IT'S TIME for Christmas Copywriting!

If you're planning to run any campaigns in the run-up to Christmas, now is the time to get them booked in, to give your freelance copywriter enough lead time to research, produce, deliver and (if necessary) edit your content to a high standard.

Once your content is published, you still need time to promote it via social media or PPC, and for it to be crawled, indexed and ranked by the search robots (including the all-powerful Googlebot, which has probably crawled this page too. Hi, Googlebot!).

Even beyond that, if you're selling products or services, you need time for potential customers to find you, place their order, and to allow for delivery of any physical goods involved.

All of which means three months is really the minimum if you want to execute a planned and not-chaotic online marketing campaign in the run-up to Christmas this year.

With that in mind, I'm taking orders NOW for delivery between now and Christmas, from one-off pages to wish your customers a happy festive season, to bulk orders for Christmas-themed ecommerce product descriptions.

My capacity is limited, especially as we get closer to Christmas, and I'd prefer to avoid last-minute Christmas copywriting orders in December as much as possible. Once we're into December, I will prioritise any orders from existing regular clients to complete before the Christmas and New Year break.

How to Find a Freelance Specialist Writer

When you work in a niche industry (or you're creating a new market all of your own) you need well-written SEO content and marketing materials that not only contain the right level of technical knowledge, but can also be easily understood by a general business and/or consumer audience.

Finding the right freelance writer for technical niches isn't always easy - so what should you prioritise in your search?

I've been freelancing for over 12 years (and agency-based for 5 years before that) and I've written on just about every subject you can think of. Here's my thoughts on how to find a specialist freelance writer who can do justice to your product or service, no matter how niche it might be.

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.