RalphGreco

Press The Press

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  No Responses »
Nov 172011
 
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I don’t know how to say this without just coming out and saying it…you don’t need a website anymore.

What I mean specifically is, if your client is spending tons of cash on a site builder, enlisting the opinion (and paying for that opinion) of a site designer and he is including you in on the budget for some SEO copy, that’s all well and good, but really all any of us need these days is a WordPress, Typad or Drupal site or something comparable. And if your client goes this way-a much cheaper way of creating a web presence-it will only benefit you in the end.

So I guess what I am saying is, if your opinion matters in the process of a client’s budget or concerns know that he will be better served by going the easier, cheaper way.

Why is this better for you, the master SEO scribe?

Basically the client is the master of his or her domain with W.P., Typad, etc.He can change or allow you access to change content and update at will, he will not be at the mercy of the site’s developer and therefore neither will you. This is especially helpful if you are blogging for somebody (or a few somebody’s) on a regular basis, as you can just pop on a site, do what you need to and pop off, leaving you to your weekly missives, articles, options that you been hired to write.

In making SEO easier, it is sometimes not just how you write what you write and the tools of the trade I can impress upon you but also the logistics of taking the easy way over the hard if you can.

Press the press my fellow droogs, press the press.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 1:55 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

Ralph Greco Presents – Weighing Your Options

 Ralph Greco Jr.  No Responses »
Sep 222011
 
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If you get in the lucky position where you have too many paying writing gigs on your plate, you’re going to have to manage your time and stick to the gigs that either pay the most or the ones you really love (hopefully these can sometimes be the same job). When it comes to SEO writing, unlike other writing gigs, you really do have to allot a lot of time to the blogs or articles you are writing.

Now don’t come down on me for saying (which I’m not) that other writing gigs are not as hard as SEO writing, I’m just relating from my experience-which lately has been mainly SEO writing-that out of all the time-intensive SEO writing you are attempting you have to push to the forefront those that pay you the most for your time, or that you love (hopefully these can be the same job…where have I heard that before?)

If you are given specific keywords by a client this writing job will probably easier then if you got to go search for or think-up keywords yourself (I have told you before you should figure these two alternatives into your overall price when first determining the job), but the job that’s easier might pay you less, if your client is a savvy guy or girl. Really, do yourself a favor and weigh your options here.

I sometimes have clients come to me with a promise to send a goodly sum to my paypal to begin some seo blogging for the month and while the am’t seems large at the time we need to project into the future how much time this writing is going to take us and if the am’t you are promised is worth that time and if this job is worth you maybe putting others on the back burner. If you are a writer you’re probably not great in math (I suck at math) but really try to figure these jobs out by how many hours it’s going to take you to do them then see what you’re making an hour.

If you do this you’ll be able to weigh your options (if you have them) and say no or maybe later, to jobs that simply don’t pay you enough or take up too much of your time.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 4:55 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

KEEPING IT CURRENT

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  No Responses »
Jul 282011
 
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This time I want to get into blogs.

OK, not into them all the way, maybe just a bit.

It’s a huge subject and I have covered some of it before in regard to SEO and it may or may not have come across how I feel about blogging in general. It’s more or less a necessary evil these day I feel and if you’re going to do it to increase traffic to your site-which it does-or you hire one of us to do it-which we will, for a price-then there are a few tips for anyone of you out there writing blogs with SEO in mind, and you really should never write a blog, at least for business purposes, without SEO in mind.

But this not a column about how to write the blog, how to put the keywords in, ad the tags; I can and might get into that some other time if I haven’t already (sorry it’s prematurely hot here in Jersey and my mind is kind of like oatmeal more then usual). But what I did want to get into, hammer home, make sure you remember, if you remember nothing else from what your wize old uncle Ralphie tells you here, is that you need to be keeping those blogs current.

Not just germane to the site you are writing for…and yes that’s important. Not just including the keywords…and yes, you need to do this to. But current, up-to-date, concerning the here-and-now and what’s doing in the world. Not every blog you write will have a take on current events or be about what’s happening in the news, but the more you can relate your blogs to what is happening in the world presently the more people might find it or want to read about it.

Don’t ask me how it came to pass that any one of our opinions could be worth a monkey’s dung heap to anyone else, but somewhere along the line it became a cause-we-can-we-should mentality to writing on the web, to twittering and twatting and Facebook cum-shots on the wall. So people expect up-to-the-minute opining; believe me if you let them they certainly are going to tell you how they feel!

