Outsourcing blog writing

[Maximum Media Solutions]

Hi,

I wondered if anyone had any experience with outsourcing blog writing.

We simply don't have the time to update our blog but realise this is a very important aspect to improve our ecommerce site.

I see various services out there ranging from a few dollars to hundreds of pounds a blog.

We don't have a huge budget (about £50 a month) so I understand the quality may not be incredible for that budget but I wondered if anyone had any tips or have used a good company for this service.

Any advice will be much appreciated

Thanks

Jonny

 

[Suzuki]

If you realise its 'very important' to your website, then you are going to need to either come up with some time or money. Putting in no time, and £50, isn't going to cut it. You might as well not bother if thats all you're going to invest.

 

[cjd]

A blog really needs to be personal - but I guess I'm old fashioned....

 

[makeusvisible]

This is not an uncommon situation. Many SEOs and web designers will tell you that adding blog posts to your website is one of THE most important methods to drive new traffic to your site.

To give an indication of what a growing trend this is...12 months ago we were spending around 15 hours per month writing blog posts for clients. Due to demand we recently had to search out a new member of staff to concentrate on this side of the business and now have an amazing lady who is a PHD, and previously did press releases for Downing Street. She now works from the office puerly on client blog posts.

If you add quality, relevant content to your website, you cannot go wrong. You will encourage Google to visit your site on a more regular basis, you will promote your site as an ongoing concern, and you will drive traffic from long tail keywords.

 

[Suzuki]

If you add quality, relevant content to your website, you cannot go wrong. You will encourage Google to visit your site on a more regular basis, you will promote your site as an ongoing concern, and you will drive traffic from long tail keywords.

That is a massively over simplified view of things, bordering on just being a sales pitch from someone who sells blog post writing services...

Its bizarre to say 'you can't go wrong' with adding more and more content as that is simply not true. You need to promote content you're adding, or have some way to get backlinks to it. Otherwise you just end up creating a site that looks garbage in googles eyes - why have you created 100's of pages yet nobody shares them anywhere? You're arguably better not having a blog at all in that situation.

Good content is only one part of the equation. And its a small part.

 

[Bart Simpson]

Content is important but its is more important to share it aggressively and link it appropriately.

You might get a freelancer to do some posts for you in that budget which would get your blog a some content on continuously but then you need to make sure it has some quality. But you still need to figure out a way to promote it otherwise it is not of much use.

 

[directmarketingadvice]

this is a very important aspect to improve our ecommerce site.

Why? I can't remember the last time I visited the blog of an ecommerce site.

Steve

 

[JonathanSEO]

£50 ain't gonna cut it.

Adding content to ecommerce sites in this way rarely works either unless it's a.) highly shareable or b.) link worthy.

Not going to be either for such a low budget I don't think.

If you're just looking to blast out blog content to try pick up long tail searches you may as well just get some lengthy product descriptions written instead.

 

[ITsoldUK]

...
If you add quality, relevant content to your website, you cannot go wrong. You will encourage Google to visit your site on a more regular basis, you will promote your site as an ongoing concern, and you will drive traffic from long tail keywords.

This is correct.

With one or two major caveats...

Your site needs to be well structured and easy to index AND you need to get your postings promoted. Easier said than done on point 2 for many novices.

...give a 1000 chimps a typewriter each and they could bang out content all day long and then you post it onto a badly coded, nonsense riddled, content stuffed website. Think that would get you ranked? Yep. Will it get you ranked high enough to earn a living? I very much doubt it.

I hear what you say, but it is a tad simplistic to say (just elaborating, I know your point is more than that) that writing content alone will get you where you want to go.

Content writing is a SKILLED CRAFT and the sooner people realise it the better.

£50 per hour, that should get you 5 minutes of a top pro's time.

Of course, you could pay £50 per month and take your chances with the chimps....

 

[makeusvisible]

That is a massively over simplified view of things, bordering on just being a sales pitch from someone who sells blog post writing services...

Its bizarre to say 'you can't go wrong' with adding more and more content as that is simply not true. You need to promote content you're adding, or have some way to get backlinks to it. Otherwise you just end up creating a site that looks garbage in googles eyes - why have you created 100's of pages yet nobody shares them anywhere? You're arguably better not having a blog at all in that situation.

Good content is only one part of the equation. And its a small part.

First off all, at this moment in time we are not offering blog posting as a service, it is purely for clients who have SEO or web-design packages with us.

Your are totally taking me out of context... I didn't say that you cant go wrong adding "more and more" content. The content needs to be relevant and of sufficient quality. One A1 quality blog post is worth 100 times more than one average one with a mass of "backlinks". Better to create quality content which people will want to link to and which you syndicate properly.

 

[justinmarch]

We simply don't have the time to update our blog but realise this is a very important aspect to improve our ecommerce site.

You're thinking about this in completely the wrong way.

I would think about your prospects first, work out what they want to see and try to understand why they might enjoy any blog posts that you may or may not produce.

If you want to get technical and all SEOeey, blogs that do well have articles that are not self serving and which engage with the reader, these readers then share and link through to these posts / blogs which helps your SEO, but I would view this as a side benefit.

Hope this helps...

 

[MASSEY]

That is a massively over simplified view of things, bordering on just being a sales pitch from someone who sells blog post writing services...

Its bizarre to say 'you can't go wrong' with adding more and more content as that is simply not true. You need to promote content you're adding, or have some way to get backlinks to it. Otherwise you just end up creating a site that looks garbage in googles eyes - why have you created 100's of pages yet nobody shares them anywhere? You're arguably better not having a blog at all in that situation.

Good content is only one part of the equation. And its a small part.

I agree with this. Posting and leaving doesnt work at this moment in time. There was a point during google updates where posting blogs and internally linking to the home offered some serious benefit but they squashed it meaning that blog posts have to have more effort put into them with sharing and links.

 

[terryuk]

I would disagree, if you are on top with your keyword research and have an SEO strategy already in place then you may find that adding new content is all your website needs for extra exposure.

But I doubt a blog writer will go that far for you - so without knowing what to write about you are in a muddle.