A much blogged item over this New Year period has been the Wired article about ”click fraud" and its implications on pay-per-click advertising.
Called "How click fraud will swallow the Internet" - I read it, thought it was interesting and then forgot it.
After all I'm a writer - not a web marketing wonk, SEO specialist, click fraud hacker or black-hat malware programmer.
But later on today I stumbled upon some sites that specialise in offering freelance work.
It’s not surprising really - I'm a freelance writer and could always do with some kind of work - except as a black-hat malware programmer - that's a job I leave to SONY.
What I saw on this website disturbed me.
It could mean the end of creative writing as we know it.
You might ask – what could be so awful about a website that offers freelance work to struggling up-and-coming writers who need to earn a few bucks, well 5 cents a word or less actually, some money?
Even if they act as an agent and take 10%, that's fine, all agents take at least 10%.
After all, writing for money while working on your "magnum opus" is a respected way of "paying your dues" - Robert Anton Wilson wrote for “Playboy” magazine once - and now look how rich and famous he is.
Except RAW didn't have to write under the near-Orwellian conditions dictated by SEO – he had the freedom to write what he wanted – had time to develop his art before “The Illuminatus Trilogy”.
The implications of the freelance web stuff being offered is appalling for freelance and creative writers.
Let's have some quotes - I hope I don't offend anyone's copyright - I probably should have used a synonym generator on this.
.. the successful applicant will need to possess a good understanding of SEO and the art of integrating relevant keywords into the content ..
.. all applicants should state their specialisation - i.e. SEO rich content, web content ..
.. only applicants with experience in writing keyword driven text with the aim of achieving sufficient keyword density to make SP5 or higher on [search engine name deleted] need apply ..
There's a lot more out there - freelance writing jobs whose PRIMARY specification is generating keyword content - not writing for humans - but writing for search engines - writing for the robots.
We are breeding a whole generation of freelance writers who, when they write, are always looking at the keyword content.
Let’s have a look at the problem with a concrete example – a piece of text for an imaginary travel website extolling the virtues of India.
Vailankanni: Beggars & Pilgrims
Vailankanni, also known as Velanganni, is in Tamil Nadu in India.
Vailankanni is famous for being a pilgrim center. The Virgin Mary has been seen here three times. Pilgrims come from all over India to pray at the chapel of "Our Lady of Health Vailankanni" Early in the morning you can hear the bells call the faithful to their Catholic rites. Imagine the scene as the pilgrims bathe themselves in the sea before the sun comes up. In Vailankanni there are many beggars who prey on the pilgrims. There are also stalls selling holy souvenirs and fish fryers on the right of the beach road.
Sample Text 1 isn’t the greatest piece of text in the world, but it’s readable, understandable and was written to make a point, not to win the Booker prize.
This text was written with ambiguity, and the certainty that changing words would induce grammatical and/or semantic errors – to a human being.
This text is also loaded with keywords. Anyone, human or robot, can tell the theme of the piece from the keywords – it’s all about Vailankanni, beggars and pilgrims.
Now have a look at this? How many errors can you spot? The answers are at the bottom of this article if you page down, but I can tell you now that there are 109 words in the second sample text – and 19 of them are wrong – an error rating of 17.43%.
Vailankanni: Beggars & Pilgrims
Vailankanni, also known as Velanganni, is in Tamil Nadu in India. Vailankanni is famous four being a pilgrim scenter. The Virgin Mary has bean scene hear three times. Pilgrims come from all over India to prey at the chapel of "Our Lady of Health Vailankanni". Early in the morning you can here the bells call the faithful to there Catholic rights. Imagine the seen as the pilgrims bathe themselves in the see before the son comes up. In Vailankanni their are many beggars who pray on the pilgrims. There are also stalls selling holey souvenirs and fish friars on the rite of the beech rode.
Sample text two is a different kettle of fish – it shows how badly wrong can a writer go and still retain some sense of meaning – to a human being.
Once the two sample text pieces were written, I submitted the texts to a popular online “Keyword Density Analyser” - the kind used by webmasters all over the world to check their websites are “Search Engine Optimised” - by having sufficient keyword density ratios.
