Content Marketing- Make Money Writing Quality Content

With the advent of Google's Panda Update the current rules of article marketing have changed and should be labeled under the umbrella of content marketing. If content was king before the update, it is now the supreme ruler over all writing for the web.

If you are new to article marketing or content marketing you may have the misconception that all you need do to make money writing is write an article, have it published by an article directory then sit back and wait for the money to come in.

If you believe that to make money writing you need  only write a few four hundred word articles with well placed keywords and a call to action, then wait for the articles to be singled out by one of the many publishers that your article directory has access to you are mistaken.

Content Marketing

Before the Google Panda Update many article writers gave lip service to the mantra, "content is king." Writing for the web became a game to see who could outwit the search engines by publishing the least amount of information and get the greatest amount of traffic.

The term, content marketing, has been associated more with the dissemination of information to customers and was not necessarily aimed at directly promoting a product.

The idea was that to make money writing, the content must give customers valuable information.  Customers were more likely to develop a sense of loyalty and continue to buy or become customers of whatever brand was offering the quality content in the form of brochures, handouts, and website content.

The philosophy is that by educating the public with, for instance, educational material, the marketing company would be recognized as an industry expert and the brand would more likely be purchased.

Content marketing is no longer limited to the world of corporate, big name brand writers. The search engines are forcing article writers to create informative quality material.

Quality Content

What is quality content? Ask five people and you will get five different answers. Instead of getting opinions, let us see how Google defines quality content.

Google's Official Blog defines quality content sites as "sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on."

But wait! That is not all. They go on to say that relevancy, grammar, and originality or uniqueness play important roles in the quest for high quality content.

Relevancy in keywords, relevancy of titles to content, relevancy of content to your audience all plays a role.

Although writing for the web is very forgiving in that anyone can publish most anything, Google is now viewing proper grammar as a part of their goal to help people have a better search experience.

Finally, to make money writing you must consider the originality and uniqueness of your content. An article should be well researched and provide useful information.

In their official blog Google lists twenty-two questions that can give you the guidance you need to understand the Google mindset. The questions range from "Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?" to "How much quality control is done on content?"

As you can see the questions vary from asking about trust to asking about grammar. The playing field has changed. Article writers wanting to be a successful as article marketers must give much more attention to content marketing.