Ranking well in search engines depends on on-site factors (your content and copy) as well as off-site factors (like links pointing to your site). Today I want to touch on a key issue with on-site search engine optimization, or SEO.

Writing for Readers vs Writing for Search Engines

In the past, writing to rank well in search engines could lead to atrocious-looking content that could be borderline unreadable to visitors of your site — you know, the people you’re actually hoping to sell to.

That’s because old school SEO relied heavily on keyword phrases, which turned into “keyword stuffing.” SEO folks would encourage business owners to cram keyword phrases into their copy or blog content over and over again, in an effort to prove relevance to sites like Google.

Now some of us saw the writing on the wall from Day One. We knew that the best “writing for search engines” would always be strong writing for readers themselves. It was common sense. And those more responsible business owners embraced that.

Many others, however, didn’t. They wanted quick fix results even if they had no chance of lasting long-term, and there were plenty of SEO snake oil salesmen happy to sell it to them. So copywriting and blog content took two distinct paths:

1. Writing for search engines — Often keyword-stuffed drivel that didn’t help or convert readers (and sometimes was designed to entice them to click off-site onto ads; yes, lousy content was sometimes intentional)
2. Writing for readers — More traditional writing designed to inform, educate, entertain, and convert the reader

If you were a serious business owner and came to me for help, I’d tell you to go with Option 2 every single time. Not only did I know as a PR professional that shoddy content could hurt your reputation and business, but I knew as a web publisher in my own right (and editor for large online media properties at the time) that quality content mattered.

In this case, I was right from the beginning. 

My own sites ranked well. I didn’t see massive fluctuations every time Google updated their algorithm. My clients’ content ranked well similarly. And SEO pros I worked with (where I taught them how to keep the focus on quality for PR benefits without giving up the SEO benefits they were looking for) also earned similar bragging rights with their own clients.

What tended to happen to those who focused solely on writing for search engines? 

They got stuck in the algorithm-chasing game. Every time Google would change their algorithm to go after lousy content and bad practices they’d engaged in, they either went under or they had to overhaul things. Instead of focusing on fresh ideas and new content, they would have to update a large portion of their older content to bring it up to current standards.

And there’s a good reason some SEO folks pushed this content and sold it as “quick and easy” money and traffic…

They didn’t care if that content got penalized by Google later. To them, it was an excuse to sell clients additional services to update all of their old work.

Unfortunately I still know SEO people who operate this way. They employ low-level content producers (I hesitate to even call some of them “writers”). They may or may not speak your language well. They may or may not know anything about the subject matter you need them to write about. And chances are very good you won’t get something original. It will either be stolen or it will be pieced together from other sources.

Side note: These are the SEO folks who promise things will “pass Copyscape.” That just means they’ll rewrite enough words from someone else’s work so that a plagiarism detector can’t pick it up. Quick tip though: That doesn’t make it legal. Here in the U.S. rewriting an article is a derivative work, which only the copyright owner of the original is authorized to do or license. So you aren’t protected.

Basically, you would hire this low-priced “writer” or SEO firm to create your content or copy. And while you would save money up front, your results wouldn’t last, you’d have to pay even more later to have the same content fixed, and you’d put your reputation at risk in the process.

Readers vs Google: You Don’t Have to Choose

None of this is to say updating old content is a bad thing. (This very post is a new version of a much shorter older one where some information was outdated.) Many topics have evergreen appeal but will need updates to reflect current statistics, trends, or more recent experiences.

That’s okay. You should do those updates and keep making those pages work for you by attracting new readers.

But here’s the thing. You should only do that when it benefits your readers.

The visitors of your site — in most cases your target customers — should always be your priority. Businesses that don’t serve their customers’ needs well often aren’t around for long.

That doesn’t mean you should neglect search engines though. Fortunately Google’s gotten better at weeding out keyword-stuffed garbage in favor of higher-quality content (though they still have serious issues distinguishing between true authority and simple popularity, but that’s a topic for another day).

