Ask yourself what you’re looking for before you decide which blog writer you’re going to hire. Are you looking to bootstrap the process and just want someone to write great content? Do you have time to find high quality images and the technical SEO know how to attract leads from the content you get?
Or is convenience important to you?
Make sure you clearly list your expectations and make projections for the future.
You also want to ensure you set a budget before you get started. It doesn’t have to be a whole lot to start with. In fact, most small to mid-sized businesses can get great SEO results from a blog writing service for less than $500 per month. Nevertheless, it’s important that you think of a budget before you go blog shopping.
Keep these points in mind before you shortlist your candidates. Then, make sure you ask the following questions.
1. What keywords will you target?
9 out of 10 bloggers for hire will tell you that they’ll send you search engine optimized content. That sounds great, but what keywords will the content be optimized for?
As a business owner or marketing manager, it’s your responsibility to know how to differentiate between great keywords, good keywords, and terrible keywords.
I understand that many will argue that you need blog content that’s written for the reader, not for Google and so keywords shouldn’t be a priority. The blog content that you have created for your website doesn’t have to be written for SEO, however, its best practice to include at least one great primary keyword in the title and first 50 words.
Here are a few examples of different types of keywords:
Terrible keywords
- Shoes
- Messenger bags
- Tennis balls
Why are these keywords terrible?
These keywords don’t focus on user intent. You can spend thousands of dollars more than you should have to get your website in the top three search results for any of these keywords, but if the visitors aren’t interested in buying then you would’ve spent all that money for nothing.
Good keywords
- Men’s shoes
- Leather messenger bags
- Buy tennis balls
These keywords are better because they reduce a large percentage of unnecessary traffic.
Look at it this way, someone types a search query on Google. That’s great for Google, they love having tons of visitors. The reason why Google has so many return users is because they’re able to assess what the user is looking for and recommend pages that have what the searcher wants. Let’s assume that the user searched tennis balls. Google recommends your page because you’ve recently published a great blog post about tennis balls. The visitor clicks on your link, takes a few seconds to review your page, doesn’t find what they want, and then closes the page without taking any action. The reason why the user didn’t find what they’re looking for is because the user wanted to learn about the history of tennis balls. Google doesn’t like it when users don’t find what they want in search results – in fact, it’ll peg your website as irrelevant for that keyword and your overall rankings will take a hit.
What Google tries to understand is whether or not your website is worth recommending. The way they do is by evaluating how people react to your website. A great blog writer delivers content that is easy to consume and encourages the reader to take action. This is of paramount important if you publish blog content website for a niche website.
Great keywords
- most popular men’s shoes in 2020
- leather messenger bags for under $200
- buy Wilson tennis balls in bulk
Why are these keywords great?
These keywords are specific. Users that search these terms have clear intent and the traffic you’ll get by ranking on these keywords is more likely to convert to a lead or sale.
A common mistake that I see every day from people looking to get into SEO is that they focus on volume of traffic. What they should be really looking at is improvement in rankings (of great keywords) and conversions.
2. Can your blog writing service publish content directly to my blog?
This, at least for me, is a deal breaker.
The number one reason why you’re investing in your blog is probably lead generation. Another equally important reason though is convenience.
Truth be told, you could invest 3-4 hours to write a fairly good blog post. Depending on how tech savvy you are, it’ll take you another hour or two to source images, format the content for your WordPress, and publish the blog post.
When you hire a service, you’re going to get a certain number of blog posts delivered to your each week. Reviewing the posts is fairly easy, but you may have to spend at least 30 uninterrupted minutes per blog post to source images and publish the content.
These 30 minutes really add up – especially if your business owner that has very lean operations. You may have time to publish the posts one week, but may not be able to find time the following week. Eventually, you’ll have a surplus of unpublished blog posts sitting in your mailbox.
Overtime, you’ll get lower ROI because you’re not publishing content as regularly as you should.
Hire a blog writing service that publishes content for you.
3. Would you eventually be able to manage my blog?
Hiring a blog writer or blog writing service isn’t that much different than hiring a fulltime employee. Initially, you’ll want time to assess them and even train them to your specific requirements. I understand that you’d probably just want ready to publish blog posts from the get-go. When you hire a great blog writing service like ours, you’re likely to get great blog content from day one – but what you got to realize is that writing is subjective.
Ask 5 people who their favorite author is and you’re likely to get 5 different answers.
Chances are all 5 authors are great writers.
Why are all 5 answers different?
Writing is extremely subjective. I might read something and think its poor quality work, whereas you might think that it’s excellent.
When you first hire a blogger, you have the opportunity to dictate terms. More often than not, you’ll have to tell the writer what you want during your first couple of projects. Instructions like writing style, image preferences, and layout guidelines – the more instructions you provide, the better the results.
Once you’ve got writing style down, what you’d eventually want to do is let the writer research keywords and titles. It’s recommended that you initially keep a close eye and give feedback judiciously. If you’re happy with the results, you would want to put your blog on autopilot.
You’re not hiring a blogger – you’re hiring an inbound marketing manager that will plan your monthly blog strategy, research keywords, write the blog posts, source images, publish the content, and promote them on your social media.
Find out if the blog writing service you’re looking at offers all of these services and consider what all of the cost.
You don’t have to pay for all these add-on services from the get-go. Ultimately you want your blog writer to handle all the work that pertains to your blog while you focus on other areas of your business.
4. Will your blog writer complete revisions I ask for a month later?
Make sure you understand the revision policy the blog writing service follows. Ideally you want to hire a blog writer that’s extremely flexible with their policy.
Some quick questions you may want to ask include:
- Will I have to pay for revisions?
- How many revisions can I ask for per blog post?
- When can I ask for revisions?
- Will you revise something you wrote for me months ago?
- Will that cost extra?
- If I placed an order for 4 1,000 words blog post, would it possible for you to write 2 2,000 word long form blog posts instead?
- Will you rewrite a blog post if I don’t like what you wrote even if I approved the title?
You may not get the answers that you want, but try to get all of these in black and white before you settle on a hiring a blog writing service for the long haul.
During the first few months, you’ll have the enthusiasm and energy to go through the blog posts as they’re publish. However, eventually you won’t review them as regularly as you should. In this case, you still want the option to ask for a revision for something that slipped through the cracks.
A blog writing service that you should consider…
For over a decade, Content Development Pros has helped business owners and marketing managers build their online presence through our top rated blog writing service. We have a customer first approach and our policies are all extremely flexible.
If you’re looking for a blog writing service that publishes content on your WordPress for no additional charge then look no further! We’ve got you covered! Fill out this short form and one our blog consultants will get in touch with you shortly.
