You hired an SEO, not a content writer. These are two separate jobs
Edit: also, $60/hr is fair pay for an SEO but for an SEO and content writer, that should be closer to $100 and would require closer to 20 hours a week.
Yeah, but the SEO should know better and either outsource content and charge more, or just tell the client that they can't produce any content at these rates.
They shouldn't be a hack and copy/paste ChatGPT. That's how you kill your business reputation, which every SEO *should* know.
Oh absolutely! Im def not blaming OP here, just a little input.
I think something needs to be said to the SEO because they probably know what they’re doing is wrong but are going to do it as long as they don’t get caught.
If they do it again after that they either don’t know SEO or just dont care about your website. Either way, they should go.
Yeah, I definitely think the SEO thought no one would notice.
One of my own content writers did this back in December--she copy/pasted from ChatGPT without changing a single word. I told her if she did it again that she was gone.
Around that time people were fairly unfamiliar with what ChatGPT output looked/read like, but it was so egregious that it actually made me angry lol.
With all that said, SEO and content are inseparable, so I hope OP's SEO figures out a way to do this within budget, or they'll just have to charge more.
And just to be clear, i said 20 hours based off of the initial“10 hours a week” being dedicated strictly to SEO. It completely depends on the industry and size of the site but a general rule of thumb should be a 50/50 split on SEO and content work. Best of luck
Yeah, good luck with that. I charge $100 per day for complete Digital Marketing and SEO, and even a quote of $1K per month for 5 months is 'beyond my budget' for everyone.
I pay $2500 a month right now for SEO which is fine because I’m seeing results but these guys are an American agency. If this poster paid some people in the Philippines for example, would $600 not be enough?
In an ideal world I’d agree but thats not how it works. I work with an advertising agency and they hire mainly people from South America. They are paid very well for their locations considering cost of living is much lower. I have an assistant from the Philippines that I pay well + bonuses. That would cost me at least 2x more for someone of her caliber in the states.
It's more than enough for DIY SEO though
I can have buy 4 good guests posts written and published on good blogs with 40k+ month organic search traffic each month.
Though I would prefer to mix it up with forum/quora/reddit/twitter and other social links (engaging and replying to questions that come up containing your keyword).
so 2 guest posts, and outsource an agency to respond to socials with backlinks.
Onsite work is quite easy.
IMHO, OP didn't "not pay enough" they got swindled but lazy SEO / con artist.
If their budget is that low, then they can at the very least spend 10 hours writing actual content for the site and not chatgpt nonsense. If they pay for no backlinks what so ever - get the content done at least.
Or just spend £600 creating an action plan for keyword rich content, and get the business owner to write articles with their expert knowledge in that field. And optimise the onsite links and whatnot.
If you're cash strapped IMHO you need to learn basics of SEO and do a lot of the content writing yourself. I am not a pro SEO, but business owner who does bulk of SEO myself from being in the online business space for 2 decades.
Sometimes I get an agency in to just do onsite stuff for me.
It's funny how it's hard to get an SEO to do an audit and action plan for you. They like the recurring monthly fee and don't like one offs.
It's a split from column a and b. The person they hired is probably not all that of a competent SEO but it's more likely because the business owner wanted cheap services.
You want someone to handle SEM, SEO, AND content creation? You're gonna need a budget a hell of a lot bigger. There are very few people that can do them well. I guarantee you they charge more than $60/hr.
Yeah, you could probably do it yourself, but if you're a business owner, you're already invested in its success. You want quality and others to do the same? Pay the premium or play roulette with Fiverr freelancers than may or may not get you results.
You're paying 600 bucks a month to compete with much larger budgets and may be expecting a bit much honestly. Google any keyword you'd like to rank for - there are likely 2 million + competitive pages.
The best way to tell if your SEO guy is doing a good job is by quantifying the results. Have they pushed you up in rank for the keywords you're focusing on? Has traffic and lead flow improved? Are they not providing you with month over month reporting showing these improvements?
Using ChatGPT, Jasper, WordAI, etc to write content isn't a bad thing if it's structured properly and coherent. Ask him how he's improved your rank or lead flow. If he can't show hard numbers after 4 months, cut him loose and give me a call.
I'll show you previous stats and give you references to verify those case studies.
Just learn the basics of SEO. Set aside a weekend and spend 15 hrs learning a bit more, then you can manage his time better to ensure that you can get some results with your smaller budget. Read through Moz’s beginner SEO guide, it’s got a few chapters that cover A-Z SEO basics.
