Why You Shouldn't Outsource SEO Copywriting to India

As a disclaimer, I'd like to point out that I recognize that as an SEO copywriter myself, I'm naturally biased against internationally outsourced content writing. Yes, of course copywriters in India and the Philippines have a tendency to "steal" business away from professionals like myself. Yes, Indian and Filipino writers are able to charge 1/10th of what I charge due to the differences in our respective countries' currency values.

But that's not why I believe outsourcing SEO copywriting overseas is a very, very bad idea.

For example.

A prospective sent me a sample of SEO articles he'd purchased (and regretted) from an SEO company as part of a package deal. The content was sold to him as "high quality SEO content", and he THOUGHT he was getting a bargain.

The articles were very similar to other "high quality SEO" articles another client of mine had purchased (and, again, regretted) from India for $5 per 500 word article. I've seen plenty of this kind of outsourced SEO content - never in search engine results, mind you - and it never fails to irritate me.

Still, I can understand why SEO companies and businesses think outsourcing their SEO copywriting in this way is a good idea. At $5 per 500 word article with guaranteed quality writing and optimized linkbacks, how could it go wrong?

Just like this:

"Considering how the global economy is faring these days, saving as much money as possible is not just an option. If before, a one-dollar difference does not warrant a second glance, now, even the amount of half a dollar is valued. This is why, more often than not, most people opt to do things their own rather than hiring a professional. Granted that the task may require most of their time during weekends, if it will be cheaper, then it is fine."

I'm not making this up.

Silly phrasing and substanceless subject matter aside, there are far more sinister flaws in this so-called "SEO content". Not only do these articles often fail to meet basic SEO criteria for keyword density, but they also use strategies which, if executed in bulk, could actually cause the website to be penalized in search engine results.

Keyword density. Can you tell what this particular article's main keywords are from the above paragraph? No, you can't, because there aren't any. That's right, an entire 80 word paragraph and not a single keyword.

Keyword density for main keywords inconsistent, at best. In the above mentioned article, density for the main keyword is below 1%. To make a solid impact (without getting too spammy), SEO articles need to target a keyword density between 2.5%-6%. Density aside, the keywords in these articles are often too general or improperly formatted (e.g. using "checks" rather than "ink for printing checks" and "MICRtoner" instead of "MICR toner").

No longtail keywords. Notably, the article focuses on only root keyword phrases without incorporating any longtail variations. Embedding main keywords into longtail variations is a tactic I've found to be effective for drawing traffic for the often-ignored lontail search query when drawing traffic for smaller, more competitive terms would be impossible. Thanks to low keyword density, lack of longtail keywords and lack of content value, these articles will likely never see the light of search engine results pages.

Too many links. Links are too numerous and the anchor text used is unvaried. Articles used for link building purposes should use between 2-6 links; more will put the article at risk of being flagged as spam - because it IS spam. It looks like the SEO copywriter hyperlinked every keyword in the article, bringing the average number of links to 10-20 per article.

Unvaried anchor text. The lack of variation in these links is cause for major concern. As SEO guru Tim Grice points out, Google is now giving more weight to "natural" links with varied anchor text. Websites with 100s or 1,000s of incoming links all using the exact same anchor text phrasing appear highly automated to Google. Consequently, these sites have been getting pushed farther down in the search engine results pages in favor of sites with a wider variety of deep and varied anchor text links. In short: fewer links can be better, if those links appear more natural. There's nothing natural about the links in these outsourced articles.

The Moral of the Story

Internationally outsourced SEO copywriting may be a lot cheaper, but the quality is simply not there. From a content standpoint, these articles are full of nicely phrased, disorganized fluff which provides no true value to the readers. From an SEO standpoint, these articles contain a critical lack of genuine SEO savvy which could end up wasting your money at best and hurting your website's rankings at worst.

Stuffing keywords into an article about nothing is not SEO copywriting. A true professional SEO copywriter has invested significant time into understanding the finer nuances of SEO and how successful SEO copy works; he or she takes the time to perform keyword research, outline a content strategy and leverage longtail keywords and varied anchor text. And yes, professional SEO copywriters like to be compensated for their work.

As with any other business investment, you get what you pay for. If you pay $5 for an SEO article, that's exactly what you're going to get.

Unfortunately for my prospective client, he paid far more than $5 per article once his SEO firm was finished marking them up. This brings us to the issue of purchasing re-marketed SEO content from SEO companies.

