I’m no stranger to SEO content creation and I’m often advising my consulting clients on how to scale up their content velocity in the most efficient way. Most of the time, the in-house marketing team is not able to create as much quality content as is needed to be competitive in their industry and so we look for SEO blog writing services that could help out.
Here’s an overview of a bunch of platforms that I have either tried myself or have gotten some insights about from other marketers. Let it be said – none of them is perfect and I don’t think there ever can be a “perfect” platform that can catch all the bad writing 100% before it gets to the customer.
Nevertheless, using these services can be very helpful and you have to try different ones until you find the workflow that works best for your business. Good luck!
SEO and Content Marketing
The definition of SEO is “search engine optimization” and it covers a wide range of activities and depending on the context, the term SEO could also stand for a person who is an expert in search engine optimization practices.
SEO in its true original form means the “optimization” of your website in a way that makes Google rank it high on the first page of the search results.
Content marketing is a bit wider term and it stands for conducting marketing activities that are centered around creating original content and gaining new traffic/leads/customers through this content.
How is SEO and content marketing connected?
The best practices of SEO are always changing. What worked 6 months ago, probably won’t work as well anymore and what used to work 3 years ago is now probably harming your site.
Since doing SEO means that you’re optimizing the content that’s on your site, you are already working on both SEO and content marketing (unless somebody else is in charge of all the content creation and you identify as a “technical SEO specialist”). In short – you need to create content that Google and your visitors love in order to gain those top 3 positions on the search results pages.
The latest best-performing SEO strategies are centered around 2 big themes:
topical authority
content velocity
In order to be successful in SEO, you need to consistently create tons of valuable content that covers every possible topic in your specific niche.
PS: if you need help setting up an SEO strategy that scales your lead generation efforts, then get in touch with me.
Why use an SEO content writing service?
As I mentioned before, you need a lot of SEO content in order to be successful – think 10-30 new articles published every month*. It’s very hard to build out all of the necessary processes for handling this big of a publishing volume in-house while still keeping the quality of the SEO content top-notch.
Here’s where the SEO content writing services come in…
If you need to publish 10 new valuable content pieces every month, you can easily order 6 blog posts from these writing services and produce the other 4 in-house. This saves you a lot of time and makes higher SEO content publishing velocity possible.
*Disclaimer: this is a rough number for established businesses that already have a strong product-market-fit and a well-aged site with some SEO traffic already pouring in and an ambition to scale their growth.
The PROs of using an SEO content writing service
you can quickly scale up the amount of SEO content you’re able to publish each month
you can focus your time on editing, formatting, brief making, and content promotion instead of writing the content yourself
you won’t get burnt out by writing all the blog posts on your own
it’s cheaper than hiring an in-house content writer
the in-house content writer could burn out by the huge volume of content they need to write
you don’t have to spend time finding writers on your own
The CONs of using an SEO content writing service
the quality of these SEO content writing services is always volatile – be prepared to send back every 4th or 5th content piece because it’s poorly written, doesn’t follow the brief or the writer has clearly used an AI content generator
a lot of time has to go into picking the right topic and creating a good brief for the writer
a lot of time also goes into reviewing the blog posts and giving feedback to the writers about what they need to change
you won’t find good writers if your niche is too technical or requires industry insider knowledge
if you’re happy with one writer’s work, you can rarely keep working with them and are assigned a new writer for the next blog post instead
Regardless of these negatives, I still think that using SEO content writing services in some capacity makes sense for most businesses that want to scale their lead generation flow from Google’s organic search traffic.
Top SEO blog content writing services to grow your traffic
So here are some SEO content writing services that I’ve checked out. Keep in mind that I’ve experienced some content quality problems with all of them, so there’s no silver bullet here. You just have to be prepared to “win some, lose some” and just build out good processes that would allow you to effectively deal with the inevitable bad content pieces that sometimes get submitted to you.
SEMrush’s Content Marketplace
SEMrush’s Content Marketplace is quite affordable and robust. You can get your content ordered quickly and the prices won’t break the bank. They also have a huge number of writers, making it a good option if you need to order a big number of new SEO-optimized content.
Price for a 2000-word article: $145
Verblio
Verblio is a bit more expensive SEO content writing service and it’s usually regarded to provide higher quality than most of the other content SEO writing services. I’ve gotten a few amazingly good content pieces from this content writing service, but as I mentioned above, I’ve also received some very poor work from this platform, so you can’t expect 100% best quality each time, but overall, this content writing service has been worth the extra cost a couple of times for me.
Price for a 2000-word article: $360
SEOButler
SEOButler as the name says is focused on providing SEO content. Their most popular content writing product also includes SurferSEO optimization, which I would definitely recommend over regular non-Surfer writing.
The strength of this content writing service is the fact that they are focused on SEO content and will keep themselves up-to-date on the algorithm changes and the ever-changing best practices of SEO.
Price for a 2000-word blog post: $270
Wordagents
Wordagents is the favorite SEO content writing service of lots of affiliate marketers because it’s focused on serving clients who want to properly scale their SEO content production and make a big impact on Google’s search results.
Their pricing lands in the middle of all the other SEO content writing services in this list, but once you start increasing the monthly word counts, your price per word becomes cheaper.
