TV writer who eats danger for breakfast
Okay, let me level with you in a way nobody in your life is doing right now:
Your short bio/about me blurb? Y’know, that one paragraph or more you use to describe yourself on social media, dating profiles, websites, LinkedIn, whatever? It sucks.
But you don’t suck. You just suck at writing about yourself.
It’s okay, I’m here to help you.
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I was about twelve years old when my techie computer programming parents turned to me and said, “Amy, we just got you your domain name. It’s time to start blogging so you can rank on Google someday.”
Boy was I lucky to be raised by total nerds.
Anyways, since then I’ve spent the past decade or so blogging on ye olde blog here at AmySuto.com, spinning tales of what I’m up to and sharing the knowledge I’ve learned along the way.
And now, it’s time for me to share all of my secrets when it comes to the magical witchcraft of ~search engine optimization~ aka SEO for blog posts and articles. But before we even dive into that, let’s start with why the hell even bother with blogs anyways.
As it turns out, you don’t have to be a sultry narrator of a Sex In the City-esque show to get benefits out of blogging.
Here’s a huge secret: your blog is the best free marketing tool ever. If your website has a blog, people will probably find one of your articles on Google while searching for something they’re looking for. Without having to pay a dime — bam! You’ve got traffic (the good kind, not the LA kind!)
If you’re a realtor or therapist or any kind of service provider, a blog helps to share your expertise with potential clients. When we’re making decisions about who to work with, we want to get a sense of who someone is and what they’re best at, and blogs are a great way to capture your unique personality while sharing your superpowers.
If you run a Shopify store or sell products, a blog is a fantastic way to announce new product releases, share behind-the-scenes content from your warehouse, and your company’s story. Now more than ever, we care about how our stuff is being made: story matters when it comes to sales. And every blog post you write is just another entrypoint that a new customer can find you on Google.
For me, this blog has been a huge source of incoming traffic. I’ve gotten leads for my own freelance writing and also I’ve met some really awesome folks who have found my work on here. Sometimes when you shout into the void… it shouts back? In a really friendly way?
But in order for people to find your blog on 100 vegan nutritional yeast recipes, you’ve got to make sure it’s properly optimized so that Google and other search engines can direct traffic your way.
When I wrote my article on how I ghostwrite memoirs, I made sure to include the keywords I was targeting was in every part of my article, from my article title, subheadings, and topic sentences. I even included my keywords in photo descriptions and the article’s metadata. If you’re blogging on WordPress like I am, I would recommend checking out plugins like Yoast that help automatically check and see if you’re hitting all the marks for the keywords you’re targeting in your article.
All that SEO legwork really pays off: from that one article alone, I’ve booked several jobs from people who found me on Google who were interested in hiring a memoir ghostwriter, which was one of the reasons why I wrote that blog post. See? SEO witchcraft does work!
But how does one go about targeting an audience?
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Since COVID started, I’ve gotten an incredible amount of inquiries for my services as a memoir ghostwriter. I think that’s because, in part, we’ve all been faced with our own mortality in the face of a massive crisis. When we die, what gets left behind? Who will tell our stories? That’s where hiring a ghostwriter for your memoir comes in.
Bleak, pandemic-related realities aside, I think the art of memoir writing is quite beautiful. But it can also be tough to tackle the challenge on your own if you’re not a seasoned writer.
A memoir should be a way for you to leave a legacy, set the record straight, and also give your family a kind of heirloom that will allow future generations to get to know you and how cool you were. (My memoir is just going to be just printouts of my Spotify playlists so my ancestors can see how great and so very obscure my music taste was.)
Enter: a ghost. (And not the scary kind!)
Whenever you’re hiring a freelance writer for something, there’s a few different things that come into play when it comes to cost:
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I spent most of this year quarantined in Los Angeles, sitting at the dinner table with my cat and Zooming with friends over cocktails and societal outrage for five whole months. I’ve taken COVID pretty seriously, seeing friends only for the occasional masked hike or social distanced hang. During those five months, I sanitized everything, avoided crowds, performed witchy rituals and offered sacrifices to the gods — y’know, everything the CDC has recommended.
But as a freelance writer who ghostwrites memoirs, I spend a lot of time in front of my computer writing and meeting with clients.
As August dragged on, my friend Kyle Cords and I got to the end of a marathon phone call and were like — what if we found people who wanted to quarantine together somewhere beautiful? And we could live and work somewhere outside of LA while we don’t have to be tied here?
So Kyle gave up his apartment, we roped in a group of friends, and we all got tested and escaped to the mountains, running away from fires and plagues.
Winter park in September was an absolute dream. When we arrived, everything around our cabin was green, and then throughout the month the leaves slowly changed.
Right when we arrived, Los Angeles also was literally on fire: between the protests, the forest fire, the heatwave, and the pandemic, the city was apocalyptic. That made us appreciate Colorado even more — and then it started snowing.
I would sit by this chair by the window, watching the snow softly fall in September as I wrote and worked on my projects and sorted through all the things on my plate.
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In the past decade or so since I started this blog, I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with so many of you wonderful people about all things writing/creativity/the best coffeeshops in LA.
I’ll continue to share free advice and meanderings here, but I’m also adding a new offering, a 60-minute creative consultation at $200/hour where we can break down your goals and help you get there. Whether that goal is to break into freelance writing, TV writing, or to finish the novel you’ve been working on, I’m here to help.
Here are some of the things I’ve got experience in that I’ve been helping others with that I’d be happy to dive in with you:
Anyways, that’s my spiel. Excited to continue to help y’all out on whatever you’re working on!
