As this pandemic has shown, the world has a growing dependence on Google for all of its queries, from news to images to directions. This has effectively shaped how we, business owners, view the internet and the need for SEO. Ideally we all want to rank on the first page of Google results, but competition is steep. Every single website wants to rank higher on search engine results pages.
Fresh, original, and relevant content is the key to not only getting ranked higher on the SERPs but also driving more traffic to your website. Great SEO content writing is extremely difficult. In truth, a piece of writing needs to check a list of boxes apart from sheer writing style alone, to be deemed ‘internet-worthy.’
For most people, there are three sources through which they can get content. A content writing service, freelance writers, of they can write their own content.
In this post, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of all three prospects, and why we think hiring a content writing service is the way to go. We take a deep-dive into how you should be choosing the right content writing agency for you, and the top 10 reasons why you should hire a content writing service for your business right now!
Content Writing Services vs. Freelancers vs. Writing Your Content
Content Writing Services
Hiring a content writing service might seem like a daunting prospect, and with the myriad of options now available one is spoilt for choice. However, with a little effort you can find a content marketing agency that provides the kind of service you are looking for.
There are many kinds of content marketing services, but the best ones are those that are specialized in their roles. These services usually have separate teams including pricing, delivery, customer support, writer selection, and, most importantly, quality assurance.
A content writing service, depending on its business model, will either have an in-house, or an outsourced team of professional content writers. The best of the lot will usually be industry diverse in its writing expertise and style, catering to several niches and various forms of SEO content.
Advantages of Hiring a Content Writing Service
Cost-Effective
Tiered price packages and standardized per order pricing, make high-quality content a possibility for everyone. Some content writing services will also offer discounts on large orders.
Customer Support
Most content writing services offer some form of customer support through some channel of communication (be it call, email, or chat). Good content writing agencies will take pride in their customer centric approach, and offer support through all modes of communication, with the best content writing agencies offering 24/7 customer services.
This is just one more reason to hire a content writing service.
Industry Expertise
Content writing services are usually proficient in their skill set. Their writing, as well as marketing teams, have experienced members on board with the technical know-how needed to produce SEO content for your particular industry niche.
Scalability
Most content writing services offer scalable resources that accommodate your needs as per your project specifics. For instance, if you need an urgent bulk order for 10 articles they will be able to meet your requirements just as easily as for a single order. Scalability even extends to services that go beyond the scope of content alone, and can involve website designing and development, SEO services, etc.
White Glove Service
With content writing services, your business quite literally is their business; as you grow, so do they. The fact that they are so vested in your growth ensures that they won’t be lackluster about their work quality.
Content Marketing
Most content writing services offer content marketing services as well, which offer holistic solutions to meet your content requirements. With a complete content marketing strategy that includes content creation, as well as distribution and promotion on all major platforms they aim to drive targeted traffic to your site consistently. All the more reason to hire a content writing service.
Edited, Proof Read Content
The best content writing services try to ensure that clients receive ready to publish work. Although client feedback is always welcome, separate editing and proofreading teams are responsible for formatting, fact-checking, and plagiarism checking all the content before it is delivered.
Wide Array of Content
When you hire professional content writing services, you get access to writers that specialize in different forms of content. You’ll have content solutions to suit every requirement. If you need to add more than articles or blogs to you content marketing mix, then they’re the best fit because they can offer you alternatives like, press releases or guest blogs. Want to hire content writer for website? They’ve got you covered!
SEO Friendly
Anyone with talent can write great content, but content writing services know how to produce content that is SEO friendly. This includes keyword research, meta details, and formatting, which is essential to get right if you want your content to rank on SERPs.
Disadvantages of Hiring a Content Writing Service
Your Project is One of Many
Even with the best content writing services, you are not their only priority. Your order is one amongst many others and your project might not get the undivided attention that you would like from your writer or the support staff. It is quite possible that your writer will be handling multiple projects at one time.
Fixed Rates
Content writing services usually offer standardized rates for the different content services that they offer. These rates are set on a per order basis and are often non-negotiable. This doesn’t allow clients to vie for reduced prices or to get a custom quote to their liking.
