After spending so much time trying to train various people to write webpage content for me, I gave up and decided to use gpt in combination with my own skills. Afterall, what is a webpage without images, and if the people I approached don’t want to deal with images, I’ll just do the job myself, and so as not waste my time concerning all the instructions I wrote for this job, I’ll post them on my site in the hopes that perhaps, one day someone will be willing to pick up the baton. [intro image generated by gpt, rest of the images on this page often are of different locations in the Philippines]
Introductory instructions
Do you have experience with Wordpress? I can set up an account for you once you are ready to commence and then I can give you basically free reign.
For the time being I would suggest you submit one article in Word, complete with pics and links etc, which I can easily import into Wordpress once I proof it.
In synopsis, I’d like to develop my website to be in a way similar to
https://guidetothephilippines.ph
minus the ads and clutter, basically showing all the interesting places to visit in the country. A useful and concise website with lots of useful information, without a lot of garbage reading. So yes, SEO keyword research can be useful, but I think it is more important to offer concise and useful information for travelers. My latest example is:
https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/explore/port-barton/
I used ai to generate most of the text for that, then searched it myself on google and linked to some interesting blog pages of other people’s experience, if the reader wants more details. Eventually we want to visit all these places in the country and add our own experience to each place, traveling with our drone etc.
The main purpose is always to link to and advertise our primary services of boat tours in and between El Nido and Coron, but if along the way we find some other services we can offer in different parts of the country, sure, we can add that. If there is not enough profit, we are happy to add direct contact to operators etc who can provide tours in different areas.
Since our main income is from organizing tours around EL Nido and Coron, I suggest a good starting point is to focus on El Nido, since we have already covered most of Coron:
https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/boat-trips-tours/tips-tours-coron/
That is our main Coron tours page and you will see that there is a page for most of the sites we take our customers to. If there are some that are not created yet, you can focus on that once you finish the El Nido page.
For the El Nido page:
https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/el-nido-lagoon-tours/
you can see that a lot of the sites our boat tours visit do not have their own page. I would suggest you start on
Create an article for that in Word so I can check you got the idea well, after which we can proceed with setting you up a Wordpress account.
Do you think you’ll have enough time to earn about 10,000p a month at 100p/hour on this? I’ll have other work for you as well, such as answering customer questions. Generally I find all this kind of work interesting, I just don’t have enough time for it all.
Content Writer – 1st task: guest posting
So one way to get more traffic to the site, because more traffic generally translates into more sales and revenues, is by guest post exchanges, whereby one person would send me an article to post on my site in return for a link to their website, while I do the same for them. This is an easy way to build backlinks, which improve domain authority and in turn seo rankings. I have started this strategy recently and am already cooperating with several people.
I have already posted two articles on my site, so now I’d like to make two articles to post on their sites. Our general deal is one backlink per 1,000 words, so I need you to create two articles of 1,000 words each. You can send me the Word file with gpt prompts and I will send you back the results.
Generally I would like to support my main parent page:
https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/
with such keywords as
- island hopping Philippines
- boat tours El Nido Coron
etc.
But I guess it would also be good to support other pages.
Here are some pages I created which focus on certain keywords:
- family-vacation-holiday-destinations-philippines https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/ph/family-vacation-holiday-destinations-philippines/
- Best Places to Visit in the Philippines https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/ph/best-beautiful-places-to-visit-in-the-philippines-and-things-to-do/
- Philippines Private aAdventure Tours And Packages https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/ph/philippines-private-adventure-tours-packages/
- The Ultimate Adventure Expedition Excursion Exclusive Private Boat Tour Between El Nido And Coron https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/explore/the-ultimate-adventure-expedition-excursion-exclusive-private-boat-tour-between-el-nido-and-coron/
- all-inclusive-romantic-honeymoon-getaway-package https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/boat-tours/all-inclusive-romantic-honeymoon-getaway-package/
- plankton-and-stars https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/explore/plankton-and-stars-in-the-philippines/
- best ssnorkeling sites in Palawan https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/boat-tours/best-snorkeling-sites/
- Hoping for Island Hopping in the Philippines https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/ph/hoping-for-island-hopping-in-the-philippines/
- Island Tours in the Philippines https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/ph/ultimate-guide-island-tours/
- wwhite sand beaches in Palawan https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/v/white-sand-beaches-in-the-philippines/
Perhaps we can start here and see how it goes and how long it takes you to create these two articles?