Every page of content or copy you write should still be well-optimized. You should have a target keyword phrase in mind. You should build links to each page that you want to rank well. Basic SEO practices aren’t inherently bad as long as you don’t abuse them to the detriment of actual people reading what you’ve written.

Here’s the thing I’ve been telling my clients for the past 17 years or so though. And it’s still true today:

Writing for readers is writing for search engines.

The higher the quality of your content, the more likely it is your site will become a trusted source people happily share and link to. And that goes much further toward earning you high Google rankings than any amount of shoddy keyword-stuffed copy ever could.

Things have changed a lot (mostly for the better) over the years. But there’s still a long way to go.

If you want to get the most out of your budget, the key isn’t hiring cheap or letting your SEO firm handle your content. It’s in hiring a pro who can get the job done right the first time creating something that people want to share and, more importantly, creating copy that converts.

Need help with your web copy or blog content? Get in touch with me any time.

The post How Writing for Readers Appeals to Search Engines appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Here’s what business owners, in similar positions to you, are asking freelance writers to do:

• The writer is to draft an article related to the client’s business. (There’s nothing wrong with this part.)
• The writer is expected to include one or more links — generally “dofollow” links — to the client’s website. (This is sketchy depending on the circumstances, which we’ll get to below.)
• The writer is also expected to “place” this content on third party websites they already have established publishing relationships with. (This is a huge problem that can ruin a freelancer’s career, but it also puts your own reputation at risk.)

The Issue of Backlinks

I mentioned asking your freelance writers to include dofollow links in their articles can be a problem. Now, if those articles are on your own website, or going on your own social media profiles, there’s nothing wrong with this.

The problem is when you require them to publish that content elsewhere with your links (their website, their social media accounts, or third party sites they have separate relationships with).

This isn’t always bad. But for this to be ethical (and following FTC guidelines if you, the writer, or the site involved is based in the U.S.), those articles would need to:

• Feature clear and conspicuous disclosure of the writer’s paid relationship with you (“clear and conspicuous” means it can’t be stuck at the bottom of an article, in a sidebar, or anywhere else that wouldn’t make it clear as soon as a reader sees that link);
• Make the links “nofollow” if the writer’s being paid in any way for this content with links as a requirement (otherwise you risk being penalized by Google for buying dofollow links to manipulate your search engine rankings).
• The other website involved would need to be aware of the arrangement.

The Issue of Ethics

When I see these gigs advertised, the problems are two-fold:

• They always seem to want to sneak the links in (dofollow links with no disclosure).
• They don’t want the writer mentioning it to the sites they’re publishing on (these often include well-known sites like Forbes.com and HuffingtonPost.com).

There’s no way around this. If you do either of these things when you hire a freelance writer, it’s unethical. And any freelancer who would willingly do this for you is both unprofessional and putting your company at risk.

The Consequences

If you took part in one of these “freelance writing” link-building schemes, what could go wrong? Quite a lot.

• If Google finds out you’re paying for links to manipulate rankings, you could end up with SEO penalties that hurt the rankings you were trying to build in the first place.
• If you fail to disclose paid relationships for those links, recommendations, or reviews in articles, you could run up against the Federal Trade Commission for violating those FTC guidelines.
• If the site that got exploited in this scheme finds out, it could cause the freelance writer to lose their relationship with that company, and it could cause irreparable damage to your reputation and get you blacklisted from any legitimate coverage and links in those media outlets in the future.

Don’t think the last will happen? I can tell you for a fact these media outlets are not only aware of this scheme, but they’re actively looking out for suspicious placements.

I have colleagues who have been told as much by the large sites they write for. One was caught up doing this without realizing what was wrong and she lost a long-time gig. And another freelancer I know did other work for a client who was guilty of this (she wasn’t even involved in their link placement on the site). And it cost her that relationship simply for being professionally associated with a company engaging in these kinds of unethical practices.

It happens. And you will eventually get caught.

So please. Don’t do this. As a PR professional, it blows me away that people don’t see the obvious reputational risks involved. I would hate to see you get caught up having to clean up a mess you might not fully recover from. And as a freelance writer, I have professional standards of my own that would never allow me to take on a gig like this.

