How to be a Freelance Writer

Web writers: in order to be effective with your SEO efforts and as helpful as possible to your clients, it is important that you understand at least the basics of how SEO works. You (hopefully) already know that good SEO relies on the use of appropriate keywords and keyword phrases in the content for a site that you are writing. However, effective SEO also involves using strategies such as link-building and programming that you should have at least a mild familiarity with - even if you are “just a writer.”

Many of my clients have heard that in order to increase their SEO ranking, they need to post links to their sites on blogs and forums. They believe that Google and other search engines will see these links, regard them as true inbound links from other sites, and calculate those “inbound” links when factoring the client’s Web ranking. However, way back in 2005, search engine heavy hitters Google, Yahoo, and MSN agreed to recognize a default “nofollow” tag whenever someone posts a link in a comment section of a blog or forum. Here’s a great article about the development of nofollow tags you should read for some background information.

What does this mean to you, a writer?

This means that when your clients ask you to post links to their Web sites in forums, blogs, and other third-party sites, you should let them know that the increase in links on third party sites will generally only provide organic SEO, which occurs when blog readers naturally click on the links. However, posting a link to their sites on third-party sites will not necessarily improve quantity of search-engine recognized inbound links or increase their SEO ranking.

Don’t get too comfortable with your new knowledge; everything you now know about nofollow links may be changing.

According to today’s SEOMozblog post by writer Will Critchlow, the nofollow trend could be changing, thanks to sites like Twitter, Digg, and others. Critchlow’s bold Twitter statement for the day: “My seo theory for the morning. Nofollow is dying.”

Critchlow’s blog is well-worth a read; it’s loaded with helpful links and info - including an experiment of his own you may find interesting. But if you want to get to the point of it, skip to the end. Here’s his conclusion:

I believe that just as the search engines have acknowledged the limits of webmaster declaration of untrusted or paid content and often downgrade links they believe should have been nofollow, I believe they have to acknowledge the limits in the other direction as well. In other words, some nofollow links should be followed. In the interests of finding the best content for their searchers, search engines are increasingly going to have to use their own (algorithmic) judgment to disregard some nofollows and include those links in their link graph.