Suess's Pieces

By Eric Storch

If you own a website, understanding search engine optimization (SEO) is an important factor in driving traffic to your site. As a freelance writer, it’s also important for you to understand it and be able to use it well. SEO is what search engines look for when scanning the internet in order to provide a list of the most relevant websites to the searcher. Having good SEO for your site will place it higher on a search engine results page (SERP).

Small companies may not have an SEO specialist

When a company doesn’t have an SEO team or just doesn’t have the money to spend on a specialist, they are going to look to the writer to provide SEO for their site. You will need to know all you can about SEO in order to make yourself more marketable. Companies will hire freelance writers with SEO experience over those who don’t. There is a wealth of information on SEO to be found on the internet and a simple search will get you started on what you need to know.

SEO is connected to content

Since the majority of SEO is content related, it can be a simple thing for the writer to provide SEO in an article. In most cases, the company is looking for certain keywords to be placed within an article and some companies may even require a certain percentage of words in the article to be keywords. Companies and SEO experts both agree though, that content should always come before SEO. SEO may bring a reader to your site once, but good content keeps them coming back.

Being ignorant of the rules of SEO is no excuse

Search engines don’t like scraping or plagiarism and when it’s detected, it can hurt a website’s showing on a SERP. It should go without saying, but original content is preferred, both by companies and search engines.

Does a freelance writer have to understand SEO? The short answer is no. You will be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t at least have a grasp of the basics, though. Companies will love you if you can do your own SEO work, and the knowledge will give you a better chance of getting repeat business.

Eric Storch is a freelance writer based in New Hampshire where he runs Studio30 Plus, a social media website for writers. His fiction is featured on his blog, Sinistral Scribblings, including his web serial, “The Linden Tree.”
 

Looking to outsource your web content for the first time? Polluting the internet is easy! Follow these 5 steps to hire a bad writer and do your part to fill the internet with crappy web content!

Go for the lowest bid every time.

Contrary to popular belief, posting a job on a crowdsourcing site is not one of the seven deadly sins. It can be an effective way for fledgling business owners to get the content they need at a price they can afford. However, if you are new to the scene, be forewarned. Taking the lowest bid doesn’t always save you money. Buying the cheapest of anything can get you burned. When I moved into my first apartment, I bought an entire set of steak knives for $9.99 at a big box store. Blinded by my thrifty pride, I didn’t see that whole plastic-handle-meting-in-the-dishwasher thing coming.

Ignore writing samples.

A great copywriter will never be insulted if you ask her to pony up the proof. In fact, she will be glad to show you her past work. If you don’t take the time to read her samples, you risk a few things. First, you may unwittingly hire someone who doesn’t fluently write in English. The freelance economy is global. Second, you may not find a writer whose tone, style, or niche matches your company. Finally, neglecting to read samples puts you at risk of hiring a writer with bad self-editing skills. Checking for big blunders in a copywriter’s samples can save you hours of haggling—or worse, tedious editing—after the deal is done.

Place an ad for a re-writer or spinner.

Article spinners will help you generate a lot of content, it’s true. I’ve seen ads placed and awarded for as little as $1 per 500 words. But article spinners create web content that can actually harm your business. It’s not worth the damage to your reputation or your search ranking.

Skip the reference check.

Another good way to get shoddy copy is to find a writer without recommendations, industry connections, or testimonials. With sites like LinkedIn, checking out a provider’s reputation only takes a couple of clicks. Do it.

Hire someone who will do anything you want.

I know you’ve been taught that the customer is always right, but the main reason we outsource work is to defer to an actual expert. Advising you on best practices is part of the job description for a copywriter. There are some things a copywriting professional won’t do, and it’s not necessarily because she’s an arrogant egomaniac. She probably just cares about your reputation as well as her own.

Photo by NYCArthur

SEO stands for search engine optimization. The whole point of SEO writing is to make search engines like Google and Bing think your site is hot shit. Think of the whole of the internet like a vast ocean. Your website is a teensie-weensie raft in the middle of that ocean. And oh, by the way, your raft just happens to be blue.

Now, the search engines are like helicopter pilots flying overhead at thousands and thousands of feet. The chances of those pilots seeing your blue raft in the middle of the blue ocean aren’t so good unless you’ve got some kind of tool to help you out. Say, a mirror. You use the mirror to reflect the sun’s light and all of a sudden those helicopter pilots are all, “Dude! What’s down there?” and “Whoa! We better check that out!” And then they swoop in with things you need like transportation to dry land, some bottled water, and maybe a Snickers bar.

Just in case you haven’t already figured it out, SEO is the mirror in this analogy. Using the words and phrases that people actually type into search engines in your written content can indicate to a search engine that your web page is relevant to the query. The more relevant you are, the higher you are listed in the rankings and the more likely someone is to click through to your site.

And life on the internet is all about clicks.

The Controversy

Photo by Alisson Gothz

@DivineWrite explains the hubbub petty well in his article, “If you’re an article spinner, you’re a spammer. Man up and admit it!” You see, some people practice shady SEO tactics like keyword stuffing and article spinning. With no regard for the actual readers of a given web site or article, they just start cramming keywords all over the page in an attempt to fool the search engines. They may also write one legitimate article and then rearrange the words a billion different ways. That, folks, is what we mean by spinning.
If this spamming “works” the end result is that people click through to junk sites. It’s kind of like a Rickroll, only without the kick-ass 80s music. And as my good colleague pointed out already, these men and women are spammers. Big. Fat. Spammers.

The SEO Philosophy Continuum

As a result, SEO is a double-edged sword. It’s potentially genuine usefulness and propensity to create utter rubbish have people divided. A number of philosophies have sprung up regarding its use in web writing. You can hire writers at virtually any place on the continuum:

• Some copywriters are too good for SEO. They see it as nothing more than trickery and deception, and they won’t have anything to do with it.
• Others are not opposed to it in theory, they’re just reluctant to use the term to sell themselves because it has some negative connotations. They may write SEO content for clients, but they don’t usually brag about it.
• Some writers believe in the power of SEO to help businesses and consumers. They hope that one day it will be used only for good and not evil. They live and write by an SEO code of ethics. (I am proud to be one of these copywriters.)
• Others embrace it wholeheartedly and will do anything for a click, reasoning that it’s about the client. To make money in this world, you simply do what the client wants the cheapest way possible.

So what do you do if you’re a site owner looking for content? Relax! There are plenty of ethical writers out there. A good SEO writer might cost more, but she will do things for you the others won’t—like advise you when things get a little fishy. That protects you and consumers. And who wouldn’t like to have one less thing to worry about?