Letter to Cornbread Consulting Firm About Local SEO…
Good Morning to All the Fine Folks at Cornbread Consulting Firm:
My name is Limus Woods, an Independent Business Editor. I saw your post in the Charlotte Black Business Directory (a local group on Facebook), as I’m always trying to find passionate people and businesses to write Search Engine Optimized (SEO) Nonfiction Interview Stories for.
I’m looking at the Services/Restaurant Solutions that Cornbread Consulting Firm provides and, I see that you have “Birthday Marketing”, but that you don’t have any kind of SEO Online Marketing that you offer your clients in the hospitality industry.
I’m also looking at your blog on your Official Company Website, and I see that it does not have any recently updated pieces. I was hoping that I could help you with that, and a couple of other things.
I see that you have “Online Reputation Management” and “Social Media Management”. And, I’d like to know what that consists of doing at your company, because, I am absolutely sure that what I do as an Independent SEO Business Editor is many steps up from any local marketing agency in North or South Carolina. I say that because, none of them, I mean NONE of them (I live in Charlotte), are actually doing real, Business Article-like Interviews and blending it with SEO keyword usage.
Nobody. Not that I’ve seen in this region of the United States. At ALL. And I’ve manually looked at all of them, for real.
And, it’s a shame, too, because Google respects it so much, and ranks people so high and fast for doing it. I actually show you what Google says about how they don’t like AI content vs. People-Driven content below — but hold on, give me a few minutes…I’ll get there.
I mean, you could, of course, just scroll down right now and see the statement from The World Most Popular Search Engine (which has “over 86% of the search market’s share” according to Search Engine Journal, one of my favorite publictions…) at the botton of this letter. But, if you did that, then you’d be messing up the “flow” of the story.
So, please, be patient, my new friends at Cornbread Consulting, LLC — take your time and keep reading!
I saw it with my own eyes last year, with my own clients, after I quit working at copywriting agencies early in 2023. I noticed it, and decided to exclusively get my own clients from that point on, because those marketing and copywriting agencies don’t let the freelancers they hire talk to the clients.
I truly think that this SEO Content Development Strategy is one of the most unknown, most innovative strategies that people and businesses simply have not caught onto yet in the SEO Writing and Editing space. I was blown away by how fast my clients ranked in their respective regions, just by me interviewing them while simutaneoulsy using the SEO keywords related to their business, instead of just gathering online sources to write the blogs and articles and using those same SEO keywords.
So, please y’all, allow me just 5 to 10 minutes of your time to start from the beginning. And, when I say the beginning, I mean 2012 — the year I realized that I could actually pay my bills with freelance writing/editing.
My very first job as a paid Blog Writer was at The Caravelle Resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I was working there in the Summer of 2012 as a Line Cook.
Here’s one of the very first blog posts I wrote for them, from August of 2012, when I interviewed the bartender at the resort at the time, a lady named Michelle Ice (her real name…wow, that was so long ago; nostalgia is setting in now).
At the time, I was in school for Journalism, and, with Myrtle Beach being a seasonal city that’s only busy in the Spring and Summer, I didn’t think I’d ever find any kind of serious writing jobs there, simply because it just didn’t seem to stay busy enough year-round to make any kind of real income doing it.
But, one day, I went to clock out, and they had a “Bloggers Wanted” sign right beside the time clock. So, I snatched it of the wall, and I went to the person who was handling the task of hiring a blogger for the resort, a young, southern lady named Heather Lee (the Assistant General Manager of The Caravelle Resort at the time).
When I approached her, she asked me, “What do you want to do?”, which surprised me, because every blog writing gig I’d found online up to that point had already had a business plan for their writers.
But, Heather looked as if she truly didn’t know how to approach this new “blogging stuff” (as she and most of her colleagues in the back office put it), and was genuinely depending on me, a Line Cook from the kitchen in his first year of Journalism school, to come up with a plan for the writing of these hospitality blog pieces for this huge resort!
