Key Attributes Your Freelance Writer Website Needs
We've talked about the questions you need to answer in your freelance writer website, but not necessarily what's needed in terms of layout, pages, and design. This walks you through creating the flow and feeling of your freelance writer website to increase your inbound leads and showcase why you're unique as a write and how you help your niche clients succeed.
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Hello? No. Hey, Getty. Welcome in. All right. We're a little late today. That's okay. We're going to start with a pup date because it's Friday and that's what we're doing. So here they are. Oh my gosh. You guys are actually both in the camera. I can't believe it. I've been doing this for so long and you guys hardly ever get in the camera at the same time. Good job. Everybody's doing great on our live stream. Everybody's getting treated. I was on our live stream. Good job guys. You're doing great. Charlotte, why do you look guilty? All right. So today we are talking about some cool things with our websites. We're talking about key attributes that your website needs to, Hey, Camille, welcome in that. Um, we need to go over in terms of, um, what are I have notes? I have notes to make sure we go over all the right stuff.
So, um, we're going over. I know we've gone over questions that we should have on our website, right? The things that we need to answer to make sure our copy is right for attracting the right ideal clients. Hey Linda, welcome in. So we have Getty, Camille and Linda and the house so far. So we've gone over questions, right? The type of copy you need to write, what kinds of things need to be put together, um, in terms of answering your client's questions, proving that you understand their pain points, um, that you can write in their niche, explain how you can help them. And if you've gotten any results, talk about that, right? We've gone over that, but we're going to go over some things that are about layout and design and how to like incorporate the feeling of working with you. So we're going to take kind of a high level approach on this because we can get really granular.
And this is something I do in my course, actually I go super granular on how to basically give that feeling that you need in your website to have someone hire you, or if you want higher end clients or a more luxury type experience, or, um, you find that your website is ending up attracting a lot of clients that are just not a good fit for you. This is one of the things that I think is really important with layout and design and also getting the right feeling for, um, what types of clients like what you want clients to feel and experience when they come to your website. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I have notes. Um, so when we are creating the flow and the feeling of our writer website, one of the things we wanna do is make sure that we're kind of following this principle.
That's a long held one of web design, which is like, don't make me think so anytime you're designing your website and picking a template. So my website is in Squarespace and I use their templates for so long. I website. Now, if you go look at my website, now it's a custom designed, um, Squarespace site. So it's still on Squarespace and it still uses a Squarespace template. But, um, I had a web designer who specialized in Squarespace go in and make it fancy. But the whole point is that when you go to my website, it takes you through the right flow and it has all the right pages that you need to get, um, in terms of giving your clients the right information. So when I set out to make my website, I wanted to make sure that there was nothing there that was like 800 clicks to go find something, because one of the major principles of web design is like, don't make me think don't make me hunt for information.
Don't, don't make me search for the answers for my questions. Don't make me have to like click a bunch of buttons. Uh, go find your portfolio over here, like search around. Um, don't make me actually put in a huge pile of effort because a couple of things happen when you do that. You end up making them think it's difficult to work with you. Cause you're making the process of them trying to work with you and understand what you do and who you work for and how to find your clips. Like you're making that different, difficult for them, right? And that story starts giving them the feeling of like, this is a pain. How do I find this? Uh, and then that translates into the feeling of them thinking it's difficult or complicated to work with you. And that's not what we want. We want them to come to our website and have this immediate feeling of like, everything's easy to find all the information I need is right here.
I don't even need to click off the homepage if I don't want to. Right. Um, my website had my clips, like some of my favorite clips are at the very top of the website. I need to refresh those. But, um, and you should refresh those often to your, your best stuff. But when you're looking at those, you, you want to have those on your homepage. So it's like they don't have to go find your portfolio to see your best work, you know, make it a mix of different niches, but allow them to actually click through those things. Right? Like they don't actually have to go find your portfolio tab. They don't actually have to go search for you saying like, um, like on the about page, like if you want to see my work, they'll click this button. This is just straight up, says, like explore my portfolio.