SEO companies are in the business to make money, and professional US-based SEO copywriters like me can be expensive. What better way to cut costs than to hire international ESL copywriters for $5 per page?

To be fair, not all SEO companies remarket this kind of crap to their clients - but there are plenty out there that do. If you're purchasing content from an SEO company, be sure to ask exactly where and whom that content is coming from. Investigate to see what the company's "high quality SEO articles" really are. SEO copywriting guru @HeatherLloyd has some great tips for determining whether or not your SEO firm is qualified to provide you with SEO content.

SEO 103: Link Building Terminology & Basic Concepts

So you've done keyword research for your business's website. You've written (or have hired a copywriter like me to create) quality, keyword-rich content with proper header tags, bolding and formatting. That programming firm in India has finally gotten around to updating your website with new content, and it looks beautiful. Only one thing is missing: traffic!

Link building is one of the three most important aspects of search engine optimization, the other two of which we've already covered. When you're going through the first phase of website optimization, link building is the "capstone" that pulls it all together.

First, let's review the first three steps of SEO for small business websites.

Search Engine Optimization:

1) Perform thorough keyword research.

2) Write quality, well-optimized content.

3) Gather inbound links from authoritative sites.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of link building, let's define a few key terms.

Outbound Link - A hyperlink which directs from your website to another website. This shameless SEO copywriting link, for example, is an outbound link which directs from this page to my main business site.

Inbound Link - A hyperlink which directs to your website from another website. For example, I got an inbound link as part of my new Local First membership.

Anchor Text - The text that is used to hyperlink to another web page. Sometimes anchor text is the same as the website URL, e.g. www.creativewebbusiness.com, but ideally it's composed of actual words, e.g. Creative Web Business. More on that in a sec.

Link Building - The SEO practice of gathering more inbound links to your website in order to help boost your website's rankings in search engines. Good link building also boosts referrals from other sites and, ideally, helps to build brand awareness in relevant industry circles.

What does link building do, and why is it important for SEO?

I could ramble on about the complexity of Google's constantly changing algorithms and Page Rank, but why bother when Matt Cutts is still prowling the interweb?

This is what it boils down to: inbound links let search engines, like Google and Bing, know that your website is worth being included in search results. The more inbound links your website has, the more authority it has in Google's eyes and, consequently, the higher your website will rank in relevant search results.

You can think of it as networking, but for your website. A successful business person is constantly expanding his or her network; likewise, a well-ranking website is constantly gathering new inbound links from quality websites.

Key Elements of Link Building

Ok, that was the easy part. Link building isn't as simple as paying for a bunch of crappy directory listings. There are a few important details which are necessary to make link building a successful part of a larger SEO strategy.

Over the years, SEO spammers have found a way to wiggle around Google's rules of etiquette, and, consequently, Google's rules have gotten a lot more strict. An important part of link building is avoiding practices which will get you banned from Google's search results.

Never pay for inbound links. Paid links are strictly forbidden by Google, and Yahoo and Bing don't take too kindly to them either. There are ways to wiggle around this rule, but it must be done carefully. Some directory sites require you to pay a small fee for inclusion in the directory, not for the link itself - an important distinction. These directories usually offer very low quality links, however, and are usually not worth the money. Speaking of which...

Links from quality, authoritative sites carry more weight. Search engine optimization specialists used to rely on "Page Rank" to determine how much a website is "worth". Page Rank is quickly becoming outdated, but it's still a useful guide to determining which sites to target for link building. In general, links from websites and/or pages with higher Page Rank will give you more "link juice" than those with low Page Rank. For example, a link from LocalFirst.com, which has a PR of 5, will send more link love than a link from MichiganLookup.com, which only has a PR of 3.

Prominent links outweigh buried links. How deep within a site a link is placed is yet another factor to consider when determining the value of a link. In other words, a link placed on the home page of a website is going to be far more powerful than a link placed on a sub-sub-subpage or a buried "Links" page. Remember what I just said about LocalFirst.com's PR? Well, when you drill down to the actual page my website link is listed on, the PR of that subpage is only 3. Most listing pages on MichiganLookup.com haven't even attained PR, so the LocalFirst.com listing is still more valuable.