I could see that the resort, much like many of the other business in Myrtle Beach at the time, didn’t see the value of having a consistently updated online presence with well-written, fun-to-read content, unlike the various copywriting agencies that I did work for remotely around that time that were located in places like Washington State, New York, New England, and many of the larger cities in California.
So, I developed a business plan right there in the moment, based on what I’d learned so far from those remote blogging jobs. I asked Heather to just let me start writing about all of the local businesses that were associated with the VMB (Vacation Myrtle Beach) Card that resort guests got every time they checked into the hotel.
These were the places out in Myrtle Beach where, if you were a guest at The Caravelle Resort, you’d get nice discounts.
For instance, if you go play putt putt golf, you’ll get a discount when you show your VMB Card from the resort. Or, if you go to certain restaurants in town (Lombardo’s was a nice Italian one I remember), or Broadway at the Beach, or any kind of restaurant or attraction, you’d get a discount, simply because you were staying at The Caravelle.
There were dozens and dozens of these businesses all over the city. So, what I proposed to her was to let me write about every business that was in association with the resort through that VMB Card, since I knew that would allow me to develop a lot, I mean, a whole lot of originally written content, especially since none of the other resorts on the strip we’re doing that.
I knew it would make The Caravelle Resort rise to the top of Google really fast, as long as they tagged the articles correctly (the marketing department did that at the time; I was just a ghostwriter back then, happy to just be freelance writing and paid a couple extra hundred dollars every week on my Line Cook paycheck in addition to my regular 30 or 40 hours…I had everybody in the Food & Beverage and Housekeeping departments wanting to write blogs after showing them that!)
Heather let me run with the idea, and, over the next year, I ended up doing like 120-something articles and stories, which shot the Caravelle to the top of Google rankings for a search of “oceanfront resorts in Myrtle Beach”, and other similar keyword combinations.
That ongoing gig is what got me my very first letter of recommendation way back in 2013. And, I still have it to this day. I was so proud of myself, and I haven’t stopped writing and editing since.
That was my very last time ever getting any kind of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Writing/Editing job working in or around the hospitality industry.
When you look at my resume on LinkedIn, you’re going to see that I’ve written for so many different industries: lawyers, various product websites, all different types of trades (blue collar and white collar), start-ups, entrepreneurs, newspapers…just so many different people and businesses, both through copywriting agencies and clients that I found on my own.
Fast forward to now, 2024, and I have my own Creative Nonfiction Copywriting Service, Trade Storytelling, a one-man service that I started last year. I get nothing but my own clients now. And, the ones that I finished up with last year did so well! I mean, they all got to the first page of Google in their regions after only a few months of me writing and editing SEO Nonfiction Stories for them.
This is because I blended using Search Engine Optimized (SEO) keyword terms in the stories with what I’ve always done, which is interview real people for the pieces I write, just like I did when I worked for newspapers (I wrote 3 front-page stories for The Westchester Guardian back in 2016, a now discontinued community weekly newspaper out of New Rochelle, New York…facts; I’ll show you them later).
What people and businesses who are using Chat GTP, AI, and all of these other little cheat-writing, robotic things to write their online articles, blogs and stories don’t realize, is that Google doesn’t like or rank that garbage well…especially when that trash is up against a real Writer/Editor in the region, someone who is not only getting a few good sources from books and online, but who is actually talking to real experts and interviewing them, so that THE EXPERTS WORDS make it into the story or article.
Still, utilizing the correct keywords for that business is always mandatory to rank well. But, good, fun-to-read, informational writing does NOT have to be sacrificed just because keywords are used!
So, instead of writing dry content, just copywriting it, what I do is interview the business owner for a story regularly (two or three nonfiction SEO stories a week in the first couple of months). The amount of content they usually need (and how long they need that amount at that rate) just depends on the population of where their business is located, as well as how much competition they have within that particular region.
The ultimate goal of everything that I write is to get it in a Trade Journal for the entrepreneur, business, website, company, nonprofit, or whoever it is that I’m writing for at the time. But, what I found out in my first year of business is that it’s not smart to just pick clients to write/edit for at random, because they may not be as passionate about what they are doing as I am about being an Independent Business Editor.
