Once upon a time Good Writing was the Cinderella of web projects. Everyone paid lip service to the idea that ‘content is king’ but Cinders usually remained locked in the scullery while the ‘real’ work got underway – the work that good web agencies excel at: programming, look and feel, wireframes, user-centred design, ecommerce, SEO and of course, social media. All vital ingredients of successful web projects. But, with Cinderella out of the way, the ugly sisters were able to flaunt themselves.
Bad Writing and Pointless Flash clumped their way across countless websites. Even when Pointless fell from favour, Bad was encouraged by the rise of the content farms. These were ‘websites which publish huge volumes of low-quality content’ (MacmillanDictionary.com). The farmers didn’t care to woo Cinderella when ugly Bad was putting herself about. Bad was cheap and she seemed to do the business. As long as the content farms were winning high search engine rankings and good profits, Cinders didn’t get to go to the ball.
Then Panda the handsome prince intervened. He’d spotted Cinderella on one of her rare escapes from drudgery and liked what he saw. He wanted everyone to appreciate her and so he persuaded his bosses at Google to change their algorithms.
“This update”, Google announced in February, “is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on”.
Good Writing was free at last and keen to get out and fascinate the world. (She didn’t have time to marry the handsome prince). Now she’s casting her enchanting spell over websites all over the kingdom and she can help you too. You’ll have put in some graft and show her how much you care but she’s worth it. She has a great agent that understands her – Vivid Agenda. We work with digital agencies and individuals to ensure Good Writing has a starring role in your project. Contact us now.
Photo: Bri
