Hiring SEO Writers. How to Source, Evaluate, Hire, and Pay
u/Jig Literally all you need to know about hiring SEO writers. How to source, evaluate, hire, and pay. Hey guys!
So I've seen the question of hiring writers pop up on just about every SEO sub, so thought I'd make a mega-comprehensive post to share my experiences with it.
For context, over the past year+, I've sourced and vetted thousands of writers from literally every source – Facebook ads, groups, problogger, job boards, referrals, and so on.
And yeah, the entire process is a pain in the ass. Most writers you source WILL suck, and you'll end up spending long hours sourcing, vetting, and trialing these writers.
Luckily, there ARE ways to make the process of hiring writers less of a pain. In this post, I'll teach you what worked for me so far. If you dig the post, I'd appreciate if you checked out our sub too – r/seogrowth. Hope this doesn't count as self-promo 🙂
First thing's first before we jump into the deets, let's talk numbers. Writer Sourcing by the Numbers
When sourcing writers, here's the general picture I get:
• When you post a job ad on almost any online job board, you'll get around 100 plus applicants. For some job boards, this can be up to 200 – 300. ProBlogger, specifically, gets us a TON of applicants.
• If you source around 100 writers total, you'll see that:
• 90/100 of those writers are going to suck. That's just part of the game, nothing you can do.
• Around 3-5 out of those 100 are going to be the "I wrote for Forbes and charge a dollar per word" type. You won't be able to hire those without breaking bank big-time.
• The final 5 of the 100 writers sourced are going to look good on paper. If you trial all 5 of them, chances are, you'll end up hiring 1-2. You'll discover that one of them is committing identity theft (cosplaying a good writer), and another is not as good as they claim to be (they worked with an amazing editor, so their samples don't represent the quality you'll be getting).
• So, at the end of the day, from sourcing 100 writers and trialing 5, you end up hiring 1-2 writers tops.
So the lesson here is, hiring writers is a numbers game. You have to source and vet a whole lot of them if you want to make a handful of hires.
Obviously, mileage may vary. Sourcing Writers
Here's a list of writer sourcing channels that worked for me, sorted by how well they worked:
• ProBlogger. You'll get 200 – 300 applicants per posting, so definitely worth paying the 70 USD fee. The quality ranges from "awful" to "amazing."
• Facebook Jobs. Create a job on your Facebook profile and pick a target location. Create an ad out of the job and target people with 1) English as a language, 2) content-writing / SEO related interests.
• Facebook groups. Think, "Expats in [location]." These groups have a ton of quality English-speakers/writers.
• Referrals. If you hire an expat writer in Bulgaria, for example, you can ask them to refer their friends. Chances are, they know at least a handful of people who'd be good writers.
• UpWork / JobRack / Outsourcely. All of these platforms are pretty decent for head-hunting specific writers. Posting jobs on UpWork usually leads to very questionable quality applicants, though.
Now, as for the process of sourcing writers, here's what you gotta do:
Pick a target word count per month. Say, you want to publish 30,000 words of content per month.
The average freelancer writer can, from our experience, take on around 10,000 words of work per month. So that means you have to source enough writers to make 3 hires.
Meaning, you want to source around 200-300 writers to make this happen. Use the mix of the channels we mentioned above to get this number. Ask for the Right Info
Get your writers to fill out a Google Form. This is going to make the process of vetting the writers (explained below) much easier.
The form should ask for the following information:
• Basics like name, email, location, etc.
• Portfolio URL.
• 3 writing samples. You HAVE TO ask for samples, otherwise you'll be wasting a lot of your time. If you're OK with hiring recent graduates (more on this later), you can mention that "academic writing samples are OK."
Vetting Writers
Now that you're sourcing hundreds of writers, you have a new problem:
You have a database of 300+ writers, each with 3 writing samples.
That's a LOT of samples.
So, unless you want to spend the next week reviewing hundreds of samples per day, do this:
Create an SOP for evaluating writers and hand it over to a virtual assistant.
The Virtual Assistant (VA) is going to go through their writing samples and evaluate writers based on the following criteria:
• Basic English. Does the writer make very obvious English mistakes throughout the post? Disqualify the ones that do.
• Content type. Does the writer have quality, educational long-form samples? Disqualify the ones that send in generic 500-word articles.
• Topic complexity. If your topics are going to be complex, you want a writer who has some technical background. What I'm saying is, you don't want to hire a travel blogger to write about accounting.
Once the Virtual Assistant (VA) short-lists the writers that look good on paper, you should give the samples a final look and invite the writers for a (paid) trial task. Hire the ones that perform well.