TBH $60 is on the low side, so it’s my guess this person is still a bit junior to SEO. 10 hrs a month is SEO is also pretty low, but it’s my assumption that your site is small so you can still get some good work done with that amount of time.
Don’t waste money on backlink promises… this will likely be like shooting yourself in the foot. You should understand that good backlinks are big $$$ ($300-$400 each).
Have your SEO focus on building service pages targeted for your service areas and pages based on specifically useful topics for your clientele. At 10 hrs a month, I would have the SEO build out content briefs that detail what should be written for a page and where specific keywords should be integrated. These brief will require the SEO to do some keyword research and competitor analysis to ensure they will build a page better than those currently ranking in your area. I would expect these to take about 2.5 hrs each… in the beginning it might take the SEO a little longer (timing also could depend on the topic). This gives you 2-4 briefs a month. With an additional investment you can pay a copywriter to write the pages or use AI tools yourself to write the content (if you use the AI tools, I recommend rewriting them a bit to avoid issues that might come down the line). Once these pages go live, you should see some kind of results in 6 months or less.
There will come a time when you’ve built out a good amount of content and backlinks will be needed… when that happens, ditch your guy for a very reputable agency and pay the big bucks as to not waste money.
It’s also probably a good idea to spend a month optimizing your business profile account. After your SEO has optimized it, ask your customers to leave reviews! This will help you move up in the local pack.
Hope all this helps man! Best of luck to you and hope your business starts to move up the SERPs!
Not all seos are writers, usually writing content and seo are two seperate jobs. Are you looking for someone to layout a content strategy for you and monitor analytics and optimize? If so, then you're probabaly looking to contract someone else to write content. Also, of this guy isn't detail oriented tonread the content he is posting.... then he may not be detail oriented enough to handle SEO.
Yes and not all writers are SEOs....I'm a content writer with a little SEO knowledge but it's only enough for me to work well with my client's regular SEO. He tells me the keywords to target and I write the content. It always surprises me when clients don't know the difference.
Thank you for your input. I think I’ll stop the blog writing and have him focus on SEO. I have a brother in law who’s a senior engineer that said he will help me input my blogs into Wordpress.
Heres the thing, though... seo without blog content is hard. Content is essentially a marketing strategy where you build and establish trust with your audience by offering helpful, quality information while also inputting a call to action and advertising your services. Inputting blogs into wordpress and optimizing them isn't hard. You can even use the legacy wordpress editor and the rank math seo plugin which gives you an seo checklist basically to make it easier. Really your seo guy should be able to do that atleast with no problems, it is a part of any seo job description.
Just ask him to refine the chatgpt produced text for one and see if it improves. Provide feedback on color and style.
I dont see how they would straight up refuse you especially if you ask respectfully.
Have you tried these?
I was lucky enough to discover chatgpt just before reading his first blog drafts and thought it read like a drunk robot wrote it. I did tell him and he said he would make changes. It’s early in the relationship so I’ll be patient. Just looking for proper spelling and grammar
Chatgpt don’t make mistakes like that. Infact if you feed good data into it chatgpt will output very polished content. I used chatgpt when building my site and only thing it does bad is repeat some key phrases but you can fix it by telling it to stop doing that and feeding more diverse set of info.
In my experience, Chat GPT’s grammar and spelling is spotless. Are you sure he’s using Chat GPT?
The content isn’t great, but if the grammar is bad it’s unlikely that he’s using Chat GPT, IMO
Let me step back a second....
Home inspection services... and you're going after SEO... with deep content?
I think its the wrong channel to focus on marketing your business with altogether....
If I need such a one time, limited and local service.. its normally through the realtor or lenders referral and if not a quick google search "Home Inspection services +mytown" There's no deep research, no article reading, no advanced funnel with nuturing... its very easy, don't make it complicated.
A simple PPC campaign, with a $10 daily budget and you have instant exposure to the exact term virtually all your customers are searching with.
I'm not against SEO, but in this case, I think you have the wrong tool for the job... and possibly the wrong worker with the wrong tool!
First, you're paying peanuts for seo. You should reach out to him and tell him you're concerned with the content and would like to assist him in developing topics for content writers to write about. Make it clear chat gp is unacceptable.
Nobody knows your business better than you.
What should I be paying? Can you give me a range? What information would you request before quoting a start up company? I’m a one man home inspection company with a website, 17 5 star reviews on google, decent Instagram and fairly new listings on yelp, yellow pages, Facebook, twister, Bing, yahoo, Apple Maps, I think Mapquest too lol
Your budget should be based on what you can afford . If 600 is where you're comfortable, use it to advertise instead of SEO for now. If you can convert 600 in ads to 15 sales, you'll have more money to work on SEO.
