If you were to listen to any aging, self-appointed pundit, they might tell you that the written word is dead. Long since replaced by an endless feed of GIFs, memes, and six-second videos.
This has led many businesses to adopt flashy content marketing strategies that put all their eggs in the basket of visual content while ignoring their content writers.
And while it's true that today's internet users love videos and GIFs, written content still has a huge mark on the web.
While it's difficult to get an accurate count, it's estimated that there are as many as half a billion blogs active today, their users making over two million posts per day.
That's a lot of content to compete with. And if you're going to stand a chance to stand out among the pack, you might need some extra help.
In this article, we'll look at how hiring professional content writers can help boost your business.
Most businesses are busy enough without trying to find time to write effective, engaging, regular blog posts.
There's barely enough time in your schedule for tracking down leads, making sales calls, managing existing customers, and everything else you need to do without worrying about your website's blog.
By outsourcing to a skilled writer, you can improve your content writing game without giving up too much of your own time.
On top of lacking the time to write your own blogs, your company might not have the talent. To paraphrase Einstein, expecting someone in-house to write a great blog is might be a bit like expecting a fish to climb a tree.
On the other hand, a professional content writer has the talent to deliver a great blog every time.
Most content writers work with a wide variety of clients. Their skillset is diverse and adaptable, so you can trust them to deliver consistent, high-quality content that will help grow your business.
Few things can help grow your company than a strong web presence. And one of the biggest boosts to that web presence is a strong SEO strategy.
93% of web experiences begin on a search engine. If your website's SEO isn't optimized enough to rank highly, you might be losing visitors before they even get to your website.
Luckily, content writing is a great way to boost SEO.
One of the most basic elements of SEO is keywords. When you do a search, the search engine takes your terms and searches the internet for instances of those terms.
In the early days of Google, stuffing as many keywords as possible into a page was enough to get the coveted top spot. Now though, the search algorithms prefer more organic keyword usage.
And there are few better opportunities for organic keywords than blog posts. And professional content writers are able to craft high-quality blog posts that make great use of your target keywords.
Another thing that attracts search engines is new content. In 2010, Google updated their algorithm to include a Freshness rating. Websites that are updated more frequently are given preference over websites that are not.
And one of the best ways to put fresh updates on your website is through regular blog posts. A weekly blog post that cycles through your target keywords does a lot for your SEO rankings.
SEO is much more than just keywords and freshness though. One of the most important parts of any SEO strategy is link building.
As your content writers make new blog posts, they can link to other pages on your site, which helps search engines catalog your site and establish a hierarchy of pages.
As your blog establishes your business as an authority in the industry, you might also see other websites linking to your content. As you build backlinks, Google's authority ranking of your website increases, boosting your rankings.
While we're still engaging with written content, the way that we read in the modern world has changed considerably.
Reading online isn't like reading a book. Very few people sit down and engage with content with undivided attention for an extended period of time.
Instead, we scan new posts for a few seconds before deciding whether we will keep reading or bounce back. Studies have shown that 55% of users spend less than 15 seconds on an article.
With such a small window, you need to make sure that you do as much as you can with those fifteen seconds.
Content writers aren't daunted by those numbers.
That's where they thrive.
They're at home writing for scanability, packing a punch in a brief package that attracts the attention of even the most attention-deficit readers.
It's no secret that social media has changed the way companies do business.
Where your website once made up the bulk of your web presence, now most users are interacting with your company through your social media profiles.
It can be difficult to translate these social media impressions to actual visits to your website.
But, if you have great posts on your blog, you can share those to your social media channels. If those pieces are valuable enough, your followers might share it to their followers, and to their followers, and so on.
And while not everyone who sees your posts will click through to your site, creating compelling, shareable content is a great way to make your traffic explode.
If you're looking to hire content writers for your company but don't know where to look, you're in luck.
Search our database for skilled, vetted freelance writers and start growing your business today!