So write the blogs for yourself or your clients and if you want to get people to read them, a little current events worked in from time to time doesn’t hurt.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 4:37 am  Tagged with: ,

PRO

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  No Responses »
Jun 102011
 
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So, guess who is a professional playwright now?

I got into the one-act thang a bit late. Having been penning and publishing short stories first and foremost in my illustrious career (it’s only illustrious to me, believe me) it didn’t take all that much time to be able to claim being a pro writer and seeing the coin from it (jingly change though it was). It had less to do with how wonderful my writing was then the fact that I really began all this stuff in earnest penning 800 # pre-recorded phone-sex scripts and being paid for them from the get go. I did spend the requisite time in the trenches sending out my sci-fi short stories, essays, etc. (and still do in fact) but for the most part when I began writing sex (and that was pretty damn early in my writing career) I got paid for it relatively quickly, so I was a pro none too long into the effort.

The SEO thang and the play writing seemed to have begun for me in earnest at the same time-though one has nothing to do with the other-and having just had a one-act run (or “go up” as we pros call it in the business) in the great city of Portland, OR and been paid for that effort (and my first time being so) I can now say I am a professional playwright. Which now leads me to (after all the bragging) my point for this installment.

Gotta get paid.

It doesn’t always happen and I am not saying only ever do this writing thing for the money, but truly if you want to make a living at this or at least earn some sort of self respect at it and maybe the respect of your peers, nothing emboldens one better then getting coin of the realm for your hard earned efforts. Which brings me to my point about SEO writing (see, you didn’t think I could tie it all in, did you?). As we all know from searching for work, there are plenty of places that are looking for written content and a good many of them on line. Most, if not all, businesses know about or have heard rumblings over what SEO is and want to have some of it on their site.  And because this writing is specialized-sorry, but not everybody can do it or do it well-the owners of the sites usually-and that’s usually with a big “ually”-know they must pay for a writer to write SEO. Now what they pay will vary and often they will attempt to low ball you on a price, as mostly everyone these days will for any and all services, so the more you can bring to the table about SEO-knowing what meta-tags are, knowing where to research keywords, how to monitor analytics to assure the client you are doing your job-the more valuable you are and the more you can demanded.

So I guess really this time out I want to impress you with a few things. One, it’s good to get paid for your writing, even if it is just a little bit and secondly, you can get more than just a little bit the more valuable you are to who hires you. My playwriting now, in the beginning stages though it is, is now just a tinge more valuable in the overall objective scheme of things because I have had a few plays produced at this writing and I have been paid now to do so. So getting paid, while not the reason we right, does help put food on the table and some crack into the old pipe.

Go forth and play this stage called life my little droogs with your writing wares and unlimited desire for abuse.

where it all happened, by the way can be seen here:

 

(Technorati code: ZNG4R4NEH8PA)

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 1:03 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,

SEO A GO GO

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  No Responses »
Apr 212011
 
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So what happened recently, if you haven’t heard, was that Google began cracking down on content houses over their output. Seems that some people were handing back rather shoddy written work for blogs and articles that were to be used on the web. You know, all the stuff I try to tell you not to do; keyword stuffing, blogs that had little or no meaning, just a seeming bunch of paragraphs to drop keywords into, over-all sophomoric content written by people who are not really writers. It is good for us scribes who do this voodoo that we do and consider it a real job, bad news for houses that simply churned out stuff with no care for the quality.

If you were to hold my feet to the fire-and I’m kinda into that, so have at it, just make sure you buy me a soda first-I wouldn’t be able to tell you what is good or bad writing. I am not the grammar police (ever see some of my stuff?) so I really wouldn’t know what’s good or bad, but I do think I know a thing about SEO and SEO as it applies to the adult industry, but an expert I aint’. And in fact, if anybody tells you they are an expert-about anything-take it from your old uncle Ralphie with the charred tootsies, they ain’t an expert either.

What I can tell you about SEO is, the keywords need to relate bro (either the client will provide them or you will be asked to research for some…and for this you damn well better be charging), the keywords need to sit nice and comfy in the article, blog, what-have-you and the article, blog, what-have-you need to be about something and something germane to the site you are writing for…unless your client tells you they do not want it to be germane.

But I can’t sit here and advise you what is good writing or bad, I just know what moves me when I see it and what doesn’t. The actual good or bad part is subjective, even Google’s not cracking down on that part of the writing, they are cracking down on writing that reeks of pure badly placed SEO and rambling content.

