As a freelance writer for hire, there are two things you need to know about SEO.The first is that just about everything you ever read about SEO is now absolute garbage.
In fact, it probably always was.
A lot of people made an awful lot of money by claiming to second-guess the search engines. They mangled their clients’ site copy, eschewing readability in favour of dropping in as many ‘keywords’ in as possible, hoping to get better rankings.
The trouble with this approach was that punters were soon able to spot an SEO site a mile off. The search engines soon got wise to it and changed their algorithms too, leaving millions of web pages with virtually unreadable copy gathering virtual dust.
And lots of SEO ‘gurus’ refusing to answer their phones.
The second thing you need to know is that there is still an awful lot of work out there on Elance, Rentacoder, etc for ‘optimized’ web site content. And that can be a problematic diversion for some freelance writers, especially when they are first starting out.
You see, although there’s lots of work out there, you’re going to be competing with people who can’t write to get it. Some of these people will happily get paid $3-$5 per article. You won’t even get a decent sample to add to your portfolio, because any article that is written purely with the search engines in mind isn’t worth reading.
But all this is great news for writers.
Why?
Well, because although the SEO people were always telling us ‘content is king’, now it really is.
Because site owners are gradually beginning to understand that the only way to attract visitors to their site is to offer them something of value. Something that is interesting, useful and reads like it was written by a writer, instead of a damn machine.
And that, my friend, is why there’s going to be a lot more work around for the likes of you and I than ever before.
So instead of refusing some SEO writing work for lousy pay (and certainly instead of accepting it), why not try and educate your prospective client instead?
Tell him that he needs great content for great results. And that you’re just the person to give that to him.
