Back in the day, having SEO content meant green lighting Yoast. All anyone cared about was making sure that Yoast SEO thought the content was good enough to rank.
Fast forward to the present day, and SEO content is more than just hitting a specific word count, adding keywords in strategic locations, or even doing one better than the competition. Sure, these are important but will not necessarily mean your content will rank.
If you just go out and buy content, you may have lots of content that does not rank. In fact, many people complain that despite having a million words on their website, none of their pages rank. While others boast of “ranking without a single backlink.”
So why does this happen? Is one style of optimizing better than the other?
While it is easy to get caught up with scores, LSI keywords, and clusters, the difference-maker is the quality of your content.
Granted, lots of low-quality sites rank too, with some pretty crappy content, but that isn’t the norm, especially in highly competitive industries. Search engines are becoming smarter and that means the eventual demise of low-quality web pages.
So, the takeaway here is to have a plan, which is a segue into the next section of this article.
Creating Topical Authority and Relevance For Search Engine Optimization
Creating topical authority and relevance requires having a content plan in place. What that means is structuring your content. For instance, if you are writing about SEO, start with creating an article “What is SEO?”
This article can be 4k, 5k, or even 6k words long, mainly covering everything about SEO. In other words, think of this as a cluster or a Skyscraper article. The article will cover topics such as What is SEO, why hire an SEO expert, what keyword research is, what are backlinks, the importance of a description, etc.
You then have articles with internal links to and from the main article. For instance, you can have a separate article detailing outreach for backlinks and another about how to do keyword research, etc.
The idea is to create a comprehensive, all-rounded resource about SEO. However, this can be done for any topic. A good keyword research tool is your ally here.
The best way to approach this is to create a mind map of your content strategy, with a Skyscraper article, aka cluster article, in the center.
Now that you know what articles you want, the next step is buying a service.
Legiit is home to a boatload of SEO content writing services. We’ll go into a couple below and how they fit into your overall content stagey. But before we do, let’s start with how to identify a good service.
Creating An Editorial Calendar
Once you have a pretty good idea of whom you want to target, the next step is to build out your editorial calendar. The objective of an editorial calendar is to mainly schedule what you publish and when you post it. It also briefly outlines what type of content it is going to be.
The calendar is helpful because it helps you stick to a regular publishing schedule. If you are going to outsource your SEO content writing to service providers on Legiit, scheduling is essential. We will get to that too in a moment.
It will also mean that you are not scrambling to find topics or asking the service provider to bounce a few ideas off you.
Creating and then adhering to an editorial calendar are two different things! Here are a few tips:
Google Calendar – The beauty of Google calendar is that you can share the editorial calendar with the entire team. You can set reminders for each author to notify them when there is a deadline coming up. However, Legiit has a feature that reminds writers that their deadline is near too.
Consider setting up ongoing features – Take, for instance, a blog about SEO, which may have a weekly post about an SEO tool or maybe an SEO professional. It could also be an interview piece about an industry name. Some blogs may also benefit from a roundup piece once a week. A category page for each ongoing feature can make it easy for people to find it.
Give writers plenty of lead time – Some writers may turn articles around in a week. Others may take two weeks. You also need to factor in that some writers run behind if they are inundated with orders. Factor the worst-case scenario into the lead time in addition to the time needed to add infographics, videos, and a final round of edits before publishing.
Don’t plan too far ahead – Most editorial calendars are derailed after a month or two because marketing goals may change, and so do budgets. So, don’t plan out an annual schedule; instead, a monthly schedule may be better.
Now that you know when everything should be delivered, it is time to find a writing service.
How To Find A Good Content Writing Service on Legiit?
Before you start browsing through Legiit, not sure whom to buy your content from, it’s important to nail down a few basics:
- What is your budget?
- How much content do you need?
- Do you need more quality and less quantity, or is it the other way around?
- Will the content be read by people, or its just for search engines?
- Are you willing to pay more for better quality?
Ideally, you will want to buy the highest quality SEO content that’s also the cheapest. But we don’t live in a perfect world. You get what you pay for, but you don’t need to spend an ungodly sum of money on SEO content either.
Content for PBNs
While PBNs are a naughty word, if you need content to flesh them out a little, a cheap SEO content writing service is acceptable because nobody will read it.
Legiit has quite a few providers that do a pretty good job of providing well-optimized content for PBNs. Since the quality of this type of content isn’t excellent, the content is cheap as you’d expect. In fact, this is the lowest-priced content you may find but which shouldn’t be used on your money site.
