What Does Google’s New Algorithm Change Mean for Freelance Writers?

Hopefully by now, if you are a freelance worker of any kind, you have already heard about the new changes Google has initiated in their search engines Algorithm. Many have been speculating about how this will change the rankings of content mills, high page ranking blogs and other vital aspects of the freelance writing world. Well the first numbers are really starting to roll in and here are some of the initial impacts found.

Personal Blogs

Simple and to the point, if your blog regularly provides high quality content and isn’t laden with shameless self-promotion, you likely have a new friend in Google. New Google does not desire to promote the sites that have the most hits due to keyword stuffing, black hat SEO tactics and other means to bump up page rankings without providing what Google wants to see most. Helpful information relating to search engine queries.

The best way to get into Google’s good graces now, is to reduce spam, keyword stuffed posts and begin to create vital answers to the questions people ask Google daily.

High-Quality Content Sites

I consider high-quality content sites to be those such as:
•Suite101
•Helium
•Squidoo
•Technorati

Although many expected this sort of content site to take several vicious Google beat-downs, they in fact seem to have came shining through. All of my stats on the above sites show not only regular increases in traffic, but indeed most show huge bursts of it on the notorious 24th.

Some of the pay-per-view rates have doubled, tripled and one is even raking in seven times what it was two weeks ago.

For those who were poised worried about which sites rankings may destroy their PPV pay, no fear, if the better part of your PPV content is on high-quality content sites such as the ones listed above, you are not only safe, but you might want to log on to ogle what Google gave you.

*Note – I didn’t include Associated Content as I think most higher quality writers know that Associated Content has some fairly lax submission guidelines, sometimes apparent in the quality of their content.

From watching stats this week I really can’t tell how the change has affected them. I do know that the view meter looks like a child’s drawing of mountains, there was a swift nosedive on the 24th, a high spike the following day, another nosedive. Really, what IS going on over at the AsContent site?

Content Mills

You have to refer to them as content mills when 90% or more of their submissions come via article submission software. However, some of the fear in Google’s new algorithms are based on good hard facts. Often content mills contain spun, anchor-linked and mis-tagged content. This reason alone makes them highly likely candidates for the loss of love on Google’s behalf beginning on February 24th.

The double-edged sword effect this has on users who have commonly relied on content farms, mass spun articles and large live back links will suffer a good bit if that has been their only means of self-promotion. Where content farms once largely dominated high search engine results, now you are more likely to see the specialty sites that provide far more helpful and informative content and far less fluff.

This means two things for your content and for your links.
For your content, expect the views to have dropped significantly, as early as instantly upon Google’s new algorithm initiation on the 24th.

Honestly, I don’t think any writer will be sad to see this change. This means when you head off to Google now to conduct research, you will actually have relevant information, regularly, on the first few pages. You no longer have to filter through the materials that have managed to attain high rankings, but rarely due to outstanding content.

Your links. Ultimately, you still have your back links. That is, unless the content mill sites your links reside on decide to ‘clean up their act’ to impress Google. There hasn’t been much of a stir about this yet, but my prediction is that there will be, and some of the bigger content farms, those that aren’t quite high-quality, and not quite hopeless, will likely strive to suck up to Google and get back into its good graces by removing the ‘mass produced’ content that makes little sense more than to provide some active marketer a back link.

The good news is that as long as you still have the links, well, you still have the links. Your site is still ranked on many different aspects and one of those is the amount of links wandering around leading back to your site. However, the difference now is that those links have almost zero chance of ever providing anything more than, well, just a link. Viewers will likely not see it. Consumers will likely not swarm to your product via the content mill sites flashy open doorway.

The Big Picture

The big picture will likely not be seen for a good part of 2011. As some of the higher quality sites begin amping up even more to please the Googlemaster, guidelines are likely to be wacky for a bit until editors and SEO marketers get their heads wrapped around the same ideas.