When it comes to your relationship with your freelance writer, it’s important to pay attention to their ethical lines — not just your own. If they make promises to place content somewhere, make sure they’re not willing to engage in a conflict of interest. If they’d screw over one client, why wouldn’t they do the same to you? After all, you wouldn’t want them getting paid to place links in content on your site for another client without your knowledge.

Looking for an ethical freelance business writer to assist with your blogging or content marketing? Between my business writing and public relations experience, I can help you come up with a plan to improve your visibility, backlinks, and reputation in ways that are both effective and ethical. Get in touch, and I’ll let you know how I can help.

The post Asking Your Freelance Writer to do This Could Damage Your Reputation appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

The term “content marketing” has been around for years (really just a combination of inbound marketing and PR-related publication). Yet small businesses still frequently get it wrong.

Here’s the thing. Content marketing is all about creating and sharing high quality content — things people actually want to consume and interact with.

Are You Making This Content Marketing Mistake?

Now here’s the mistake I still see businesses make quite frequently:

They still prioritize quantity over quality.

It happens time and time again. A company — including fairly large ones — will advertise on some freelance board about a content writing gig. They want someone well-versed in Web content writing, blogging, social media, and content marketing. They expect that someone to have years of experience. And they expect flawless writing. In fact, they usually expect several of these writers. And they usually want those things at rock-bottom rates.

Playing Content Marketing Catch-Up

The ads usually mention that they’re trying to build a collection of articles. It’s about quantity. They haven’t been producing much content on their own. Now they hear “content marketing” is all the rage. And they want in. So they focus on a massive surge of content up front, sometimes with little more than a plan to toss it on a company blog.

What’s the problem with this? Usually the client’s expectations far exceed what they’re actually buying. It’s easy to assume you can pay $25 or so per article and get decent material, if your experience only extends as far as bottom-of-the-barrel online marketplaces or content mills. Most experienced top-notch content writers don’t find their gigs in those kinds of places though, and you can’t compare rates there to hiring an experienced pro.

Lessons from the Past

By all means, for $50 or so you could get decent content from a newer writer or one living in a lower cost of living country (assuming they write so fluently in the language you’re looking for that they would pass as a native speaker). Or you might find a decent new writer at those rates. (Side note: I’ve run one of the leading websites for freelance writers for 13 years, and $50 per article is the bare bones minimum I advise new freelance content writers to charge.)

But the obscenely low rates do nothing but send pros running. You end up sacrificing quality — what content marketing is all about — to save money and put it towards quantity. That’s exactly what did in the older, now-failed, content mills and what changed the focus on web content for both search engines and readers in the first place.

Quality.

You can put in the effort yourself to make that happen. Or you can hire a professional to assist you with your content marketing.

Don’t make the same mistake companies have been making for years by outsourcing your content writing to the cheapest providers you can find. You won’t save a cent if that cheaper content costs you readers, customers, rankings, or reputation — all things a strong content marketing strategy should help you build.

If you want professional help with your content marketing strategy or any type of business content creation, contact me and let’s discuss your project details.

The post A Major Content Marketing Mistake Companies Still Make appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

The problem with cheap content lands squarely on the shoulders of Google however. While in 2018 Google’s John Mueller stated that content frequency wasn’t a ranking signal, this wasn’t always the case.

How “Relevancy” Got Confused With Content Volume

Back in 2011, Google rolled out an algorithm update that made “freshness” of content a ranking signal, with the stated goal of giving searchers results that were more “relevant and recent.” SEO professionals, of course, took notice.

While Google might have had decent intentions at the time — with freshness being a bigger factor where timeliness really matters, like sports scores or TV series updates — the change led to editorial declines on a large scale.

You would have been hard-pressed at the time to read about search engine optimization without that idea of “relevancy” being tied to recency — and having this mis-applied to all content. And SEO pros took advantage of that to push clients to update their content much more frequently with the promise of higher rankings.

