Everything You Absolutely Need To Know About Hiring A Content Writer For Your Therapy Website
Part 2

 

(continued from Part 1)

Can You Break Down Why Hiring a Content Writer Helps With SEO?

Absolutely. Good content writing can boost SEO- even without a dedicated SEO marketing strategy. Let’s review our favorite statistics.

• 77% of people using the Internet read blogs (source: Impactbnd).
• Websites with active blogs can average a staggering 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed inbound links (source: DemandMetric).
• 60% of consumers report feeling increased satisfaction with a particular business after reading their customized blog content. (source: ContentPlus).
• Compounding blog posts account for 38% of all blog traffic on the web. Compounding means ongoing organic searches grow traffic over time. (source: Hubspot).

When businesses exclusively focus on content marketing, they yield 5x more conversions than businesses that just focus on boosting search engine rankings (source: Kapost).

Okay, I Now See Why Content Writing Is Important. Can I Just Do It Myself?

Sure! Many business owners do exactly that. Maybe you enjoy writing and want to use your website as a creative space. Perhaps you want to cut down on marketing costs. Either way, it’s absolutely feasible to control and create your content.

However, we encourage you to keep the following statistics in mind:

Ability To Produce High-Quality Content

• Nearly one-quarter of readers indicate that “bad content” can tarnish a blog’s reputation or credibility (Source: Social Marketing Writing).
• Extensive, in-depth articles yield 9x more success than shorter pieces (source: Curata).

Ability To Produce Consistent Content

• Businesses that publish 16+ blog posts per month generate nearly 3.5x more traffic than businesses publishing only 0-4 blog posts per month (source: Hubspot).
• Business owners spend an average of 3 hours and 16 minutes writing a blog article (source: OrbitMedia).

So, yes, you can do this on your own. Just remember that you will need to invest time to research, write, edit, and format your content writing. As a business owner, you likely have numerous competing tasks to complete on a given day.

While most people have the best intentions to manage their writing, many of them:

• Get lost in the design or concept process and never actually start.
• Spend way too much time curating content only to receive minimal results.
• Write about the wrong topics, which won’t attract the right audience to their site.
• Become frustrated and abandon the process altogether.

What Should You Look For When Hiring A Content Writer?

Hopefully, we’ve convinced you why content writing matters. If you’ve decided to outsource this task, how do you find the right candidate? If you search the phrase, hire a content writer, Google rewards you with a staggering 115,000,000 Google search results. That strategy won’t take you very far. Let’s review the anatomy of the perfect writer.

What Level of Expertise Should They Have?

Like therapists and coaches, content writers come in all styles and levels of experience. You can commission the next-door teenager saving to buy a car. You can also hire the veteran journalist writing for The New York Times. To determine the level of expertise that’s best for you, consider the following factors.

Benefits of Hiring Another Mental Health Professional

Have you ever read an article containing stigmatizing language or grossly inappropriate assumptions about mental health? To borrow the classic therapist line, how did that make you feel?

We all know that therapy and coaching are intimate, nuanced, and sacred. Capturing your wisdom and thoughts about the work you do requires talent and intuition. For these reasons, many therapists prefer to work with someone in the field.

Benefits of Hiring A Content Writer With An Academic Background In English, Journalism, Or Creative Writing

Professionals with a formal education in writing understand the syntax, style, and flow of their creative process. You can generally trust that your content won’t have painful, run-on sentences or glaring grammatical errors.

If you choose this route, ask about their experience writing about mental health. Ask to see some samples. Just because someone has an M.A in Creative Writing doesn’t mean they understand how to write about EMDR.

