On-site blog content and off-site guest posts represent two types of content that can boost website traffic and assist with conversion optimization. Both are considered foundational to a comprehensive SEO plan. The question website owners need to ask themselves is who will produce the content. Whether it is contracted out or produced in-house, it has to be paid for.
You pay for content either way. Contract the work out and your company will end up paying a content creation specialist. A contractor may charge by the piece, the word, how to become a content creator or content type. Having content produced in-house is not all that much different. It may not generate a monthly invoice, but the company is still paying the employee to produce the content.
For many companies, bottom line price is the deciding factor. This is a mistake. As with anything else, bottom-line price doesn’t necessarily denote value. True value is determined by the quality you get commensurate with the amount paid. If your company isn’t getting good value, what’s the point?
In-House Content Creation
Some companies are very fortunate to have a number of good writers on staff. These are people who know how to effectively communicate in a variety of written forms. They are the ones you tap for in-house content creation. But wait. As fantastic as they are at writing, how much do they know about SEO? It makes a difference.
SEO is a collection of tools and strategies designed to improve search engine ranking. In terms of content creation, a lot of it rises on keyword research and variation. In other words, whoever is tasked to create your content in-house needs to know how to choose and utilize the most valuable keywords.
Topic Expertise
One of the benefits of in-house content creation is topic expertise. Your staff knows your business inside and out. A contract writer may or may not. So if your organization is involved in an especially complex field where a lack of expertise would shine through in blog posts, perhaps producing content in-house is the better option. Whoever gets tapped to do it can learn basic keyword principles.
Contracted Content Creation
Contracting the work out means letting a company you may know nothing about produce content on your behalf. There is a trust issue here. Still, it is hard to beat the quality of a professional writer. It’s hard to do better than a content creator who knows all the finer points of SEO for both on- and off-site content.
Webtek Digital Marketing is a Salt Lake City firm that specializes in Utah SEO services. If you were to contract your content creation to them, they would make a point of getting to know your business as intimately as possible in order to produce the best results. Not all content creation providers will do that. So it’s a risk.
The other risk is quality. Yes, you should get much better quality from a professional writer. But there is a danger in having unrealistic expectations. For example, it is not unusual for companies to demand feature quality content without paying feature quality prices.
Hiring out content creation costs money. The more you are willing to spend, the greater the expectation of quality you can exercise. Do not expect masterful pieces if you are only willing to pay a penny or two per word. A rate that low will produce equally low quality.
Whether your company produces content in-house or contracts the work out, there is a price to be paid. How much is your company willing to spend to get quality content that produces?