The problem with that? Companies tend to have set budgets, and bloggers of the time had limited funds for the most part. So “more content” meant many had to bring in outside help from freelance writers, but without an adequate budget to do so.

The Resulting “Race-to-the-Bottom” Content Market

That also drove new freelance writers into the market, seeing a demand to be filled.

It wasn’t uncommon at the time to see clients advertise penny-per-word writing gigs. And you would often see plenty of writers jump to compete for those opportunities — most of them not subject matter experts, many simply rewriting others’ content (which is a copyright-violating derivative work), and many not speaking English well enough to appeal to English-speaking readers.

Despite the problems, companies put quantity over quality because SEO pros misled them about the intentions of Google’s changes, and because Google hadn’t really thought through all of the implications at the time. So we found ourselves deluged with cheap, sub-par content on the web.

Unfortunately much of that content still exists, including that old and outdated SEO advice. Some clients still think $4-20 articles are their key to strong Google rankings. But they aren’t. And they can do far more harm than good.

What Cheap Content Could Cost Your Business

Thinking extremely low-priced content writing will help you rank well in Google is a big enough mistake on its own. After all, Google’s algorithms change. And low quality content — what you almost always get for those very low rates — tends to suffer in those changes. This leads to “algorithm-chasing” where you’ll pay again and again to have that low quality content rewritten, improved, or replaced.

The only ones who benefit from that are the SEO people and shoddy content writers selling those services. They know you’ll have to come back. And you can end up spending more money in the long run than you would have if you purchased higher quality content in the first place.

That increased cost over time, and lower search engine rankings than you hoped for, aren’t your only risks however.

Reputational Risks Can be Even Greater

As someone coming from a PR background, I can assure you that you don’t want to get caught up in a crisis management scenario because of poor content you published from low-priced writers.

Low-paying gigs are often poorly-researched gigs because you aren’t paying enough for the time required to do a thorough job. Depending on your industry, that means your content could do real harm to your readers — from encouraging them to make irresponsible financial decisions to sharing un-vetted health advice.

When your content hurts readers, or simply includes embarrassingly-misinformed “facts” that you’re publicly called out on, are you prepared to clean up that mess? Would you even know how?

Then There Are the Legal Risks

Another holdover from the “freshness”-driven cheap content craze is “Copyscape-passing” web content. This often meant rewriting existing content rather than writing something unique. Clients only cared that the wording itself passed the plagiarism checker Copyscape.

There’s a big problem with this though. Passing plagiarism checkers doesn’t mean the content is legal. Rewriting someone else’s content is not writing. And as noted previously, it can constitute a derivative work. No one is legally authorized to create a derivative work other than the copyright holder of the original.

Not only do some clients not understand this, but as long as the work passes a plagiarism detector, they assume they’re fine and wouldn’t even know how to tell if the cheap content they purchased is a derivative work that could leave them open to a lawsuit.

This is why it’s so important you understand what you’re buying. If you’re buying extremely low-priced content, it’s unlikely you’re covering the cost and time involved in creating truly original content. And, especially for smaller businesses or solopreneurs, the reputational and legal risks involved could even put you out of business.

What “Quality Content” Really Means

Now that you understand the risks involved in underpaying for low quality content, what’s the alternative? What does “quality content” actually mean? To summarize, high quality content:

• serves readers first (answers a question, offers a solution, features clean easy-to-read writing, etc.);
• conveys a message in line with your brand;
• helps you rank well in search engines without having to chase algorithm changes constantly;
• preserves or boosts your reputation, as a thought leader when appropriate;
• conveys expertise rather than simply parroting another source;
• in most cases includes persuasive copy in the form of a call-to-action (CTA).

In other words, write for your target readers before all else. Hire subject matter experts when possible. Be the subject matter expert in other cases, such as when working on thought leadership content with a freelance ghostwriter. Tweak content for better SEO without writing primarily for Google. Cite your sources. Be ethical. And let your readers know what you’d like them to do with that content (hire you, sign up for your newsletter, buy a product, etc.) — in general you want your content to do something for your business.

Where Professional Freelance Writers Come In

There are several alternatives to buying cheap content from under-qualified content producers. For example, you could write your content yourself.