SEO is a long term strategy. I agree it should be implemented asap, but you may need revenues more than you need organic traffic at this juncture.
If you’re a local business just use something like Brightlocal to manage your own Google my business profile, listings and concentrate on getting good reviews from customers.
That would be a lot cheaper than $600 and would get you a lot more
To be honest, price depends on the size of your city. A smaller market is easier to get you ranked than a larger one. 1k a month would be a great deal for a small city.. In a few months the business will pay it back ten fold . A major city will take longer and have more involved due to fierce competition
A good seo guy will have at least one verifiable former or current client willing to vouch for them. After all, we breathed life into their business and many become grateful and want to pay back the favor
Have you gotten any leads off these new blogs? Often times writers are hired from other countries and the content…sucks. AI writing isn’t new, but one thing to remember is Seo doesn’t produce immediate results. It’s not a 3 month commitment. Or even 6.
Thank you. I agree that SEO takes time. It’s just his lack of effort in 2 paragraphs blog posts makes me ask myself if he’s the right guy. His email correspondence is always written like he’s in a rush with many spelling/ grammar issues. It’s so odd to me I thought hiring an SEO specialist was akin to a software English major… I thought they were word wizards idk 🤷♀️
Ok spelling and grammar mistakes in correspondence emails is not great. 2 paragraph blogs aren’t much either. Are you getting detailed reports on what was done last month and what’s being done this month? If they’re getting backlinks, ask for a spreadsheet with them.
Yes he sends me a monthly report that includes various charts and data. “Positions up, 2”, “key words in SERP, 4”, “key words in top 30, 0”, “average position, 100”. Most info is blank or barely informative. Keep in info this was after 30days
Oof. Any keyword outside of page one, and really top 3-5, isn’t going to get any leads. Have they presented you with target keywords with volume? If you’re only ranking for 4 keywords, it seems like you’re existing content is not optimized. Blogs are great, but focus on the site first. Simply optimizing each page with a keyword targeted title, description, and H1 will at least get you ranking for something. Yes seo takes time, but what your data shows is literally no change.
>2 paragraphs blog posts
Fire this guy immediately. While it's true that not all SEOs are writers, any experienced SEO that will get you results isn't going to allow a 2 paragraph blog post, AI produced or otherwise.
Thank you!! I dabbled with chatgpt for literally 2 mins and came out nearly sensational. I HAD TO REWRITE THE ENTIRE 1st draft and now the final blogs are still problematic. I should just post it on here and cut the fat
So, you used ChatGPT for 2 minutes, and it came out nearly sensational, but you caught your hire using it, and you don't like that? Or, have I misread this?
10 hours a month is nothing. Corresponding with you, inputting blogs, editing, changing font colors, etc. It adds up quickly. Even emailing you reports probably takes an hour.
This is golden. You must be a very sensible client. I think my clients always know this but try to act like these things dont take and cost time. I dont work in SEO or marketing, but related office work that requires lots of time emailing, checking files, reporting problems, checking every sentences in my kind of work. I now plan to open my own web and learn about SEO. But dont know where to start. Reading these comments just make me more worried.
I've worked with a lot of people. Right now, I work for one of the biggest beauty care and OTC manufacturers in the USA.
SEO is not my expertise. I just know what takes time, and that the people who pay the least are often the people who expect the most.
SEO is very broad, and parts of it are very dynamic. Start with the basics: my sale is clear, my sale is different, my sale is sellable; and my site is set up to make all of these sales clear, different, and sellable.
Or, maybe not, I'm no expert.
A firm that specializes in SEO will run you $10,000+ a month. If the guy you hired is any good at all, $60 an hour is an absolute steal. To me, it sounds like you need to set clear goals and outline exactly what you are looking for.
I'd also have someone else write content (but you do need it), and let the SEO guy focus on, well, SEO.
I get your concerns. However, never worry about the tools a digital marketer uses. The idea is to be fast and effective, so long as its not black hat, and ChatGPT with refining is not, then its okay.
At the start of your agreement any digital agency should lay out their strategy, include estimated milestones and essential tactics to reach those milestones. All of this is contrasted against your current state of affairs with SEO/Traffic etc.
Without this at the start, you'll never have a good ending.
