As a freelance writer, I spend quite a bit of every day researching various topics online.  As a result, I’ve become something of an expert on finding the information I want online.

Unfortunately, as a freelancer I also know how flooded the Internet is with useless information.  A lot of companies use marketing articles and other methods of trying to promote their business — but they fail to ensure that the content is actually worth reading.  So when you search for information online, you naturally need to weed through some of the junk.

Here are a few tips for finding what you are looking for online.

• Make your search terms specific.  If you provide only one or two keywords, you are going to get more pages than you can ever look through in a lifetime, and chances are the first page will only have one or two on what you’re actually looking for.  So try to narrow down your search terms by adding more details about what you’re looking for: For instance, instead of “freelance writer,” search for “freelance writer income.”  You get the idea.
• Look for informative titles.  There is a big difference between good search engine optimisation in Birmingham, and the poor attempts.  You can usually tell by looking at the search engine results.  A good title will usually tell you a lot — a well-thought out article or page will usually have an informative title, whereas a page that is just trying to cater to the search engines often has repeated keywords in the title (rather than something to hook you or tell you what the article is about).
• Look for clues in the blurb below the title.  If you can’t tell from the title and the blurb below it what the page is about, don’t waste your time looking at it.
• Avoid duplicate articles.  Often you can tell by looking at the title or the blurb underneath it in the search engine results that the article is the same as the one listed above it.
• Have a good anti-virus software.  This is especially important when you are opening pages on unknown websites — and usually when you are researching something, you probably won’t know the websites you are going to well enough to know whether they are safe or not.  If you don’t have a good antivirus program, be sure to proceed with caution, and always be ready to click away immediately if it seems like the page is taking overly long to load, or if something else gives you the impression that something isn’t quite right.

These tips will help you get started, but a large part of finding information online is just doing it and getting a feel for what sites are worth a click and which ones aren’t.  Good luck!

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