Here's a bunch of clips. And if they click them, it takes them directly to the clip. It doesn't take them to the portfolio. It doesn't shoot them around my website. They get that one click to get the information they want. That's like as, as far away from don't make me think as you can get, right? Like that's, uh, or I mean, that's as close as you can get to don't make me think one click gets them the information they want. It's the same thing with contact me right on my website. I have buttons to say, contact me. They don't send someone to a page that says like, fill out this form. It literally just opens up a box and says, here's the email send the email, right? That's as literal his colos as you can get, right? It's just one click to get the information that they need or to take the next step.
And that's really important to the flow in designing your website. So we want to make it clear from the very beginning that everything they need is in one place. They don't have to go searching around. So for my website, the way I did that was the opening top bar is just, um, me and my dogs. And it talks about niches and who I write for and how it help. It goes into my past clients. Um, it has testimonials. It explains why, kind of, why you should work with me or what maybe you're looking for. And maybe I'm a fit. And it has my clips on there. Um, contact me basically anything they would need to know, like, who is this person? What do they write for? Are they credible? Like, do they have past clients? Do they have clips? Do they have testimonials? Um, how do I get in touch with them?
Once I realized this might be the right fit for my business, all of those things are on one page. They don't have to go anywhere else. Now, if they want to, they can, they can go to my about page, which really isn't about me. Like 80% of it is about them, right? We want to guide them through the process a little bit more, but they go to my about page and it's still like easy for them to get in touch with me. One click to get in touch with me. Um, it's really easy for them to hit my portfolio, which is on the top navigation and go look for extra clips if they want to do that. But the idea is like when someone gets on the homepage of your website, the feeling should be like, this is easy. The flow should be all the information that they need to make a decision.
It shouldn't be this thing where they have to click around to the website, 800 different times to find information. We're not Microsoft. We don't have 800 products. We're not apple. Like we have our main things are always kind of like who we've worked for. Like who do we currently work for our niches and the types of writing we do, um, who are our past clients, uh, what clips we can offer that are kind of our best clips and then testimonials to prove that we get results or that we do a good job. So all of those things being on the homepage makes it super easy for someone to see if you're a fit, um, to see your credibility, to understand that you may be the right writer for them. And it doesn't give them this feeling of overwhelm, right. It's easy to scroll through. And I think the power here is white space.
A lot of people end up creating these websites without a lot of white space. Um, and it just ends up being this very crowded space. That's full of text and hard for people to get through. And I think if you're creative about how you use your white space, right? How do you use the white space within your website? It makes it a lot easier for people to not feel overwhelmed by information. So the feeling that they get is like, great. This is clean. It's easy to get through. It's easy for me to move to the next step. Right? And that's another thing for like a point on your side, right? We don't want to make a bunch of points where they're just, this is difficult. This is a pain. How do I find this? Now I'm annoyed. I just want to contact this person. How do I get this clip?
Like, where's this thing. We don't want any of that. We want the feeling of our website to be like, ah, they get it. You want to make it easy for me to find stuff. They want to make it easy for me to work with them and contact them. Um, and then you can add other feelings and stuff in there. So for me, one of the things I wanted was to be very specific about who was coming into my inbox. So I got very much like from my previous site to my site, that I read it in 29 19. Um, I got very granular on who I wanted to target. And I can tell you from being very much specific on my website, copy the inbound leads I get are way more targeted. Um, very rarely do I get tire kickers. Very rarely do I get people who aren't a fit at least in terms of niche or what kind of project they're looking for.
And I think that granularity, right, that's really important in your copy, but it's also important in like how you kind of put things together, the design of your site. This was something that I realized when I started reviewing a bunch of, for those writers sites, um, is that sometimes people pick a very simplistic template and that attracts a very like tire kicker type client. They don't make the template have personality. Um, they don't give the template color and it's too simple, right? It's, there's a big difference between white space and making it too simple. And that ends up getting people who have similar websites, which are not the clients you want. You want clients with like smart websites, right? You want clients with smart websites that make sense that aren't overloaded information. They look modern and cool and clean. That's how you get on the right track with your clients.