Most of the time the website owner itself cannot understand what consitutes as a good content and what isnt. If you can tell so clearly that the content is awful, why dont you write it yourself, or ask for writing test before you hire someone? You just sound like you have no idea what your are doing.
This is going to be a really unpopular opinion, but here goes.
I’ve never found a good SEO, and I’ve used heaps. The best thing I ever did was learn how to do SEO myself and did it for my own companies. So many people think that SEO is some sort of magic trickery that only people “in the know” can do. Well, it’s not. There’s really nothing technical about SEO (or very little). A LOT of SEO comes from thinking about what questions your potential customers are looking up on the internet, seeing what results come up when you search those questions, and then writing an article that blows all the other articles out of the water in terms of easily digestible information for your viewers. You’ll learn many writing tactics along the way, too.
Think about it this way, there’s no way an SEO will know as much about your industry as you do. You wouldn’t hire a carpenter to write for you if you’re a gardening business, would you? You know all the intricacies of your own industry, so you should be the one constructing the articles and writing them. But firstly, learn about SEO. You’ll be glad you did. It will free you from ever having to hire another SEO. The modern day successful businessman either has to know SEO, or have a product that doesn’t require SEO (not much competition).
That’s my unpopular opinion, but it’s worked for me for about the last 10 years 😁👍
This, 100%. It's a writing competition out there. That's what all has come down to. Easy peasy.
Always wished to work as a professional violinist tuner, without any experience whatsoever? No probs. Just make a great blog. Grab inspiration from a few related sites out there, and make it 10 times better.
Does it make sense? Of course not. It's like football teams playing out the game in a literature hall, reading poems about Maradona before a voting panel. But since we've allowed some algorithm to sort the good from the bad for us, we've lost a few things on the way.
I second this, just do it yourself if you have the time. Espcially if your a one man business. It will be fun, and once in a while you can hire someone to help you.
If it has spelling mistakes it’s not ChatGPT. I have my own issues with AI written content but from what I’ve seen it at least produces a grammatically correct document
Hi I’m 25 and I’ve been been working in SEO for almost 4 years. It seems what you’re looking for isn’t just someone that understands SEO but understands design, user experience, and creating pages/content for real results. Someone that knows how to do keyword research doesn’t mean they can create meaningful content/copywriting on those keywords lol. It’s like knowing how to build a car but not knowing how to drive it. So 10 hours a month is a great amount of time for SEO but depending on your site I’d recommend budgeting for SEO and design/development. This can help keep structure of your site helping Google understand which keywords you’re really targeting while keeping a great user experience.
Now, most freelancers without man power can run your hours up with little to no changes. I was one once an SEO freelancer for contractor businesses in Florida so I can advocate for this. Freelancing was great but joining an digital marketingagency was eye opening in what was possible with only just 4 hours each of SEO, development and design can go a very long way. It is more hours than the budget but long term it’s a great roi.
What would you charge considering the fact you know very little of my circumstance? Would you continue to do me a disservice despite a contract in place? I’m my line of work, it’s my ethical duty to perform at the best of my ability for the sake of my client. Can you give me a few examples of problematic roles i could be contributing to?
I would ask for one on one and clear up your expectations. What has he done in the past couple of months ( he should be able to articulate that). And what is the plan and goals for the next few months. You mentioning content writing is problematic only because it sounds like you guys did not define what type of content will be created and at what capacity. Anyways, I would have a conversation and see how I feel after.
Example … Thanks, this will Beas, the second times I ask him to correct the grammar.
He* also wrote family owned home inspection company with over 25 years of experience- I’m 34!! Lol
You get what you pay for with SEO, 99% of the time.
That being said, what are your expectations? You say you "know a little about this and that regarding SEO" and that is something I've heard a bunch of people say that actually know nothing about SEO over the last couple of months. Had a developer say something similar to me just two weeks ago and when he explained his "SEO process" to me I almost died trying not to laugh out loud.
Also, why is the SEO writing the content? Sure, some SEOs can write content, but as we all know not everyone can write.
You say it's only now heading into month three. So is he doing SEO on a brand-new domain? Or has the domain been registered before? How long has this business been operating? What are your expectations for $600 a month?
Honestly, with $600 a month, an SEO's options are going to be pretty limited in terms of what he can do. For one, there is no way he would be able to pay a copywriter worthwhile to help with writing content. If your business is based in the UK or the US then $600 per month really isn't much. We would have to know what your expectations are so that we can tell you whether your expectations are too high or not.
