I’m in my fourth year of Internet marketing, and I remain awestruck by the significant role that content plays in the eventual success of any online venture. If any cliche dealing with this relatively new field is both tested and accurate, it is this: Content is King!
Anyone who has done much web article writing for distribution for either traffic or SEO purposes will know that it is not a simple task (otherwise why would so many be trying to buy good content?). Good writers have a valuable skill set.
Last night I happened to find myself at one of those websites where free lancers can view project proposals from businesses and vice versa. It was not guru.com, but it was a site similar to that. I decided to look around just to see the sorts of things that were listed. I actually laughed out loud at some of the proposals, even though I was alone in my office.
One business was looking for someone to help with search engine optimization by negotiating over a thousand one way links, all from ranked sites and all with keyword rich anchor text. A good plan, no doubt. Their top end of the budget for this work was 0! Oh yeah, they mentioned that they had tried to reach their goals before but hadn’t received good results. I wonder why…
More to the point was another company that was looking for 300 optimized five hundred word articles. This project had a more modest budget of 0. Could this explain all the sites with worthless content that give the Internet a bad name?
Very early in my short career, I was guilty of the same thing. I once contracted for a package of ten original optimized articles for . I received articles that were strikingly similar to each other. They were indeed packed with my key phrases. Indeed, they were little more than keyword spam. I tried to revise them so that they would be usable, but I finally decided that I would be better off just completely starting over.
Because of the essential nature of having quality content for our own sites and for use in our syndication efforts for traffic and search engine optimization purposes, we must be very efficient in our article marketing efforts. Few things impact our reputation more than the content we put out there with links leading back to our websites.
I only had to learn once from my mistake. While I am careful with all of my expenses, I do not try to skimp on content. If you pay the price for junk, you will receive junk in return.
I have an acquaintance to operates a number of retail sites. He says that he learned his lesson (as it seems we all must). He has found some excellent writers. He pays for each 500 word article and reports that it is money well spent. I’m absolutely sure that his business is much more profitable than the company who is offering fifty cents an article or the business that is willing to pay less than fifteen cents per “quality” link.
Try to benefit from my previous mistakes. If, instead, you have to learn by making your own errors, I hope you only waste seventy dollars as I did. It pays to be a fast learner.
