Being that it’s football season, I thought it would be appropriate to blog about how much good an incomplete pass does for your team. In the huddle, the quarterback calls the play — a pass designed to exploit weaknesses perceived in the defense and bring the goal of a score much closer to a reality. But once the ball is snapped, a myriad of events occur to cause the ball to fall to the ground incomplete.

So what was gained here? No yardage was gained, thus, no  progress toward the goal. A down was lost, costing them time. Also, the play that was called might have been tipped, and someone else would be expecting it the next time! Stagnant progress, lost or wasted time, and the loss of competitive advantage or ideas — any of that sound familiar?

This is what happens in varying degrees when you abandon projects midstream. They are left on the shelf, never nearing completion, representing lost opportunities and lost income. How many great ebooks have you started? Novels?  Reports? Courses? How much time did you invest in these, and perhaps money as well? It’s been said by many a wise man that 100% of the projects you don’t finish will make you very little money!

If you are struggling trying to get projects to completion, know that nearly everyone goes through this to some degree. What separates the people who end up making money on projects is that they actually finish them. It doesn’t mean that they are perfect: many times they are rough, and need some extra help before they really can sell. But at least having it in a rough form can help get it closer to market.

Another, more insidious aspect of incompletion is the mindset it engenders. All of sudden ( at least in your  mind if no where else), you perceive yourself as someone incapable of getting it done. You are diminished to some degree, whereas the opposite occurs once you get in the habit of completing  projects. Your confidence soars, and you feel as though you are capable of getting the job done, which of course is half the battle!

If you’ve got too many things on your plate, clear it down to the ones most important, and run with those until they are done. Then move on to the next. He who chases many rabbits catches none!

You have heard them both: you need to write naturally and you need to make sure you write with SEO in mind. Can you actually do both at the same time? Will it sound okay? Will it rank? The answer is yes! Both aims can be accomplished and be effective. Let’s take a look at how.

While it’s important to try and make our content rank well, we need to understand that at the end of the day, all we can really control is the quality of our content: the search engine rankings will have to take care of themselves. That said, there are some things we can do to positively affect our positions in the search engines. First, make sure you use one primary keyword in your content. The idea is to try and rank each page for one keyword. If you get multiple keyword rankings, so much the better! Second, make sure your keyword is in the title tag, your title, the post or article URL, any post or article tags, the first sentence, and then sprinkled through the rest of the article as it makes sense. How often? A good rule of thumb is no more than once per 100 words.If you manage these things, you will have done about as much as you can for on page SEO.

As far as the readability issue goes, do your best to make sure it sounds natural. This sounds easy but is sometimes a bit challenging if you’re working with keywords that are a bit odd. You have to really get creative to make it sound as part of the conversation. One of the best ways to help with this is to read it aloud to yourself and see  that it not only makes sense, but sounds good. Be particularly sensitive when writing on subjects that may be very technical in nature, as your audience may not be as versed in the lingo as you are, whether its a keyword or not!

Remember to write for an audience; not a search engine! In the end it’s the readers who will be moved to take action or to leave posthaste, depending on the job you’ve done with the content. Make sure you are writing for them and crafting your article or blog post to get the appropriate response.

If you’re looking at this blog, you have no doubt heard somewhere that it’s a great idea to go about outsourcing your web content creation. However, if you’re like many others, you’re leery of giving this task over to someone less qualified than yourself to do it or you may have been burned in the past. Let’s go over some of the reasons why you need to take a bigger view of the whole picture and learn to embrace outsourcing as an incredible tool for scaling your business in a way you would not be able to do yourself.

• Control – First of all, you can still maintain a modicum of control on your project. Most legitimate outsourcers allow for not only some rewrite provisions, but actually require that you give considerable direction to the writer before the project starts, so as to avoid unnecessary rewrites. If the client is able to give their writer clear guidance as to the keywords, slant, voice, and audience the piece is to be written to, there are seldom many problems.
• Know What You Want – If you don’t know what you need, do some research prior to engaging the outsourcer so you can get all involved on the same page. Also, don’t change ideas, markets, or keywords in the middle of the project without expecting considerable pushback. Everyone’s time is valuable, so make sure the work is clear before starting.
• Use Your Time Wisely! – Use the time afforded by outsourcing to lay the groundwork for scaling up your business in ways only you can. Learn or put in place systems to promote your new material, as to further increase it’s reach.
• Check ‘Em Out - Make sure you check out your outsourcing provider as well as you can before you engage them. If you outsource overseas, be aware that there are many degrees of “fluency” and “native speaker.”  Ask for samples or work with some of the more reputable firms. Your best bet, however, if you want contemporary, colloquial American English is to use a company stateside, like Content Divas! Outsourcing stateside is not as expensive as you might think, and it will save you money and time in the long run!

Outsourcing your web content creation is a very savvy way to go and can leverage your time and assets in ways you can’t imagine right now, especially if you’re buried trying to create 25 articles on weight loss!

Obviously, we here at Content Divas are big proponents of unique content, and it’s not only because we sell it. We also sell PLR, but we maintain that that type of product be used in a specific way, and by no means should it ever see the light of day on your main site in it’s current form. Here are 6 very good reasons why you should opt for unique content for your web pages every time!

1. Late To The Dance! – Webmasters who opt to use either PLR articles or take someone else’s articles and content from an article directory are running a high chance that their efforts will be in vain, as far as getting that page indexed is concerned. It’s not about that dreaded (but not applicable in this case) duplicate content penalty, but rather that Google, with many different instances of the same page floating about out there, has to choose the one they feel is the most authoritative, and that usually isn’t the latest incarnation of the piece in question. It’s usually the first!
2. Not Keyword/SEO Optimized – The use of less than unique content can have an impact on your SEO efforts within your site. Very often they will not be anywhere near optimized for your site with regards to keywords and focus, and attempts to tweak can result in an incoherent mess. Getting your site to rank is based on a number of factors, and good keyword strategy and SEO are very important.
3. Readability – Many times the PLR content that is chosen is barely literate at best. Often they are spun articles, many times removed from the original, seed article, and who knows how good that one was to begin with! Remember, presumably you’re not doing this to waste your time so  don’t waste your reader’s time with anything less than unique, highly-readable content!
4. BOOORING! - 99 times out of a hundred, you can spot PLR. It’s just bland and has little to no personality or joie de vivre! It is constructed to be all things to all people and to not take a position, but be applicable to anyone needing content containing those particular keywords/topics. Is that what you really want on your site?
5. Don’t Waste The Opportunity! – Your content is making a statement about you and what your message is. If you are making a made-for-Adsense site or something similar, then clearly you don’t care about the content on the page and only hope it facilitates getting people to the page so they can be bored by your content and hopefully click out on an ad. If that’s not you and you want your site to shine and be recognized for quality, don’t employ PLR! You expend a lot of time, effort, and expense getting visitors. Don’t waste them!
6. Make It Shareable – Bland, uninteresting, and ultimately worthless content is highly unlikely to be shared on our increasingly social Web. I assume you have those social sharing buttons on your blog for a reason. Ask yourself if anyone is going to share what you’ve posted. If you’re writing or posting for more than mental exercise, make sure someone else will want to read it and pass it along!

Even if you are outsourcing your web content creation, strive to make anything you put on the Web, and especially your site, reflect the best you can do. You will be rewarded in the end!