When I create gpt prompts for articles I try to use something like:
Create for me an enthusiastic and lively sounding article written for travelers about coral reefs in the Philippines.
If the output is too short you can try related questions which would serve as H2 sections, for example.
Task 2 – create articles in wordpress [WP]
Would suggest you use the Classic view in editor as opposed to Block. I can send you detailed instructions how to work with it if you like, or I can just send you little tips as you progress and as I check your work.
The main task for now is to focus on Palawan, since that is where we currently make all our income, although we’d like to slowly expand into other areas, heck, maybe even international.
For example, there are two main websites:
- Coron: https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/boat-trips-tours/tips-tours-coron/
- El Nido: https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/el-nido-lagoon-tours/
We offer private single day boat tours in EL Nido and Coron, and private (and some group) multiday boat tours between the two.
On the two pages above you will notice there are different types of tours, each going to different sites. Some of the sites are underlined, meaning they link to their own page, while others are not. Our plan is that all the sites visited in these two towns will have their own webpage.
After the Palawan area is done, you can then do the rest of the country. I think I have finished Luzon and have started on Mindoro and Visayas, a little bit of Mindanao. I have different WP installations for each. Lets start on Palawan for now please.
For that purpose we can use the attached Excel file.
This was created by my previous content writer, but turns out he does not have enough time to help me, because his existing customer got angry that his jobs were neglected too much.
In the El Nido 1 sheet you will find four sites with yellow background. They should be included on the El Nido link above, but without links to their own webpage. Let’s start on that to learn the ropes.
The pink background ones are those that are already completed with their own webpage.
The first column with google docs link is what he created, just text, and the second column is the webpage I produced from it.
Let’s start with just text and then move on to pics etc after that.
Can you create webpages for those four sites, just the text, and we’ll start from there? Let me know as soon as you get each page done so I can check and give you some tips if necessary.
Once we figure this out you can just have free reign and work whenever you like without much instruction from me.
How to add pics to Wordpress articles
let’s move forward to the last aspect, which is the images. I have changed the subject of this email and erased a bunch of text below, to help you organize the instructions.
I will use the following as an example:
https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/luzon/apo-reef-natural-park/
I did all these pages when I had more time, but am yet to finish Mindoro, which you can continue on after me once we finish Palawan.
Basically I was trying to make each page as interesting and useful as possible, and I mostly only used chatgpt4 with hardly any editing, but I wonder if google is not impressed and if it might be better at some point for you to edit the text and “humanize” all these pages more [we tried this and it does not seem that the “humanized version” of the content scored any better in google search results].
Basically I would generally follow these steps (you can peruse my other pages in the top right menu of this section for more samples):
- getting pics – in this case I might copy “Apo Reef Natural Park” (and add for example “philippines” and possibly “luzon” if a park of the same name existed elsewhere in the world) into google search and then press on Images to get something like:
For the featured image, I would choose the nicest one or the most unique to that site. Note that the “You may also like” section at the bottom of each page shows the Featured Image as the thumbnail, so it is also good to keep that in mind when choosing a featured image.
When you hold your mouse over the image you will be able to see its size, as shown with my red arrow. Generally I like to have size 1200px wide for landscape oriented pics and 500-550 size for portrait. In this case it is 748px wide, which might be a little small for the featured image, but doable. If it is too large, like lets say much above 1500px wide, then I like to resize it to 1200 and save before I upload it to the site. Remember, how fast a page can be downloaded affects seo and our rankings, which is very important for our business.
- Once I choose a pic I like, I download it to my comp and give it an appropriate name, keeping seo in mind. For example, in this case I’d name that particular file “apo-reef-natural-park-corals”. When you import that into Wordpress, I have a plugin which will automatically copy the text “apo reef natural park corals” into the pic Title and Alt Text. This is important for SEO. Remember to always use a dash – to separate the words in the file name, very important. Never a space. For the next image I download, I might click on the previous pic to get the same filename, but then change some things. Using important keywords for the Alt Text is very good for SEO, but making them all too similar can also appear a bit spammy in the eyes of google, so I try to make it somewhat variety.