But I can tell you this for sure….if you are out there writing SEO content for clients you damn well better step-up your game because the stakes are higher now and big brother-of Google-is watching.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 4:33 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

Moving The Goal Posts

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  2 Responses »
Mar 032011
 
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Kids, if you want to work in the wacky world of SEO writing you need to know the goal posts might be moved on you every so often.

Because what we do in keyword copy writing is about the, say it with me now…keywords as much as it is the copy (really it’s about the keywords, don’t let anyone fool you) you write to the keywords, work copy around the keywords, research what keywords will work with a particular client (research you should be paid for, by the way) or work-in keywords given to you by your client; get it, the emphasis is on, that’s right say it with me…keywords. Therefore don’t be so shocked when a client comes to you and says, ‘hey let’s change up some of those keywords we have been using because they do not earn us a lot of traffic currently’.

Learn to adapt.

It’s the the nature of the beast. This beast is Internet writing a many sullied thing at best, poorly written missives at worst. You see all the bad writing on the net or truncated net-speak that passes for actual sentences. You realize language is being aborted for the brevity of some sort of digispeak. It should not come as a shock to any of us as the language changes-for the worse as far as I’m concerned-and grammar goes out the window (shit, all ya gotta do is read some of my posts to see how bad grammar has effected me!) that the goal posts will be shifted to what a client thinks they need in their copy and this includes what keywords they will use and even how long the copy might be.

So take it from your old uncle Ralphie, be ready for changes even if you have a contract (which, in the end, is not worth dickall really…try hunting someone down on-line to honor what has been agreed upon. Yes I know emails are evidence but unless you hire a lawyer to go get the $600.00 bucks owed you, you can’t enforce a contract from on line, or anywhere else. If you think you can, I have some land in NJ you might like) and agreed upon keywords, it’s all not only subject to change, it pretty much damn well will.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 2:12 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

No Muse Is Good Muse

 Write Sex  2 Responses »
Jan 132011
 
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No Muse Is Good Muse

So it’s another one of these columns where I will speak less about the specifics of SEO writing then the approach I think best suits the working writer, or the one who wants to work. Whatever it is you’re doing, SEO work (writing copy with specific keywords for search engines) editing or if you’re lucky enough to make fiction writing your main gig, I think it behooves a writer to wait for his or her muse.

A muse, if one exists (and I have a hard time believing in the concept) ain’t  gonna put food on your table. If you are a writer, write. Stop blogging about writing, stop tweeting or twatting about it, stop professing to people that you write and you have the great American novel on your hard drive awaiting completion. Please do me, your family, friends and fellow writers a favor…just fucking write!

If you have a job that will pay you to move those stubby little digits across a computer keyboard and the job is paying you what you feel is a honest wage, then you best get on the job and start writing, cause the worst thing to be is a writer waiting for inspiration while money passes you by.  Be inspired all you want, feel the vibe and the verve and the shuck and jive, stand on your head if you have to, but one need remember this writing thang we do, especially if one is writing stuff like SEO copy, is a job. Negotiate a good pay, stay off your twitter-really nobody cares how many followers you have, it doesn’t give your meaningless existence any more weight-and write.

The only way I ever got the jobs I did or the one I presently have is by working. I either worked directly to solicit the job, or my name was given to someone from work  I did previously, or  what little rep. I do happen to have I got by…yes, say it out loud with me kids….by working writing!

The nuts and bolts of SEO writing I can sum up for you right here, right now…either find or have your employer give you the keywords he or she want to get into the copy, write clear and concise copy to your employers specification, put those keywords in the copy judicously, have the copy make sense and make sure to stay on your point in the words allotted. Don’t stuff keywords by keeping the ratio pretty well even through-ut your paragraphs and you’re mostly there.

But none of the paragraph above will mean doodly unless you…that’s right, say it with me again kids…unless you write. Unless you work. Unless you get up off your ass (or sit down on it), turn off the PDA, close the Facebook account-believe me if you log on an hour from now you’re not going have missed a blessed thing-and welcome the muse called commerce and do your job. You’re a writer right? Writers right. If you think for a millisecond that what you do is really all that more important than anyone else’s job, that you are on the fast track to inspiration because you do something ‘creative’, that you’re any more special then the dude that picks up your garbage, then do me a favor, go on your Twitter account and tell all your friends. They believe they are just as special

For the rest of us slobs, I say, keep writing.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 4:29 am  Tagged with: , , , ,

WHY SEO

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  2 Responses »
Nov 182010
 
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You have a website. You want to bring people to your website. Either you have a blog you feel the world needs to read, a product you’d like to get people to buy or a service you want to hook people into paying for.  Maybe you’re a band and want to have your music heard or a beginning film maker who likes to post his short movies and have them watched by untold thousands. Either way you have something, ‘content’ for want of a better word, you want people to see, listen to, experience in some way and you have placed this content, or at least a link to it on a website. You know, as well as I, how many websites there are out there. How do you get the untold and unwashed to your specific website?

