Is SEO dead? – A new look at Content writing.

Last night I had a dream – in it I was working for an IT company as a Content Writer, and was severely admonished for leaving work before the CEO, who just happened to be a self-made and self-proclaimed SEO expert. After the dream, and when I arose from my comfortable bed, I got to thinking – most so-called SEO experts probably have their own fixed idea of what a content writer is, namely a writer (often an Intern) with limited experience, but one who can turn out a pretty turn of phrase in exactly the way the SEO wants it. In addition it is interspersed with the right percentage of keywords and so on. I’m sure that is the way that they look at me.

However, what they do not know is that in my case I wrote my first program (remember Fortran?) when most of these upstarts were still in diapers – and in some cases before they were even a twinkling thought in their parents’ heads. Even before attending that long-ago Computer Studies course at the North London Polytechnic, I was flying around the sky with some of the then most sophisticated and highly secret analogue computer equipment available. Before the Internet caught on and during a brief sojourn to the Middle East, I designed a database for all air traffic passing through the region. A few years later was in charge of three computer networks comprising no less than 70 or 80 PCs, and I remember the excitement when the networks first went ‘live’ on the Internet. I am not bragging, but merely trying to put everything into perspective.

What I am trying to get across is that Content Writers are not necessarily interns straight out of college. Many of us are widely traveled and have had a great deal of experience of worldly affairs. I personally have traveled through or to every continent, have had well in excess of 6,000 articles published on the Internet, and have six of my own websites. Of course SEO is not yet dead – just dying maybe. It is no secret that, as search engines introduce new algorithms they prefer more and more good content that is well written, free of spelling and grammatical errors, valid and to the point.

I am enjoying my last few months in South Africa before relocating to the colder climes of New England. South African SEOs in particular should start examining the content they have used in their websites in the past. There is nothing worse than coming across a website in which the content is badly written. South Africa, with its eleven official languages, is particularly prone to this. In many cases the content is exacerbated where the webmaster or SEO, wishing to save a few dollars, has outsourced content to countries such as India, Pakistan, the Philippines and China. Get your act together guys – let’s start seeing some high-quality content – you’ll find it pays in the long run.

New New Hampshire website

It has been a while since I last posted here, mostly because I have been kept busy writing for clients here in South Africa and in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Most of my regular readers will know of my plans to relocate to North Carolina, and of how my wife Liz flew back to the States more than a year ago while I stayed behind in the Eastern Cape to finalize the sale of our smallholding. After spending a year staying with her daughter, circumstances forced Liz to move on from Louisiana, supposedly to NC. However, things have changed. I was not happy about Liz arriving in NC under the conditions that were forced upon her, and so I asked my daughter Julie in New England if she wouldn't mind Liz staying with her for a while, and this is why Liz is now firmly ensconced in the Granite State with Julie and my three grandchildren.

To cut a long story short, Liz is so happy in her new home that we have decided that it is to be our final relocation destination, and I can't wait to get there. These new circumstances have led me to creating a new website, which, at the time of writing is just partly finished, although coming along in leaps and bounds. The design is all there, and it is now just a matter of populating it with good content and then marketing it. We have based the design on our info-nc and info-sc websites, which have proved so popular in the past, and the pic for the header was taken by Liz a week or so ago.

There seems to be no shortage of writing work on the other side of The Pond, unlike here in darkest Africa. Many of the domains ending with .co.za have been populated with content that leaves much to be desired, clearly having been written by someone not fluent in the English language, and of its subtle nuances and many idioms. This is just another sign of the times in South Africa, and is something that goes hand in hand with the neo-apartheid policies of the present government. The new upper class in South Africa is the reason for many of the setbacks experienced in the country. Much of the government and industry is corrupt, and the new leaders are filling their pockets at the expense of the poor. Why, only last week a local government official here in the Eastern Cape, after resigning from her position after only 5 months, was given a handshake of R2.5 million!  Only in Africa!

I will not miss this country one iota. I'm ready to leave - just need to sell the farm. Which brings me to one final point. A couple of days ago I received an email from some asinine idiot offering me R200,000 cash for the farm (I have just dropped the asking price to below R1 million). With the Rand crashing the way it is, I will consider any sensible offer, but I have only one reply to sheer stupidity - kma.

