This week on Whiteboard Friday, Rand Fishkin describes the methods he recommends for outsourcing content creation. Content is extremely important for SEO and users alike so these best practices are important for those of us without the luxury of an in-house staff of copywriters.
Rand starts this presentation by setting context with his favorite SEO diagram. You can read more about the SEO Pyramid here.
Step 1: Requirements Gathering
Decide what you are trying to accomplish. Are you doing this for sales? SEO? Engagement? Traffic? Brand awareness? Be clear and write down what you want to accomplish along with the metrics you will use to measure them.
Step 2: Locating Potential Resources
You have plenty of options for finding potential resources. You can go offshore, in-house or hire web contractors. For web contractors, you can use the traditional services like Craigslist, Upwork, Guru or tap into the world of writing communities and long tail bloggers. These last two recommendations while not as established can many times provide superior quality writing with lower budgets.
Step 3: Research Writing Quality & Voice Match
In order to do this, we highly recommend you set up a voice document (a written record of how you would like to sound in your company's written communications and promotions). Give this to the writer before getting a sample and use this as the yardstick after they submit their first sample. This will help you gauge if this person is a good fit for your organization.
Step 4: Scale, Evaluate, Track
Now that you have established a process, you need to put checks into place to make sure the writer is hitting their targets. Look back at the goals you created in the first step and use them to track and improve upon the related metrics.
Remember, from both an SEO and from a human perspective, writing is about quality over quantity. Having one great article that engages readers and earns links far outweighs 100 poorly written articles.
Great WBF, Rand. (excellent audio, too)
Unfortunately many webmasters see outsourcing only as a shortcut to save time and money. And many companies try to sell you the dream of cheap, effortless content. (Haven't we all been tempted?) But it never works. Cheap in, cheap out.
As you demonstrate, outsourcing is a good way to scale your online publishing, but to succeed still requires work, intelligence and attention.
Agreed the audio (and video, it seems) quality have improved. Did semoz invest in new camera equipment? :P
It see that way, doesn't it? From the looks of things they've had a bit of revamp now that they've moved to a different office.
Strange, quality was worse for me. especially sound??
A new theme tune?? I haven't watched a WBF in a little while so it's new to me.
One note about the embed video & see stats - I think it's bringing down the look of the page, they need to look much nicer visually. Here's a screenshot of what it would look cool as: https://img828.imageshack.us/img828/920/seocomplete.jpg.
Sorry for the unfortunate screenshot Rand.
Haha nice face :P
Haha.. I liked it too.. but clicked at the unfortunate time!! lol
I think he kind of looks like he's about to pop a champagne bottle open.
Great Usability work there trax! Have you been branching out in your workplace or are you a natural?
I'm a web designer by trade haha, so usability is in there.
Love the suggestion!
Expect to see it intergrated into next weeks WBF :-)
Awesome, looking forward to see the integration.
Do I get a months worth of PROness for providing such valuable, valuable advice?
(Don't ask, you don't get)
I vote yes.
Really like this post as it is right up our street. We employed a content writer at the beginning of the year to create content on our customer stories. When we receive case studies created by the content writer we set to optimizing it, editing accordingly and then posting it to our blogs.
Overall its has resulted in a three-fold traffic increase in readership this Summer compared to the same period last year.
In addition to this we wanted to take the content further and I employed a mulit-lingual marketing bod. Now we have the same optimized content in English, German, Spanish and French.
Within a month of deploying the Spanish content we had a 1000+ visits to our new Spanish blog. This for us was our 'Costner' moment "If you build it they will come!". With Spanish being the second largest language in the US we felt it was important to have the content available for millions of Spanish speakers. A lot of our customers are in US public health and quite a few of them have Spanish names.
Example of this approach belowEnglish post on the City of London
Spanish post on the City of London
There is an unexpected benefit here as well, this being that our customers loved the idea that their stories are in all these languages. Other customers who were going into the interview process were also impressed with this approach. Which in turn helps us to create more content.
I would also add at this point is make sure the content writer does understand your market, he/she needs to speak to your customers in their language - very important.