Benefits of Hiring A Content Writer With SEO Experience

Most professional content writers integrate SEO best practices into all their work. To determine if a potential candidate has expertise, consider asking how they:

• Select blog topics: How do they pick targeted keywords?
• Format posts: Do they write long walls of text, or do they create scannable and easy-to-read posts? Do they integrate user-friendly tactics like headers and bulleted lists?
• Use inbound linking: Will they link posts to other pages on your site?
• Use external linking: Will they link posts to high-authority websites? Or, are they accidentally linking to potential competitors?
• Write to your audience: Are they writing in a way that appeals to your targeted demographic? Or, is the writing extremely technical and hard-to-read?

How Will I Pay For These Services?

Just like mental health professionals charge varying fees for their services, you’ll notice dramatic price discrepancies when hiring a content writer. Typically, writers structure their fees by word, hour, or by the entire project.

Hourly Rates

This structure is extremely straightforward. If a writer charges $50 an hour, they will invoice you $50 x the number of hours worked.

Pros: Hourly rates make it easy to keep track of payments. To maintain a consistent budget, you can work out an agreement where your writer works X amount of hours per week or month.

Cons: All writers work at different paces. One writer may take four hours to complete what another writer could finish in forty-five minutes. Unless you diligently micromanage your writer’s work, you risk receiving fewer articles or content.

Pay-Per-Word Services

Writers can charge anywhere from $0.1 per word to upwards of $1.50 per word. For example, if a writer charges $0.10 per word, you will pay $100 for a 1000-word article.

Pros: It’s easy to set a limit on the project. For example, you might tell your writer to provide a 750-800 word article about CBT. Usually, this pay-per-word rate also includes edits, which can be beneficial.

Cons: You may have no idea how long you actually want your articles to be! Moreover, inexperienced writers might be long-winded in their content. Some will engage in “fluffing” practices to boost their word count. In the freelance writing world, fluff refers to intentionally or unintentionally adding irrelevant content. This practice may result in you paying more for receiving weaker content, which could also result in lower search engine rankings.

Pay-Per-Project (Flat Rate) Services

Flat rate pricing tends to be the most popular option for monthly packages or subscription services. With this method, you pay a fixed rate for a set number of deliverables.

Pros: Flat rates offer a predictable expense each month, quarter, or year. Likewise, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting from your writer.

Cons: Writers may charge a higher rate for adding on more services. Some writers have clauses about canceling subscriptions prematurely (i.e., they may require a certain time commitment). An excellent writer usually has a limited number of clients they work with each year.

I’m Overwhelmed By All These Fee Options! Can You Just Tell Me The Best Way To Pay For A Writer?

There are no perfect strategies. You need to find what works best for you. For one-off projects like landing page content or About Me pages, hourly rates are convenient.

If you need consistent writing, monthly packages or subscriptions typically provide the most advantages with the fewest potential downsides.

Can I Hire A Writer For Free And Offer To Give Them Lots of Exposure?

You can, but we don’t recommend it. Here’s why.

• You probably don’t offer free therapy- unless you include pro bono work as part of your practice. If that’s the case, you have specific requirements for what that entails, and you reserve it for the most deserving populations.
• Freelancers already struggle with being underpaid and overworked. Taking advantage of unpaid labor only perpetuates this societal problem.
• You probably don’t have any real exposure to provide. This may sound like a harsh reality, but a single website (unless you’re creating the next Huffington Post or Forbes) simply won’t generate compounding, viral exposure.
• Your writer won’t have as much loyalty to you as they would for paid projects. Intrinsic motivation exists, but people depend on external incentives to sustain our livelihood. If your writer starts finding other work, they’re likely to abandon you first.

Professional And Friendly Relationship

What do your dentist, accountant, and your hairdresser have in common? Chances are, you trust their competence, and you tolerate their company!

You know the therapeutic relationship impacts how your clients heal and grow. Your relationship with your writer follows a similar philosophy.

While nobody can quantity what factors are most important to you, consider the following questions:

• How hands-on do you want to be with my writer?
• How would you like to communicate with your writer (email, phone, video chats?)
• What impressions do you immediately get about this writer’s level of professionalism?
• Do you feel excited working with this writer?

(Continues in Part 3)

​Read Part 3​