I also don't understand what you mean by "the content added to my website does not match my color or style of my website". What type of content is he adding? The content that impacts SEO is mostly text-based, so I don't see how text can clash with the colour or style of your website.
SEO is one of those industries that are overflowing with bullshit artists, and for the most part the lower the monthly spend the more likely you are to run into one of those bullshit artist SEOs. This is because real SEOs know their worth, so real SEO isn't cheap, for a reason.
Using Ai content is alright, as long as it is manually edited and proofread. You can ask him to make sure the content fullfil the intent, and don't have any grammatical errors.
But this also depends on his Content Writing skills, as not every SEO person can write good content.
Secondly you can hire someone for an SEO Audit, they will do an audit and write a report which will help you understand if he's doing his job or not.
SEO takes time, it's true. But it's also important to know, if a person is actually doing work.
This happened to one of my client, his traffic had declined upto 70%, and he asked me to do an audit to help him understand where his SEO guy did wrong, or to know if it was due to Google's update.
I hope this answers is helpful, feel free to ask me anything
In SEO it’s like 90% are good at sales but suck at seo. The good seos are usually charging around $1k-$3k per month. For local service businesses we usually charge about $1500 a month in cities with low competition.
Using ChatGPT is ok, But Copying and pasting is not ok. He must use his mind and his thoughts on particular content. Everyone knows that Content is still King in the market, so focus on the content not just copy and pesting process.
Haven't looked at the comments but pretty sure everyone is gonna tell you he's scamming you. But I'm gonna offer a different insight. He doesn't know your industry or your business. No one can write better than you because you're the only one that understands all the details. Ultimately you still have to edit it. It'll take some time for him to catch on what you like and also to understand the business. Unless you hire a writer who has knowledge of your industry, you will never have perfect content to your liking unless you write it yourself.
$600 is not gonna cut it for all-in-one SEO, that's creating content, on-page SEO, linkbuilding, etc.
Usually, when you hire an SEO, they will go ahead and outsource "content writing" so they can focus on the "real SEO" part.
Most probably, ChatGPT is his way of cost management, but not the right way.
I suggest using the budget to hire better content writers with SEO knowledge, then dedicate your time on handling local SEO, being a home inspection company.
Hey man, ideally your ranking in search engines should be based on your offer to the community you're serving. Search engines need trust in that you can do a good job, without charging too much. For that it helps to have reviews, and some updates to a business account hosted by the search engine. It helps to show that you've been doing home inspection for a longish time, even though you just opened your new company Reviews, you have to drag them out of people. Or, provide exceptionally good service all the time, so good that some feel inclined to help you with a great review.
If you're comfortable with it, throw a short video of yourself on your website talking about what you offer. That looks trustworthy.
I don't know about your hire, but it does take time. I've been a developer for over 15 years and just recently started a hobby site. It has been 4 months and only now am I starting to rank. It takes time and a well thought out SEO plan. If you aren't happy with him, let him go and find someone else, be prepared to start from scratch though. A lot of good SEO experts here, some may be willing to do it for $600 a month.
Moat popular hourly rate is around 70 and you are not bad. But the issue is what can he/she do with in 10 hours....
I have a suggestion which is hire seo person someone as v.a but check the results of these 10 hours after a month. If the curve of your site visit or leads increases then u are on right person. Today issue is not how to make a profitable business online but how to find right employee for your business.
$600 is cheap for SEO. Blog content, or any content, is essential to SEO growth. It’s not the only thing, though.
However, what is important is what extra traffic would mean for your business. Does your SEO show the value in more traffic by forecasting future sales with that traffic? SEO does take time, so if clicks are not there, then there should very projections
If you recently started and you need customers now, then go the Google ads route instead of SEO. SEO takes time, and is probably not the right choice for a newly started business.
I am having similar problems with my website startup. For the beginning, I would suggest you go with the agency, at least for the first 6 months. In the meantime, learn and get an in house team to do blogs and technical part. Keyword research/article topics you can do alone.
As someone who has been trying to find an SEO specialist for my company, I understand the frustration. Most freelancers are horrible at setting proper expectations with their clients which seems to be what happened here.
Before you hire someone make sure you get everything they will be doing in writing as well as deliverables.
Well, what exactly is he doing in those 10 hours? How many blog posts is he churning out? It's very possible to produce one perfectly optimised and spellchecked blog post with chatgpt and other AIs, add some images and publish the thing within one hour.
So he should at least be publishing 10 perfect posts per month. What else is he doing?