David
This is a good post with valid feedback. Having literally done some content today I can understand that some will view a dedicated writer to be of more use than say, an SEO consultant who also writes the content. We have a content team who will write articles to an extremely high standard and I admit I don`t posess the same skill at writing sharp, precisely edited content as they do. However, on this occasion I have had to write content for the front page, just 250 words or thereabouts and I had to optimise for just one word. Not a huge task admittedly, although it still took me a couple of hours to write and I found that as long as I knew the structure that was required, I could make it work effectively and avoid making it spammy. Never be afraid to write content just because everyone claims that you must be an expert on the topic in hand as that is not always the case and although a "professional" within the industry would write very informative content, sometimes inspired amateurs know a little something. The more you write, the more confidence you get.
Nice vid Rand. Some good recommendations. As a copywriter, I'd like to see more clients come prepared with that sort of info. I particularly like your note at the end about quality over quantity. Very refreshing to hear.
I would, however, suggest that people don't limit themselves to places where they can 'get writing done cheap' (paraphrasing, but in reality, the sources you mention suggest that cheap's the imperative). Just as quality is more important than quantity, return on investment is more important than cost. I'd suggest checking out some Twitter lists of writers, and also services like https://wordfruit.com/ (which is like an oDesk of top flight copywriters).
Great WBF as usual Rand!
Content Creation: I have found outsourcing content creation is somtimes a challenge in finding a great writter who has the voice we are looking for... often I hire two writters for the same job and pick the better version and then tweek it to adjust to our needs and voice. Once you find a great writter be sure to keep them happy and hang on to them.:)
Video Audio: I wanted to provide a little feedback for you regarding the video audio. It sounded like lower quality audio than your past videos. For me I heard hissing and popping like an old vinyl record. :) Im not sure if this is due to using wistia or another problem. Also the intro audio was very loud and the talking was lower so I had to turn down the intro and then higher for the main video.
Stats: I do like seeing the stats for the video and wonder if this is something you want to share with competitors? I know you have no competition :) but I don't like sharing asset usage data with mine. What is your opinion on making your data public which could be used against you?
Thanks!
What is your opinion on making your data public which could be used against you?
I can chime in here about that cpignite. As amazing as it looks, SEOmoz has a "thing" about being transparent.
It seemed counterintuitive to me also when I read my first post that seemed to me like they were giving away the farm, but the Proverb "Wisdom is proven right by her actions" comes to mind now that I've seen it over and over.
I believe it's one of the major reasons they've become the "thought leaders" they are in this world of SEO in which we all live.
So I'm now a convert. "Long live TAGFEE I say! (Or WAGFEET if your name is Jen and you do nothing but carry around a Whiteboard at conferences)
Thanks for the feedback on the video audio. I am not a fan of the old vinyl record version of WBF :-)
I'll tweak some settings and try again this week :-) Also, I'll readjust the intro column. Should be an easy fix.
With regard to Stats, goodnewscowboy is right. One of our core values is transparency. We don't do it for a competitive reason, we do it because we believe it is the right thing to do. It is your data, not ours.
Great article, going through the same phase right now as I'm trying to reach the "link nirvana" moment.
I would also recommend:
www.Constant-Content.com - to buy unique content
www.AssociatedContent.com - to find a good author to write for you
You have forgotten purecontent.com
"One great article is better than ten lousy articles."
I'm sure I am paraphrasing a little bit there but if more people understood that the Internet would be a happier place - with cleaner websites, more relevancy, frolicking puppies...
Okay, maybe not frolicking puppies (though, I'm sure you can find frolicking puppies here, too), but I'm sure you get my point.
I'm not going to even try to count how many times a client has said: "Well, I can get (so and so company) to write 100 pages of content for a hundred bucks"
Someday they will learn...
and the puppies will frolic
Great idea to give us access to 'stats for this video'. I'm stagged at how few have actually watched the whole video when there is so much fantastic content. Hopefully they will be back another day to watch the rest.
Good points, Rand et al.
Our sticky situation is that right now we don't have a blog and I've been the only one in a very long time writing pieces for our educational sections on our site (I'm in-house). Problem is that I'm only one person and have a ton of other stuff to do!
So, the way I've been handling it is to write a base article and then edit it for multiple purposes such as using it as a blog post on an industry website, using it as a B2B article, using bits and pieces of it for our own site, etc. Cuts down on time spent doing research and also saves you from having to come up with a ton of different articles.
