Content Writing Avatars – Tricky, Treacherous, Virtuous

“Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it.” – Albus Dumbledore.

Professor Dumbledore’s words are golden advice for those who play with words for a living. We live in the time where the world has understood the potent power of words and writing in every single process. Use of proper words and effectively framing them can create an impact that nothing else can. Good writing creates wonders, whether it is for knowledge transfer or for gaining benefits in business through marketing.

Content Writing –

Content writing is a profession which involves utilizing the words as a source of magic to create wonders for any business. 74% of the leading successful businesses already know the power of original content and consider it be a highly effective tool. They are enjoying the fruits that optimum content marketing has borne for them. The examples of high returns and business profits through content writing have increased the worldwide demand for writing process outsourcing. Because of its large demand and advantages writing process outsourcing has taken over the role of SEO marketing.

But the increasing demand for content writing services for SEO has also invited many ill-practices in the process. These bad practices involved in writing for business degrade the quality of content and often comes at the expense at consumer trust, eventually leading to brand dilution. There are a number of writing services promising to offer the best content with no substantial evidence to back the claim. Hence, it becomes a tough task for businesses to choose the right company. Owing to the vast demand for business content writers, the content market is now overflowing with freelance content writers and content writing services. Businesses almost always have to face an ethical dilemma while choosing a writing service.

There are many content developers who offer quick services that are slated to uplift a business by helping their website rank higher in the SERPs. These types of offers make businesses fall victim to grey or black hat SEO tricks, often unknowingly. This makes it an extremely tough task for companies to hire an ethical writer whose SEO skills will bring only advantages to their business rather than pushing it off the edge. However, to hire a right writer, a company must know how to identify tricky, treacherous and virtuous content writing.

Know Where to Say No

Here is what Bad Content Writing includes, and why a business should abandon those who perform it.

Tactics of Bad Tricks

Search Engine Over-Optimization

Remember what Dumbledore said, “words are capable of inflicting injuries”. When it comes to wielding the power of words in business writing, treacherous writing can also cause death – Death of the brand. In the race for scoring the first position in the SERPs, SEO is the adrenaline rush that helps brands to cross the finish line. But many content writers misuse and overuse SEO for the sole purpose of achieving a higher rank. This overuse and misuse of SEO is considered as bad content writing and businesses should consider it as the red light.

Plagiarism

“If you steal from one author its plagiarism; if you steal from many its research.” This is the motto of many writers who are too lazy to create their own content.Some writers copy someone else’s entire work or important part of the article and deliver it as their own creation. Just copying and pasting an already created work is not content writing, it is just lazy and dishonest plagiarism. Plagiarism is the most frowned upon practice amongst the web content writers. As plagiarised content is easily discovered by the search engines, the website containing it runs a great risk of getting penalized.

Article Spinning (With Image)

When a writer lacks originality and creativity in article writing, a spinner is what he turns to. The article spinner is the software which rearranges an existing article to make a new article. The produced spun article cannot be claimed as a duplicate of the article that was fed, as it is entirely paraphrased and restructured. Majority of the words, phrases, sentences or even paragraphs of the original article are rearranged or replaced with words having a similar meaning. While the spun articles might look like a new and different article, most of the time, as shown below, it

completely lacks diversity or difference in

Black Hat SEO

Sometimes it is okay to lack originality or creativity because it can be developed with practice and determination. But when a writer lacks conscience nothing good can turn out from his/her writing. Many times the SEO content writing game takes a darker and treacherous twist because of the writers who don’t care about a company’s reputation. Black Hat SEO writing is one such series of practices which mean nothing but total disobedience of Search Engine guidelines for the sake of achieving higher search engine ranking. The black hat SEO writers just focus on the search engine to win high on SERPs and disregard human audience. The bad practices considered under the black hat SEO can bring catastrophe to the business as described in the infographic.

Grey Hat SEO

As Black Hat SEO is developed by writers who are devoid of conscience, it makes it easy to identify those tricks because they are totally against search engine guidelines. One just needs to see if the method followed during the process of SEO content writing matches the guidelines or not. If no, then it is a red alert. However, there are a few SEO techniques that are hidden in plain sight and hence, cannot be classified as either right or wrong. These techniques are considered as Grey Hat SEO which remains ill-defined by the search engines. These techniques are not easily identified by search engines as writers misuse the SEO parameters while staying within the parameters enforced by search engine guidelines. But if these techniques are caught by the Search Engine on a site, the site may have to face the bitter consequences. Those sites may face demotion of rank or even de-indexing of the web pages. The most commonly used Grey Hat tactics are shown in the given image.

Apart from these bad practices, companies should also know the writing factors that can turn away visitors from their site. If a business fails to identify such slack-ends, then there is no other way but to pay the cost of the wrath brought upon them by bad content writing practices.