Google Penguin 2.0 – Its implications for your Website Content

At the time of writing it is just 2 weeks since the release of Google’s Penguin 2.0 algorithm, and already many websites are feeling the pinch of the new code. In Google’s Matt Cutts’s own words, the algorithm penalizes websites that show questionable SEO tactics such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, link building and the deliberate use of duplicate content. This is bad news for many website owners. So-called Black Hat webmasters have been paying for inward links to their websites in order to trick search engines, and in particular the Google algorithm, into assessing that the website is more informative and trustworthy than it really is. These are the sort of links that Google wants to penalize.

The websites that will benefit from this new algorithm are those publishers who focus on providing high quality and authoritative content. This algorithm and future tweaks expected later this year will penalize bad content, including mis-spelling, bad grammar and low quality writing. Such bad content is particularly evident in a country like South Africa, where there are no less than eleven official languages. As an example, much of the content found in South African websites has been written by individuals for whom English is not their first language. In addition many webmasters have outsourced content to countries such as India and the Philippines in order to save a few dollars. In consequence many websites ending in .co.za are found to have exceptionally bad content.

Webmasters who suspect that their website hits may be suffering from penguinitis should have their content checked, and if necessary re-written by a professional - one that has an excellent command of the English language.

So, what can you do to ensure that your website succeeds online?  How do you ensure that your website is one of authority and will not be penalized by Google? All of the content on your website should be quality – invest in a real writer to rewrite your website content in such a way that it is written for its live, real readers – not written for search engines. Your content should be written by a content marketing specialist with a view to making it an authority on your product. Invest in features such as blogs, videos, infographics, and news that are both relevant and will benefit your customers. Don’t be satisfied with a simple 5-page website – invest in adding relevant and beneficial content in the form of articles, and do this on a regular basis.

Make sure that you retain control of your website so that you can edit its content at any time. Use Google+. Every time new content is published by Google+ authorship it is immediately indexed by Google and stands a better chance in Google searches. Publish links to new content on social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Develop relevant inbound links from germane and quality sites and from high-quality writers. Ensure that your writers have an excellent command of the English language. Above all, let Google know that your website is an authority on its subject, and be aware that if you don’t publish content on your website, penguin 2.0 will penalize it.

Why Google ?

Research into ways that computers could 'talk' to one another goes back to the early 1960s, and the first two nodes of what was to become ARPANET were connected in October 1969, when UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science was linked up with SRI International of Menlo Park, California. Further nodes were added in the following years. It wasn't until 1982 that Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, and another 4 years until access to supercomputers was provided. Since then the Internet has expanded exponentially, and today there are more than 2.4 billion users, 46.4 million active websites and more than 1 trillion web pages, a formidable figure that increases by more than a billion pages every day! So why Google?

As of October 2011 Google's share of searches was 65% in the US and 82% worldwide. In contrast Bing and Yahoo together took 26% in the US and a little over 10% worldwide. It is because of these figures that website owners do what they can to attract Google searches to them. There are a number of ways of doing this optimization, and this niche of the IT industry has given birth to a new profession, Search Engine Optimization.

Graphic representation of the Internet

Google carries out its Internet searches by using algorithms. These algorithms are upgraded or rewritten from time to time so as to make the results of searches more logical or appropriate. Webmasters attract search engines such as Google to their websites by a number of means. These include keywords, the careful wording of the page's title and description, and regular updates of relevant content. Browsing through some websites, especially in countries where there are more than one official language, or where content has been outsourced to such a country, shows excessive use of keywords, frequent bad spelling and appalling grammar. These are some of the points that Google's latest algorithms will penalize. 

My next blog will examine the implications of Google's latest algorithm update - Penguin 2.0 and how you can ensure that your website is not penalized by the code.  Click on the Internet above to see the services that I offer - I am a one man show, and I need the work!

New clients for old = never

I found myself in something of a quandary a couple of weeks back. It was just after I had done some self-marketing on LinkedIn, adding a score or more of contacts to my network. I have a couple of clients that I would describe as 'bread and butter' clients, one in South Carolina and the other here in South Africa. They have each supplied me with regular assignments on a month to month basis, and I have good and well established rapport with them.

After my bit of self-marketing I received a request for a quotation from a corporate body for whom I had never written before..The assignment was for rewriting an entire technical website, something that I have done before and am perfectly capable of. However in this particular case the request was accompanied by a 38-page brief. Pages had to be written tab by tab and each one approved before progressing to the next. The whole job had to be completed in what, to me, was an unacceptable deadline, which would have meant placing my regular clients on the back burner.