This is where SEO comes in. What you do is, you pick whatever niche you happen to be exploring-since this a site about sex writing let’s take a cam site that shows Japanese women smoking cigar VODs-then you write articles, blogs, what-have-you about that very subject and you (or the writer you hire)  use keywords related to your subject (and any good SEO copywriter will know how to find those keywords, or at least the ones that garner a lot of hits) get it all nicely meta-tagged (though keywords will show up without meta tagging, but it is a good idea to go this extra step) and away you go. The trick of course is first finding the niche you want to explore, exploring your best keyword options then figuring if you want articles, blogs, reviews, even fiction about your subject (or all four), writing copy that sounds natural and not ‘stuffed’ with keywords (this is called “keyword stuffing”, go figure!) and incorporating the keyword copy in a way it doesn’t take away but instead enhances the smokin’ hot smoking Asian girl cams that you want people to sign-up for.

You want people to come to your site and stay at your site and beyond all the normal advertising you’ll do for a Japanese smoking cam site-posting on boards, running banner ads, affiliate linking-writing about what you do and offer, will rank high on search engines if your copy is written with keywords in mind and well placed.

The actual blogs and articles themselves, fiction even?

Don’t ask me why, this is still something I can’t get my mind around and I do this for a living, but there are people, plenty of people out there that will read someone else’s ruminations about a subject. These ruminations, for want of a better term, are called blogs. Blogs are very popular. If you have a site that is closely related to the blog you blog all’s the better, if you are some sort of noted expert in the field you are blogging about, you’re ahead of the game. If you’re smart enough to hire a writer who does this for a living and can incorporate keywords into your blog, you might just pull people to your site.

Articles are a little bit harder to come by, and write. They require some research and knowledge about the subject. You best know what kind of cigars those smoking girls are smoking, how often the videos are updated, etc. But the same rules apply to the keywords. The copy needs to read smooth, not like one is ‘stuffing’ words such as smoking girls, or girls smoking in every chance one gets with no care for the article making sense.

I am primarily a fiction writer. I am most comfortable making shit up (like the sex life I brag about all the time). What I came to find, most notably when writing for adult toy manufacturers was that a nice three hundred to six hundred word story, with well-placed keywords plugged in, brings people to a site every bit or more so then an article can. For sure this is probably the most specialized writing I ever did and do (next to 800# pre-recorded phone sex scripts…remind me to tell you about that experience sometime) but it is also the most funnest.

Though SEO writing is a very specific type of writing, it’s not impossible to do by any means. But it all requires a certain economy of style-if you will allow me- and certainly some practice and an eye for where commerce meets creativity. This is not ad copy writing-itself a totally different form of writing replete with its own rules, formulas and difficulties-but writing where you have to research keywords that will rank a site high, then piece them into either articles, P.R. blogs what-have-you and like all writing, this takes time, skill and is best handled by a professional (kids don’t try this at home!)

Next time I’ll get into how to do it.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 7:53 am  Tagged with: , , , , ,

Ralph Greco, Jr.SEO – WHAT IT IS, WHAT IT BE, WHERE IT’S AT

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  No Responses »
Sep 302010
 
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I’ve been pondering the question of what SEO is and how to write it, since it looks like I am to be your go-to-guy over this specific aspect of adult writing (and boy, if I’m your go-to-guy you are in trouble big!) but I realize I don’t have much to teach. So, so long and thanks for all the fish (if you know what this is from you get an extra prize in your Kracker Jack bucko), thanks for having me, don’t forget to tip your waitress and please, try the veal.

Ok, I’m joking. I do have some tips, advice, lead-you-down-the-garden-path nudges to nudge you with.