Then again, if you’re a business owner or on a small staff, you might not have the time to devote to content writing personally. And not everyone who can run a successful business counts themselves a strong writer. If you can bring in more money focusing on other things, it can make sense to hire help.

Along those lines, you could hire a member of staff to take on your content writing. That makes sense if you need a lot of content on a regular basis and you can afford to pay those regular hours, taxes, and benefits.

What if you need content more sporadically though? Or what if you need content writing regularly, but not very much — maybe just a couple of blog posts each week?

In that case, your best bet is to hire a professional freelance writer.

What sets pros apart from cheap content producers?

• They’ll know the value they bring to the table, so they’re likely to charge accordingly.
• They can turn in drafts that need minimal input and revisions (after all, you’re hiring them to save you time).
• Professional freelance writers can work well independently and take the reigns of a project once you’ve worked out the details with them.
• A pro-level freelancer knows how to balance writing for your readers with seeking search engine benefits.
• They don’t over-promise results (such as guaranteeing your new content will rank in the top 5 for highly competitive keyword phrases shortly after publication).

In other words, if things sound too good to be true, they often are. Real pros don’t work for next to nothing. And they’re honest about what clients should expect. Anything short of that, and you’re almost guaranteed to be getting a raw deal.

When it comes to hiring professional freelance content writers, you have another important consideration though.

Subject Matter Experts vs Ghostwriters

When it comes to hiring freelance writers, consider whether you plan to give them bylines (have their name on what they write) or if you’d rather have them ghostwrite (meaning you, or your business as a whole, get the benefits of credit).

If you plan to give bylines, it’s always a better idea to hire subject matter experts. That’s because their professional reputation in that subject matter lends greater credibility and trust to your website or company.

On the other hand, if you prefer to keep posts anonymous or you want them to appear under the company name or even yours, you should hire a freelance ghostwriter. The primary reason to hire a ghostwriter is their expertise is in writing in your consistent brand voice and putting your expertise into words that appeal to and influence your readers or customers.

That’s not to say you can’t have both. You might have a ghostwriter work on the bulk of your content and have subject matter experts come in for specialized pieces. Or sometimes your ghostwriter will happen to be a subject matter expert as well (such as what you’d get hiring me as a ghostwriter covering online business, marketing, or PR topics).

In the end, you need to consider your long-term content strategy. When you have a plan in place, it makes it easier to focus on quality content rather than quantity and to make sure credit is going where you want it to go for every piece of content you publish.

If you decide a freelance ghostwriter is right for you, or if you’d like some help planning out your own content strategy, get in touch and let’s work together.

The post Why Quality Content Matters (& What Cheap Content Really Costs) appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is when you create, distribute, and encourage the sharing of content with the intention of reaping marketing benefits for your business. Those marketing benefits might be direct sales or greater audience engagement with your business through that content. Content might be text-based as in articles or it might involve other content formats such as data collections, audio, images, and video.

15 Content Marketing Tools

Here are fifteen tools you might use in your company’s content marketing strategy:

1. Blog posts
2. Infographics
3. Web-based articles for article marketing
4. Guest blog posts / feature articles
5. Online video
6. Reports / white papers
7. E-books
8. Podcasts / audio
9. SEO articles
10. Newsletter content
11. Webinars / e-courses
12. Social media profiles (tweets, updates, etc.)
13. Widgets
14. Databases
15. Feeds

Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Whether you’ve ever thought about the concept of “content marketing” or not, chances are good you’re already using one or more of these tools in your overall marketing strategy. The key to creating a true content marketing strategy is to find ways to use content in new and better ways to achieve those marketing goals. As with any other strategy or plan, it’s important to choose the tools that offer the best ROI for your individual business — ones that will have the most impact with your target audience.

So start working on your company’s new content marketing strategy today. Make the content you already create and distribute in your business work even harder for you. And if you need help creating that content, contact me with your project specs. I might just be able to help.

The post Do You Have a Content Marketing Strategy? appeared first on Pro Business Writer.