Customer centric agencies, like ours, offer clients the opportunity to get customized quotes based on their project’s requirements. Pricing may vary depending on project complexity, deadline, and writer’s expertise.
Limited Access to Your Writer
Not only do you have limited control over the writer assigned to your project unless you specifically ask for a writer that’s worked on our projects before, but you also have limited access to your content writer.
Most content writing services, will usually have some form of customer support as an intermediary in conveying your feedback and revisions to the writing team. This limited interaction makes it harder to develop a rapport.
Tiered Prices
Most content writing services offer tiered pricing, with five star content quality usually offered at the highest price point. Several prized writers are reserved for high-paying clients only, while there are some writers-in-training as well. To hire their best content writers, you might have to pay more.
Although this pricing system is designed to offer affordable content solutions to everyone, some clients might argue that quality should not be a varying feature across price levels.
Freelancers
There were 57 million listed freelancers in the US in 2017, offering a wide variety of services. This goes to show that they must be doing something right… right?
Advantages of Hiring Freelancers
You Choose The Writer
You get to decide and hire the writer best suited to your project’s style and niche. Your direct involvement in the selection process helps develop a rapport with your writer that allows them to better understand what you require from them for your project.
Somewhat Cost-Effective
Freelancers usually charge lower rates than content writing agencies. However, some freelancers can go over the top and at times the lower cost means lower quality – so it’s a bit of a gamble.
Undivided Attention
Unlike content writing services, freelancers usually take on a limited number of projects at one time. This means that a freelancer is more likely to give your project the undivided time and attention that you require and allows you more control in terms of having your feedback implemented in the way you want.
Disadvantages of Hiring Freelancers
Erratic Communication
Ghosting and delayed, or inconsistent communication are common complaints when dealing directly with freelancers since they are managing every aspect of the order from support to operations on their own.
Unreliable Delivery Dates
The absence of SOPs or a set of checks and balances means that delivering on deadlines is more of a loose promise than a guarantee. This usually leaves clients with no binding money back option; neither the alternative to have the writer changed last minute, except to just wait on the freelancer to deliver their work.
Say you hire someone to write website content that you want to make live on a certain day. You’ve marketed and advertised the fact, and your customers are waiting for it. If the freelancer disappears, you’ll be left picking up the pieces.
Painful Selection Process
With so many options available, choosing a reliable and experienced writer is a time-consuming process. A lot of these freelancers may have great profiles and will send you a promising proposal, but everything that shimmers isn’t gold. Additionally, as a new user on Upwork or Fiver, you’re not likely to attract top talent to the jobs you advertise because the best freelancers only want to work for high paying clients that have a history of placing large orders on the platform.
Low Commitment
Freelancers have a limited number of resources and that is why they will employ their best efforts into the project that pay the most. In this way, if a more high paying order comes in with an urgent deadline, your project and its importance might get sidetracked because of its low monetary value.
No Professional Editing or Proofreading
You will have to edit or proofread the work on your own as the freelancer will write the content, but they won’t pay an editor to go through the work. This is important to consider because you may not have the time or skill required to edit their work.
Although, most freelancers will run their work through some editing or plagiarism checking software before sending it to the client for delivery, this does not beat the effort that a professional editor puts in.
Writing Your Content
Writing your content gives you unprecedented control over what you convey to your audience. This is not to imply that content writing agencies and freelancers don’t carry the message, just that they are only limited to the data you provide and their research. You, on the other hand, will have much more in-depth knowledge of the subject matter thus eliminating the need for any revisions.
However, you should also be well-versed with the intricacies of SEO optimized content to rank well.
Advantages of Writing Your Content
You don’t have to pay money for it!
You don’t have to pay money to write your content. But bear in mind that it does take up the utilization of other resources such as your time and skills. Even though it might be considered unused potential or a readily available resource, writing you own content is certainly not free.
Control over Tone & Style
As the writer of your content, you best know who the target audience is and how to engage them. You already have a content style and tone in mind, and have an exact idea of what you want your final piece of work to look like.
Instead of explaining your vision or requirements to a writer, you can put better put into words how and what you are trying to convey. This is especially applicable for niche products that hired writers would find hard to understand or gather information about.
