Elixir - 10:55 pm on Feb 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

Excellent post Sugarrae,
SEO has grown up. You have to understand marketing now to truly promote a web site. Two years ago our services were 80% technical 20% marketing now its more like 40% technical and 60% marketing. This is what it takes to rank a site well in today's Google.

Unfortunately, the link mavens having had their income curtailed from link buying are already spewing articles out at $600 a pop. Selling them as a linking strategy. Before you know whats happened the web will be saturated with useless articles and Google will have to find a way to disregard and bang goes your hard work writing quality articles on your subject. It is thanks to the quick fix SEO tricks that the Search Engines have been forced to bring down the hatchet as hard as they have on many once legitimate techniques.

Some people were talking about outsourcing. Talk to your local colleges and see if you can connect with a student in their creative wirting or english major classes who wants to write. You can guide them towards writing for the web and give them a few assignments as a trial. Some tweaking from you on the first few will give you and idea if they will work out. Do not buy articles from articlenbanks or "content providers". It is only when everybody takes a more professional approach and stops encouraging these tactics by not buying them that our industry will become more stable.

The problem still with all this is that clients do not want to pay for good quality marketing like Sugarrea describes. It does not bode well for the new Moms and Pops though I think the days of those sites doing well are well and truly over.