Hiring a website writer is important. Before you turn over writing responsibilities, vet your website writer.
Are you looking for an SEO and SEM expert? Is the content you purchase supposed to help your visibility online? It should if it’s strategic, interesting and well-written.
Skilled or Scammer?
Your writer may be a plagiarist. Your writer may make things up. Your writer may have 35 years of copywriting. Your writer may be copying content from publications and placing incorrect, dated content on your website.
Client References
Vetting and checking skill and client references is important. The only way to know is to see the work they’ve done and hear from other clients. The writer’s reliability, experience and understanding of search engine optimization and search engine marketing shapes YOUR online message.
Proof of Original Content
Is your writer posting the same copy for every client? Is your writer using a software program to spin content into 1000+ versions and posting them for another client similar to you?
You may have them write what you tell them, verbatim. Is that the best plan? Or do you want someone with experience in your area and some advertising background?
What about SEO? Do they think that a few keywords thrown in will provide the food for the search engines?
Before hiring someone to write content for your website, get their credentials. You should see websites NOT writing samples with current and past clients, awards, portfolio, published work, publications that paid for writing services. FYI: live links to active websites are best but if the link is not active, dated copy helps.
Facebook, Twitter, Personal Blogs Don’t Count
Everyone can write comments on Facebook. That doesn’t count as professional writing. Posting comments on New York Times articles doesn’t qualify. Tweeting or retweeting articles doesn’t count. Liking an article, tagging, sharing through Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Delicious…doesn’t qualify writing samples. Listing a personal website blog as a published work doesn’t count either.
Published work is printed or posted or broadcast by an established newspaper, magazine, television or radio station, or paying client. Published and sold books matter, but you’re hiring a website content producer. Speed, accuracy and content that sell is what you need. You may want to read white papers, research papers, thesis papers, class work, or internships: but all are informal and do not apply to website writing experience.
If a writer hasn’t been paid to write for business longterm, do you want to be the guinea pig?
The Proof is in the Publishing
When people proclaim they can write content for your website if they start by telling you that they are an IT expert and that they write to keywords, be wary. Keywords are not the only element that Google looks for in content.
Make the writer (or firm) prove it: they should have a list of clients on their website for whom they have actually provided and written content. When you look their clients up, they should be on Google and other search engines.
Remember, Google is one of several search engines check Yahoo and Bing to find the content.
A client list will contain e-mail addresses and phone numbers that you can speak to on your terms. Testimonials and case studies don’t tell you if the copy came in on time, correctly, posted when it was supposed to post.
You Get What You Pay For
Is the copy you’re buying original? Has it appeared on someone else’s website or blog? You may see ads for copy for $5, $6, written by someone in another country. Can you verify that the content will be yours and not written for you and then used on many other client websites?
Hire a writer with training, education and published, professional experience. It shouldn’t be cheap. If your website is going to generate business for you, quick, fast and easy content is not the way to go. When did you last invest very little and have massive returns?
If low-cost writing is your qualifier, you will get what you pay for.
The Marketing Square Content Production
The Marketing Square content production for clients is 100% original and customized to the online and advertising and SEO and SEM needs of the client. It will be the most expensive, but it will be the best. Choose your website writer carefully.