Price for a 2000-word article: $240
Draft
Draft promises higher quality content from native speakers and is also priced at a similar level to Verblio. The platform is very clean and the content ordering process is very straightforward.
Compared to the previously mentioned SEO content writing services, Draft also includes royalty-free images in their pricing for each blog post.
Price for a 2000-word article: $400
Textbroker
Textbroker offers a similar SEO content writing service to all the others mentioned above and they have been around for more than a decade and have a huge pool of writers. The offered pricing looks very affordable, but as is the case with all the other writing services, the quality of the blog posts can be described as “hits and misses”.
Price for a 2000-word article: $68.50
Compose.ly
Compose.ly is priced on the mid-higher level for these types of SEO content writing services. The platform looks very good and they are offering a similar level of service and content quality as the other similar platforms. They have a big writers pool and they vet them thoroughly (again, this, unfortunately, doesn’t mean a 100% success rate in terms of receiving great content every time).
Price for a 2000-word article: $300
iWriter
iWriter is often mentioned as the favorite SEO content writing service by marketers who have been working in this field for a while and can appreciate the complexity of outsourcing SEO content creation on a bigger scale.
The pricing is affordable and the quality (when picking the highest quality pricing tier) is also at the same level as the other platforms.
Price for a 2000-word article: $145
FAQ
There are some common questions that often come up when talking about finding good SEO content writers and trying to scale the search traffic. Here they are…
How important is keyword research when scaling SEO content writing?
Keyword research is super important when starting to scale your web content. You should have a very clear content marketing strategy already figured out and keyword research is the basis of that strategy.
In short: keyword research should produce a list of topics that you need to cover in order to achieve topical authority in your field. You’ll then go 1-by-1 and create briefs for each topic/keyword cluster and submit these to the writing services.
Read more about it: “Topical Authority Is the New Keyword Research” by MarketMuse
What’s the best content marketing strategy right now?
Right now, the best content marketing strategy that’s also focused on SEO is gaining topical authority through extremely valuable and original content.
What’s the difference between SEO content writers and regular content writers?
People who identify themselves as “SEO content writers” are usually charging more for their article writing and they have different levels of additional knowledge about SEO (unfortunately it’s very hard to validate if this knowledge is actually there or not).
SEO content writers are usually more aware of the importance of using the right keywords in the titles and the copy of the article. The insights about how to best use these keywords could be outdated though (for example, some SEO writers are still using keyword stuffing).
Regular content writers can also do “SEO writing” without having any special knowledge about it, because in order to gain topical authority, you just have to write about the topic in a natural way and offer a lot more value than the current nr 1 ranking article.
What makes a good SEO writer?
A good SEO content writer does great research on the first page of Google and figures out what’s the search intent of the keyword they are targeting and what topics need to get covered in order to produce a high-quality content piece.
A good SEO content writer also figures out the ideal word count by studying the search engine results pages and comparing the word count of articles that rank well for the target keyword.
A good SEO content writer goes above and beyond to offer value to the reader and their article writing skills should be optimized for humans and not for the search engines.
What type of SEO writing increases search engine rankings the most?
Top search engine rankings are reserved for quality content that matches the correct search intent of the visitor and offers a lot of value for the reader (by answering their questions or solving their problem).
When to use SEO writing services vs a content marketing agency?
Use SEO writing services when you have done your own keyword research and you have a strong content strategy in place.
Use a content marketing agency when you don’t have the in-house expertise to figure out the exact SEO keywords you should be targeting for maximum impact, you don’t know how to create quality content that has the potential to rank well in search engines, and you haven’t created a content strategy from scratch before.
What does “quality content” in SEO mean?
Quality content is an original, well-researched, and thorough web content creation that matches the search intent of the visitor and provides them with real value. In SEO it means that the writing should not have fluff, but instead includes original research, images, and insights. The writing should also be easily readable and in simple language.
SEO best practices also require that there are both external and internal links in SEO articles that are contextually relevant to the topic.
Best SEO writers also know the importance of using catchy titles while also incorporating the target keywords.
Search engines get signals from real users and their behaviors when interacting with your content and draw conclusions on what’s “quality content” based on that. For search engines, the quality of links directed at your content is also seen as a quality signal.
Read more about link building: “23 Actionable Link Building Tactics [B2B SEO Essentials]”
Can I have a successful website without content creation?
There are some exceptions, but usually NO. You need a solid content strategy and consistent article writing processes in place in order to see your site on the search engine results pages.
Your website content might start organically ranking for your brand name + a few other keywords but if your goal is to drive traffic and leads to your site, then you need to invest in a dedicated SEO content writer or use one of the article writing services I mentioned above.
How important is social media vs SEO in digital marketing?
It depends on your industry and target audience, but as a general rule of thumb – SEO and content marketing are crucial for B2B products/services.
Suppose you’re in the B2C market and focused on increasing brand awareness. In that case, you might see that social media marketing has a bigger impact on your business and should take a central role in your digital marketing strategy.
In general, your digital marketing strategy should combine both – quality SEO and social media marketing.
Conclusion
There are tons of other SEO content writing services out there, so let me know if I missed a good one.
SEO content writing is something that businesses need to start doing on a scale if they want to succeed with it and in order to do it, it makes sense to find your favorite SEO content writing service that doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out.