Your website kind of needs to mirror theirs. And when you end up having, like, for me, this is kind of why I don't usually end up recommending something like Wix or Weebly is cause it's like too simplistic looking. I like Squarespace because it's just this nice balance of like minimalist, but also gives you enough stuff to customize gives you enough color. It gives you enough options for adding photos or, um, it makes it look really modern and they update their templates all the time. So you can update your website, switch out the template, you know, start over. Um, whenever you decide your website feels a little dated and well, you can do that with WordPress too. So if you like WordPress, you can go and do that, um, and pick a different template and modernize it. But I find that like, when your site gets too simple, there's like a mismatch there where you're like, I want high-end clients.
I want like luxury brands or I want it to feel like a fun or expensive. Not really like, you want it to feel like it's quality, right? You don't want to feel like it's a knockoff. And I think the times when you need to invest that money is with something like getting a Squarespace site, instead of something like Weebly or Wix, you can also use show it. Um, there are plenty of templates that are built for the show it platform. And, uh, you can do all kinds of cool stuff in there and show it as a little bit more customizable than Squarespace. And it's a lot easier to kind of move things around. So that's another cool one. But the important thing here is like, remember when you're doing your research for your clients, look at their website in terms of design, we'll get their website in terms of how it feels to be there.
Like you can definitely tell the difference between someone who hasn't updated their website in the last like 10 years and someone who has an ultra modern website, right? There's a very big difference there. And that means there are two different types of clients that client doesn't really value their online presence. Right. They're not really updating their stuff. They're like I a website, it works right now. We have to keep updating our online presence to keep up and kind of sometimes be ahead of our clients. So when we're thinking about feeling and flow, I think that's really important in terms of how it's designed. Like what's on your homepage, then you have like about in portfolio, don't make it ultra complicated. Don't have like a contact page, add your contact information everywhere that's available, like buttons. Um, you can check out my site where I just have buttons that say contact me or like let's work together.
And then at the bottom, um, I have like my email and then on the sidebar, I have a little button and it just has the email. Right. And you can click it and email me. I think that makes it a lot easier. It's just a flow of information that they can get through and it's scannable. They can just, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Testimonials, let's read a couple. Okay. Clips. Let's read a few. Okay. She writes in these niches, she does these projects make it easy for them to get through that. Um, and I think the more pages you end up adding to your website, the more overwhelming it ends up feeling. And it's harder to scan a lot of people. Aren't reading everything on your website, they're scanning. So we need to make that easy, but we also need to make sure there's enough white space.
So when we put our copy on there, which will be a lot of copy, it doesn't feel like they're getting like a rock of copy, stuck on them, right? Like they're not getting a Boulder of copy hitting them in the head. Whitespace balance is really important. The other piece is like, make sure you pick a template that provides a good balance of being modern and having good white space for you to put your text in and not being too minimalist and too simplistic. And too kind of like dated looking. We want to kind of match our clients on that same level. The other piece about feeling is this is something I didn't really understand until I got my branding done. And my website done by two professionals who were not me, um, was that the colors you choose and the photos you choose and how you kind of want that client experience to be on your website is really an important thing.
There's a lot to be said for like bright colors, right. Or muted tones. Like there's a big difference between going to a website. That's a lot of neutrals and a website. That's like a lot of neon, right? That's a big, big difference in personality and how the online presence comes across. And it's also like for me, when I was designing my site, I really was like, I want a high-end client. I want someone to see my website and see that it looks really pro that it stands out from other people's because it has these little tiny tweaks and design elements and, um, colorful boxes. And like all of the things kind of go together that feel like me, right. They feel like me in terms of colors. I like, they feel like me in terms of the vibe I bring to a project like it's playful or fun, but I also get the job done.
Um, it's like these images that I'm choosing are like collaborative or they're bright and colorful, or they represent my niches. Right. All of these things here are really important to bringing to the table. Right. So like, let's say you're in a niche where people are like very data heavy or they're much more serious. Like my niches can be sometimes a little bit lighthearted. Um, so I get a little bit of freedom there, but if you're in niches or something where people are a little more buttoned up and a little more serious, maybe you want to take that with your images. Right. Don't choose like the stock images that look like very cheesy, you know, like you, you know what I'm talking about? Like the stock images where someone's like, like there's a writer with like a pencil or like there's someone like sitting at a keyboard.