Anchor text counts! If I could only give you one piece of advice for link building, it would be to pay attention to anchor text. Whenever possible, use the same keywords for which you want your website to rank for in inbound link anchor text. In other words, if you're targeting the term "Grand Rapids transmission repair", you'll want to gather inbound links which contain those keywords in their anchor text.

Using anchor text properly can be tricky, however. You do NOT want all your website's inbound links to have the same anchor text, since Google tends to see this as spam and may lower your website's rankings. The solution? Change things up. Changing anchor text as much as a word or two can keep your website on Google's good side.

Of course, there are many finer nuances of link building not discussed here, and I didn't touch on how to go about obtaining these links. Those topics will have to wait for another post.

Confused yet? Comment and drop me a question.

Small Business Success with SEO: Achieving Google's Page One in a Month!

As I mentioned last week, I've been working on my first marketing video, which is in the form of a case study. Thanks to my iMac's build-in camera, microphone and video editing software, iMovie, doing the actual editing, voice over and timing portions of this video weren't too difficult. The hardest part was recording the video portion without looking and sounding like an awkward robot. There goes my future acting career.

The graphic slides were created in Keynote, then exported as images so they could be imported to iMovie. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

The video is a case study outlining the basic search engine optimization strategies I used to boost a small local driving school to the top of Google's first page. The SEO campaign I ran for this small business was relatively simple, but what made it worthy of having a case study video made of it were the phenomenal results we saw.

Using:

- keyword research

- quality, optimized content & meta data &

- basic link building,

WCMDE.com saw the following results in less than a month:

- page one rankings for 95% of the business' key service & location terms in Google, Bing & Yahoo

- 2 known sales conversions directly resulting from the campaign

- a complete return on investment

Hopefully, this video conveys how simple and cost-effective SEO can be for small and local businesses. Far too often, the costs associated with SEO and internet advertising are inflated and unnecessary, and one of my main goals as a web marketer is to make make internet marketing affordable for the businesses that struggle the most: small businesses.

I would love to hear your thoughts, comments and criticisms (yes, I want to hear your criticisms!). Comment and tell me what you thought about the video or the case study.

Thanks!

The Marketing Copywriting Golden Rule: K.I.S.S.

Over the last two weeks, I've been developing a web marketing video based on a campaign I recently did for a Michigan driving school (Forgive the shameless link building. What's a marketing blog for, if not to give yourself and your client links?). In concept, the video seemed like it would be very simple to put together; it would be just a basic case study with screen shots, text and voiceover. In execution, however, it proved to be MUCH more difficult than I anticipated.

As a writer I've always been overly verbose, and my creative writing background doesn't help to stem that tendency (see?). My professors taught me to edit and be critical of my work, and it's no coincidence that my most successful poems and creative pieces were always the shortest and most tightly edited. When developing copy for marketing materials, however, there's even less room for excess words. Being verbose with marketing content - whether it's video, ad copy, white paper, whatever - is the best way to kill your message and bore your customer base.

This is the lesson I learned the hard way over the past few weeks. My first video script was three pages long and took 10 minutes to read. That was after 3 rounds of slicing and dicing up the copy. 10 minutes! Without interesting visuals, nonetheless! Who would watch such a boring monster?

Luckily, a friend of mine (who just happens to also be my cousin-in-law) owns Creo Productions, the sweetest video production studio in town. Last week I asked him if he had any tips on writing scripts for video. He and his business partner always prefer to write video scripts themselves, and they've gotten pretty darn good at it (visit their blog for proof). Without blinking, he shrugged and responded, "just keep 'em short."

Andy's sage advice gave me the boost I needed to take a hatchet to the script once more until it was pared down to a manageable 5:15. Hopefully, after one more round of editing, I'll be able to get it down to 4:30.

The whole experience reminded me how important it is to "keep it simple, stupid", or "KISS". No matter what kind of content I'm writing, I have to remind myself of two important things:

- What is the message I'm trying to convey?

- What is the simplest, clearest way to communicate that message?

If there are words or phrases floating around that aren't absolutely essential to the message I'm trying to communicate, more likely than not they need to be cut.

Marketers have egos - often larger than normal folks - and it can be particularly difficult for us to take a hatchet to our creations. But when it comes to content, simplicity always wins. Whether you're a copywriter, video producer, blogger, social media guru or graphic designer, it pays to remember that less is more.

Stay tuned next week when I (fingers crossed) will publish my first video here. You can be the judge and tell me whether I "KISS'ed" or not.