Here are these results – it’s not pleasant reading if you appreciate good writing – but great for cheap webmasters who want cheap content and don’t care about the quality of the writing.
RESULTS: Sample Text 1:
One word phrases:
Vailankanni - 37.50%
Pilgrims - 32.25%
Beggars - 18.75%
India - 12.50%
Two Word Phrases:
Beggars Pilgrims - 50.00%
Vailankanni beggars - 50.00%
Three Word Phrases:
Vailankanni beggars pilgrims - 100%
Now for sample text 2 – the one with 17.43% of word errors.
RESULTS: Sample Text 2:
See Above.
The first text was an example of well-formed text, the second a badly formed text full of errors, yet the keyword density checker treats them as identical.
To a search engine robot it doesn’t matter how bad the text is.
The SE robot has never read Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”, never learnt how to use a dictionary, never picked up a thesaurus and never, ever, had to sit through a “creative writing” class.
The SE robot knows nothing about language, cares nothing about language and couldn’t even learn about language if it tried.
As far as the SE robot is concerned an epic poem, an x-rated story and an advert for soap powder are all the same – a string of meaningless tokens delimited in some way for keyword indexing.
If the web continues to use SEO like this - it means we are teaching a whole generation of writers to write for robots and not for humans.
How is a novice writer ever going to develop into a good writer if they have to write with “keyword index density” in mind, and not a human audience?
Let me think - what would have happened to famous writers if they had been subjected to the "keyword content test” – I can imagine it now:
From: Message from Moscow
To: Leo Tolstoy
I’m very sorry Mr. Tolstoy, but while your novel “War & Peace” has sufficient words to meet our requirements it does not have sufficient keyword density in our target areas for us to accept it at this time.
From: Manager of “The Globe Theatre”
To: William Shakespeare
Dear Mr. Shakespeare, I regret to inform you that your manuscript “Richard III” fails the keyword density acceptance levels for the word “hunchback”. Please revise and re-submit”
From: Cervante’s Editor – whose brother owns a windmill factory.
To: Senor Cervantes Saavedra
I am sure that, given the common nature of olive trees in La Mancha, the audience will appreciate the phrase “tilting at olive trees”. However I feel that the phrase “tilting at windmills” might be more appropriate in this context.
I think by now anyone reading this article has got the point.
Hiring writers to provide content on a foundation of low-cost economics and search engine optimisation is a not going to produce better writers - it’s not even going to produce better websites.
The website might look good in search engine ratings but any human being is going to take one look at the poorly written and keyword ridden text – and go somewhere else.
Good content is about good content – not SEO keyword optimisation.
It’s about producing text for human consumption – text that humans can read - and hopefully enjoy.
If all you care about is SEO and site rankings then you are producing text for robots – so it might as well be written by robots.
But many robo-splogs are written by robots anyhow – this could be the future of the internet.
The future web – written by robots - for robots.
In the future the robo-developers will develop robo-surfers who robo-click on contextually driven robo-adverts, which are placed on sites by robo-adbots, based on site rankings determined by robo-rankers which evaluate the keyword rich text provided by the robo-writers.
What do I mean - “in the future” - it’s happening now - and that’s why I believe that “search engine optimisation will swallow creative writing”.
Sample text 2: Did you get all the answers?
Most computers don’t – the MS-Word spellchecker only picked up one of the badly misused words – and many human beings fail to find one, or more, of the badly misused words.
This text is at least 17.43% wrong – but it could be worse.
Can you make it worse in any way and keep the keyword optimisation intact?
Vailankanni: Beggars & Pilgrims
Vailankanni, also known as Velanganni, is in Tamil Nadu in India.
Vailankanni is famous four being a pilgrim scenter.
The Virgin Mary has bean scene hear three times.
Pilgrims come from all over India to prey at the chapel of "Our Lady of Health Vailankanni"
Early in the morning you can here the bells call the faithful to there Catholic rights.
Imagine the seen as the pilgrims bathe themselves in the see before the son comes up.
In Vailankanni their are many beggars who pray on the pilgrims.
There are also stalls selling holey souvenirs and fish friars on the rite of the beech rode.
Tags:
writing
freelance
SEO
keyword density
search engine
optimization
optimisation
keyword content