Like you want something that feels like the experience of working with you. So a lot of my images are collaborative or they're about Austin. They're about my dogs. Um, some of them are in my live stream. Um, I also have images on there that are about food and real estate, but they're colorful. And they, you know, they, some of them feel more enthusiastic, less. Some of them feel more, um, like, like fun things you'd find on Instagram and others of them. Like some of my real estate ones are a little bit more stoic because real estate sometimes can be a little more, um, rules heavy. So if you were in an industry where things are a little bit more buttoned up, maybe choose images that aren't so like splashy, maybe they're still fun. Maybe they're still kind of like bright and catching the eye, but they're not cheesy images like a stock calendar, you know, or like someone looking at data or like, you know, that kind of stuff.
We want to have stuff where, um, like I like to go on Unsplash and I go on Unsplash, it's just unsplash.com. And I go in there and I just search random stuff. I think when you get really creative about what you're searching for, you get the, the right images for your site. A lot of people are like food real estate. No, I'm looking for like green cottage house, green house in the forest. Like I'm, I'm pulling all of these things that I know are kind of my brand, which is like outdoorsy and, um, little like food elements and like greens and, and brand, or not brands, but like grays and that kind of stuff. Right. So I've had to put all those things together. And I come up with these search terms that find the right images. Right. So if you have someone who is, um, you have a client that's like more data heavy, maybe you want to have someone like reviewing things together.
Like not in a cheesy way. Like, it looks like a natural photo or you want to have something that feels like maybe your brand is, um, a health brand and you take care of like you do healthcare. Uh, maybe you still put in images of people like taking care of their health, but it's not like cheesy people running now on the boardwalk. I think really thinking that through right now, don't just search running. Like you want to search like specific things. Like I said, like greenhouse in the forest, or I could say green restaurant, or I could say gray desk, I would use like the color of my branding and then my niece, or like a piece of furniture or something like that would connect those things together without being cheesy and sort of give life to my site. So I think that's really important.
Um, if you have any questions, pop them in the chat. I know have been going for like most of the time here, I've got a few more things to talk about. So if you have questions, pop them in the chat. If you feel like this has been helpful so far, give it a thumbs up. Um, if you want to learn more about freelance writer websites, or, you know, growing your freelance writing business, make sure to subscribe below. So what we want to do here. Okay. The next thing we're going to talk about is in cross feed, increasing your inbound leads and then explaining things visually. So this is what I was going with with the images, when you're explaining things visually, that's how you get those feelings out of the photos, right? There's a lot of things that we can look at photos and like, I, you know, they're bursting with color or they have really neat, um, attributes to them that, that you're like, this feels like me.
Like I'm fun. You know, like when you see those photos of people, um, a good example is like baking. There's a big difference between like a geometric photo with like a cupcake tin. That's like turned to the side and you just see them, like before they frost, the cupcakes are like just a little hand where they have there's frosting, like one cupcake between that. And like a mother and daughter, like the mother's like putting frosting on the daughter's, uh, like nose and they're laughing about it. That's a big difference, right? This geometric kind of like stoic photo of like frosting. These cupcakes is a lot different than the interaction between two humans, joking around with the cupcakes and the frosting. I think thinking about differences in those photos and energies that you want to put in your site, like maybe you're like, I don't really like this kind of like, this is too over the top for me.
Maybe you really like a lot of like those geometric ones or those kind of stoic photos, maybe that would work better or for your brand. But that's part of the visual part of explaining what it's like to work with you. Like, I know that when people go to my website, like, I can tell you how many, like tons of people, like inbound leads. They're like, I loved your website. And they tell me specifically what they liked about it. Right. And those things are exactly what I'm hoping to get at it. Like, oh my gosh, your website, so fun. I love your dogs. I love that playful photo on this. Like, I love this food photo or whatever. Like there's all these things on there that they can pull in from the experience. Right. It pulls in and they're like, ah, this is who I want to work with.
