When I applied and got my first job as a writer of an outsourcing company, I thought that I could finally make use of the journalistic skills that I had amassed. I was joining press conferences and journalism contests since I was in grade four until college.

Before I underwent job training, I was the typical layperson who viewed Google or Yahoo as merely the homepage of an internet browser.

To search some information, I would just type some words into the search engine bar, click search, and poof… in a fraction of a second, I have rich list of links that would answer my query.

I had no idea that there was something more behind those homepages and also more than my journalism skills.

During my training on online writing, which a big part of it touched about Search Engine Optimization or SEO, the whole concept of search engines and SEO dropped on me like a bomb.

Its shrapnel are the crawling spiders in the Internet, keywords, algorithms, Internet marketing, social media, blogging, back links, black hat, white hat—the list of SEO jargons and revelations is quite long and more are being added.

Then and there, it dawned upon me that the cyberspace is indeed a growing frontier. While I was treating Google as a mere homepage, other people are making World Wide Web as their source of income.

And of course, when I started my online writing career, I got tangled. I began to tread the world of SEO, finding my way through the maze of techniques and good online writing ethics.

I had great time writing while keeping the article “optimized”. It was fun at first but when it reached the part when the client just directed you to copy and paste contents from various websites, put them together and then to just rewrite everything, writing became a tasteless and robotic task.

When the client demanded that I should pass ten 400-500 word articles within eight hours, I honestly told him that I cannot do it. It just did not feel right.

I can do a decent write-up within 1.5 to 2 hours. The time that you spend on writing articles depends on the knowledge and understanding that you have on the topic.

Imagine writing about tips on how to get to a ski resort form a Swiss airport when you are miles away, living in a tropical country. Of course you have to scourge the net for resources and directions.

This marked the time when I started asking myself – do you have to sacrifice content quality in order to come up with more articles?
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Shelly Mae Solis is a Mass Communication graduate of Central Philippine University. She is an affiliate writer of Online Writing Niche, presently working with Amazon Auto Nation Ltd. as full time SEO writer and blogger.

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