It’s more of a zine that happens to use weblog software in order to publish online. I mean, is there more of this out there? Is there some sort of organization of it all? None of the major directories have a specific category for it- it’s just broken into whatever genre… It seems like this medium is perfect for something like this- easy to publish, easy to let people know whenever a new ‘piece’ is up, etc. There’s just that odd stigma that the weblog format tacks onto the whole thing.

The rapid evolution of content equally requires sophisticated philtering phor phreeing up time phinding phavorable rather than phony content. The net effect of generating such massive amounts of content is a new Web 2.0 filtering, aggregation, and SEO industry providing jobs to techos and communication creatives while content producers hedge their bets on Affiliation and Adsense as a viable source of income.

Brace! Corporate World 1, for our collective consiousness is already pushing your boundaries for accountability and transparency as we say whatever we like about you and have our friends cast their votes.

Web 2.0 is environmentally friendly. Writing on our wired solar powered machines at home there is no need to commute, saving a ton each of CO2 per year.

All hail the content re-purpoSirs!, Blogmaniacs, Soshil bookakimaaks, and SEOligists – the net is MUCH more interesting, expanding, filling my mind, connecting me, making me smarter.

When I was a kid whatever my parents told me was gospel. But my own kids will never take anything I say as the truth until they have corroborated with others on the subject matter – online. If I told my kid that Emporer Nasi Goreng built the Great Wall of China to keep the rabbits out, they will quickly identify me as an idiot.

Every SEO company in the world will say to write using keywords strewn throughout the text (how awful is that to read???).

As an internet marketer who helps people with the SEO on their sites, I’d like to respond to that comment, Bill.

Certainly people should use words that their audience will expect to see, and will search with to find that content in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with making some intelligent choices about the words that you use when you write something.

But the practice of writing for people and for search engine optimization is pretty much the same – use a particular phrase to be the subject of a page and then use that phrase naturally within the engaging and thoughtful prose you create for that page. Chances are good that because it is the subject of the page, you will use it in the title to the page, the main heading, and in the body text of what you write. You likely will even use it in links to the page, and others will use it to link to you.

It’s not a question of writing something, and then stuffing it with keywords, but rather using your keyword phrase as the subject of what you write, and then writing naturally. Take the post at the top of these comments, for example. The focus of the post is “independent content.” It appears in the page title, it appears in the post title/main heading, and it could easily and naturally appear once or twice in the body text of the post, without the post being “horrible to read.” Many links to the post will likely use the post title in the anchor text of the link.

Good writing for SEO purposes isn’t a matter of stewing a dictionary of keywords through text, but rather of writing intelligently, with focus. In a few days or weeks, this page has a chance of ranking well for the phrase “independent content” because of that focus.

Places to learn about writing quality content?

Any good book on writing fiction or prose will likely help you learn about writing quality content for the web. Sitting down and writing, and writing some more, and then some more will even bring you further. Write some fiction, try out some sonnets, haiku, lymericks, satire, letters to friends.

Read some good books, and think critically about them, and how the writer reaches out to his or her audience, evokes emotions, gets you to care about different characters, gets you to maintain an interest in the story, tells you about the setting.

Go to places like Poynter online, and read through the many articles about journalism, editing, photo journalism. There are many blogs from marketers and copy writers who describe what they do when they write to audiences.