The Latest Google Update is Fantastic News for Freelance Writers
On November 3, 2011 Google published a new article on their blog informing readers that fresh new content is now being seen as highly valuable on their blog or website. This “freshness update” is a new addition to Google’s “Caffeine web indexing system”.
Now blog owners who update their sites regularly will be rewarded with a higher search engine ranking. Let’s look at how freelance writers can put this new update to use in their business.
How Does this Impact Freelance Writers?
This latest Google update is the perfect opportunity for freelance writers to reconnect with past clients and find repeat clients.
Visit this news post on Google’s blog and send the link in an email to your client list. Explain to them how this post could affect their website’s rankings. The post will inform your clients on how Google has spent the last year tweaking their indexing system.
This freshness change will impact 35% of searches.
Remember the commotion that the Google Panda update caused? Well that only affected 12% of searches. This freshness change will impact 35% of searches. What will happen is when a user types a phrase into the Google search engine the most recent content will be returned first. Google has always attempted to provide searchers with the latest results, but their old algorithm methods had an impact of approximately 17.5% in the past.
This new update doesn’t mean that other standards have been eliminated. Quality content and the use of keywords in articles and posts will still be vital. What it does mean is that it pays to keep your site active with fresh content on a regular basis.
Profiting From This Update
As a freelance writer this is the perfect opportunity for you to inform previous clients about Google’s latest update. You can send them the link to Google’s own post and offer to create new content for them.
If your clients don’t want to feel the impact of these changes, then offer to help them with updating their blog posts and website articles.
A smart freelancer can offer a monthly or weekly package of updates for their client’s sites. This will benefit your client by helping their website get listed at the top of the search engines. Secondly it can help you establish a list of regular clients and generate a recurring income for you.
Let your clients know that results from Google will now be altered by 35% because of this new algorithm change. If your clients don’t want to feel the impact of these changes, then offer to help them with updating their blog posts and website articles.
Client Benefits of This Update
Trending topics such as politics always return the most current news. Other topics such as dieting information, growing your own vegetables and electronics often return out of date information. How many times have you personally came across sites on the first page or two of Google that give you old material? Many times for sure.
To counteract this, the new changes will (more often) bring up the most current items. So if your customer is selling electronics, having fresh, high quality material written (by you) will allow them to show up higher in the search engine results.
For clients who provide a service, adding new content to their site will be imperative to keep it ranking high. This could include updating pages, such as: portfolio and testimonial pages, adding postscripts, and revision notes. Another great suggestion is to have your clients attach a blog to their service page and you provide them with new content!
Reach Out to Your Clients Today
This latest Google update is an opportunity for you to reconnect with past clients and secure new work. Why not become known as the writer that keeps up with current trends and can produce current content?
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Thanks for the timely information and helpful prompt to contact our clients. This valuable content is why I love Freelance Switch. Please keep these kinds of posts coming!
Seems to me to be yet another Google action to turn their search for information even more solidly into a garbage can of “top of the head” “out my mouth” fluff where 2,000 blog entries from teenagers and sales people with agendas top a well written and definitive exposition on a topic by an expert source. Many topics (if not most) don’t change daily, unbiased medical advice for example. Already a definitive article on Tonsillectomies, without bias or agendas, is buried on the 20th search page below 1,000 medical scammers and teenagers merely mentioning their sore throats on their blogs.
This Google change may be ideal for webbies and techies whose whole world can change overnight with the release of a new product; but, for more stable areas of content this latest action is nowhere near worth 35% of the search weight and could very well be destructive the web. The actual works of, let’s say, Shakespeare could be buried so deep with more recent posts for, well, anything he ever said that we would never find it on Google!
Some things make sense, to me and the content I generate, it’s absurd; although I can definitely see how anyone who profits from people needing help dealing with the vagaries of the internet could consider it a godsend.
I think calling this “very destructive to the web” may be overstated, but your point is well taken about this change being limited to “anyone who profits from people needing help dealing with the vagaries of the Internet.”
Along those lines, I think the title of the article is inaccurate, or at least too general. Freelance writers as a whole don’t really benefit this “fantastic news” but only the subset of freelance writers who focus on blogging. And in my experience, that’s not a very lucrative market to begin with.
I agree that Google needs to step up their game when it comes to weeding out useless fluff from search results. They sort of did it with content farms but there’s plenty more left.
Thanks for the heads up. Blogs have been a good tool for generating extra traffic for a while, but this sounds like it’s going to make it even more important to generate regular articles.
This is obviously a very good news. Hope the blogger will be benefited who writes regularly in their blogs. their new and fresh articles will be indexed very quickly.
If Google wanted to help those providing its livelihood, it could shoot over the ad money every month instead of waiting for $100+ one month to roll around.
Hope the blogger will be benefited who writes regularly in their blogs. their new and fresh articles will be indexed very quickly.
This is a great news for blogger.
Great news! Thanks for pointing it out. Wonder if there was any indication of how often you need to update to keep that “freshness.” Daily? Weekly?
I would say that you want to update your blog at least once a week with relevant information. You can set this up inside of wordpress and schedule your posts to appear. This way you won’t forget to post!
We all know that Google has offered great services to its users and I am one of it who has availed. But despite of the humours on the Google, they will still have the solution in fixing these problems. Though many websites were affected and ruin it is indeed sufficient if you will just find a way in this issue.
This change is a welcome for technology writers, but for other fields, I don’t think content changes often. For e.g. medical bloggers may not keep on updating their Blogs. But as far as technology is concerned, tech bloggers can update their blog with new content and can benefit from Google.
Content updation is necessary at circular way in your website or blog.Then you get the benefit from there. I would say that you want to update your blog at least once a week with relevant information.
This is great news. I try to update my blog regularly. Do you recommend hiring a marketing company to market your site, or is it better to just write regular content?
HI Marie
I would suggest updating on a regular basis with your own content. To get more exposure you can simply try and do some guest posts on other sites.
Great news for bloggers. Thanks
If people start updating their websites with fresh unique content instead of duplicating what is already there on the Internet, it will not only give their websites a better search engine ranking but will also help in evacuating plagiarism.