Ways in which a Business Pays

“Nobody ever did, or ever will escape the consequences of his choices.” When a company fails to identify a bad writer, it invites loss in business. The company may suffer a loss in terms of revenue and reputation. When a website harbouring any of the above-mentioned types of content is identified by Google, it gets penalized. The website might get demoted in the rank, i.e., it won’t appear until after the first 100 results of the SERP. The web pages having bad content may get de-indexed from the web, and the site might even get banned from the page ranking structure itself.

While the business pays these penalties on the internet, it mainly loses its reputation. Bad and irrelevant content degrades the quality of a site, resulting in loss of trust amongst customers. Loss of loyal customers affects the company both in terms of profit as well as brand reputation. The treacherous SEO techniques employed in content writing leads the search engines to misjudge a business website and the company gets defamed.

How to Discover the Trickster

“Behind every piece of bad content, there is an executive who asked for it.” Yes, if a company has incurred a loss because of bad content writing, it may be because the company asked for it. While hiring a content writer for business, the executive dealing with the writer has to be very vigilant. Sometimes businesses get lured into hiring a web content writer because he promises big work in a short span of time. To save the business from loss of reputation as well as profit, every individual involved in the business needs to be equipped with the right skills and information that allow him/her to identify a bad writer. Here are a few spells that deceiving content writers use:

“I’ll complete 40 articles for you in just a day”

Impact area of the spell – (quality)

Tool or technique used for the spell – (Spinner or plagiarism)

Yes, sure he will, because he is just going to “Ctrl+C” and “Ctrl+V” control from relevant articles off the internet. When a writer promises quantity and says nothing about quality, a business should immediately consider it as the red signal. A promise of more number of articles per day generally means either plagiarism or article spinning.

“I’ll only charge 150 rs. Per article”

Impact area of the spell – (bargain)

Tool or technique used for the spell – (Grey or black hat)

“No, that’s too much.”

“Well, I can cut it down to 100 for you, but not lower than that.”

Sure why don’t you just make him write it for free because that would perfectly fit the write-up’s value – “Worthless.” When a business gets into bargaining about the rates of content writing, a good writer will never compromise the rate for the sake of quality. Bargaining is one of the prominent strategies of writers who provide low-quality content of little use. When you lower the rate per article they lower down the quality of article writing. Imagine charging on a per word basis for an article that involves much more aspects than mere words – research, creative narration, tonality development, conceptualization, motivation and more!

“I’ll study your company through your website and social media page”

Spell type – (Lack of research)

Tool or technique used for the spell – (remixing)

“Don’t worry, I have looked you up on Facebook and have understood about your company. Just wait for few days till I work to lift your company to the top of the SERPs.”

Of course, just by looking at the company’s social media page anyone can totally understand the vision, mission, marketing strategies, future plans, and goals. Oh no, wait! No one can. This is exactly what a responsible employee of the company would be able to tell. But these few tricksters are not interested to research about the company. They promised the top position on SERP, and they will help a business attain it with SEO content writing, wearing any hat. No matter if it is Black or Grey.

“My experience includes working with confidential brands”

Right, they are extremely confidential, at a level that they don’t even exist except in the minds and the words of the writers who use them as evidence for their skills and credibility. Quality Content writers never hesitate in giving up their clients name unless and until the client himself has denied it. When a writer assures experience in writing but is hesitant in disclosing clients’ names or showing examples of previous work, a business needs to smell the rat. Never trust a freelance writer or a content writing service, without verifying their previous work or clients.

While these are a few expressions that can give away a potential bad content writer, businesses always need to be watchful. Hiring content writing services which deliver quality content and brings success to business is not that tough when there is a clear understanding that allows one to differentiate between good and bad services.

Solution: Recruit a Writer who Writes Right, Right?

“Where there is a will there is always a way.” Most of the times, taking your time to choose a path to walk upon is considerably important, owing to the fact that the path thus chosen is the less travelled one. In this era, where digital marketing is leading the marketing forces; it is evident that there is no alternative to quality content. Because of the ever-rising demand for quality content writing a large number of freelance content writers have jumped into this profession. Many of these writers and their content are not as good as they promise but appear to be good at what they do because they use different tricks in content writing. These tricks, while they might show instantaneous good results on SERPs affect businesses very badly with the passage of time.

To overcome the rising demand for the best and most suitable content for content marketing, businesses should know the difference between bad and good writing. The company should hire a perfect writer or writing service that will bring all the benefits to the business that content marketing is supposed to bring. Selecting a right content writing company is not that difficult. A good company can be recognized through its site, the clients they have worked for, their previous assignments and the promises they make. A reliable content marketing company would never promise quantity or feign timeliness/quality issues for the sake of money. Also according to Professor Dumbledore’s enlightening words, choosing the right content writing Solutions Company can become the remedy for the injuries inflicted by tricky and treacherous business writing.

Moral of the Story: Choose wisely!