And the benefits go beyond SEO: publishing articles online helps you promote your products and services, position yourself as an expert in your field, and start a dialogue with valuable prospective customers and clients.

“So I’ll Hire Someone to Write 50 Articles for £20. Easy - Right?”

In recent years, many businesses have resorted to using “fast and cheap” article writing services to save time and money in their content marketing endeavors. Pay a small fee, flood the web with dozens of articles linking back to your site, and your search engine popularity will soar … right?

Not so fast.

As of February 2011, a major change by Google has affected 12% of sites - and has cut many sites’ traffic in half.

This critical update to Google's algorithm - known as the Panda (or Farmer) update - means it's more important than ever that your site contains high quality content.

Stating, “… people searching on Google typically don't want to see shallow or poorly written content,” Google now penalizes article directories and others that are considered to be link farms. These sites often contain low quality articles - the type you’re likely to get from those inexpensive content writing vendors.

Article directories are now demanding expert-level quality before allowing you to publish your work on their sites. They've implemented much stricter standards. Likewise, other websites that use mass-published articles and other content on their sites may now start being exceptionally picky about which articles they reprint.

Suffice it to say that it’s no longer enough to simply employ articles as part of your overall marketing strategy. You must also make sure your articles are engaging, well-constructed and packed with value for your readers.