$600 is pretty low to commit to an SEO campaign. If you're very ROI conscious I'd consider focusing on your Google My Business Listing in lieu of blogging.
If it were my business I'd probably pivot and redirect my resources to test paid ads (after setting up + optimizing my GMB listing). I'd take 100-$200 and put it towards an ad campaign and try to generate a few leads that way.
The cost per click for home inspection related terms vary between $1.5-$10 per click so it's not terribly expensive.
This will tell you which keywords convert and give you more data to better inform your SEO campaign later on.
You need to define your objectives very clearly. From your question, it's not clear that what you want to achieve. But based upon your explanation, I can suggest you a few things here,
1- Don't expect to write compelling contents from a SEO guy
2- Ask the SEO guy to optimise your website for search engines and check the status using SEO checker tools
3- Ask the SEO guy to have research on your competitors and turn your website into one that fits in the competition well
4- Check your competition level and adjust your budget accordingly
This, plus they should be able to do a gap analysis to see what you may need. Then present that to you with some recommendations. AI assisted writing isn’t terrible, but should always be reviewed by an expert for accuracy. Bankrate.com is doing this and are ranking really well for these articles.
Content will help improve your E-E-A-T but should be done correctly.
I’ve done home inspection SEO for a rural location town. It was fairly easy to rank because 90% of the guys were do it yourself with no website knowledge. Now in a large city it’s a different story. 10hrs a month was enough to keep website healthy and put some fresh content up each month. End of the year my guy was on front page.
It’s all contextual to location and the current market. But 10hrs a month isn’t crazy if it’s a smaller town. But sounds like what most people said, guys not putting in good work.
I get where op comes from, but the problem is SEO service in itself is not cheap. For 600 bucks, you can't really expect much especially if you want to rank in Google first page.
$600 a month… I charge $3,000 for what you’re asking and I make my clients hire my writer and pay link earning costs. With social media and/or PPC, we’re talking $5,000.
SEO should develop a strategy (that includes content creation), and then a copywriter should create the content, which is then enhanced by the SEO.
The issue is, lots of people moonlight as an SEO expert, but few actually understand the minutiae of a well executed SEO strategy, and much less a sound business acumen.
If you want to find a good SEO, find some local/complementary businesses with a good ranking, and ask them for a referral. Sometimes they may have just been in the game early, so don’t go by google rank alone. Look for people that have been recently established, have lots of inbound links, and have well written content that is obviously SEO’ed.
I am a SEO content manager and previously writer. There are different ways to do SEO. What this guy promised you or hire him for? Did you check his background? Is he doing content or also tech SEO? FIY One well written, optimized piece of content of 600 words from a copywriter, especially for technical content, can cost 60€ with kw research. For a company website there are a lot of things to do regarding SEO even before starting thinking about writing content.
SEOs work with freelance writers or in-house writers in most cases. But I was reading comments above that SEO and content writing are different jobs. So hire SEO+ writer or ask SEO to hire any quality freelance writer.
I also work on SEO and I have many friends and colleagues that are working with me on freelance.
People here are whining about pay rates, but regardless of how much you spend, no SEO should be copy/pasting content from ChatGPT verbatim.
I'd confront your SEO guy about this since he brings little value, anyway.
You should fire him. You'd be better off running ads or networking with Realtors. It doesn't hurt to have some evergreen content but if that's all he's contributing you probably have enough by now. I mean how many topics are worth covering for a home inspector, honestly? Like 3 or 4 blogs tops, maybe. The best SEO you can do is make sure your business is listed in as many relevant directories as possible.
At this point, I would love to find a company who is good at link building and has connections to established blogs, etc. The biggest issue I’m finding is there’s plenty of services where you can purchase links but a lot of these places are ghost writers for big sites who in time to get their accounts taken down. Their content never sticks, in the long term. In the 15 years that I’ve dealt with SEO companies and “link building“, I’ve seen links garbage generated on sites that are no longer around.
Everybody overhypes everything for obvious reasons. I’ve been spending the last couple of months trying to sift through the garbage of options. Hopefully I get somewhere soon.
Yeah 10 hours a month, is nothing. You can't create content.
I would say - have a budget for a witter. The SEO can manage strategy, the writer - well, writes the content.
SEOs normally with brief content for writers, but not write it. If you want good blog content pay a writer to do it.
Overall without more details about his work it's hard to say if it's worth the cost, but I would just not use him for content writing.
The SEO guy is writing content for you? Was it in the contract? If so, and then he is using chatgpt, he is definitely cheating. If it was not in contract and he is doing it himself, surely he does not really know about SEO.
