Ghostwriters, SEO, And The Vast Right Conspiracy

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Wednesday, 2 of January , 2008 at 9:25 am

I can’t say that ghostwriters are all bad. I can’t say they’re all good either. But if you’re going to use a ghostwriter then I’d suggest that you do three things before you let your ghostwriter start writing your blog or website content for you:

1. Interview your potential ghostwriter extensively. Don’t let any ghostwriter touch your stuff until you are absolutely sure that your ghostwriter understands the basic principles of ghostwriting - he or she should be in the background while you are in the front (otherwise, why hire a ghostwriter?) - and make sure that your potential ghostwriter understands your business.
2. Make your any ghostwriter you hire to write online content for you understands SEO. If they don’t understand SEO better than you do then they probably don’t understand it enough. This might not be true if you are an SEO, but most of you aren’t so make sure your ghostwriter knows SEO at least as much as you do.
3. Thirdly, don’t just make sure that your ghostwriters knows your business, but your industry. And make sure that your ghostwriter and you agree, at the very least, on the central philosophy of your business. In other words, he or she has to be able to write from your perspective. If you’ve been writing your own content for awhile then you’ve established your own voice and your readers will know it. They will know your prejudices, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your fourth child’s name. Does your ghostwriter? He’d better, because he’s pretending to be you.

If you do find yourself hiring a ghostwriter and you didn’t conduct a proper interview first, understand one thing: There’s no vast right wing conspiracy. There’s no cabal of ghostwriters out there trying to bring you down. Many, many ghostwriters are darn good at what they do. I have no problem recommending a ghostwriter in many cases, especially since Brick Marketing provides ghostwriting services for some of our products. But, you can get into trouble with a ghostwriter if you are not careful and that’s why you need to conduct a proper interview.

Category: Content Development, SEO

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