However, one must wonder just how important key phrases now are? We have seen major sites such as EzineArticles take steps to stop their users posting keyword stuffed content, and they now impost a strict 2% limit on density for any phrase. Quite frankly, this is just about the percentage that organically written content tends to come out with for the same key phrases, strange that isn’t it?

We can only presume, that when a heavyweight article directory such as EzineArticles takes steps to prevent keyword stuffing, then they have become aware of the fact that major search engines such as Google, are now attempting to differentiate between organically written, valuable content, and key phrase stuffed SEO content.

Personally I think this is great, as eventually, once my client base catches on, I will no longer be receiving lists of key phrases to be used at a certain density and placing throughout the content I write. Instead I will be told to “make it look natural”.

However, what most students do not realise, is the more work they do in preparing for the essay before they recruit me, the cheaper it will be. If a student simply gives me the essay question, and requires me to find sources to quote, then the price is going to be higher. If the student prepares a list of acceptable sources, and outlines the document, then the price will be lower.

I think I might actually write a set of guidelines for academic clients, explaining to them the way in which they can save some money and streamline the entire process.

Why do we need Great Website Content?

Many people invest significant resources to develop a feature rich, great looking website. They will then spend even more resources upon the marketing and search engine optimisation of the site. Yet they trust a third party SEO provider to verify the quality of the website content that is being used to promote the site. The problem here is that the SEO team may not share the site owners desire to create a quality visitor experience. They may simply purchase the cheapest site content, in a misconstrued understanding that they are doing good, by saving the site owner money. However, it is easy to see how the image of a site could be affected detrimentally should the quality be of low enough quality to cause comment. Content used upon a website needs to be crafted no less carefully than the graphics, template and functionality of the site itself.

SEO Content v Organic Content

Many webmasters and site owners see their web page content as nothing more than a tool to be exploited, in the quest for higher search engine ranking position. And whilst web content is a fine tool for SEO experts to utilise, it should never be considered to be solely in place for this purpose. The content found upon the pages of a website has value, once a visitor arrives at your site, and has taken in the impressive graphics and awesome colour scheme; it is the actual words upon the pages of the site that will keep their attention. If the content of the website is bad, then people will simply surf away, as there will be nothing upon the page to offer them a return upon the investment of the time it takes them to read it. So yes, bad content can be used to pull organic traffic, but it is unlikely to retain that traffic once people begin to read. Great website content on the other hand, can still be written with the search engines in mind, but will also present visitors with something to capture them, keeping them upon the site and reducing bounce rate.

One thing I have noticed lately is the increased demand for freelance writers. OK I specialise in writing website content and other forms of writing designed to be used on-line, so we can expect a growth in this industry as the internet is still booming. However, the increase in demand seems to be significant.

I can only attribute this to the growing awareness of the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), and the fact that many SEO practices revolve around a requirement for quality website content.

This of course is good news for those people like me, who make their living as a freelance writing, focused upon producing high quality website content.

Let us hope the boom continues into the future.

My girlfriend pointed out to me the fact that most morning I spend at least a couple of hours sitting at my laptop, drinking coffee and dealing with the day to day tasks associated with running a business. When I add this up it comes to a staggering 14 hours a week. This is 14 hours that I am not writing, 14 hours I am not getting paid for and 14 hours that need to be budgeted for in my rates.

So I’m going to spend a week keeping track of exactly how long I spend on the purely administrative tasks associated with being a freelance writer. Then I will work out new rates which take this dead time into consideration. One of the great things about being a freelance writer is the fact I can adjust my fees as I see fit.

When I took up freelance writing as a new career some years back, I never considered that such a large chunk of my work time would be taken up by anything other than freelance writing. I certainly did not envisage so much time being spent dealing with administrative tasks.

So this week I am going to try something new, I am going to set a 50 minute timer each hour, during these 50 minutes I will only write, I won’t check my email, or any other external function that is part of by freelance writing business. The remaining 10 minutes each hour I will give over to admin and customer communication. Just an experiment, to see how it works out.

This huge market has massive amounts of room for other writers to jump in and get a slice of the pie, and I am sure there are many new writers out there who would love to take a crack at supplying the demanding needs of website owners and internet marketers.

SO I have decided to develop a freelance writer mentoring programme, where I will guide new writers through the subtly different aspect of writing for the on-line market. I will spend the next couple of months putting a strategy together, which will be designed to take a new freelance writer from the infant stages of securing their first website content project, through to advanced topics such as writing for an interactive audience.

So I really must be doing something right I guess, although its been a long haul getting the ball rolling, it has taken me over a year to get to this stage, but I think it has all been worth it when I see where I am today. So a big thanks to all my clients who have helped me so much over the last few months, many of you have been extremely supportive and helpful.

I have discovered I really enjoy this aspect of working for blog sites, I am also really having fun with the fact I am expected to write opinionated copy, which is designed to solicit a response from the readers. Several of the blogs I am a guest poster at have actually asked me to be controversial bordering on antagonistic and this is great fun.

As the world wide web fills up with more and more blogs, I am looking forward to working on more of these fun projects.

The downside of an editing job is that it is very hard to price, at one end of the scale are the simple jobs which involve correcting grammatical mistakes and spelling errors, these types of projects are great. At the nasty end of the scale are the projects which require huge amounts of re-writing of the original copy, these can often be more time consuming than writing the pie\e from scratch would.

It can be really hard to gauge which type of editing is required from a project brief, it can really be an "open the can and take a look" kind of deal, sometimes the contents are tasty, at other times you wish you could put the lid back on.