The situation was somewhat delicate to me, but in the end I determined that my regular clients could never be placed in such a situation, and so I wrote to the corporate contact turning down the work and in doing so the chance of a fat cheque. The question is, did I do right?

Recollections

I was driving from the farm into Port Alfred this morning, reminiscing, when I decided on the subject of this blog - recollections of some of the things I have achieved during my life, and of some of the mistakes I have made. I have reached that age where a person starts wondering how many more birthdays they are going to enjoy - if one can enjoy birthdays in this day and age. I am still told from time to time that I do not look my age, so maybe there's hope for me yet. So what can I brag about ? What can I tell my grandchildren? And what can I not  tell them?

I suppose that one achievement I can chalk up on the board would be my close to 300 each carrier catapult shots and deck landings. I spent 8 years flying off aircraft carriers, and during this time qualified as a 'top gun'. My flying career was not without incident, my having survived a mid-air collision between two Hawker Hunter jet fighters as well as a crash landing after an engine failure at 24,000 ft. The latter hit the headlines of the national press.

The one I walked away from

I had become very apprehensive with the complacency of the British people during my days as a naval aviator, and on their completion decided to 'emigrate' to Africa - to Rhodesia to be precise. The Fleet Air Arm and its carriers were being juggled about like  yo-yos by various politicians in those days. I had become a particular admirer of Enoch Powell, a Conservative politician whose predictions of Britain's future have proved so true. I also admired Ian Smith, the Rhodesian prime minister, whom I was to meet several times during my nine years in the country. It was in Rhodesia that I became heavily involved in the theater, serving on the Executive Committee of Salisbury Repertory Players and treading the boards in more than a dozen plays under the direction of their resident professional director.

The writer as Dronio in You must be Joking (Four plays for Coarse Actors)

After that joker Mugabe came into power and Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, I left the country with my new family for Britain, where I had been appointed Senior Air Traffic Controller at Biggin Hill Airport.  I slotted into the job very well, and was soon deputizing for the Airport Manager as well as running Air Traffic Control. Unfortunately the narrow minded politics of Britain's Civil Aviation Authority refused to recognize my Rhodesian ATC qualifications, in spite of my obvious experience, which is what brought me and my family to South Africa. I remained in ATC for a number of years before becoming involved in computers, and it was during this time that I was honored to have shaken hands with Nelson Mandela - I consider this, if not an achievement, at least something I can brag about.

In retrospect my first marriage was my first big mistake, although even from mistakes can come good. In this case in the shape of my daughter Julie and later my three grandchildren. They are very special to me and I just cannot wait to get to New Hampshire again to see them - and without doubt to spoil them. My first visit to sub-Saharan Africa had been to Mombasa whilst embarked on HMS Eagle. I had spent a week staying on a farm at Nyali Beach, the guest of Andy Pape and his two teenage daughters. This was to influence my original decision to move to Africa, and eventually to another achievement - to own a farm in Africa.

The main farmhouse and Katie

Martindale Farm is an 18 acre smallholding about 10 miles from Bathurst in South Africa's Eastern Cape. The village is home to South Africa's oldest pub, the Pig & Whistle. We bought the farm in 2005, and loved it and cherished it, but the time came to move on. I met Liz, my present wife, on the Internet, and we've been together for 15 years - 15 years without a single argument or fight.We are true soul mates. Liz has returned to America in 2012 and I followed her 2 years later. I am now able to coin the phrase "I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Kaprivier Hills".

Today I am relocated in New England and the owner of several websites, and spend much of my time writing content for the Internet. My most successful personal sites are  info-nc and info-nh . My latest achievement is a website for a veterinary clinic in the Northeast Kingdom. I never thought of myself as a writer ten years ago, but since 2006 I have had more than 6,500 articles published on websites - this I do consider as an achievement. What's more the Internet has made it possible for me to continue writing wherever I am located.

Freeing the mind

Workwise I have had an extremely illuminating time recently. I have been writing the content for a number of mini-websites - so far about 60-odd with hopefully more to come. Writing web content can be both interesting and didactic, especially when researching a completely new subject – new in the sense that one previously has known little or nothing about it. As an example, about a year ago I was contracted to rewrite the content for an Orthotics &Prosthetics Practice website. Where, beforehand, there was a void in my knowledge, there is now enough understanding to hold at least a brief conversation on the subject, and at the same time a lot of sympathy for the unfortunates who have to make use of these artifacts.