They get this feeling of like, um, like it's high end or it's fun, or, um, I'm going to get the job done or that like, even though there's a lot of color, like I take my job seriously. Um, and that's reflected in testimonials. It's reflected in how I organize things. Right? Like my website is very well organized. So I think you got to think through those things. And I think writing down what you want people to feel when they come to your website, like, do they want you, you want them to feel like you're competent, you're professional. Um, like you'll get the job done. Like you're detail oriented. Maybe the working experience with you is fun or maybe their working experience with you is like, Hey, like don't, you don't have to worry about it. I've got it. Like maybe the experience is that, um, you want something that is a very, like, you want to slant it towards a certain.
So like there was someone who I used to know who wrote in the women's health and sex niches, and her website was like fun and playful because sometimes people get really uncomfortable talking about women's health and sex issues. Right. So she kind of has to play off that. And there's lots of like flowers and, um, feminine energy that comes from her site. Like it feels very pink and purple. Um, and it feels kind of like greens and earthy almost. I think kind of thinking through those things, making a list is really helpful. So, um, another good example is like, if you go to, uh, different spa websites, this is something I've noticed, like, think about the difference between going to a spa that's on the lake and a spa that's in like the middle of the mountains and a spa that's in the middle of a city.
Right. They're all very different vibes. And you can tell that from their websites, right. The pictures of the lake or the pictures of the city buildings and getting like re you know, retreat away from the city, or you see like this basically the like spot or the hotel or wherever it is, it's just like out in the middle of the mountains and there's nothing around it. Right. There's a big difference between all of those things and the vibe they're going for. Right. And the customer they're trying to attract. So I would think about it that way. There's also a big difference, right. Between like apple and a spa. Right. So I would find some websites that you like that gives you a good feeling of what you want your brand to feel like, and look like. And for me, this was really helpful in not only outlining my site, but seeing like, oh, when I see this, it makes me feel like this.
That's why I want to put it in my site. When I go through this and I click through these things, or I'm seeing these visuals together, that's the feeling and like how I want my site to feel, I want to put that in my site. Right. So I would go find some examples of what sites you really like and kind of play off those. Um, and then the last thing that I wanted to go over was inbound leads. So if you have questions, you can pop them in the chat and, um, we can go over whatever questions you have. So we, haven't done a little pup date. Let's do a pup day before we get to the last piece. So those are they're licking. Then you have to go back to your Hobbit hole, go back to your habit hole, go back to your Hobbit, a hole, go back to your Hobbit hole. Where'd you go? There you go.
Here we go. You did it. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Everybody's getting treated us all right. Sometimes we have trouble getting him back in our little Hobbit hole space, but you know, that happens to the best of us, I guess. So, all right. Our last point here is that we are going to go over, um, how we can increase our inbound leads. So when you have a good website, number one, just having a good site that says what you do, who you do it for, who you've worked for clips, testimonials that already converts really well. And don't worry if you don't have clips or testimonials. Um, huh. Um, don't worry if you don't have clips or testimonials yet, that will come later. But as long as you can kind of put your stuff together in terms of like how you can help and explain things, right.
You're usually in good shape. So when we're thinking about inbound leads, what's really important is that, um, that design thing matches the types of leads. So another piece, in addition to making lists of websites that you really like is make lists of client websites that you really like, if you can kind of combine those things together, the websites you like and the client websites you like in terms of design and functionality and how they look. Um, I know Linda's asking some questions. Yeah. Beau and Charlotte are looking good. They, uh, they need a bath, but they're doing okay. So when you're doing, um, you're like combined, combining the, um, websites that you like from clients, and then combining the websites that you like, just in terms of things that you like visually, like websites you've come across. And you're like, I really liked the site.
I think that really helps with inbound leads because you're connecting all these different pieces that really make it feel like you, but also, um, really connect with all the things that your clients are looking for, or they kind of match the ideas that your clients are putting in their sites. Right. So we want to make sure that with our inbound leads, it's like a lot of it is copied, right. We want to make sure that they come there and understand stuff, but it's also like that they come to your site and they don't feel like you've hacked it together. They don't feel like this is a site that you never update. Um, they never get to the point where they're, um, looking through your site and links are broken, or images are messed up, or things are scaled wrong, or the clip doesn't go anywhere.
