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Tips for a buyer looking to buy written content - from a seller


dante166

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Hello all.

Although I’m relatively new here, having sifted through a mixed load of “stuff” already, I feel I can offer some sound advice on what you should be looking for when it’s quality written content you’re after, not just on Fiverr, but beyond too.

  • First of all, don’t be lured into the SEO trap. If someone specifically mentions SEO this, SEO that, this MIGHT be all the content is good for. This actually can be a double edged sword. If for example it slightly knocks up your posts in the rankings, and the content is actually no good, this will be pretty short lived. Plus, most content writers have an awareness of SEO nowadays anyway, particularly if they’re experienced with digital-based content.

  • Carefully scan the seller’s profile, and look at the specifics of the gig posts. If it looks like it’s just a bunch of keywords, in a funny order, then this probably ties in with point number one.

  • Seek out samples of their previous content. Most decent content writers will happily point you towards some of their pieces, of course only in line with Fiverr’s policies, however.

  • Consider the way in which the seller communicates with you. If you send them a message and you pick up warning signals (overly bad spellings, somewhat exaggerated promises), then it might be prudent to err on the side of caution.

  • It’s not all about the price. Is saving a little money worth damaging your brand reputation?

  • You ideally should be asked about the target audience of the piece. Think about it - your customers are typically 20 year old health conscious fitness fanatics, for example. Would you target them with a marketing piece about the best place to indulge in a quadruple cheeseburger? Probably not. It’s all about being as cost effective and as targeted as possible - blanket approaches simply do not work.

  • Finally, you should ideally be asked to tell them a little about the aim of the post/your organisation. If you’re asking them to write about fashion for example, and you are a fashion blogger, then it’s clear what the purpose of the blog post is. If, on the other hand, you’re an anti-fashion campaigner, then the purpose of the post is completely different and it should ideally be tailored accordingly.

I’m sure you’re all savvy but I was just hoping to perhaps help people think a little more critically when looking to buy written content! Sorry if I’ve (somehow) offended anyone in the process… I’m just looking to hopefully champion a bit more thought! Thanks.

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Good points!

I think writing for humans (as compared with writing for algorithms) should be the goal.

Most people don’t think it through–and they shouldn’t have to–that you probably outsource your writing, but they still hold you responsible for the quality of the content on your site.

To be fair, though, it’s not only the smooth flow of writing that readers want; it’s also what they don’t want that matters. For example, are there too many ads? Are they the appropriate kind? Are certain elements of the page distracting the reader from the main message?

So, paying attention to the look and feel of each page of your Web site and evaluating it periodically so it creates an image in keeping with the mission and vision of your brand is important as well.

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SEO shouldn’t deter the quality of any content. In today’s online writing need, it is expedient to have some selective keywords embedded in the contents you’re writing- even if it’s a mere listing. It goes a long way in soothing both the search engine bots and the readers. Of course I’m not in support of bad contents. Nevertheless, seo is more than important for today’s website needs.

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Good points! I like especially the part that states " It’s not all about the price. Is saving a little money worth damaging your brand reputation?" There are so many good writers on Fiverr but fixing a low budget will drive you to the low-quality sellers.

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As I specialize in product descriptions, a request I often receive is “Can you make my description SEO optimized?” With a sprinkling of keywords here and there and one of those wonky titles that Amazon adores, viola! But even Google has stated that peppering your content with keywords isn’t the secret sauce that everyone hopes for. If the words and sentences don’t flow well and accurately share whatever message needs to be shared with the intended audience, all the keywords in the world won’t save 'ya.

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Asking for samples of work will quickly sort the good from the bad. A great content writer for one business or in one country may not necessarily be as good for another.

Also ask if the content in written or spun.

1,000 words of spun content isn’t worth 50 words of freshly created content.

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SEO-friendly articles usually yield more sales though. If you’re going conversion over buzz, I have noticed content doesn’t really matter all too much from test experimental niche’ research.

In fact, the worse the content was written the better the conversion rate seemed to be. Now I am not talking out-right terrible but if the content is too interesting they don’t seem to want to go to landing pages, shop, etc.

If you’re after readership sure, but the goal in a lot of cases is sales. Readership is nice if you want to build up a good mailing list for the long-term but if your business isn’t around that then I see no purpose for that kind of content writing.

Not to say you shouldn’t try your hardest to write an amazing article, but you should not try TOO hard to make it more interesting than your sales pages.

Search for some SEO gigs on Fiverr to see my point. Even some involving content writing with a terrible pitch get such a high volume of traffic making the content actually irrelevant and they get hundreds of sales.Without the keyword relevance they wouldn’t get the volume and in turn get much less in sales.

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Tell me about it. I had a buyer, on a different platform, that requested I write five articles for them and provided the keywords for them to be based on. At first, I thought each set of keywords (5) were the basis for each article; one phrase for one article.

After submitting the first article I was quickly corrected. They wanted all five keyword phrases in one article mentioned a boatload of times. Not only that, but the same treatment had to go for the remaining four articles that were to be written.

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