Optimizing existing content
If you have a load of great content on your website that isn’t ranking, you need to find an SEO content service that will optimize it using Surfer SEO, MarketMuse, or something similar.
The process of optimizing existing content is time-consuming and requires a bit of skill. It will also require that the writer have access to these tools and understand how it works. However, this is an excellent way to give your existing content a chance to rank without spending much money on fresh content.
The downside to this approach is that parts of your content may read a bit off. That’s because the content writer had to insert keywords in specific locations to optimize it for search engines. More skillful Surfer SEO writers do a better job of masking the use of keywords, so you’ll want to hire someone with experience.
Generally speaking, you’ll not pay as much for optimizing existing content compared to paying for fresh content. You can check out a few services here.
Optimized product reviews, web page content, etc.
If you need SEO optimized articles like product reviews, blog posts, how-to’s, and web page content, you’ll want to buy a service that offers excellent quality writing and optimization. So, buy a Surfer SEO writing service with experience writing the type of articles you want.
Writing Surfer SEO articles is a tricky balancing act. The writer needs to start by writing a great article, then optimizing it in a way that does not make it blatantly apparent that certain words or phrases were inserted for search engines.
A well-written Surfer optimized article can take several hours to write depending on its length and subject matter. However, the effort is worth it because these articles rank almost as soon as they are indexed if done correctly. So, you see how they can be an important part of your SEO strategy.
Since writing Surfer SEO-optimized articles are time-consuming, requires experience and skill, these are more expensive than regular unoptimized articles. The price you pay can often be 2x more than what you pay for regular articles, but these are almost guaranteed rank aka show up in search results.
Content that adds value
If you want content that adds value, for instance, invites other websites to link to you, and serves as a pillar for your on-page SEO efforts, you’ll want to get Skyscraper articles.
Skyscraper articles or cluster SEO articles are an excellent way to add fantastic quality content to your website. This will help you get backlinks by running a limited outreach campaign. Once you get the momentum going, many websites will link to your Skyscraper articles voluntarily because it provides all the information the readers need on one page.
Regarding pricing, you are looking at paying more than you would with a regular article, mainly because there is a great deal of research involved.
You also need to remember that some writers are better skilled, with more experience, which will do a better job than most others. Though these articles will certainly move the needle for your organic search results.
What Can You Expect To Pay?
Pricing and what you pay for SEO content is a very sensitive matter. Everyone who is out there trying to source content is on a budget. Some people may have a better budget than others.
While we’ve briefly touched on pricing in the previous section, it is worth mentioning that the pricing of a service offered alone does not tell you if a service is good.
For instance, paying $100 for 1k words does not mean you’ll necessarily get better quality than paying $50 per 1k words. Most times, you will pay more money for content that requires more work because it takes more time.
Technical articles that need to be optimized will cost you more than easier stuff. Then the location of the writer also matters.
Native speakers tend to charge more because the price of doing business for them is higher. But native speakers also produce better blog post or web page content which is important if people will read your articles.
However, there are native speakers on Legiit that charge competitively while still offering excellent quality. But it will be up to you to find one, which can be done by dolling out test projects.
You’ll pay anywhere from $3 for 100 words right up to $10 per 100 words for content on Legiit. If you are okay spending time doing a bit of proofing and fixing up the article a little, the lowest-priced service should serve you best. However, your goal shouldn't be just to get organic traffic but the content should help it convert. So, understanding the target audience is just as important.
If you’d instead use a service that writes content you don’t have to edit; a slightly more expensive writer saves you a great deal of time. So, the little extra you pay for better quality will save you a boatload of time. After all, time is money!
What To Look Out For When Buying A Writing Service?
At Legiit, we try to make the platform as easy as possible for anyone to find the best service provider for their needs.
As someone who is looking for content, here is what we recommend you look out for:
Read reviews – Make sure that the service provider has been well-reviewed for the most part; in particular, people are happy with the quality of the work. Also, the more reviews, the better, though we also encourage you to try out newer services to find a hidden gem in the rough.
Quality of the sales page – A sales page explaining the writing service in detail will tell you what to expect. Also, if the sales page is well written, the writer knows how to write good copy.
Start with a low tier – Once you have short-listed a few writers, start with their lowest tier service to test the waters. While it may take time to see them appear in search engine result pages, it will help you gauge their quality.
Final Word
There you have it, folks! Using this guide, you should find a writing service that adds value to your website and helps it rank. The only other thing you need to worry about is using the correct internal link structure for your content and adding meta description tags.
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