Right? Like you have the clip and it, it's not like it doesn't even click. Right. It's not even that there's no link. It just doesn't click. I think all of those things to really matter, um, inbound leads are things where like someone gets to your site, they understand what you do. And they're like, yep, I want to work with them. And it's a whole bunch of different things. Um, you want to make it easy for them to contact you. You want to make it easy for the people that aren't a fit for you to self-select themselves out. So for me, a lot of times, that's why I kind of went a little more like full force on my site is because I don't, I got tired of getting all of these leads on my old site because they got the impression from my website that I was a fit for them based on a whole bunch of different things, not just the copy, but the design and how it felt like I would get these companies that just, um, would ask me to work for free.
Or I would get these people who like would email me and I never emailed me back. Um, and I was just tired of it. So I was like, you know what, I'm just going to go full force in my site and make it like myself, make it what my clients are like, what my client's sites look like, look like. And then what I'm looking for in terms of like my ideal website, like these other ones that I look up to and combine that together. And like, since I did that, my inbound leads have just gotten so much better. A lot of people come to my site and they're like, oh, like, this is too overwhelming. Or they like, Nope, she's definitely, excuse me. She's definitely not a fit for me. Or they come to my site and they self-select to just like, not contact me based on whatever's in my site.
Right. There's also this thing where like, if you have a good design, a lot of people who kind of have like dated modalities or like they have kind of this data view of the web or a dated view of content, they don't reach out to you cause they come to your site and they don't like it because it's not data. Right. This was something that happened to me. A whole bunch was I would get a lot of inbound leads where I would go to their website and their website. It just looked like so old, like it was not updated. It was on some sort of old platform. It wasn't on WordPress or Squarespace or Weebly or Wix or anything, um, or show it, it wasn't on anything. It was on some random thing, like built hack together like 10 years ago. And that was a big problem for me.
So they come to your site, right? And they're like, whoa, like this is not going to fit. Like whatever's happening here is not my business. Right. That helps you get better clients because they kind of the people who care about design and making the right impression and getting the right people in the door will match with your site. Instead of people that are like looking for stuff like we just heard about, we need a blog and like you go to their website and their website is janky and I'll mess up. And like it's missing copy. Or the font's really small. Or it's like one of those really old websites with like the two bars on the side of like all this information, that's just too much, you know, for people to handle. So pay attention to those things, pay attention to what your clients are doing.
Pay attention to the like websites you've come across that you really love, um, combine those things together. Think about your copy. Think about how you want people to feel when they come to your site. Think about, um, the ideas that they want to get when they come to your site. And remember that your site being more like you and your website, feeling more like the feeling you want people to experience when they work with you. That gets a lot of people to get out of, like not contact you and waste your time. You get much more honed in inbound leads. So we're going to go through a few questions. I know Linda has some in here. Um, she says, what about SEO? Is that as important as content? So for me, I am not a big SEO person. I think SEO matters in terms of getting the right cute, like a few key words in there.
Right. But you don't want to stuff anything with SEO keywords. So what happens sometimes is, um, one of the reasons I like Squarespace is because it has like built-in SEO stuff like Squarespace websites, um, or at least last time I read, like they have stuff that helps them rank better. So there's that piece. But also your content is like the number one thing and updating your site. Right? So for example, like I think I'm still the first result for Austin freelance writer. So if you go Google, Austin, freelance writer, I think I'm still the first result out of every other thing. Um, and I that's because I update my site all the time. It's not because I constantly in there being like what SEO keywords working now? Like, no, I've put in a few in there. Like ones that make sense. This is one of the things that, um, I think with SEO, oftentimes when I have clients and we work with SEO firms, a lot of times the words that they give me are things that would naturally fall in that article already.
Like they're not anything new it's like term that you would be using to find someone it's like basic stuff. Um, I think doing a little SEO research using like Uber suggest or SEM rush or keyword finder, um, or, um, any of the SEO tools to just find a few words that you think might be helpful. I think putting those in your copy is important, but se like your content is always number one. This is something that I think a lot of people forget because they're so worried about ranking and they're so worried about getting people to their content. They forget that like getting people that are content is like sub people actually learning something on the content. They get to this point where they're like, I want to be like HubSpot and I want people to come read my content. Yeah. HubSpot HubSpot's content is a really good, like there's a mismatch there.
