Buried By Keywords? Here’s How To Cope

by Sharon Hurley Hall on October 22, 2007 · 4 comments

in freelance writing, get paid to write, ghostwriting

Writing keyword articles can sometimes be overwhelming.

Writing keyword fodder isn’t always easy, especially when you’ve written 70 article of a batch of 140 and are losing the will to live. Yet this is one of the tasks that many freelancers face, because clients know that content is king and want plenty of it for their sites. So what do you do when the creative well has run dry? Here are some of the strategies I have used.

Turn It On Its Head

We have to take our clients and our work seriously, but that doesn’t mean we can’t use humor from time to time. Instead of writing about how to raise the perfect child, write about how NOT to do it. Trying to reverse the normal order will help to boost your creativity, and I’ve found that clients don’t mind the occasional humorous piece in a large batch.

Do Some Research

Even if you’re not setting a client’s site up, it doesn’t hurt to use a keyword research tool to find keywords similar to the ones you’re writing about. Even better is looking at related searches, because that might give you a few new ideas for ways to tackle a subject. For example, when writing about credit cards, I was able to extrapolate and write about some of the issues that students faced in getting credit cards.

Talk To Friends

It’s amazing what talking to others will do. Whether they are online or offline, you can get a lot of inspiration from chatting with people about their experiences. Real life anecdotes can help make a keyword article more interesting. For example, if you’re writing about home decorating, you could use a real example of a decorating nightmare as a starting point for your article.

Use Your Archives
If you’re writing on a familiar subject, then you’ve probably got a lot of articles on your computer. Have a look at what you’ve done for other people and see whether any of the ideas apply to your current job. It’s a great way to reuse ideas without straining your brain.

Gut It Out
In the end, you still have to meet your deadline. Sometimes the only way to do it is to do it. I usually divide up my work across the week so that I can do some difficult tasks and some easy tasks each day. I do the hard ones in the morning, which is my best writing time, and the easy ones later on.

So those are some of my tips. What are yours?

Article by

Sharon Hurley Hall has been mentoring writers here at Get Paid To Write Online since 2005 to help them improve and build sustainable and successful writing careers. Check me out on sharonhh.com. Feel free to connect with me online on Google+.

Sharon has written 653 awesome articles for us at Get Paid to Write Online

Twitter: @SHurleyHall | Facebook | | Blog → Writing Portfolio

{ 4 comments }

Rosa October 23, 2007 at 03:08

I hate doing research on topics that I don’t know much about but in the end it is worth it. I pulled my hair a time or two and kicked the dog but was okay once I got it over with.

Sharon October 23, 2007 at 11:38

I expect the dog doesn’t like it, either, Rosa. ;)

Yuwanda Black December 22, 2007 at 14:27

Sharon,

This is excellent advice. I’ve recently started to do SEO writing. To generate fresh ideas, one of the first things I do when I receive the keyword list from the client is an internet search.

I copy/paste text that generates new ideas and create my outline from that.

Trying to come up with fresh content off the top of my head after I’ve written 30 articles on “mortgages” is just not possible most days.

Great post!

Sincerely,
Yuwanda Black, Publisher
InkwellEditorial.com
InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com
SEO-Article-Writer.com
SEO-Articles-for-Sale.com
Money-Making-Videos.blogspot.com
P.S.: Read how I went from $0 to $250/day writing SEO articles at http://www.inkwelleditorial.com/make-money-writing-seo-content.htm

Sharon December 28, 2007 at 15:21

Thanks Yuwanda – that’s my first port of call, too. Hope that’s working well for you.

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