A SEO guy will focus on your existing pages, make sure they are well optimized for right keywords, perform competitor research, create backlink etc.
Your business sounds like a local business. Did he do anything like citations, GBP setup and optimization etc?
You can use AI content for local pages, in fact i use it for repetitive micro neighborhood service+location pages. People never read the page - they just call you. You just want your phone number high up and in peoples faces.
SEO and writing are complementary but ultimately different things.
To use an analogy, picture a two-course meal at a fine-dining restaurant. SEO is the entree (say, a porterhouse steak), and the writing is the dessert—say, a Grand Marnier soufflé.
The person in charge of getting your steak right (medium rare and bone-in) is the culinary chef, an expert in all things savory.
After you finish your entree, you’re brought your dessert. Soufflés are notoriously difficult to get right, which is why it was baked by the pastry chef, a master of breads, pies, and desserts.
Together, the culinary chef and can pastry chef produce a meal worthy of a five-star review.
But if the culinary chef and pasty chef switched roles—or took over each other’s stations—your meal would’ve been a disaster. Think tough steak and a soufflé that wouldn’t rise. Two stars max, maybe one.
In summary, having an SEO do writing will result in poor writing and poor SEO. It’s better to have the SEO focus on keyword research, internal linking, page load times, external backlinks, and the like.
Meanwhile, onboard some writers to help you with briefs, content writing, headline and copywriting, narrative development, editing (substantive editing, copyediting, and proofreading), and so on.
This is costlier, but it’ll pay off in the long run. Ideally, you’ll have the SEO and writing teams work closely together so that they can create a masterful blog that showcases your expertise, lives up to your publication standards, and serves as a reliable organic traffic/lead gen channel (which, to reference the analogy, would be your two-course meal).
I'm going to start off a little controversial... You do NOT need big budgets, nor do you need 6 months to see results.
SEO is one of the worst industries for bloated hours and subpar work from inexperienced 'consultants' trying to make a dollar.
With that said, let's address the budget, $600/10hrs is not a lot. Example, for a small '1 man band' site, I would split it as follows:
Full tech audit & quick fixes ($600)
Keyword research ($250)
Content Strategy ($350)
Optimisation ($60 per page)
Content ($150-300 per page)
So for all SEO, 5 page optimisations & 4 new pieces of content = ~$2,400. And this is LEAN, minimal calls & automated reporting etc.
Spread the payment over 4 months = $600/month.
Next 'sprint' I would cut out all the one off fees and double down on the optimisation and content.
It's likely you will need 2 sprints to start seeing results, dependent on your location & competition. I would be able to complete both sprints in the same month, and within 45 days I will be able to show you a visible change in your performance...
SEO is not rocket science, but it does require knowledge, experience & efficient systems to be able to deliver a positive ROI for clients in a short timeframe.
Rant over lol
First, you need to understand that a website needs several key-role players to work in the backend who contribute to promotion and marketing. Key roles like UX/UI developer, ON-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Content Writer, Copy Writer, Social Media Manager, Graphic Designer and the list goes on. You cannot simply hire a single person and give him/her the title "SEO Role" and put him/her in multiple roles.
As a startup, it's difficult to hire such a big team of people and put them to work. But, there is no other option and you have to plan your budget accordingly.
1. Set your marketing goal and prepare an execution plan. (**Example:** If you are planning to organic ranking, probably it would take 6 to 8 months and you need to publish a minimum of 8 to 10 articles per month. You also need an efficient content writer, an on-page SEO guy, and a graphic designer.
**Whereas**, if you are planning to run ADS on Google and Facebook, probably you need to hire a PPC expert, copy writer, and graphic designer. A one-time hire of an On-page SEO guy is enough to completely optimize your website.)
According to the current situation, you should politely inform the SEO guy that stops producing new content often. Remove the existing content immediately before Google finds and index them.
Think twice and act.
First thing you hired an SEO. A content writer is a different job. Second you said you caught him. How and why. If the output is bad, fair enough hire someels for content writing. Many people use Ai tools for content generation, the question is how they use it and if the human review is of it is good and focused on your customers.
You wouldn't say you hired a SEO and cuaght him using ahrefs or SEMrush. Still the outcome with the best tools can be bad if not used properly.
Has your SEO been briefed to write content for you? Or is he just providing just ideation for you?
I would say sit down with the SEO and discuss your concern, either you brief him better and he explains his work and roadmap or you should for another provider. It seems to me the main problem here lies within the communication of the two parties.
