Quality vs. Quantity

One of my pet peeves as a freelance writer are companies who hire writers to produce articles for online publication who care only about quantity and not quality. Everything on the Internet today is all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and search rankings.

In this type of writing work, the client gives you a general topic and a list of keywords to incorporate. Some clients don’t seem to care whether the article has any real content or not, as long as the keyword density is right. The piece can practically be downright gibberish. This attitude infuriates me.

I’ve seen a lot of poorly written articles online, with broken English, bad grammar and incomplete sentences.  What’s almost worse is that these articles contain no useful information whatsoever. Personally, I would not want my company website linked to one of these poorly-written articles. It goes against the grain with me to write strictly for SEO. I believe articles should be informative, well-written and grammatically correct.  They can be all that AND provide keyword food for the search engine bots.

When one of my clients suggested I should spend less time researching my articles because they didn’t care about the content, I went out on a limb and said that if I couldn’t write something that was intelligent, correct and well-written then I didn’t want to write it at all. So far, I’m still working for them, even though they could probably hire some hack from the Philippines or India to do the job for $1.00 an hour.

So, I plan to continue my battle for quality website content even though it’s probably a lost cause. I just can’t help it…that’s how I am. Meanwhile, I’m seeking out other types of writing work where quality matters.

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