- In my sample above, next to my red arrow you will also see Visit. In my sample page, just under the heading Bird Watching Haven, you will see a pic of a guy walking through the mangrove forest, and in the caption below that a mention that can click on the pic to take you to his page for a personal experience of visiting that site. In such cases I ALWAYS try to link to a personal blog and never to something on Tripadvisor or our competition, such as a webpage of another tour agency. But I first skim through their page quickly to see if their material is worth linking to. Interesting and useful for our own audience. If I like the pic but their material is not really that interesting or useful, I’ll use the pic but not link to their page. After downloading the pic to use it, I would right mouse click on the Visit button and open that in a new tab, so that it can download in the background in case I will be resizing the pic. By linking out to third party interesting sites, I believe google likes it and gives our website overall more credibility. But WHENEVER linking out to a third party site, ALWAYS link out such that it opens in a new tab, never the same page. Otherwise our visitors may drift off into webspace and we lose them as potential customers.
- In my sample page, near the top you will also notice a cropped screenshot of the site on google maps, to show where the site is in relation to the country. I find this info can also be useful for visitors.
- Further down, just below the table of contents [TOC], you will also notice a cropped screenshot of the reviews of that site according to Tripadvisor, resized to about 500px wide so that it embeds nicely into the text. To embed in this case, I choose left alignment for the pic, otherwise I always choose center alignment. Again I link out to the tripadvisor reviews page to open in new tab.
- Speaking of reviews, when viewing the page as published on the web, if you scroll to the bottom, just under the Author’s box (Espinosa Kosmans), you will notice a Create Your Own Review button. You can press that to add a review of that site. You can use Tripadvisor for that, or google reviews, for example. If the overall average rating is five stars, which it usually is, I will choose five stars, otherwise something accurate to reflect the average. Then I will choose a sample review which sounds nice. In the case of my sample review, I used the first name Perry of the reviewer and copied in his review. When you press Submit, you will not see the results until I approve the review on my end, as an administrator. Not only does this make the page more interesting, but it also shows up in google’s search results. People tend to click more likely on google search results links if they have an associated five stars review.
- You will notice other screenshots from google maps on the page, with arrows to make things clear, and other sections, such as How to Get there. For the case of Palawan, we would probably only mention that they would get there through one of our private boat tours.
Basically I use gpt for ideas, ask it various questions, and try to make the webpage as useful and interesting for the visitor as possible. Eventually of course leading them to the final salespitch at the bottom, using always our Palawan Boat Tours pic. To get that pic, simply Insert Media as usual, and if you type “tours” in the search box, it should show up for you. You would then link to our main parent page (https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/) and add just under it our tagline “Experience the thrill of island hopping in the Philippines”, again linking to the parent page as shown and making it italicized. The text before this pic link I would write myself as a sort of transition between the article and the final sales pitch.
Well, I hope that gives you a general idea what I am trying to accomplish. Tons of work for you over the long term, and I hope you enjoy it.
Once you get these four pages finalized, I’ll check them, but in the meantime, please prepare for me a list of your next 10 proposed pages, in the Palawan area and not currently covered by our site.
At the bottom of each page, in the footer you will notice a Search link. You can use that page to check if a site has already been covered by our site, or the Sitemap, otherwise I believe I already sent you a list of sites? If not I can check my records, to save you time.
Once done, please prepare a report for me of how much time approximately you spent on each page, with how much extra time you spent emailing with me and learning the ropes. I assume things will become easier and faster for you over time.
Content writing is also a sales pitch
Just proofed your last site page (https://islandhoppinginthephilippines.com/palawan/boat-stops/nat-nat-beach/) and have the following comments:
- the main purpose of each page, especially pages of sites visited by our tours in El Nido and Coron, is to entice the visitor to want to go there via the tour WE provide. NEVER the competition.
- for which reason the page should always look interesting, with the most interesting and captivating pictures possible. A map like I have added would always be good for the How to Get There section.
- The bottom contact/booking section should always have basically the same format and I can explain the details once you are ready.
- And once you are ready, I can explain how to add a review to the page. The five stars show up in google search results and makes it more likely for the visitor to click on the link, increasing chances of a sale.
We are a family operation managing private custom boat tours in the beautiful Palawan area, and are happy to help travelers with their plans through the country, having traveled a lot of it ourselves and planning to visit it all.