Urgent/Overnight Copywriting Orders

I welcome urgent copywriting orders. Maybe you've been let down by your writer, you're coming up hot on a fixed deadline, or you've just realised you need 1-2 extra pages you hadn't already allowed for.

My first freelance order was from an SEO agency whose freelance copywriter had quit at short notice. I stepped in and delivered a batch of blogs for multiple websites within a couple of days. That agency is still a regular customer, 12 years later.

Subject to availability, I'm happy to take on overnight copywriting orders, or short-notice orders with delivery in 48-72 hours, if you're able to give me the extra time. Maybe it will be the start of a long and happy collaboration for us too.

Generally to deliver a last-minute copywriting order as quickly as possible, I need several things from you:

• A brief or instructions to tell me what you need
• Any supporting materials and information
• As much time as possible

But I'm open to offers - so please feel free to email me and, if I have space in my schedule, I'll always do my best to give you what you need.

Unique Product Descriptions for Affiliate Sites

For several years now, Google have been advising webmasters to create valuable, original and unique content. One place where this often does not happen is in product descriptions for affiliate sites, which are often copied and pasted from the original manufacturer's website.

Starting from November 2021, it's even more likely that affiliate sites with duplicate content will find their pages disappear from Google's search results - not just penalised in terms of ranking in the results, but actually removed completely from Google Search and other Google websites.

This is as a consequence of the November 2021 Google Spam Update, announced on Twitter via Google's SearchLiaison account on November 3rd:

As part of our regular work to improve results, we've released a spam update to our systems. This November 2021 spam update should be fully rolled out within a week. We encourage sites to follow our best practices for Search: https://t.co/jK3ArQmTqT

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 3, 2021

So what do Google's Best Practices for Search have to say about websites that participate in affiliate schemes and reproduce the product descriptions supplied by the original manufacturer?

Publish a press release for World News Day

September 28th is World News Day, a campaign to bring together more than 300 news organisations worldwide and promote the value of good-quality, credible journalism.

The initiative is run jointly by the World Editors Forum (WEF), the network for editors within the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) and The Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF).

World News Day is the perfect time to publish a press release.

For 2021, World News Day has a particular focus on climate change and the future of the planet, and participants are being asked to share quality journalism on those topics.

But it's also a great opportunity for businesses of all sizes to publish a press release and generate some additional exposure on a day when news in all its forms will be on the agenda.

Orders Open for September Copywriting Projects

I am now taking orders for September copywriting projects for immediate delivery. I'm always open for orders anyway, but I'm looking to take on some last-minute writing work on a tight turnaround.

If you need any content - fact or fiction, topical or static - please get in touch and we can agree on an appropriate deadline, depending on the size of your order.

This is a crucial time of year as the seasons change, we move towards Halloween and Christmas (not to mention Black Friday for ecommerce campaigns) and the new academic year begins.

One-off orders are welcome regardless of size. I have no minimum order or ongoing contract commitment - just let me know what you need, even if it's a single page.

How to show older images on Google Maps Street View

A quick tweet explaining how to show older images on Google Maps Street View turned out to be one of the most rewarding things to happen to me this week.

Google Maps Street View Time Machine is hardly a Google Maps hack - it's been a core feature since 2014 - but its icon is so subtle that a lot of users just don't know it's there.

In fact, even though it's a feature I've loved for a while, I had to dive into the page code to even find out that it's called 'Time Machine'.

How to show old photos on Google Maps Street View Time Machine

What I really didn't expect was the number of 'thank you' replies I would get, or the sometimes sad but always heartwarming reasons why people wanted to show old Street View imagery.