We all know that content is vital for effective search performance, but it can be tough to find the best and most economical way to create content at scale.
When putting together your POA for your corner of the web, should you hire a freelance writer, utilise a search agency, or hire an internal content team? In this article, we explore this exact question. Here’s our take…
Freelance writers can be an inexpensive hotfix to production problems, but it’s not their job to create your content strategy. You need someone who can take ownership of their content and nurture it, from conception to publication. Our, admittedly biased, take on content strategies is to use a search marketing agency to combine content production with a solid strategy. This is the perfect first step to a high-quality campaign strategy.
Let’s look at the pros & cons of hiring freelance, agency, and full-time in house content strategists.
But first – why is content and always will be an integral part of your search strategy?
For some of you, this may feel like a strange topic or stepping onto a mystical land for the first time. Let’s pull out the pros and cons of having a content writer resource in your business.
What Is A Content Writer?
A content writer specialises in producing relevant, creative, and engaging written content for websites. Onsite content is integral to an effective search strategy. Rather than simply creating a load of category content, blog posts and guides. Content is something that should be created consistently and to a high standard as part of your search strategy.
Google’s Helpful Content Update
With the new google helpful content update introduced, here is an explanation of what the helpful content update is and why it will affect your content strategy.
“Google has started to roll out the new helpful content update that it pre-announced last week. As a reminder, Google’s helpful content update is a sitewide signal. It targets websites that have a relatively high amount of unsatisfying or unhelpful content, where the content is written for search engines first.”
Freelance Content Writer
In the short term this can be great if you need to get out high-quality content for your site, do you have time to proof the work, and publish it to go live? If not, then this can become time-consuming. Can the pros outweigh the negatives here are some to get you thinking about the freelance route?
Agency Content Writer
Agents are familiar with global cultures and can communicate with customers easily. This can be a helping hand when it comes to the business because you can focus all your energy on making profits, while the agency will focus on improving the brand image.
Full-time Content Writer
When it comes to a content writer do you have a structure in place? Objectives will be needed to be put into place to achieve results. From one employee to building an empire of content writers, you will need a structure.
Do you have access to the correct online tools? Here are some pros and cons you need to consider for a full-time employee.
Summary
Are you still unsure which road to go down? It depends on which would be the best route for your business. Go down the agency route comes with less stress and more time for you to focus on important tasks and day to day running of your business. If you have the time to set up a structure and plan for the upcoming months, then a full-time employee can be the one for you. A full-time employee, would help start to produce tailored content for your business.
Two great options to pick from and the choice is in your hands!