TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
RE: What is happening to us -- was RE: What's wrong with this headline?
Subject:RE: What is happening to us -- was RE: What's wrong with this headline? From:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:William Sherman <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>, "salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com" <salt -dot- morton -at- gmail -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:20:24 -0400
William Sherman wrote:
> The competition among writers to fill the need for published material
> (news
> articles, use guides, technical documentation, and so on) has become
> such
> that we see ads such as "Content writers wanted - $1 page" and
> "Technical
> writer needed - $13/hour" more often.
Thankfully, I think you can expect to see less and less of
that "$1 per page" stuff.
Since Panda 2.x*, Google severely de-rates the crap-content
mills, and so that model is already dying. It's not worth
anyone's while to generate thousands of pages of worthless
dreck, now that merely having thousands of pages is not
an automatic SEO win.
Panda is raising the bar, and the other engines are
working on similar updates so that they can all better
discern well-written content that is valued by searchers,
and place it higher in their search results.
Those of us on this list (and in this profession) with blogs
and topic/theme websites should find our efforts have been
bubbling upward in the search results these past few months.
Some of us will actually be FIND-able soon. Imagine that! :-)
If an actual resurgence happens, I'd begin to hope for
a sea-change in writing standards and in demand for
technical writers who can... er... write.
Cheers,
-k
*Well, it started with 1.x, but they had some glitches
and unfairly penalized some good, original sites and
pages and blogs, but 2.x goes a long way toward fixing
that.
The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected
from disclosure. If you have received this communication in
error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer without copying
or disclosing it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help. Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need.
Try Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days.