Danny,
Great article on outsourching content creation. I have used off-shore partners for content creation and have been burnt in the past when I did not do my HomeWork to find the right firm.
I also didn't provide them with proper requirements in the past and this is where lot of people fail.. People often fail to communicate because they assume that content writer who's writing about your business knows your business already. Remember, No one knows your business better than yourself. I try to provide my content writer with all the data needed including:
One of the more interesting trends in Internet marketing today is the idea of outsourcing content creation and copywriting. Here’s how it works: you run a small business, you become too busy with work, and on top of that – as though your calendar wasn’t crazy enough, as though you actually had time – you find yourself having to refresh your website or company blog with new, engaging content. You have to meet the demand for new, diverse information about your product, your brand, your industry. And you’re not even a writer by profession.
I especially liked the aspect of metrics and puttting checks in place to measure, enmake sure the writer is hitting their targets. Ahhh... this supports the importance of quality over quantity.
The MayDay update was good in that crap "quantity" content lost ranking.
Nice actionable strategy, Rand!
Great WBF!
I will have to take a look at these services and try to utilize them in the future. Always been hesitant on using 3rd parties, but would love to give it a try after taking the proper steps in the future.
Has seomoz marketing voice document has been shared? written about?
If not, what kind of items go in it? Are there any good examples out there?
If one in 20 pieces are great, it is worth the sacrifice for the other 19. All 20 should be good, but only a small number will be the super-fantastic linkbait type that tips the scales. I find a lot of people who just want the one in 20, but then forget that the other 19 will still be worthwhile, also.
On the other side, there are those who will just throw out a lot of junk and work the angle of sheer volume. Without a good balance of great material, all you get are 10 second clicks.
Transparency is so critical here.
We're buidling some content sites again and have great leaders on each. One problem we've faced in the past is not taking the time to educate content contributors about what we want, how to get there and what the current data is.
The contributor feels disconnected, both parties are frustrated and things eventually go bad. The reason I liked this WBF is that too many folks have just thrown content against the wall and hoped for acidental ranking.
This is the same as any leadership exercise. There has to be a strategy, training and constant feedback loops.
Well done.
Excellent WBF ... agree with everything you say Rand, but it is difficult for the one-man-band webmaster to let go and 'trust' someone else to do content because of the worry that it will be a) not good enough b) not relevent enough c) too expensive for the end result ... but as you say it comes down to planning and giving detailed instruction, i.e., it can actually be your fault if the content is not good enough, or too expensive.
Great WBF! I've been leery of the quality of outsourced content, but I'm intrigued by the idea of talent-hunting in writing communities - that's a resource I'll have to investigate.
It's a gift when you stumble across a client who knows their subject and can write too. Like the day I discovered purely by accident that one of my clients had 4+ years of his monthly newsletters squirreled away in a subdirectory of his hosting account. Every single one had at least one original article on a business-related topic ... and NONE of them were on his website!
I think this WBF is fantastic, we have gone for the in-house approach hiring in a Copy Writer and teaching her about the products as well as key SEO copy techniques.
However, to try and add more credibility to the content we are going to employ a guest blogger/writer on a periodic basis so not only is our content right, but it's got some legitimate and credible sources to back it up. Hopefully this will build up brand trust and eventually add some "omph" to our readership levels.
Good video. I think the most important thing about hiring content writers is that they have a fundamental understanding of the goals of the site or project. If the content isn't completely focused on the goals and the site's value prop, there will be a bad disconnect between the content and the site overall. Your readers will notice and not come back, running the risk of losing traffic.
Thanks a lot for this. As for contents, specially text contents, I am usually very wary of outsourcing them because of duplicated content. Unless I trust a company, I believe many outsourcing companies maybe taking short cuts and duplicating their content or parts of it.
I don't know of any good reliable tool out there to double check outsourcing content so if you have one please let me know.
Thanks
I have had great success finding writers on Elance. You can find skilled writers with masters degrees for $10 an article. Incredible arbitrage opportunities! It can be very efficient for the SEO person to focus on researching and coming up with topics of articles and strong headlines, while outsourcing the research and writing of the articles. I somewhat disagree that subject matter expertise is more important than good writing skills (re:seo-himanshu). While subject matter expertise is ideal, there are many content options that don't require an expertise - such as content curation like creating lists of great content or interviewing industry thought leaders or researching answers to common customer questions.