Disadvantages of Writing Your Content
Opportunity Cost
Whether you have a writing background or not, content writing takes a lot of time and effort. This effort can be better utilized running your business and working on other aspects of its marketing rather than catering to one facet of it.
The opportunity cost of writing your own content is far greater than having a professional writer do it for you as there are more chances of your business suffering from neglect and lost time.
Limited Content Expertise
Although knowing the niche is essential, but limited expertise relating to the different forms of content can make the most informative of pieces boring after a while.
Lack of a Cohesive SEO Strategy
Even if you have several great ideas for new content and have some SEO knowledge, none of it will amount to much if you lack a cohesive SEO content strategy.
For an effective SEO strategy you have to do a competitor research, followed by a keyword research as well as, a search for reliable high value content publishing platforms. All of this, apart from the content creation itself, requires a lot of effort which is hard to maintain if you are trying to manage your business.
Consistency Is Required
For content marketing to be effective, it needs to be consistent. From the content creation to the publishing, everything needs to follow a consistent schedule to reap results on the search engine pages.
Final Verdict
The content writing services vs. freelancers vs. writing yourself decision is an easy one if you’re clear on what kind of results you want.
As is evident through our detailed analysis above, hiring professional content writing service or agency is the best option for fast, effective, and original SEO content. A reliable content writing service not only produces content, but also publishes it for you on your website and distributes it on other reliable platforms.
Ready to Get Started?
Get in touch today and one of our talented account managers will create a content writing strategy for you that delivers the results you crave!
5 Questions You Should Ask Before You Hire a Content Writing Service
How much time will it take for my website to rank on Google?
Consistency is important when it comes to seeing results for SEO content marketing. However, it can take anywhere from a few weeks to up to six months to see a positive improvement in your ranking on the search engine pages.
Building an organic presence online requires time and effort. Competitive high ranking keywords might take more time to rank, but the results are certainly attainable. Hiring a content writing service that is well aware of SEO content marketing will help you achieve your desired results quicker.
Their multi-pronged approach to content development will not only focus on content creation, but also publishing and promotion on high ranking platforms to drive targeted traffic to your website.
What is your estimated turnaround time?
Delivery or turnaround time depends on your order. A single article or blog is completed and delivered within 2 business days. However, bulk orders of ten or more articles can take longer. If you are pressed for time, you can always opt for an urgent order which cuts your delivery time by half.
If you have a custom order with a specific deadline, it would be a good idea to contact the account manager of the content writing service you are considering since most agencies would be happy to accommodate their urgent requests.
What is your approval policy?
We believe that client approval on every step of the content creation process is of utmost importance, since the client knows and understands their business best.
We ask the client for their approval on everything: from approving the working titles for the articles and blogs, to approving revised pieces, and even before publishing them on any digital platform.
Our approval policy even extends to the closing of the project. We ask for approval after the final set of deliverables has been mailed to the client. We do not mark any project as closed without the client’s explicit approval.
Even up to ten business days after the project’s completion, if the client at any point feels unsatisfied with the work they’ve received, then we are more than willing to revise it for them until they are satisfied with the final result.
What is your revision policy?
Most agencies offer a limited number of revisions. The same stands true for freelancers as well. Remember, content can be very subjective. While one person might find a piece very well written, it might not resonate with another. Revisions allow you to tailor the content according to your liking.
Look for agencies that offer an unlimited revision policy. This reflects on whether they are genuinely customer-centric in their approach and how much importance they give to quality over quantity.
Do you have a separate editing team?
If you’re paying someone for ready to publish content, then you don’t want to waste time editing and proofreading.
A content writer usually has a lot going on in their mind when working on a piece, such as making sure the tone remains constant, conducting sufficient research, and, most importantly, making sure the content is SEO optimized. So, it’s fair to assume that they might miss out on the “r” in “her” or omit a word here or there.
These mistakes can break the flow for the reader, throwing them off your article or blog for a second. They’ll have to concentrate on getting back into it. This is what a good proofreader or editor exactly helps eliminate.
Not only this, but editors also ensure that all your content orders are 100% plagiarism free and fact-checked. This is very important considering plagiarized content is quickly docked down by search engines and can have a negative impact on your ranking.
