Does your company need an SEO content writer? How do you know? What should you look out for when you’re shopping for the right content writing service?
A lot of business owners question whether they should use professional writing services. Problem is, if you don’t live in the marketing world yourself, it can be hard to tell. After all, every SEO content writing service costs money and you want to make sure you get the most out of your investment.
If you’ve played with the idea of hiring a freelancer or even working with an agency to produce your content, this post is for you.
We’ll walk you through the process of finding the perfect business partner for your SEO copy needs and discuss how you can understand which SEO services are right for you. And, in case you’re still uncertain if you should make the outsourcing jump or just write the copy yourself, we’ll also talk about some telltale signs that you need a content writer to move your enterprise forward.
The SEO Business Writer Advantage
In today’s competitive and increasingly connected world, you can’t afford to ignore how your potential clients perceive your brand online, whether that’s through a search engine or on social media. High-quality content builds trust and makes readers come back for more.
That said, your competitors know that, too, which means each one of them will pour more resources into their content strategy. Some will even use AI to put their SEO writing on autopilot. So, how can your next blog post stand out without you burning out?
We’ll let you in on a secret: With an experienced SEO copywriter who translates your industry knowledge into a buyer journey, your competition will only see a cloud of digital smoke as your Google Analytics burns bright. Even AI can’t prevent that. Why, you ask? Because the most gargantuan blog post library doesn’t stand a chance against innovative content writing. That’s even more true if your writer understands the need to respect technical requirements while weaving in your expertise and heeds your mission.
We certainly wouldn’t want you to neglect strategic goals such as growing your email list or generating revenue. That’s why an informed content creation strategy will include those objectives alongside your headlines and keyword research.
A skilled web content writer won’t simply draft a blog post to match SEO best practices. They’ll use your brand and information about your target audience to inform how they approach the things customers are searching for, making it easier for your website content to stand out with a unique business offering. Thanks to their blog writing know-how, they’ll even apply this strategy to minute details like a meta description to ensure that when your content comes up in search results, people will notice.
To achieve that, they’ll obviously need to master an SEO tool or two for keyword research, Google Search Console and Clearscope being only some examples. If you’re lucky, as in the case of Brafton’s team, they will even manage the tightrope walk between search engine optimization and masterful article writing.
Whether you want your landing pages to earn those zero click searches or your blog posts to attract new customers, don’t just think of your SEO content writer as a strategic blogger who fills your queue. Guided by the right SEO content strategy, they’ll do more by helping you understand your audience and allow you to speak the language they already do — all with your sales in mind.
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Ways To Know You Need an SEO Business Writer
As a business owner, you’re holding a lot of balls in the air, your digital marketing only being one of them. Depending on your own background, you may not even recognize that you need an SEO content writer. So, here are a few indicators telling you that your enterprise might benefit from a business writer:
- Confused customers: If potential clients repeatedly misunderstand your offerings, it could be because your copy contains too much technical jargon. Thanks to their industry knowledge and thorough research, an SEO writer can make in-depth concepts more accessible.
- Inconsistent content style: Content that’s riddled with grammatical errors or an inconsistent brand voice won’t engage your customers. With the help of a blog writing service, you can polish your copy and improve overall customer experience.
- Irregular content schedules: Think of your brand as a Netflix series viewers want to binge-watch. If your content schedule is too irregular, your customers might lose interest, which could be an indication that your content strategy needs support from the outside.
- No search engine traffic: Without optimized content, your target audience might not even know you exist. Together with SEO managers, content writers can make your company rise in the search results.
- Topics all over the place: If your blog posts cover a way too broad range of topics because you want to “rank for everything” it just means you’re not being strategic and you might actually be wasting money.
- Unachievable content calendar: You might have an SEO strategy and a proper content calendar, but if your team is not able to stick with it, because of lack of resources or messy workflows, you definitely need help from an SEO writer.
These are just a few of the most common reasons companies might need help with their SEO content creation. If you’re more tapped into your technical back end, you can utilize KPIs and search metrics to confirm your suspicions.
There are many moving parts involved in achieving SEO success and yours might look slightly different from your competitors’. You may have noticed that a more structured approach to your brand storytelling would help unify customer journeys across platforms. Maybe your company is about to enter a new geographic market and needs support localizing its content.
Individual problems will manifest themselves in a variety of ways. However, it’s advisable to bring in SEO content writing if your marketing efforts are inconsistent or confusing to clients, or when your team can’t manage the workload of a regular content plan on their own.
