On those days when you miss your workouts, there are plenty of exercises you can do right from your desk. Instead of staring guiltily at the elliptical machine that’s serving as a coat hanger, try these simple exercises to get your blood flowing and keep your energy levels up.

• The one-person sports team: While seated, tap your feet rapidly on the floor, like you’re doing a football drill, for 30 seconds. Then give yourself a cheer—pump both arms over your head for another 30 seconds. Repeat this 3 to 5 times.
• Lift those legs: From your chair, lift one leg and extend it out straight. Hold the position for 2 seconds, then lower your foot until it almost touches the floor. Hold again, for 3 to 5 seconds, before lowering it completely. Alternate legs until you’ve done 15 lifts per leg.
• Seated squats: You’ll need a chair with arms for this one. Plant both hands on the arms of your chair and slowly lift your butt off the seat (hint: your feet don’t have to leave the floor). When your arms are fully extended, lower yourself back down but stop before touching the seat, and hold for 3 to 5 seconds. Repeat for a total of 15 times.
• Hamstring situps: For this one, you’ll get to kick back and put your feet up! Push your chair back from your desk and rest your right heel on the edge of the desk. Sitting up straight, bend forward until you feel the back of your leg stretch gently. Flex your foot a few times, then point it and bend your body forward a bit further. Hold for ten seconds, and repeat with the left leg.
• Neck flex: To help ease out those kinks in your neck, drop your chin and roll your head back and forth a few times. Then, lift your chin and bend your neck to each side. You can repeat this a few times.

Regular exercise is important for great health, especially when you live the somewhat sedentary lifestyle of a freelance copywriter. And when you work alone, like me, you don’t have to worry about anyone seeing you doing bizarre things at your desk.

But when it comes to picking a blog platform, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the countless options. Here are a few tips to simplify your choice.

Integrated or separate?

This is an easy decision. When blogs were brand-new, it was common practice to have them separate from the main website. Then, when folks realized that a highly searchable blog is a surefire SEO booster, folks started integrating them right onto their business sites.

An integrated blog is definitely your best bet (and I’m not just saying that because I have one!).

Enlisting a professional

If you have a website designer who created and maintains your freelance site, you can probably just let her know that you want an integrated blog, and she’ll put it together for you. Make sure you have easy access and a user-friendly interface for posting to your blog. It’s also a good idea to allow comments as a means of interacting with potential customers.

If you’re not particularly tech-savvy and you want a blog that melds seamlessly with your existing website, it may be a good idea to hire a web designer to make sure it’s done right.

Do-it-yourself options

Basically, you’ve got two choices for adding a DIY blogs to your website. You can use web design software like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression (technical difficulty: hair-pulling to keyboard-smashing) or you can integrate a blog platform into your existing site (technical difficulty: mild to moderate cursing).

There are three main blogging platforms that are free and enjoy widespread use: Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress. Tumblr’s options are limited, and the platform is more suitable for images than text—great if you’re a freelance photographer, but not so much for freelance copywriters. As of 2010, Blogger no longer offers an FTP option for integration.

That leaves only WordPress—but the good news is that it’s a robust and stable platform, with tons of flexibility, plenty of templates, widgets, and add-ons, and a whole lot of functionality.

You can check out the free WordPress platform here, and find instructions for integration with your website here.
Whether you choose to hire an expert or do it yourself—happy blogging!

This was a fun take on an important topic for investors. Metaphors can be powerful tools for copywriting—they let you match complicated concepts to terms that are easy to understand, and get the important concepts across to target audiences in a relatable way.

The finished piece is currently featured on Morningstar.com. You can read the full article here, and see for yourself why investments are like babies!

This is one of several pages of SEO content I wrote for this professional web design and marketing firm.

This page on Ascenditure’s web services is one of many I wrote for the marketing and design firm.

I created content for the website of this design and marketing firm, including their about pages and descriptions of their services.

I wrote this blog article for the website of a lawyer whose practices focuses on issues related to electronic discovery.

I created SEO-friendly content for this professional website for a web sales, hosting and training business.

As a freelance web writing expert, I often create content for sites such as that of this accounting business.