When giving the trial task, provide the writer a Google Doc that they're supposed to write on. This way, you can check article history and see 1) who wrote the sample (i.e. if the writer did it themselves, or outsourced it) and 2) how long it took the writer to write the article (not including research time).
Pro tip – yes, the trial task is very important. Sometimes, you'll see that the writer 1) isn't the person behind the samples, 2) had a very good editor who basically "carried" the articles they submitted as samples. Hiring Full-Time VS Freelance
If you ask me, full-time writers blow freelancers out of the writer. Here's why:
• Freelancers are motivated to fluff up the articles and try to write the content ASAP instead of actually taking the time to perfecting the posts.
• Freelancers can usually do more output (since they get paid per word), but this usually reflects on quality.
• Freelancers aren't going to spend as much time on research as they're only getting paid for the end result.
• Full-timers can also learn how to do other tasks like landing page copy, ads, etc. since you're paying them per-month instead of per-word.
Other Relevant Tips
Here's a bunch of other tips that didn't fit anywhere else in this post:
• Hiring recent university graduates is a good strategy as long as you train them extensively. Meaning, weekly calls, training sessions, workshops, etc. Give them regular readings on Search Engine Optimization (SEO), writing, copywriting, and whatever topic they're going to be writing about.
• When working with writers, use content outlines (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vz4PpWkq7MkyFjLBt34TI5U1xeeBPcjDUleWd5vM_5c/edit). This helps ensure that they cover the topic in such a way that the article will stand a chance at ranking on Google.
• Upgrade your best writer to an editor. Upgrade your best editor to "Head of Content," if you're going to scale your content hard.
• Give your writers extensive feedback if you want them to improve. Don't just leave a comment saying "this sux pls improve" – actually tell them how/why they can improve specific bits of text.
• Give your full-time writers a task to master the topic they're writing about. For 2-3 days, 100% of their workload should involve reading articles about this topic, reading up FAQs on Quora, reading what questions people ask about the topic on Reddit, etc.
• Do video call feedback with your writers once a week. They'll learn the topic / writing a lot faster if you do that as opposed to just leaving comments on Google Docs.
• Use Google Docs for all your content creation and editing needs. Use Mammoth Docx to automatically upload content from Google Docs to WordPress.
Aaand that's it
That should be about all you need to know. Got any questions? Comment below! 32 💬🗨
meme_echos You forgot about hiring an agency – what are your thoughts on that?
Testing a few right now, and the results (so far) are basically as good as the results after all that effort you just mentioned, but prices are inflated by 50%.
Personally that's a tradeoff I'm fine with, compared to spending dozens of hours finding a decent writer that I'll have to babysit and likely lose after 1 year unless I raise pay substantially.
Jig ✍️ No experience working w/ a content agency. I run an SEO agency & we do content in-house, that's how we get the most quality output.
Daaz
If your topics are going to be complex, you want a writer who has some technical background. What I'm saying is, you don't want to hire a travel blogger to write about accounting.
It's not a good idea to hire "unicorns" anyway. In accounting you wouldn't hire a veteran expert accountant either if you don't want to burn your money.
You'd hire an experienced consultant (who provides the process) and get the actual work done by a freshman – because doing it and following a process isn't that hard. This way you pay less for a much higher quality. That's also how most agencies operate internally, their best people aren't the ones doing the actual work.
Finding a domain expert in your niche who's also into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very hard or expensive, it's much better to get the content from a domain expert and get it rewritten by a seo writer.
Jig ✍️ I'm not advocating looking to hire unicorns. The top-top writers who have 10 years of writing experience, high-level of accounting knowledge, AND good SEO understanding is gonna cost a pretty penny.
What you can do, though, is hire a recent business school graduate w/ understanding of accounting + strong writing skills, and get them to learn the topic by tasking them to focus on the research for the first few days.
What I'm saying is, you can find peeps with domain knowledge for most niches (unless you're looking for something complicated like high tech, cyber sec, etc.).
Daaz Everytime you raise the bar you're looking at a smaller pool of people who would do the job – making it more expensive. This is certainly true if you task them with research because it's gonna cost them a lot of time. It's a different world than 10 years ago, somebody who recently graduated has many more (online) opportunities and ways to spend their time.
junglegut This is a great writeup! Thank you for doing so, and I've subbed as well.
Maybe I missed it, but did you mention any specific pay rates here? I see it in the title but not in the content, unless you were referring to just the difference between paying freelancers or fulltime writers.
Also I LOVE your content outline there! Could I ask what you use to put those headings and descriptions together?
Jig ✍️
This is a great writeup! Thank you for doing so, and I've subbed as well. Maybe I missed it, but did you mention any specific pay rates here? I see it in the title but not in the content, unless you were referring to just the difference between paying freelancers or fulltime writers.