I budget about $3,00 a month for content writing but with that I get someone who deals with our content as a journalist and editor, knows our markets and understands the needs to communicate benefits of our products to our audience.
They focs on the content and we focus on content delivery and SEO requirements etc.
For me its about trust and confidence in what is delivered in a timely fashion
Never used Elance, maybe one day I'll test it out.
David
Please mention https://www.hirewpfreelancer.com/, it is the best freelancing website also its free and user friendly.
I just love your Whiteboard Fridays. T.G.I. friday
What about costs of content creation?
I know that this is very dependent on many factors (industry, topic, length of article, etc...) but some rough numbers with estimations would be beneficial.
I realize that many of the websites listed in this post and comments provide some indication of costs, but it is very difficult to evaluate without a true experience. Maybe some readers have some examples that have worked (at whatever level) and would like to share what the associated costs were?
Excellent wbf - I have been urging my customers to ONLY get the good stuff (quality content) and forget about the 10 articles for 40€ road.
So far it always pays because in my experience only the content is successful where you had this extra effort nobody else is willing to spend.
Wow, I really like the idea of getting lesser known bloggers to create content on a site. I wonder if anyone has had any experience with this.
I blog for Internet Exposure, a web design and interactive agency, and I also create SEO content for our clients. I know if someone asked me to create content for a site I'd be happy to do it in exchange for a link, as long as I knew the industry, etc. (That was not a shameless plug ;) )
I would love to hear if someone has experienced any success with this. Or if they've tried this at all and what the results were.
The idea with encouraging writers by giving them date about the visitors' length of stay on their article is really a good one! Could end up with like a writer of the month - competition.
Just came across this today, and it is very timely. We are just now starting to outsource content writing, and thankfully, this WBF gives us a scaffling for how to build the process. The Requirments Gathering and Voice Match are once again head smackingly simple tips that must be integrated or else you'll have the wrong content and unhappy clients. Having gone through just enough of this process to make it painful, I'm excited to go back to the drawing board and put a process in place. Thanks again for the great tips!
This article totally inspired me to write a post about a similar topic: 3 Ways to Outsource High Quality Content Creation
Thanks for the post, Rand!
Great WBF Rand, as always.
I've been adamant about processes like these for quality control.
However, there are still folks out there, lots of them older generations in the publishing Industry (TV, Print, Radio) who find that content re-purposing, content dissection, rephrasing, and rewriting, is the way to go.
There are times that you can of course follow steps like these to breathe new life into your content, but seriously, as "the" content strat?
I don't think so. Great job Rand!
Jurgen
One company i know of created a blogging platform and the automagically links specific keywords from the platform to the shopping engine site. It is really effective. Most of the bloggers don't even know that the links are there they are automated and nearly hidden by using a very discreet CSS style.
#1 is definitely an important task. I have worked with so many people who think "well we just need content so get the cheapest you can and add it to every aspect of the site." I always try to get them to understand that there are very few cases where you can go for cheap.
In fact in most cases it isn't wise, but I can see that in some cases cheap content will suffice when you are working with limited budgets. Things that are fairly generic such as product descriptions or a description of the typical climate in a city are fairly safe to get cheaply, but your great content needs to have a lot more time and effort put into the vetting priocess. When you are presenting a voice such as in a blog post a lot more consideration needs to be put into the requirements prior to working with an outsourced writer.
Content is king if we are able to spread the greatness of the content our sites are filled of.
But, anyway, good quality content is mandatory in order to:
All the places where to find content providers here listed are all good ones. But I would like to suggest other 2 options.
1st) If you have still have good links in your old university, or if you can have easily access to the university world, then you can easily find young going-to-be excellent writers (and - being an university - in almost every field of the human knowledge), who are willing to use and better their skills. Train them about SEO copy principles and you can see resolved the 80% of your writing needs.
2nd) Sometimes it happens that for very niche markets is practically impossible to find writers who can provide you content about those niche topics. In that case is almost an obligation to make your client or client PR dpt. become your content provider. Also in this case is extremely important to train him/them to the SEO basics.
But content is not only written: it can be video and graphic (as we saw just yesterday here in SEOmoz). What sources we could check out?
For video (especially for viral purpose) webs like Zooppa are a great place where to look at.
