#TheTrendingHashtag

​​Good content will drive web traffic, but how do you know what makes good content? There is no universal template; as with cheap leggings- one size does not fit all!
​However, there are some guidelines that will set you in good stead when starting, or updating, your content strategy.

​Make it useful.
​Potential sales and service engagements are a two-way street for the supplier and the customer. To persuade a client to believe and invest in your product they need to be given information. Customers need to feel they have had a useful and enlightening interaction with your brand- good content is a perfect opportunity to showcase your integrity, reliability, products and services, and to establish authority as a force to be reckoned with within your field. This is a client expectation, don’t disappoint.

Keep it clean.
This isn’t necessarily a warning about using the ‘f bomb’ within your content or advertising- there is a time and place for this- I stumbled across this product and think the strategy works, after all, who wants glue that doesn't stick?
​What I essentially mean is to watch out for those typos, bad punctuation, dodgy spelling, and missing or misplaced capital letters; helping your uncle jack off a horse and helping your Uncle Jack off a horse are two entirely different activities- don’t mix them up.

Maintain the truth.
​To add genuine value to the perception of your brand, you really do need to keep it real and tell the truth. Emphasis will obviously be placed on the real benefits while muting some aspects, but your clients and customers deserve to be given the truth; otherwise, when the bubble bursts, they will feel betrayed and waste no time is spreading the news about your false claims. Additionally, getting your mates to write testimonials and give you 5-star ratings on Google will not ultimately improve your brand, it will merely imitate success. When you think about it, if you need to make it up, isn’t it about time you invested in improving your actual product? *just a thought*

​It goes without saying that the art of creating good quality and engaging content is far more complex and involved than the 3 little ‘starters for 10’ listed above, however, the point is that without good content the outside world cannot get to know and love your brand in the same way that you do- that is a wasted opportunity. My heartfelt advice to anyone seeking to gain traction in commercial environments is to never underestimate the power of your web content and marketing copy.
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It would be fair to say that usually in life you get what you pay for. There are obviously exceptions to the rule- we all have that one friend that manages to bag herself ‘genuine’ bargains featuring Louis Vuitton® or Mulberry® products from some top-secret location on holiday, but in general, if you are prepared to pay a fair price you will get you an authentic product or service. Some potential clients are not prepared for the time estimates from writers to complete a commission, some think that writers can just write about anything, immediately. This is rarely the case- your writer needs to be allocated time to understand your brand, your vision, your competition, only then can you be provided with a good quality piece of writing. One pointer I often give potential clients is that if you work out how much net profit each sale makes, and then be realistic about how many new sales will be created by better web content and marketing copy, you can soon see the benefit in the financial investment.

Well, I'm sure most of us saw it coming. Last year Matt Cutts,leader of the Websafe team at Google, started sowing the seeds that the days of spammy guest blogging were nearing an end. And now those early warning sirens are ringing out loud and clear. 

The advice from Google is that if you are using guest blogging as a reliable vehicle to gain links ~Don't, those halycon days are over. But is this heads up all bad? I think not.

Guest blogging has established itself as being a valuable asset to enriching the content of your blog. 'Experts' in their field can write a post for your site that interests and engages with your readers. Once, to be asked to write a guest blog, or have your offer of a guest blog article accepted, was a great honour. However, the position of guest blogging has changed. The issue concerning the Websafe team is that guest blogging is now used by many as a way of linking to their spam filled website by offering renumeration, inserting links without you realising and getting around PageRank all in one guest blog post. 

Matt Cutts offers this advice on his own blog;  "guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy. In general I wouldn’t recommend accepting a guest blog post unless you are willing to vouch for someone personally or know them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy."
 
The Google team have tried to assure the reputable bloggers that 'genuine' guest blog posts are not an issue here, this action is aimed at the blog writers that violate Google's quality guidelines and erode legitimate SEO work.

For companies that have in-house writers providing the bulk of their blogging activities, this should not present any detrimental effects. For companies that rely on low quality guest bloggers to provide the bulk of their blog content, times are changing. Many companies may not even realise the counterproductive affect of these posts, others may just not care as long as they manage to get their site higher up on a web search.

These changes will hopefully go some way towards cleaning up some spam, improving the integrity of the material we have access to online and ensuring sites work their way up google by containing relevant and readable content. There will naturally be winners and losers in these changes, and as a freelance SEO copywriter there could be exciting times ahead. One way to still optimise your site through blog activity could be to employ the services of a reputable copywriter. This would ensure the writing was fresh, original and  PageRank friendly.

Here at Creative Copywriters we provide a fully comprehensive Social Media and Network Writing service. We write blog posts, social media and network updates, all absolutely violation free. Blog posts can be written as a 'one off' project or several  posts can be commissioned to keep your online presence stimulated and enlivened without any of the unsavoury aftertaste spam may leave you with.