Why Google's Algorithm Update Means Good News For The Philosophy Student

SYE6F2ZRSXMK

Many start ups rely on the internet as a sales and marketing channel. Whilst in the early days of the internet, simple brochure pages dominated the small business' web presence, today the typical start up website is packed with multimedia features. The reality however, is that search engine technology is still very much based on text. A recent update of Google's algorithm has cemented the importance of quality text content, making Philosophers and other humanities students suddenly indispensable to small businesses.

Until Google's recent update, web content didn't need to be particularly good or useful - just densely packed with keywords and links in places where it didn't make sense. Start up.

Many of the biggest sites such as eHow.com have produced content on an industrial scale, leading Google to reassess its algorithm. eHow and others have been downgraded on many search terms since the Google algorithm update. As Google comes out with new enhancements, it becomes critical for start ups to future-proof themselves against poor content.

Philosophers, historians and literature students - long the butt of jokes about practical skills - have the expertise in developing rich, text-based content that can be deployed on the web. Google has raised the bar, and soon start ups and other companies will require a greater depth of uniqueness and insight in their content.

Start ups can find student freelancers to work on their content via sites such as StudentFinanceExpress.com.

Student Finance Tips: How To Get Funding For Your Study

As a student you are faced with the dilemma of how to finance your studies without impacting your academic achievement. Part-time work is one source of student finance, but most part-time jobs demand a lot of your time for relatively little return. Knowledge industries leverage your educational background to give you more flexibility over your working hours and location, as well as higher salaries. So how do you get part-time, knowledge-based jobs?

Freelancer sites such as StudentFinanceExpress.com, vWorker, Elance and Guru enable you to pitch for projects that can finance your studies. You can work on admin or research related tasks, or be an article writer, or even a programmer or web designer. The range of possibilities is vast.

It's not well known that English graduates or even Philosophy students can make the most impact in the search engine ranking of a website, but this is very possible. Writing quality content frequently makes the difference between success and failure for many websites, and humanities students can easily do this. So start up entrepreneurs make very good potential employers for humanities students.

As such, the internet offers the student many financing opportunities beyond the traditional programming and web design roles. Marketing students may want to start a social media enterprise, where they blog on behalf of companies or offer blogging services. The key is to get good clients using sites such as Student Finance Express, vWorker, Elance or Guru.

The only catch if you are using freelancer work to finance your studies is that you need to pay for membership for some of these sites. An alternative option is a recent site dedicated to students, called StudentFinanceExpress.com, which enables you to finance your studies by registering to get emails alerting you to paid, knowledge-driven work. Best of all, StudentFinanceExpress.com is free for students.

Student Finance Shocker: Study Finds Part-time Jobs Lower Achievement

A recent study has shown that working part-time for more than 20 hours a week can lower academic achievement and increase the likelihood of drug addiction. For students working to finance their studies, this will not make encouraging reading.

Researchers at the University of Washington, the University of Virginia and Temple University studied data from around 1,800 US students aged 16-18 in the 1980s. They explained that the data set was still relevant because students' part-time jobs had not changed since the 1980's. This assumption alone is questionable, since sites to flexible freelancer jobs such as Student Finance Express did not exist at the time!

The study suggested that students working long hours tend to take easier classes, and spend less time on homework. Students' academic achievement was negatively impacted for a year after quitting part time jobs or reducing their working hours.

These results suggest potential problems for university students facing higher tuition fees in the UK, who will increasingly need to work part-time in order to fund their studies. With students from lower income families requiring the most part-time work hours to fund their education, the implication is that high tuition fees would result in lower academic achievement by students from working class backgrounds. In a highly competitive labour market, academic achievement is critical to job market success, so lower academic achievement by students from poorer families would diminish the progressive impact of education, thereby undoing billions of public investment.

Potential solutions for this double jeopardy come from equipping students to compete in the knowledge sector jobs that offer higher pay, and have a lower impact on students' achievement. Freelance work is an example of this, as it can often be done online and during hours that suit the student's study timetable. The recently launched Student Finance Express enables students to obtain part-time knowledge work as freelancers. Students can get part time freelance gigs from admin, research, writing to programming and web design. These jobs can be performed anywhere, with just a computer and internet connection.