Don’t Outsource Your Content Overseas!

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

There are plenty of good reasons to outsource your content writing and marketing to an SEO firm. For instance, you may not have the time or writing skills to fully invest in a managing a content marketing campaign. Since content marketing is one of the fundamental elements of inbound marketing , outsourcing it to a reputable SEO company makes sense. But when looking to outsource your content marketing, or any other part of your SEO, keep it in the U.S!

The great thing about working with an SEO firm is that they don’t have to be local. The Internet is everywhere, and nothing in SEO is so time sensitive that working with an SEO company in a different time zone could become a serious issue. If you work in Chicago, but find a great SEO agency in Portland, by all means hire them! Don’t let location keep you from working with the right SEO company.

That being said, you want to keep your SEO and content marketing within US borders.

First off, it takes a mastery of the English language to write exceptional content in English. No to say that there aren’t fluent English speakers all over the world, but if you outsource your content, chances are it won’t be written by them. Most businesses decide to outsource their content to countries like India or the Philippines because it’s much cheaper than hiring a US-based, native English speaking writer. When it comes to SEO, remember that you get what you pay for! It may only cost you $5 to have someone in India write an article for you, but you’re only going to get an article that is worth $5.

One of the ways overseas SEO firms keep their costs down is by spinning content. You hire them to write a few articles about your industry, and they’ll just take a free article from an article submission site, tweak it and sell it back to you as “original” content. Most of the time they won’t even bother to steal the good content; authors who care about their work keep an eye on who is “borrowing” it. They’ll pluck articles from spammy, low-quality sites that algorithm updates like Panda were designed to take down.

Some businesses decide to outsource their content marketing overseas because they don’t have the time to produce the content in-house. If that’s the case, don’t you want to outsource your content marketing to a white hat SEO company that knows, not only how to write great content, but also leverage it for SEO. If you are writing content just to drop a few links, you’re missing out on the bigger picture.

Content marketing is supposed to enhance your brand and build your credibility as an industry authority. Outsourcing your content overseas may be the cheaper option, but what is it really doing to help grow you brand and build your online presence? You have to think in long-term when planning your SEO. Pinching pennies now could mean paying a higher price farther down the road. Don’t be penny wise, pound foolish with your SEO!