How do you balance creativity and SEO in web content outsourcing?

I’ve been a contracted content writer myself, and hired a few as part of my own business. I can’t speak for every niche, but when writing about psychedelics, authenticity is key. Audiences should be able to detect that a writer has “been there”, regardless of SEO constraints. This means that writers have to have had at least a bit of their own experience in this area. There are many technically proficient writers out there. But this sense of authenticity is often the missing piece. Not only does it help content be more engaging, having a writer who is publicly known for doing the thing they’re writing about is the first step towards it being authoritative and therefore more shareable & discoverable.

When choosing writers, it is important to consider the following factors: Experience and expertise in your niche. Choose writers experienced in your industry with a strong grasp of its terminology and jargon. Creativity and originality. Seek creative writers skilled in crafting engaging, informative, and entertaining content. SEO knowledge. Writers should have basic SEO knowledge to optimise content for search engine rankings. Communication skills. Clear communication and constructive feedback are crucial for effective collaboration with writers. Test candidates. Test candidates before hiring to evaluate their skills, including following instructions, original writing, research, and English proficiency.

While keywords and topics are essential for SEO, they should not limit your creativity or originality. You can use synonyms, variations, and related terms to avoid keyword stuffing and make your content more engaging and natural. You can also use storytelling, humor, anecdotes, and examples to illustrate your points and connect with your readers. Remember that your content is not only for search engines, but also for humans who want to be informed, entertained, and inspired.

Let's put SEO, traffic, and all that good stuff to the side for one second and consider why writers use headings, subheadings, and titles in the first place. It's to help readers get a general idea of what the text below is going to be about. No one wants to open a book titled "How to Get Over Social Anxiety" and have it be "50 Shades of Grey". Keywords and SEO research will always help you gain and maintain good traffic, but above all, your titles and headings need to be helpful. In fact, Google also prioritizes headings that are helpful and accurate to what they represent. So, before doing any sort of SEO research or digging for keywords, think about how you can make your titles and headings more helpful to readers.

Titles and headings are extremely important as they help scanners get a quick idea about your content piece. Before optimizing the headers, ensure they are accurate. Optimizing inaccurate headers won't do any good. For titles, I generally keep a detailed title (if that's what the requirement is) for my blog. However, when it comes to SEO titles, I ensure that they are short, clear, and are optimized for driving higher CTRs. I personally use CoSchedule Headline Analyzer for this purpose. Again, this is just a tool which assists me in the process. I don't blindly follow it. Often times, I go ahead with my instinct if I am not satisfied with the results of the tool. Also, there are tools which help you visualize your SEO titles.

When optimizing following should be kept in mind: Catchy and clear. Your titles and headings should be attention-grabbing and easy to understand. They should also be relevant to the content of your page. Include your keywords. Your titles and headings should include your main keywords, but you don't want to stuff them with keywords. Use keywords early. The first few words of your title tag are the most important, so make sure to include your main keyword early on. Be concise. Your titles and headings should be short and to the point. They should be no more than 120 characters long. Use power words. Power words are words that evoke emotion or action. They can help to make your titles and headings more engaging.

Everything and anything you write needs to have a unique voice. One of the biggest mistakes I see writers (including myself) make is going by the instructions of clients or team leads, never thinking about what kind of personality they can inject into their writing. Regardless of what people may be reading, they'll always appreciate a human touch and a tangible voice or character. This makes what you're writing more digestible. Palatable. Even easier to read for those who don't have the patience to sit through paragraphs of someone droning on and on.

Embrace the power of unconventional storytelling! In addition to encouraging variety and voice, consider incorporating unique narrative techniques that captivate your audience. Experiment with interactive elements, immersive experiences, or even gamification to make your content stand out. Remember, the key is to strike a balance between creativity and SEO while pushing the boundaries of traditional storytelling. By doing so, you'll create a memorable and engaging web content outsourcing strategy that sets you apart from the competition.

SEO is much more than adding keywords. It involves many things like: 1. Adding Images/GIFs Images provide visual aid to your content. It also breaks a long wall of text, offering white space and visual relief to the reader. It also helps in SEO search image. 2. Videos Videos help you explain a complex topic without occupying much space on the blog and also with higher clarity. Also, if any of your video is ranking on YouTube, you can add it to a relevant blog to make it rank on the "videos" search on Google. 3. Links Adding internal links not only helps reader to navigate but also passes link juice to other blogs. Whereas, external links enable you to cite various stats, making your content factually correct and trusted.

The general idea of SEO is to stuff your content with the desired keywords. But that's only a part of SEO. Depending on the subject and tone, you can add real-life images, videos to your content. Adding alt text, captions and source to the images/videos are also part of SEO hygiene. If your content is informal, has funny tone, you can add GIFs. Another crucial part is, adding links from your website and links from external website related to the topic. I like to add Internal links in the form of "Also Read" section in between the relevant paragraphs. Like, keywords, the key here is to not stuff your content with multimedia and links but to place it strategically.

I don't know who first said it, but remember: "You can only improve what you can measure." Data is your friend. Use it. Here's an example. You write an article on the increased prevalence of AI writing tools. Google Search Console tells you that engagement and ranking is 8/10. You're hitting your targets there. But conversions are barely out of the block. OK, what do you know? Perhaps your CTA isn't strong enough. Perhaps you're missing a piece of the puzzle. Look at your CTA, where could you improve it? Make it more persuasive? Explore the data. Test, iterate, improve, repeat.

Even when you balance your creativity and SEO for your web content, you must guarantee the content is helpful and valued to your target audiences. Creativity or SEO is only part of the journey to reach the audience and drive them to stay, read more and keep curious about your next content. If your content doesn't bring them something valuable - answer their questions, meet their needs or wants, the balance between creativity and SEO can't improve your images or impressions on your audiences.

No matter how creative your content is, it won't make any impact if it doesn't reaches its audience. That's why it's important to focus on both SEO and creativity. In my opinion, you must take care of the SEO hygiene first and then try to infuse your creativity wherever there's an opportunity. Do ensure that your SEO efforts don't take a hit due to the creativity.