HOW TO: SEO’s Guide for Buying Website Content

It is commonly known that website content is an important part of a sound organic search online marketing strategy. To meet the content creation needs of webmasters and marketers a wide variety of content creation options emerged. This article provides a concise guide that outlines the various content creation options for either adding content to existing organic search “landing pages” or adding new pages to your website. Note however, this guide does not dive into more specific content creation needs such as link bait,Online PR, and micro content.

Spun vs. Low Cost vs. Editorial Quality Content – Which Is Right for You?

Spun Content: The good thing about this content is that it is as inexpensive as you can get but be careful! With the rollout of the penguin update, Google has flexed their muscles on this strategy, having taken an aggressive stance toward spun content. This is a high risk method. From a usability standpoint, this type of content is also not recommended for any real landing page for visitors arriving from organic SERP’s.

Low Cost Content: The benefit of low cost content, well, besides the fact that it is low cost, is that it can be produced at a consistent rate and you can specify to the writer how they should optimize it. This is good if you’re trying to get a high volume of optimized content fast. The thing to keep in mind with this kind of content is that editorial quality is not consistent in many cases. You will find that some of the content is okay, some of it is not so great, depending on the writer that grabbed a given article to write it. If you decide to go the low cost content route, be prepared to invest a lot of time managing this process, working with the writers, and editing the content after the fact, to get publish worthy content. Also, as implied prior, content tone will often not be consistent from article to article. Another side note with the low price content is that often times targeted keywords are not worked into text well, so this type of content often has a keyword stuffed appearance at times.

Editorial Quality Content: The ideal scenario here is having an in house editorial team that produces landing page content, blog content, article content, and knows how to perfectly weave in targeted phrases and anchor text rich links. However, not all website owners/ webmasters / marketing directors have such a team at their disposal. However, it is still possible to get really high quality content for your site, without an in-house editorial team. The upshot of this content is mainly that it is natural looking, guaranteed unique, and that it is user friendly, so you can have peace of mind when adding this content to important landing pages that bring in large volumes of visitors from organic search. Another benefit is that this content can also be turned around quickly. The down swing of this content is that there is an increased cost.

The same content strategy is not right for every single site. It is important to consider the costs, benefits, and risks of each content creation solution as well as your in-house capacity to create content and manage the process. I have provided a quick guide below on some of the factors to consider when when comparison shopping for the right content provider.

What Type of Content Approach is Right For You?

General considerations when shopping around

1. Does the content provider have any kind of guarantee that the content created is unique?
   Do they test all pieces of content created against Copyscape or other software to verify that it is not duplicated anywhere else?
2. Does the content provider have customer support by phone or email?
   Responsive customer support can insure that you’re getting your needs met. This is basic and something easy to overlook…until you need it. 
3. Do you need to preform the needed keyword research for the content strategy or does the content creation provider do this?
   Doing keyword research to identify powerful primary and secondary keywords for each page can be a time consuming process, does the company that you’re working  with for website content creation have trained content strategy specialists to do this task and can you review this strategy before content is created?
4. Does the content provider give you an opportunity to view a sample piece of content  in a larger content order during the content creation process?
   This helps you identify if the content meets your editorial standards and the needs of your website.

Low Cost Content vs. Editorial Quality Content

What Makes Sense for You?

1. Are you just looking for “filler” content for deep pages or are you seeking content for pages that attract visitors?
   • If you are trying to just backfill deep pages that get only a few visitors, that lower cost content may be a better fit.
   • If you are seeking to add content to pages that get regular visitors, higher quality content ought to be considered
2. Do you have long term goals for your site or short term goals for your site?
   • If the site you are working with is primarily focused toward short-term goals, low cost content is sufficient.
   • If you have long term marketing goals for your site, the content you build today will be an asset of the website in the future.
3. How much time are you willing to invest in your content strategy, in-house?
   • If you have a lot of time to invest in your content strategy which includes tasks such as page specific keyword research, monitoring content orders, following up on outstanding orders,and editing content that is written, low cost content is a tenable solution.
   • If you cannot be involved in the tactical aspects of your content creation strategy, consider a content creation approach that includes a full editorial process.
4. How many existing pages need content added and how many new pages need to be created?
   The number of pages will determine the amount of time investment between purchasing low cost content versus a more  high end solution. A good content provider ought to be able to assist in the content need identification process.
5. How much you have to invest in your website content creation?
   This goes without saying but for the sake of completeness, I decided to explicitly include it 😉

One small cautionary note before I leave you off, is to make sure to be fully informed on the content creation option you choose. Just Monday, Google rolled out another refresh of the Panda update, refresh 3.8. Make sure to account for this algorithm update as you plan your content strategy …..