10 Reasons Why You Should Hire a Content Writing Service Right Now
Whether you already have a well-laid out content strategy or are simply looking to make the most of the reduced competition at this time, a content writing service can help you maximize your ROIs. Here are a few ways in which hiring a content writing service today can be beneficial for your business:
1. Search Engine Rankings
This is what you’re looking for, and this is precisely what a content marketing agency can help you achieve. A consistent content marketing strategy will give you the boost you need to rank higher on the SERPs. Fresh and relevant SEO optimized content is the way to go in creating an organic online presence that lasts a long time.
You might be able to write your content or have a freelancer do it for you but creating an SEO friendly content strategy that involves content creation and publishing on reliable platforms, is what will get you the rankings and that’s something a content writing service can provide you with.
2. Consistent & Original Content
Hire professional content writing services to ensure your get 100% original content every time before your deadline. You or a freelancer might run out of ideas or get tired. Still, a content writing agency with its team of writers understands that posting content regularly is imperative in monitoring and crushing those search engine results.
A lot of content writing services have monthly content packages that you can subscribe to. These packages offer a month’s worth of content, which you receive topic by topic weekly, so you are always on top of your publishing schedule.
3. Content Publishing
Still not convinced why you should hire a content writing service? Top tier, professional content writing services will not only write your content but also offer to publish it on relevant digital platforms. This saves you the hassle of marketing and distributing your content yourself, and again ensures consistency in posting.
Most content writing services include this as part of their content marketing package, and will also provide you with weekly updates on how well your content is doing on the web.
4. Scalable Services
Content marketing isn’t a one-time affair but is a long-term commitment. The benefit of a reliable content writing service is that it can scale up and down with your business without asking too many questions.
Need ten articles per week? Or want to have a short break because of budgetary issues? It’s all as easy as placing a phone call.
5. Diverse Writers for a More Diverse Content Strategy
With a content writing company, your work won’t be limited to a specific content writer or tone. Whenever you need a change in tone, information, or a general shift in subjects, you ask them, and they’ll change the writer for you.
No matter how diverse your requirements, if they have a big enough team they’re sure to have a writer for you. Want to hire someone to write website content? Want to hire a blog writer too? Why not get them at the same place?
6. Low Opportunity Cost
Compare how much you’ll have to pay for an article to how much time you’ll lose when you write the content yourself.
Business owners usually have a lot to do and content writing services understand that. While they write your content, you can focus on your business.
Even time spent running after freelancers makes them a hard sell, which is why a firm will always win the content writing services vs. freelancers debate.
7. SEO Friendly
What’s the use of content without proper SEO? Where you might have to research SEO practices, content writing companies have dedicated teams to ensure that the content follows best SEO practices.
This industry expertise is what makes them a much more cost-effective and reliable option.
8. Capitalize On Your Niche
No matter how small your niche is, article writing companies have a way of having someone in their circle who can write exceptional content for it. You simply have to place an order – the rest is their headache.
9. Quality Control
Unlike with freelancers, where you have to be vigilant about the quality you receive, in terms of its editing, proofing, formatting, or tone and style, content writing services do all the tedious work for you.
There are designated teams for everything, be it for the SEO elements of the content or the editing, strict policies govern all aspects of the order process to deliver you a finished product that does not need any work from your end.
10. Digital Marketing Expertise
Content writing agencies are businesses, after all, and are invested in providing you with an immersive experience to better build brand loyalty. Their SEO marketing teams are more than helpful in offering detailed insight into what could work well for your online business.
Where you once thought that articles and blogs were the only forms of content that worked well for your website, customized content campaigns could better collaborate in your favor than generic orders. Their marketing expertise in determining what your website or online business needs to get to the top is what sets them apart from individual experiences with freelancers.
Content Writing Service is The Best Solution if You’re a Growing Business
There are merits to writing your own content and the same can be said about hiring a freelancer. The former is timing consuming to say the least and the latter is great if you’re not quality conscious or strapped for cash.
If you’ve got a growing business then you know that it takes capital and time to grow that business. Sooner or later you’re going to have to spend money on marketing. By hiring the right content writing agency, you can keep costs low and get the most bang for your buck.
Get in touch today if you’re interested in getting started… we’d love to schedule a time to meet and discuss your custom requirement!