No specific pay rates as those can wildly vary on freelance/full-time, experience, English knowledge, location, etc.
Also I LOVE your content outline there! Could I ask what you use to put those headings and descriptions together?
Thanks! Manually, actually. Don't use any fancy tools for these.
We have an SOP for creating these. Basically, this involves:
• Base it on whatever is currently ranking
• Look up "People also ask" and "ask the public" to find related topics that people also look for. Add them in the outline.
• Calculate the word count for the top 3 ranking articles. Go for the highest word count of the 3.
• See what kinda questions people ask about the topic on Reddit. Make sure the outline includes those topics too.
Usually, the outlines are made by one of the following:
• Head of content / editor
• Writer focused on the specific project (reviewed by editor or SEO pro)
willpe8ch Nice post and some very good pointers.
Quick Q: if you're publishing at scale you're seriously going to produce content outlines like that for every piece?
Surely it makes more sense to train the writers how to come up with the H2's/subheadings in the first place?
Jig ✍️
Quick Q: if you're publishing at scale you're seriously going to produce content outlines like that for every piece? Surely it makes more sense to train the writers how to come up with the H2's/subheadings in the first place?
W/ us, it's usually the head of content or the writer who makes these, so pretty scalable.
The outlines aren't usually as detailed as this one though – some are more detailed, some less, depending on how complicated the topic is.
Sometimes, we do even more detailed outlines if the topic is super technical and someone on the team has experience w/ it. E.g. with marketing or SEO topics, I personally write a huge outline with exact info that needs to be mentioned in the article and writer turns that into a post.
mrsuperflex Great post! I'll definetly keep it as reference for when I'm putting together my first team of writers.
You mention that most writers do 10.000 words on average per month. At a 2.5c rate that's $250 which is less than I thought would be a minimum for a freelancer to want to stick around. I'm probably going to take the leap from agencies to freelance writers in a couple of months.
What are your thoughts on getting your preferred writer at an agency to jump ship and come and work directly with your site?… I have one that I like working with, but the agency doesn't really provide much of a system for communication other than content briefs.
Jig ✍️ Thanks!
What are your thoughts on getting your preferred writer at an agency to jump ship and come and work directly with your site?… I have one that I like working with, but the agency doesn't really provide much of a system for communication other than content briefs.
As someone who owns an SEO agency, I'd reco. finding someone yourself instead of poaching one haha. Poaching from a company you work with is a bit of a low blow. You're better off poaching from the competition. Find an article you like, grab the writer's contacts, and hit them up on email or LinkedIn.
upvotesthenrages Fantastic content! Thanks for this.
One question: What virtual assistant would you recommend?
I'm assuming this is a bot type thing and not an actual person you hire.
Jig ✍️ It's an actual person you hire, actually. Unfort. most Artificial Intelligence (AI) / bots today aren't that useful.
A Virtual Assistant (VA) is, well, an online assistant basically. They help you with tasks that take up too much of your time like publishing content on WordPress, gathering link prospects, and basically anything that can be explained with an SOP.
You can hire 2 types of VAs:
• VA as an internship. You hire a recent graduate and train them to do a more complicate SEO task (e.g. on-page, link-building, whatever), and in the meantime, they act as a virtual assistant / help you with time-consuming tasks.
• Career VA. There are a bunch of people on UpWork who do virtual assistance as a full-time/freelance thing. These peeps are good if you don't have the time to train a VA yourself.
am-noobie Awesome write up, thanks for taking the time.
Do you, or anyone for that matter, have experience with folks from r/HireaWriter?
Also, do you typically pay for the test articles? Is this at a lower rate than usual or the same you'd pay them as if they were already working with you?
Jig ✍️
Awesome write up, thanks for taking the time. Do you, or anyone for that matter, have experience with folks from r/HireaWriter?
Yep. Some quality writers there for sure. Pro tip – instead of posting a job ad, look for writers in your nicha via search (e.g. search for "Software as a Service (SaaS)," "tech," whatever) and head-hunt em'. Going to be more effective.
Also, do you typically pay for the test articles? Is this at a lower rate than usual or the same you'd pay them as if they were already working with you?
We have a policy of, "we'll pay you if the article is something we can use." If the article is clearly extremely low-effort rush job, then we ain't paying. Also if it's a copy-pasta or any other type of trash.
If the article is decent or at least salvageable, we pay the agreed upon rate.
You HAVE TO pay for your trials, otherwise they won't be reflective of the content quality that the writer can put out. Especially holds true if the topic is something that requires some research.
