Archive for May, 2010
Using a Professional Freelance Writer: The Article Bubble Bursts
Posted by: | CommentsAn increasing number of companies are starting to understand the importance of using high quality website content and articles. Instead of paying cheap freelance writers to churn out spun copy for their marketing, they want to use a professional freelance writer to produce meaningful, unique content.
This is nothing new, and many marketers and writers have known about this trend for a long time. However, I want to expand upon this point, because this move towards producing informative content ties in with what the search engines are doing to clean out the Adsense optimized content plaguing the internet.
I read a post by respected online guru, Grizzly, today and this supports what most marketers and writers have suspected for over a year; Google is going on the offensive and is looking to clean up the net. Google advertisers pay good money for prime adverts locations, and expect their adverts to be shown on useful, targeted content. Instead, their Adwords are often displayed on a content-thin blog with the sole intent of making customers click on adverts, just so that they can escape the empty content and keyword soup.
Great News for Professional Freelance Writers
As a professional freelance writer I am, naturally, very pleased about this news, although I am probably at odds with a few of the marketing-oriented people. From my point of view, anything that gets rid of the article mills paying mediocre freelance writers a couple of dollars to churn out content spun from Wikipedia or Ezine is a good thing. Simple supply and demand will now mean that experienced professionals receive a level of pay that matches their talent, without the disgraceful rates paid on many freelance sites becoming a stick to beat down rates and fuel a race to the bottom.
The interesting point in Grizz’s post is that most of the marketing experts are advocating building one or two informative, authoritative sites, instead of throwing up 20 blogs with minimal content, all set up with the purpose of funneling people towards Adsense traps. Foresighted companies are developing well laid out, content rich sites, and are cleverly using article marketing to attract direct referrals, rather than scatter tripe around the net in the vain hope of building a few backlinks.
Freelance Writing: Research and Increased Productivity
Less time spent wading through respun rubbish might mean that this freelance writer can actually have the occasional day off!
As an online writer, much of my work involves a lot of research, and being able to navigate search engines, without the same, automatically spun content dominating the search-engine rankings, is going to increase my productivity immensely.
There is still a need for good SEO practices and, as a writer, I still have to understand the basics of online marketing, such as keywords and backlinks. However, I am confident that this move towards quality will mean that I can spend more time writing and less time leaving comments on blogs that I have little interest in reading (Much like this one, I hear you say!)
As with many things, this move is nothing new and SEO is moving back towards old-school marketers, who are ethical and prefer to help online businesses grow organically, rather than follow the latest fad. The knowledgeable Peter Hoggan, at Escocian, is a great believer in Ethical SEO Services, and I have no problem giving his organization an organic link; I like what he has to say.
Hire a Freelance Writer – Get Ahead
As you can imagine, this news will take a long time to filter through the system, and many companies will continue to throw large volumes of mud at the wall in the vain hope that some sticks. Conversely, forward thinking companies can now concentrate on producing quality, using marketing techniques developed long before the internet appeared on the horizon. The article marketing bubble is about to collapse, and you have a chance to get ahead of the competition.