So your content needs to be good. And it needs to be updated pretty often. Like, like you literally, if you just go add your clips in there, like whenever you get a new clip, go add it to your website that brings your website up. Cause it's constantly getting refreshed. So for me, I'm constantly adding clips. I'm constantly adding my live stream. So like what we're doing right now, it gets added to my website. Um, I'm sometimes I fluff around and change the copy. Sometimes I go in there and um, add new things. Like I think I added my course link in there. I think I added my templates in there. Um, both of those are linked below. So if you want to check out my course, which is opening again in kind of like late September ish, if you want to go check that out, it's in there.
And then my templates are, um, you can just go to Mandy ellis.com/bundle if you were interested in those. But those kinds of things where I'm updating them all the time are more important. This is something that I've always thought like is a disconnect here. Anytime you see a website where like people are going there often, it's not because the robots are all doing it. It's because the content is so good. People keep reading it and sharing it and reading it and learning from it and they update it. Right. That's way more important. That will always be important, more important in my mind. That's why there's a lot of articles that come out that say longer content is better. Right? A lot of things like Google's penalizing companies like that have blog post below 500 words. Um, and they're prioritizing content. That's like a thousand to 2000 words because that's more content and usually more value if you're just writing content, that's just like a thousand, 2000 words of fluff and junk.
Like no, but number one is always that you have content that's providing value and teaching people how to do something. And it's something that people come back to because it's giving them a bunch of stuff. It's, they're not coming back to it because the robots are like, try this. Like, yes, there's stuff with SEO. That's helpful. But number one is always that the content is of quality. And like, it actually helps people do stuff. And sometimes the helping you do stuff is hiring you or adding more clips so people can find you and you know, they come across your stuff. But the, um, content is always number one and I would find some SEO keywords. And most of the time your SEO keywords are like freelance healthcare copywriter or like freelance restaurant writer or prop tech, freelance writer. Like they're not complicated. So use the tools, figuring them out and add them in your copy in a natural way.
Don't just put them in there. That sound like weird robot. Um, Linda, I know you asked this question before. So what about having clips from past niches that you're pivoting? So how do you suggest using those? So we've talked about this before Linda in our course. So Linda is one of my core students, but I think just from here, when you're pivoting stuff, like you just need to have clips, put them in there, put them in your portfolio. That's what we're talking about right now is websites. You would be using those in different ways for like your clients, but you want to have them tagged, like for mine, if you go into my portfolio, they're tagged. So my portfolio is actually a blog. Um, and that's why you can see like topics and categories and stuff that people can search for. But you want to make sure that if you have the option to tag them as a certain niche, I would just do that.
And then, um, we've mentioned like slanting them. So one of the things that I did with my clips was cross niches. So like I would write about food and real estate or travel and health or, um, restaurants and real estate. And I would kind of combine those things. And then no matter who I'm marketing to, whether it's restaurants or food or real estate, I can slant that clip saying, this is about this topic because it's a combination of topics. So if you have clips from past Neisha is you got to put those on your website. Um, if there are some of your favorite clips, you can feature them. But I think a lot of times, like you just have to have clips to have clips. There's plenty of times I sent people clips where they're like, do you have clips? And I'm like, yes, but they're not necessarily like a hundred percent in your niche.
I send them anyways. And they, you know, they're like, great, sounds good. Like that, there's kind of this thing sometimes where they're just looking for good writing. They're not necessarily always like you have to meet a hundred percent of this criteria. So, um, yeah, I think, yeah, the website updates are fun. If you do it on the right platform, that doesn't become too complicated. That's why I stopped using WordPress. I had WordPress for so long and it was every time the template would update or they'd add a plugin or like all this, like all these things would just be breaking all the time. And it was such a pain in the butt for me. Um, and I just couldn't handle it. So I switched to, to, well, not that I couldn't handle it. It wasn't the right platform for me. I used switched to Squarespace cause I'm like, I want a textbox here.
