How to Write Killer Bios for Ghostwritten Articles
3 minutes | Word Count: 598Summary: This article offers tips on how to write effective author bios or resource boxes for ghostwritten articles.
Photo Credit: PinAgency.ComThere are times when your web design agency can’t provide you with content and you’ll need to have them ghostwritten. If you do that, be warned that your ghostwriter might not always be willing or able to offer an author bio or resource box with it.
Author Bios: What Is It?
Author bios nowadays have become more important with the introduction of Google’s authorship. If you haven’t heard of this yet, authorship allows an author’s photo and short bio to show up together with search results.
Author bios consist of a few lines that include the following types of information about the author:
- Professional and writing background
- Why the author is writing about a particular subject, product, or service
- Call to action
- Keyword or link back to what the author intends to promote through the article
How to Write a Killer Bio Even If You Are Not a Professional Writer
The good news is that you really do not have to be a professional writer to write an effective author bio. Powerful author bios or resource boxes can serve as an additional call to action as well as add weight and authenticity to the article.
If the articles you had ghostwritten don’t come with any author bio, here are a few tips you can easily use.
Avoid saying you’re in the SEO business
Granted, everyone is in the SEO business when you do online marketing. But if you mention it outright people will think the only reason you’re writing an article is for promotion purposes. Rather than simply state you’re an SEO specialist or an Internet marketer, you may say instead that you’ve been “actively following” trends in a particular niche (e.g. fitness, entertainment, sports).
Make use of dates.
A lot of people base specialization on the number of years a person has been involved with a particular field. If you had a blog since 2007 then you can say that you’ve been blogging since 2007 – never mind if you haven’t really been blogging actively. You can also say you’ve been in the “e-publishing business” for five years – never mind if it was only because you had a 5,000-word ebook released via Smashwords in 2008.
Include keywords naturally.
Never stuff author bios with keywords as Google and online readers generally frown on this. If you’re able to insert one keyword naturally, be content with that. Anything more than one may be considered keyword stuffing considering the (short) length of author bios. If possible, use your keyword as anchor text for your URL.
Your reason for writing an article should be anything but promotional in nature.
Say you’re writing about a health supplement. In your author bio, you can mention that you’re an avid runner, hence your interest in fitness. You can then add that one of your “discoveries” while researching about health and fitness is Product X, which is an effective health supplement. With this, you’re able to justify sharing a little information about a particular product or service in your resource box.
Author Bio: Marian Pinera has been working as a web content provider since 2005. As a full-time writer for PinAgency.Com, a premier online marketing agency based in LA, she likes combining her background in business and work as Amazon author to provide readers with the most enterprising articles and blog posts.