5 Reasons Why you Shouldn’t Hire an SEO Copywriter Right Now

You’ve got an online business.

You want that online business to be found on the interwebs so you’re tentatively exploring the tangled, somewhat confusing world of SEO.

So…should you hire an SEO copywriter?

I’m going to be super honest in this post and put my own personal agenda as an SEO copywriter aside and tell you why you DON’T need to hire an SEO copywriter right now.

Hiring an SEO copywriter is a big deal and you want to make sure that it’s a leap in your business that you actually need to take before forking over your hard-earned cash.

Some of these reasons are more relevant for not needing SEO blog content, but others (like reason #2 and #3 in particular) also cover why you might not need SEO website copywriting right now.

So, let’s take a walk.

Reason #1: You don’t Do Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you sell someone else’s products or services online and receive a commission for every unit sold. It’s an incredibly popular method to generate passive income in the online business community and an SEO copywriter can help you nail things like review articles to earn more selling affiliate products.

The idea is that an SEO copywriter would create a great content marketing strategy to sell the value behind the products you’re promoting. For instance, if you’re an ESL teacher with an online business you might sell iTalki credits and earn an affiliate commission from that.

An SEO copywriter (dare I say, an ESL SEO copywriter?) would create a series of posts like; “Best Platform to Practice English with Natives” “iTalki Review” “How to Improve your Speaking and Pronunciation Skills in English” to draw in relevant searchers who would be most interested in taking you up on those iTalki credits.

Remember, SEO goes so well with affiliate marketing because it rewards you over the long-term. That means a blog post you write now will still bring in affiliate commission for you in years to come as long as your affiliate link is still valid.

Compare that with social media which needs regular promotion and a much bigger time commitment because it only rewards new content.

However, if affiliate marketing isn’t something you’re into or want to try out, then an SEO copywriter might not be that useful to you.

Reason #2: You Haven’t Nailed your Niche/Positioning Yet

No amount of SEO can fix a broken business. If you’re unclear on your target audience then SEO will be extremely difficult for you.

If you’re a course creator who has a general “online marketing” course for basically any type of business, you’re going to struggle a lot to see any type of ROI on SEO.

That’s because SEO really shines in the niches and the very long-tail keywords which pull in highly targeted traffic which is more likely to convert. All the major players out there have already dominated the super broad keywords and to be honest, a lot of the time it’s not even worth going after trophy keywords.

If you haven’t nailed down your positioning and niche you’ll likely be going after very broad, vague keywords which will only pull in the worst types of leads who don’t even really know what they’re looking for. You’ll also be battling it out with some pretty huge websites who you’re unlikely to topple from the first page.

So, if you haven’t gotten clear on your niche and positioning so your SEO copywriter can actually build content around some really great, highly relevant keywords, then I would wait until you figure that out first.

Reason #3: Your Current Website is slow and Clunky

SEO is an ecosystem so if you have major issues with your website then it doesn’t matter if you hire the best SEO copywriter on the planet, your results will be hindered because you’re building a house on shaky foundations.

Slow websites with a terrible user experience will struggle to rank well. Google takes over 200 factors into consideration when ranking a website and your content + copy, while very important, are only a part of the puzzle.

Your website should load fast, be secure and be easy to navigate. If not, then you’ll struggle to get your website to rank even with great SEO optimized copy.

So, don’t hire an SEO copywriter if you’re website is slow and you aren’t ready to invest in fixing that first.

Reason #4: You Don’t Have a Funnel in Place

This is particularly true if you’re considering hiring an SEO copywriter to write blog content for you. Well-written and well-optimized blogs are a great way to generate more traffic, but you want that traffic to actually convert in some way.

While some blog content can be quite “bottom of the funnel” (eg “how to hire XX”) the majority of it will be pulling in leads and searchers who aren’t quite ready to make a purchase with you yet.

That’s where having a solid funnel comes in to make sure that you’re SEO blogging efforts actually pay off. A funnel would be something like this;

👉Someone searches for “how to integrate Calendly and Asana”

👉They find your article on this on Google

👉 While reading your article they see you have a free Asana set-up tutorial

👉They sign up for your email list to get access

👉Once on your email list you send them an automated email campaign that promotes your paid Asana course

💸Cha-ching you just made a sale!

The fact is that few people will go from a free blog post to a high-ticket offer right away. They need nurturing first and that’s where something like an email campaign comes in to help them make that leap. If you’re a service provider or have any type of high-ticket offers you’re hoping to promote with your SEO optimized content, then make sure you have a funnel in place first.

Reason #5: Your Business is Brand New

This kind of falls into the positioning reason up above but usually if your business is brand new and you don’t have investors etc then your business goals, vision and offers are bound to change in a relatively short period of time.

You want to make sure what what you spend on a good SEO content writer is going to actually serve your business not just now, but in the future also.

I would say if you’re in your first year of business and don’t have a validated offer yet, then you should hold off on hiring an SEO copywriter for now.

Wait until you’ve really nailed your offer, positioning and you’re clear on what your business goals are. That way you’ll make sure you’re getting the ROI that will really grow your business.

Need to Save Someone From a Bad investment in SEO Copywriting? Send them this Article

Kerry Campion

SEO Copywriter & Content Marketer

Kerry Campion is a content marketer and copywriter for SaaS brands who are fuelling the creator economy. Her gig is creating customer-centric content marketing plans and writing SEO copy that sounds nothing like SEO copy 😎. Get in touch if you’re interested in working together!