Boom. I added it. I want a block here for this color thing. Boom. I added, I want an image. I added it with WordPress. It was like this huge disaster when I used to do it and I used to hate it. So Linda says, how do you protect content from plagiarism from others? Is there a block or program to prevent that I don't know who would be stealing your web content? That would be weird. Like if someone went in and stole your website, content, like your blog posts or like, like transcripts or that kind of content that might be, um, that might be an issue, but I don't think anybody comes in and like steals your web content. And even if they did like, oh, well, I mean like the plagiarism part is mostly like turned in work like articles or, um, case studies or whatever.
But your plagiarism thing, like I know that there's people who have recipes that are, um, they'd get like Google alerts saying that, um, Hey, like someone copied your recipe or whatever. Um, or there's Google or so you can set up for certain things. But I don't know in terms of like, I just wouldn't worry about that. Like I don't sit around, wasting my time, thinking about people who have plagiarized my website, copy. It becomes very easy to tell, like, let's say someone copied my website and then they got a job. There's no way that they could create my work. It's not possible, no matter what they took from my web copy. It doesn't mean that they can write, like I can write like their clip would be miles in a way different from the portfolio on my website. Like that's just not even possible. Like, I don't think we need to spend our time worrying about blocking that kind of stuff, especially.
Um, I think I would be worried about, um, bigger scale stuff. Like I would be worried about, um, like if you had like a multi-million dollar business and like people were stealing your like TM program, like your trademarked, um, pat, like a building blocks of your program or stuff like that. Like website content. I don't think people plagiarize that they plagiarized like easy stuff, like blog posts or case studies or like stuff that they can steal and copy paste. Like more than a website, a website would be a weird thing to kind of plagiarize. So wouldn't worry about it. Um, so we'll re oh, she's saying she's going to read okay. If you're going to really relabel them. Yeah. Just like look into the there's like free tools. Like I have keyword finder on my, uh, Google Chrome. It's just a browser extension. So every time I do something, it pops up. So I always find that's really helpful. Um, yeah. WordPress is kind of a pain.
Yeah. There's always plagiarism in writing. Right. Especially in the digital, it's like, it's really easy to copy paste. Right. But, um, there's all kinds of stuff that pops up and like the Google things do that too. They're like, Hey, like we notice there's like repeat content. Um, and they don't like that. So there's also like, I, I just don't think that is something that we should worry about with our websites. I think if you're worried about with blog posts, like no one can get a job with your website and then do the work that you do. Like it just, isn't it be almost impossible for someone to repeat your, for clips. Like did it's your brain works differently. So
Cool.
I don't know AEF is, but I use, I like keyword finder and I think Uber suggest is really good. Cool. All right. So that's what we're going for with, so we want to make sure, just make a list of the, the websites that you like that are your client websites that are really cool. And you're like, I like this and make a list of websites that you just like in terms of design and flow and feeling, and kind of mishmash those together and add your personality in there and make your own website. So make sure that you figure out what the feeling is that you want when someone comes to your website, make sure that you figure out what kind of experience you want them to have when they come to your website. Um, make sure that you think about how easy it is for, for them to find the things that they want.
Um, and most of the time, just like, as a thing, the contact page is like something that people hate figure like filling out. I know you can try it, right? Like one of the things that, um, someone suggested was like, well, how do you know if someone's always emailing just your email address? You don't know whether the contact form is something that like the contact for people just don't reach out to you. Um, which is I'm sure is a thing. Uh, but when I talked to freelance writers, like when I talked to coaching students or people who have had contact forms, like pretty much 99 times out of a hundred, out of a hundred people email their email address, they don't fill out the contact form. So for me, I think the easiest way to let people get in touch with you is just to have your email address on there. And they feel like it's more one-to-one rather than kind of the black hole contact form. Cool. So great. So I hope you enjoyed this live stream. I will be back just like every Friday at noon central. If you feel like this has been helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you feel like you want to learn more about how to grow your freelance writing business or build a better website, make sure to subscribe below and I will see you next Friday. Bye.
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