Introduction to Google SEO

It's free, legally free. Let me check the work-around.

Create an account, and try this link: https://www.coursera.org/learn/search-engine-optimization

Click enroll under the description, NOT the 7-day trial on the left. When you enroll, click the small "audit" option in the bottom. And you're all set. You can choose to pay at a later time if you want an official certificate stating you passed the course. It always looks great on Linkedin and resumes.

My advice would be to learn about SEO. There are plenty of blogs about it (Backlinko, Moz, Ahrefs, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, SEMRush, Search Engine Watch, etc.) and there are affordable online courses on Udemy. There are also some marketing courses you can audit for free on Coursera (for example, this Introduction to Search Engine Optimization).

The type of writing gigs you're likely looking for right now will want you to have at least a basic understanding of SEO principles and how they relate to content creation. After you've got some SEO knowledge down, I'd write up some sample articles. If you have a topic you're interested in writing about (fitness, cooking, space travel, finance, whatever) I would draft a few articles for that niche. If you're willing to write about anything, pick some subjects that interest you and check out websites/blogs related to those topics. Think about an article that might fit on that website -- and then go write it. Once you've built a portfolio of SEO writing clips you can search for jobs online or set up a profile on freelancing websites like Upwork.

Funny story about this, I had two of my friends over for dinner just the other night. John recently had an allergic reaction to an ant bite and his leg had swelled pretty bad. Amy and I were trying to figure out what would help to get rid of the infection and swelling. John wanted a more natural remedy. I have books on everything in my apartment. I am still a lover of reading a physical book! So, Amy hops on her I-phone and begins to do a search while she takes a crack at me saying, “Have fun looking through your index”! But the funny part was that I actually found some remedies flipping through my book before her search was complete. She had to retype her inquire several times, getting more specific with her search, because even though she was searching for remedies her search was catered to her past searches which typically involved some sort of research on her dogs! So, when you talk about the kinds of knowledge we have at our fingertips, it seems that unless we go out of our way to “search correctly”, these engines of information feed us answers that cater to our own interest. How do you get beyond that? or Can you? I feel like this directly ties to our last topic on privacy in that it seems like a system we spin our wheels with by having specific information feed to us. Professor, is the information collected in these algorithms sold to companies that then turn around and pay for ad space based on prior search history? Also, Is it possible to create an algorithm that counters each search bias to possibly produce an unbiased outcome?

For more information, I linked a few videos and articles that explain search engine algorithms below. The Ted Talk discusses the impossibility of unbiased search results. Its pretty interesting. Enjoy!

https://www.coursera.org/learn/search-engine-optimization/lecture/O4vhG/introduction-to-search-engine-algorithms

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-search-algorithms-work/252301/

https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-updates-explained-282627

https://www.ted.com/talks/andreas_ekstrom_the_moral_bias_behind_your_search_results