First of all, all SEO mean is search engine optimization, which in turn translates to mean (in our context here) writing copy that has key words in it. Say you have a site where you have Asian hookers displaying themselves on cam (a client I actually did do work for) and you want people (adults) to come to your site, pay a monthly fee and peruse the girls, in order to get people to your site you need to let them know you Asian hooker cam girls exists, right?  One of the ways you do this is to hire incredibly talented writers like me (and good looking to, let’s not forget that!) to write press releases, webcopy that will appear on your website, blogs, articles and in the case of this client, short fiction featuring Asian girls. The trick of course was in all of the above writing I had to make sure to include various key words or key word phrases that we knew would ‘tag’ this site when one was scrolling through Google etc, possibly looking for Asian cam girls or any variation on that theme. At that time I was working with my great friend and SEO expert, Lisa W. (Lisa has blogged here before) and Lisa was the one who did the keyword search for our client and later, took my copy to ad Meta Tags (and don’t ask me about Meta Tags, I don’t know how to do them, look them up…you want everything for free here!) The point is, once the keywords are established (in the above case words like ‘Asian’ ‘Oriental’ ‘flower’ ranked high as did all the variations on various Asian ethnicities) I knew what I had to work with. ‘Stuffing’ these words is looked down upon (putting too many phrases or keywords into copy where is reads terribly and obvious, like “The New York Botanical Garden is open year round, which is unusual seeing that no other New York Botanical Garden in New York is open year round, simply because New York’s Botanical Garden’s are at the mercy of New York’s terrible winter weather which can greatly affect Botanical Gardens) as is simply pluralizing the same word over and over. So the trick for me, and a pretty good writing challenge, was to bring this client fiction, articles, etc. with plenty of keywords in it, to be picked up later by search engines, but to make the copy sing.

This is the essence of SEO writing…as far as the writing is concerned. Like I said, dear sweat Lisa, truly the brains of our operation (but not just brains, she’s a cutie too) was the one who took my stuff and added the tags, ran the analytics for the client to keep up on what was working and what not, and generally made what I did, the writing, work so the client got hits.

The specifics of what works and what doesn’t in all this I will save for another piece.

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 6:07 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Ralph Greco, Jr. requesting permission to come aboard

 Ralph Greco Jr., Write Sex  2 Responses »
Aug 122010
 
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Not that my name means much to anyone except me (and it hardly does me) I do think a quick introduction is in order. More to see my credits listed then to impress, I am a freelancer in this writing thang we do, having been published in small press, major market, anthos and on-line; penning blogs, essays, SEO webcopy (more on that in a bit), produced one-acts (so off off Broadway they have been produced in northern NJ where I live), short fiction, reviews and interviews, 800# pre-recorded scripts and my weekly column SEX FILES at a website to be named later. I also have a music show on Radiodentata and am an ASCAP licensed songwriter, having played in the US and abroad.

So that’s me, for good or bad.

The main gist, point, fol-de-rol and fiddle dee dee of what I will present here we be the ins and outs of SEO (that’s search engine optimization) in the sex writing field, where it fits in and how and why to do it. Since I write everything from P.R. for clients, to product descriptions, interviews and even short gonzo pieces, and almost all of it needs to have some sort of SEO compliance, I might be in a position to give some tips, advice or at least answer questions about this voodoo that we do.

The thing I have come to see (and I’m sure you have also) is how all bets are off these days. The table lists constantly. One day one type of doing something is the only way, and by the end of the week the rules change. As seems to happen more and more, the Net allows for so much freedom while at the same time opening doors to ways of thinking and working that are seen as innovative on a Monday but grow obsolete by Friday. What I will be on about here is ways of writing more dictated by trends and market-place rules then your own little style and way of writing that makes you you. And while in all my writing I endeavor to find my own voice, I do find I am implementing so many new paradigms as the days go on that sometimes make my head spin.

To this end I am ever learning. I don’t take everything to heart, some ideas or trends are simply too silly or don’t apply with what I do, but writing copy with a specific eye on SEO is different then penning the great American novel in your enviable style. And though I don’t start my fingers flying with the express purpose of stuffing keywords into every line nor am I even compelled to do so with every scribble, this way of thinking has crept into the work I do when I am hired to do the work this way.

Again, I really do hope I have something to offer here. I do not have a rarified view of what I do, of art in general. I think that anything you do with a passion is artful. If you have a desire to lift, topple and shift garbage from a garbage can, and this is a job you take pride and view as artful, then it is just as important as another guy or gal penning that great American novel. And maybe that’s what I’ll leave you with today. Nothing specific in the way of SEO writing or its ilk, but more an idea that whatever you do do, if you do do it well and want to do do it well, that you are approaching that thing you do ‘artfully’ and beyond paying attention to a certain number of keywords in your copy or fitting in the website name in a blog or article, maybe the most important aspect of anything you do is to always endeavor to do it with care, passion and some sort of artfulness.

 Then again, I’m new here, what the hell do I know? 

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 Posted by RalphGreco at 9:57 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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