The risk of using Ghostwriters for your blog
A local real estate agency attracted negative attention recently after a blog posted to its website and Facebook went viral. The post was seen as being misogynistic and sexist and resulted in the agency being slammed by many in the local community and around the country when the story was picked up by the media. The agency apologised for the post when it became aware of it and explained that they engaged a real estate marketing agency to write content for their website.
More and more businesses are seeking out the services of bloggers (or Ghostwriters) to write their content in the hope that it will increase their search ranking and social media footprint. It is widely known that regular, relevant and quality updates to your website can help improve its search rank.
In this case, the blog post went against two of my fundamental rules for improving websites – it was not original (it appeared on as many as 18 other websites according to one news agency) and it was poorly written, littered with grammatical errors – two things which will lower your search rank! Were you paying for them to lower your rank?
Even if you have a Ghostwriter writing for your site, you can protect yourself by not allowing them to publish content themselves. You should check all posts and only publish them if you are happy with the content. Your website is attributed to your business and conveys your message so it’s your reputation on the line.
algorithms behind search engines have gotten smarter and the old methods simply don’t achieve results now – metatags, automated random backlinks and rehashing content. Unfortunately many SEO providers still use these methods that haven’t worked since Google’s update in 2012.