DomainInvesting.com

Yesterday afternoon, I discussed the importance of having good content on your websites. It will drive traffic to your site via search engine, and it will bring visitors back if your site is a good source of information to them. After all, people primarily visit a particular website to learn something or to get information, and if the information proves to be faulty, there is no incentive to return.

When building a website, one of the most challenging things is writing all of the content, as there can be dozens or even thousands of pages of unique content that’s needed. To do this, I’ve used copywriters in the past, I’ve written my own content, and I’ve also hired an expert for something that required current expertise. Depending on the website, you need to determine who should write your content.

To find a good copywriter, you can start with a Google search for “copywriter” and contact some of the leading companies that offer copywriting. It’s better to get a quote for all of your articles at once, as you will get a better price break for more articles. You can also search sites like Guru.com and eLance.com to find professional writers. I found a couple of writers simply by posting in DN Forum, and I was satisfied with most of the work.

You might also look around the industry/community in which you are writing the content to find an expert. Some people will charge a considerable sum of money to write articles, but there are also people who are willing to write articles in exchange for advertising, and some will do it for a link back to their website. It’s important to negotiate everything beforehand and make sure you are getting unique content that’s free to use and distribute on your site. If information is very technical or is difficult to come by online because of frequent changes, you may be better off working with an expert in the field.

Choosing whether you should write the articles or not is a personal decision based on the amount of time you have to do research and write the articles. If you don’t think you can write quality articles – especially if you need a significant number of articles – it’s best to outsource them. Hypothetically, if you are paying $20 per article that takes you 2 hours to write, isn’t it worth paying someone else $10/hour so you can do other things? You can always revise the copywriter’s work if necessary.

One concern that people have (myself included) is that the content is passed off as being unique but is really copied from another source. Copyscape is a service that allows people to search the Internet for copies of text. You can also search Google for random “quoted snippets” of the article to make sure that it wasn’t lifted from elsewhere.

Here are a few tips to getting good content for your websites:

• Ask for samples of work and references. Ask the owners of the websites where the samples are from if they would be willing to provide a good word for the writer.
• Have the copywriter write the first article at no cost to make sure the work is up to your standards. Address any grammar or colloquial issues ASAP to avoid disappointment.
• Ensure that the copywriter has the capacity to do all of the articles you need in the time you need them. There’s nothing worse than getting a great article and moving forward, only to find out that the writer can’t do them all and starts to take shortcuts on the rest.
• Don’t ask for all of the articles at once to make sure the writer doesn’t get off track. It’s easier for the writer to correct the issue on the first few articles than to go back once theyre all done.
• Make sure the copywriter provides the source of information for all articles for your records.