I purposely picked businesses last year that didn’t have a lot of competition, businesses located in small towns. I did this because everybody (similar businesses, competition) that was physically located in the same region(s) as my previous client(s), were trying to use robots and things like that.
I knew I’d beat the robotic, AI writing, so, I let my clients actually SEE themselves shoot up to the top of Google rankings past their competition as it happened, updating them every time they moved up another spot or two, just to prove to them that what Google wants us writers and editors to do really works, and that they truly do rank our SEO written stories higher (and faster!) when we follow their rules.
Below is what Google instructs SEO Writers/Editors like myself to do if they’re trying to develop written content online that ranks well in search results. Please, I implore you, pay attention, because this is the exact mistake that so many businesses and entrepreneurs in 2024 will be making (just like in 2023) by trying to use AI to write their stuff for them online:
“When it comes to automatically generated content, our guidance has been consistent for years. Using automation — including AI — to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies…Google has many years of experience dealing with automation being used in an attempt to game search results. Our spam-fighting efforts — including our SpamBrain system — will continue, HOWEVER spam is produced…
However content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, PEOPLE-FIRST CONTENT demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness).”
Source: December 2023. Google Search’s Guidance About AI-Generated Content. Retrieved from Google Search Central Blog.
(https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/02/google-search-and-ai-content)
What I’m proposing to do if hired as your Independent SEO Business Editor for Cornbread Consulting Firm, LLC (an independent contractor) is to charge you all the $40.00 article that I normally do (only $0.04 a word, $480 monthly to be paid up front every month, generally a few days BEFORE the 1st of the upcoming month) for twelve 1,000 to 1,200-word SEO Creative Nonfiction Interview Stories.
The people I will interview for the Nonfiction SEO Stories are (1) current hospitality clients of Cornbread Consulting, LLC, (2) the fine folks who work at Cornbread Consulting, and (3) the people and happy customers and workers at the many hospitality establishments you guys are already representing…that’s it!
I basically want to do for you what I did for the Caravelle Resort back then (but at a much, much higher level…I’m of course waaay more experienced than back then), because I haven’t had any ongoing SEO Business Editing work in the Hospitality industry yet since I started my company…not since way back then!
If you can afford to pay for 12 pieces (1,000–1,200 words apiece) upfront for the 12 months, a dozen pieces per month for a year, I guaran-damn-tee, you’ll be to the top of the first page of Google searches for “marketing firms in Spartanburg County” and many other keyword phrases in a matter of months.
But, getting your firm itself to the top, and beating the competition of Cornbread Consulting Firm, LLC itself in the Spartanburg area of South Carolina, won’t be hard. I say that because your immediate competition (other firms that pop up for a search of “marketing firms near Spartenburg” and other closely related keyword phrases) simply are not (and upon close examination, HAVE NOT ever) had anything as strong as this being produced content wise on their websites at all.
I’ve looked.
To put it plainly, they simply won’t see you coming when and if you hire me for this role, an independent contractor role that I would LOVE to start on January 2nd 2024 being paid the first $480 payment sometime between December 27th and that date, via Cash App to $LimusWoods.
What I truly need to focus on, though, is your clients’ content, THEIR blogs and THEIR websites (through being hired by you, my one-man company, Trade Storytelling) as the official SEO Business Editing Department for Cornbread Consulting, LLC in 2024, right alongside the rest of your services.
So, in closing, I simply want to be another service you can add to your list that you can provide to the hospitality clients you serve, an innovative service to give you an edge that none of the local firms in competition with you in your region will be expecting in 2024.
I truly hope to hear from you, and sincerely hope that we can move forward with this contract/proposal next week and into the new year. I would really, really enjoy it, and I’m absolutely sure that your company and clients will, too.
Thanks for your time, y’all, and have a blessed day.
—
Peace & Love,
Mr. Limus Woods
Independent Business Editor
(843) 246–5387
limusw@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/limus.words
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/l-woods-abaa8a3a/
Medium Profile: https://medium.com/@limuswoods
Business: https://medium.com/trade-storytelling