Recently my writing has been around motivation, and has included such subjects as life coaching, investing, trading, property investment, motivational speaking and the like. Since I was involved in Jaycees (or Junior Chamber) many years ago I have always maintained a keen interest in motivation, although I am ashamed to admit that I have frequently lapsed in the past. This present assignment has re-awakened my mind, and taught me how it is possible to completely change one’s life around for the better by positively controlling the mind. Now I may be getting a little ancient for that right now, and living where I do prevents me from attending any of the local seminars anyway, but I am deeply grateful to CL for giving me the opportunity of doing the work for him.

Our smallholding remains unsold. As I write there are three or four glossy starlings chattering away to each other in the wild plum tree by the gate. The largest of our four cycads has been carrying two huge cones for several months, and only during the last few days have they started to split open, revealing the fleshy red fruit inside. Some species of cycad are indigenous to this part of the Eastern Cape, and one species, Encephalartos latifrons, is close to extinct. Cycads are known to have been around for more than 250 million years, one of the oldest of all plant families.

Last night I managed to have a lengthy telephone conversation with Liz, who is now awaiting her first Christmas with her daughter and grandchildren in Washington State. This will be our first Christmas away from each other in the ten years we have been together. If it were not for Katie I think I would have gone crazy months ago. She is my constant companion and guards the property on my infrequent trips to either Grahamstown or Port Alfred. Since the new shopping mall opened at Rosehill a couple of years back I have been avoiding trips to G’town, and only venture there once a month to pick up my prescription. Shopping at the Rosehill Super Spar is a far more pleasant experience anyway.

Update

I've been very lax about keeping my blog up to date over the past couple of months - I think mostly because I have been kept extremely busy - have written content for some 60 or 70 mini websites during that time, as well as content for a South Carolina holiday resort company. I must say that writing for the local company has gotten me very motivated as well as opening my eyes to wealth creation methods that I didn't think were open to the likes of me.

Liz has been back in the States for 6 months now - we chat either on Skype or the telephone just about every day. She now has a job, working for the DoD no she's not joined the Marines! - something to keep her occupied and bring in a few dollars locally until I can get this farm sold and join her. The farm sometimes feels as though it is an albatross around my neck. Liz has gotten over the culture shock of returning from a third world country (let's face it - we may as well be!) to what is technologically the greatest country in the world. She has rediscovered what it's like to be up to date with the latest tech. She's been busy too - a presidential election, a hurricane, the extreme heat of the Louisianna summer and now the advent of winter.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, the swallows have returned for their third year. They broke their nest again and have just completed rebuilding it with a third entrance tunnel, having blocked off the first two, which are still there attached to the roof of the patio. Back in October we had 400ml of rain in three or four days - the worse I have seen here in Martindale during the seven years we've been at the farm. So much rain that the water table was higher than some of the rooms, and there was an inch of water in two of the bedrooms, the lighthouse room and my office. Fortunately all but the office are tiled, so not too much damage. I was forced to move my office into the lighthouse room, which is where I am now.  I'm getting a regular trickle of people interested in the farm, but no actual offers since those first two I shook hands on a year ago. I shall endeavor to be a little more active in writing this blog in future.

New Chapter

Enough sadness! Sandy is now in greener pastures and running around chasing rabbits (or whatever they do over there - knowing his preferences here on the farm he's probably chasing chickens). Sandy brought joy and happiness to both Liz and myself, as well as the many others who knew him. It is now time to start a new chapter. We will remember him with all the love and fond memories he so richly deserves.

Now it is time to concentrate our full efforts into the relocation to NC. We will make the move this year, come Hell or High Water. We had a couple of queries about the farm over the weekend, so we'll keep on with the promotions on the Internet and elsewhere. By the way, if you would like to see our farm you can do so at its own website here.

Updating Websites

Well over 90% of all websites, once up and running, are forgotten about by their owners in the sense that they are just left as they are with little of no updating ever carried out. Unless new content is added to a website and the source code optimized for search engines, the website will attract little attention. It will certainly never be found in the first few pages of a Google search. If you have such a website, maybe the time has come for a little updating, and this is one of Mike's fortés.

One of the easiest ways of updating is to add a few pertinent articles that are scattered with the correct concentration of keywords (about 2% to 3% is a good figure). Older websites that were written in html code or a simple css system will both look and function better if they are converted to a cms (Content Management System) format, such as Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal. Mike is no only well qualified to write articles for your website, but can also convert it to a cms site and if you wish give the website a brand new look.

Contact him through the Contacts page here for further information at no obligation.

© Michael J Mason 2011