Where To Find an SEO Business Writer
Where you’ll find the right SEO business writer for your company depends on your industry, your marketing goals and the scope of writing services your brand requires on a consistent basis. It’s usually best to assess your unique content needs before you even start looking for SEO writing services, simply because of the wide variety of offerings on the market.
Some freelancers and agencies will offer a specialized SEO writing service within a particular niche or only a certain style of content production, such as press releases or blog writing. Others, like Brafton, will include everything from SEO content writing to social media and email marketing in their catalog.
In theory, you can locate a freelance writer or even one-click-buy packages for your SEO strategy on social networking sites like LinkedIn or dedicated freelance marketplaces. Undoubtedly, you’ll discover solid offers for your next SEO article there.
However, this requires more effort from you. Your first task will be to vet all potential service providers based on their portfolios and bios, and not all of them come in a unified format, because the platforms themselves don’t always provide the SEO-friendly content that allows you to search and filter proposals. This will make it challenging to compare your options. And, that doesn’t even take into account that you may be looking for someone experienced in both organic and paid search, or in both SEO copywriting and your industry niche.
While it’s absolutely possible to find a talented writer capable of producing quality content this way, this path requires you to define the standards and organize the entire production process. You alone will determine which SEO services you need, which criteria influence your content strategy and which tools you use to share assets or manage your project.
Remember, if you find an SEO content writer through social media, you’ll only have a writer. While they may be able to showcase their track record and deliver solid content writing, a lot of them won’t have the professional network that would allow you to receive everything out of one hand.
This is where digital agencies and their article writing services come in. Agencies aren’t inherently better than freelancers or vice versa. They only serve different markets.
If you like to be more involved in your digital marketing efforts, individual freelancers might be a great option for you. However, if you’re looking for a combination of services, coordinating them will become increasingly challenging. In those cases, an agency will ensure that your editorial guidelines and marketing goals are considered across each and every asset your marketers produce.
Finally, the experience your team has within your industry will play an enormous role in choosing the right business partners. Book marketing requires different skill sets and professional connections than B2B software marketing, which is why you’ll find specialized freelancers and agencies focusing on particular specializations.
When searching for business writing options, make sure to ask about experience in your field and their portfolio.
Working With an SEO Business Writer
It’s crucial that you can estimate the scope of work when you start your collaboration with a business writer or an agency. If you’re not familiar with content creation and marketing processes, you simply may not be aware of some routines that are required to make your copy pop.
To guarantee your marketing efforts serve your business objectives, you need to audit the content you already have, create a content strategy that reflects your brand and revenue goals and then translate these steps into more technical ones like keyword research and link building. Notice that we haven’t even talked about writing yet, let alone editing.
While a seasoned SEO writer will certainly produce substantial amounts of content on a consistent basis, you still need to consider their natural limits and streamline communication.
A reliable content brief can already eliminate most sources of miscommunication while standardizing your production efforts. It will also give you, as a client, the opportunity to chime in and adjust minor details to your liking or even fill in the gaps with your industry expertise. Basically, it not only lays out your marketing strategy and content goals, but also your team’s responsibilities and project management timelines.
That said, every writer — freelance or agency — should have a road map and tell you upfront which production cycles your content needs to run through. This is valuable information for you, as it will allow you to estimate how your marketing efforts will fit into your day-to-day business cycle and whether you’ve found the right partner for the job.
Keep in mind that your marketing needs will evolve as your business grows. Maybe a single content writer served you well when you were starting out, and now, you notice that they can no longer handle the workload. If you don’t want to set up an internal marketing team, then this may be the right time to move on to an agency.
At the end of the day, it’s important to realize that no agency and no freelancer will have the perfect solution. You can only look for the perfect solution for yourself. Whether that means you value a single freelancer’s flexibility or the way an agency handles your project management depends on your needs.
Here at Brafton, for instance, we let you stay abreast of each and every asset and marketing metric on our very own content marketing platform. This avoids unnecessary back-and-forth communication and gives our clients peace of mind.
Conclusion
For every enterprise, big or small, finding the right content writing service is an enormous task. You need to make sure you have chemistry with your future business partners while keeping your budget in mind. And, on top of that, you must perform the balancing act between technical SEO and carving out a unique brand identity.
That’s a long list, no matter who you ask, that’s a long list, and it’s normal to feel overwhelmed at first. Think about your own content marketing experience and determine, based on your current business situation, whether your company could benefit from an outside perspective or even a long-term collaboration. With the right partner and targeted selection criteria, that feeling should disappear over time.
We hope we’ve been able to help make this decision a little easier, so you can see your marketing strategy with a set of fresh eyes and decide on your content needs with purpose.
