Freelance Writer Tip #9 — Keep a Blog

There are few objects on the Web which are more effective for SEO purposes than blogging. While I haven’t spent much time on SEO writing yet (which I will in the next few days), as a new freelance writer, you will probably receive offers for SEO writing before any other type content. Understanding how to blog, and how to use the main blogging programs will make your bid for work in this area, that much more attractive.

Blogs are useful areas to spend time on even if SEO writing wasn’t so prevalent in the industry. They are fairly simple to use (for CMS type programs), using some of the available tools, blogging and micro-blogging is fast, an a way to storehouse comments, quotes, notes, scenes, ideas and just about anything else you can produce.

There are two main free blogging areas, and you should know how to get around both of them The first is WordPress.com, the second is Blogger. There are others, such as LiveJournal.com, and MySpace has a weak little blogging area inside its “space” area, but knowing WordPress and Blogger will get you up to speed with those, as well as most of the others as well.

I use to be far more appreciative with WordPress, than any other blogging system, because you can export your content from the blog, and move it to another system if you wish to; recently Blogger added this functionality to its tool set as well. Exporting is a required feature for any serious blogging area. There is nothing worse, than posting two or three posts a day to a blog, for a couple of years, and then finding out that you can not get your content off that system to move to another, or even your own web site.