For graphic, sites like 99designs or Iamasource (very similar to 99designs) can be worth a look.
Making your client your content provider is not a good idea. What if they lack subject matter expertise? What if they can't write well? You can't say, "sorry your contents are not good enough" and risk spoiling your relationship with them.
Best content writers are subject matter experts who also have flair for writing and they are not cheap.You need domain knowldege in the first place to connect with your target audience. Often people neglect this factor while selecting a content writer and just look for his/her literary skills which eventually cost them. For e.g. if you run a chiropractic website and you need fresh contents for the site on daily basis to engage with target audience, then you need a chiropractor who can write well and not just any content writer. Same is the case with event planning, car insurance, finance, health, sports and other sectors. How a website can ever be a success, if its writers are not subject matter experts in the first place. SEOmoz blog is popular becuase its writers are subject matter experts in their respective fields and can also write well. Now imagine you outsource the content development of this blog to a third party with exceptional literary skills but little to no domain knowledge. It would be a disaster.
Maybe I was not able to make me understand, because I was practically saing the same you commented.The example of the chiropractor is a good one. But also when it comes to very technical field is not possible to find better source than your client... for instance I had to engage a client of mine in order to provide his website of good content about ultrasonic washing machines, because only he had the knowledge to write on a regular basis content about that topic.
What it was needed, and I think you agree with me, was to train him on how to write for the web, as Web copywriting is very different than writing for a magazine.
Yes, you have to work with your clients to get the content. Some clients will have a gift for writing content; others won't. It can be very painful to get content sometimes because not everyone feels comfortable writing.
With the example of the chiropractor, one thing I did recently on a chiropractor's site was to work together to draft and produce most of the main content. Then I added a blog section to their site so that they could write their daily content about patients and treatments.
So the main content was wordsmithed and the daily updates, because they are part of a blog, could be more casual. It seems to work for them.
Hey G. Have you had any experiences with the University route? I'd love to hear about them (he says hinting at another YOUmoz post)
Yes I actually had some experience with university, but - honestly - not that much to write a YOUmoz about. Anyway, My brain is "cooking" some ideas... let's see if at least one YOUmoz post will be sent for approval :)
This is a great video Rand!
But... aren't you the one preaching the "one click" javascript on embeddable html textareas?
That is actually my fault. Our blog editor has issues with <textarea> so I am forced to use a div which means it is uglier to implement one click.
Don't worry though, I have a plan for next week :-)
Awesome! Thanks Danny... excited to see what you do!
Good video !
If for example, uses a content writer or an external collaborator from time to time and it works well. Is not it risky that it turns against us, as customers require consistency in the creation of content? We can not always afford the services of a content writer
Fantastic! So many people don't get the value of really good content. It really does take time and knowledge to write content that truly is valuable. This is why I personaly don't write content for my clients, I simply don't have the knowledge that they do about their niche. However, teaching them SEO best practices and guiding them with potential topics really helps.
This was a great Whiteboard Friday and something we have been looking at. We have a couple of guest writers who have written on our site, but have not scaled it bigger. The voice document info is really good.
Thanks Rand
I forgot to add that I liked the writing communities idea. I have also used guest blogging services like Blogger Linkup.
I'm kinda embarrassed to admit this, but while watching the video, I made a note to ask in my comment "Why is a voice document required? Wouldn't a written document suffice?"
Then I read Danny's write up that cleared up the fog in my head.
And it looks like I'm the first to comment about this: Great drawings Rand! Love the little "Land ho!" Details. Details are everything.
Cheap content creation solutions don't always resolve content creation issues.
One more excellent WBF here.
Everyone agrees that "content is king" and it is important. But accidently some mistakes can happen which can collapse the whole seo process. So it is always wise to give extra importance for content writing everytime.
I am working on a couple of content sites and definitely useful tips shared here Rand!
Can you stop down the exposure by one or use a light yellow curtain over the window. Your videos look very washed out which makes it hard to read at times.
Thanks for the feedback, the over exposure was my bad. I opted for using natural light and think I went a little overboard. :-)
Stay tuned for next week
Well the topic should be bore elaborated and expressive..I think that can be done...
Its beter if you mention some method of content outsourcing and some specific points like blogging etc...
Content is important! This is good guide to start to work with
Thanks