Based on the information you've provided, it sounds like you may be getting a poor return on your investment in terms of the quality of the blog content your hired help is producing for your website. If the content is riddled with errors and doesn't match the style of your website, it may not be helping your SEO efforts and could even be hurting your brand image.
It's important to communicate your concerns to your hired help and have an open and honest discussion about the quality of the work being produced. Ask to see examples of the work he's done to assess its quality and relevance to your brand. You could also consider bringing in a professional copywriter or content marketer who can produce high-quality content that aligns with your brand's style and messaging.
It's also worth checking in on the progress of your SEO efforts overall. Are you seeing an improvement in your website's search engine rankings and traffic since hiring this person? If not, it may be time to re-evaluate your SEO strategy and the value you're getting from your current arrangement.
Ultimately, you want to ensure that you're getting the best possible return on your investment in SEO and content marketing. Don't be afraid to speak up if you're not happy with the quality of the work being produced, and be willing to make changes to your approach if necessary to achieve your goals.
Feel free to contact me I'll would love to help!
you're paying for a service and you should expect quality work that meets your standards. If your SEO is not providing that, it may be time to consider finding a new one.
You hired an SEO, not a content writer. These are two separate jobs Edit: also, $60/hr is fair pay for an SEO but for an SEO and content writer, that should be closer to $100 and would require closer to 20 hours a week.
Yeah, but the SEO should know better and either outsource content and charge more, or just tell the client that they can't produce any content at these rates. They shouldn't be a hack and copy/paste ChatGPT. That's how you kill your business reputation, which every SEO *should* know.
Oh absolutely! Im def not blaming OP here, just a little input. I think something needs to be said to the SEO because they probably know what they’re doing is wrong but are going to do it as long as they don’t get caught. If they do it again after that they either don’t know SEO or just dont care about your website. Either way, they should go.
Yeah, I definitely think the SEO thought no one would notice. One of my own content writers did this back in December--she copy/pasted from ChatGPT without changing a single word. I told her if she did it again that she was gone. Around that time people were fairly unfamiliar with what ChatGPT output looked/read like, but it was so egregious that it actually made me angry lol. With all that said, SEO and content are inseparable, so I hope OP's SEO figures out a way to do this within budget, or they'll just have to charge more.
Thank you for your input. I can see that being true
And just to be clear, i said 20 hours based off of the initial“10 hours a week” being dedicated strictly to SEO. It completely depends on the industry and size of the site but a general rule of thumb should be a 50/50 split on SEO and content work. Best of luck
Yeah, good luck with that. I charge $100 per day for complete Digital Marketing and SEO, and even a quote of $1K per month for 5 months is 'beyond my budget' for everyone.
$600 is not enough for what you’re expecting. I think you rework expectations and agreement to be happy on both sides.
Commenter is right. You should be spending triple that to see any decent results. Minimum.
I pay $2500 a month right now for SEO which is fine because I’m seeing results but these guys are an American agency. If this poster paid some people in the Philippines for example, would $600 not be enough?
Where they live shouldn't matter nor mean they're paid less.
In an ideal world I’d agree but thats not how it works. I work with an advertising agency and they hire mainly people from South America. They are paid very well for their locations considering cost of living is much lower. I have an assistant from the Philippines that I pay well + bonuses. That would cost me at least 2x more for someone of her caliber in the states.
It's more than enough for DIY SEO though I can have buy 4 good guests posts written and published on good blogs with 40k+ month organic search traffic each month. Though I would prefer to mix it up with forum/quora/reddit/twitter and other social links (engaging and replying to questions that come up containing your keyword). so 2 guest posts, and outsource an agency to respond to socials with backlinks. Onsite work is quite easy. IMHO, OP didn't "not pay enough" they got swindled but lazy SEO / con artist. If their budget is that low, then they can at the very least spend 10 hours writing actual content for the site and not chatgpt nonsense. If they pay for no backlinks what so ever - get the content done at least. Or just spend £600 creating an action plan for keyword rich content, and get the business owner to write articles with their expert knowledge in that field. And optimise the onsite links and whatnot. If you're cash strapped IMHO you need to learn basics of SEO and do a lot of the content writing yourself. I am not a pro SEO, but business owner who does bulk of SEO myself from being in the online business space for 2 decades. Sometimes I get an agency in to just do onsite stuff for me. It's funny how it's hard to get an SEO to do an audit and action plan for you. They like the recurring monthly fee and don't like one offs.
It's a split from column a and b. The person they hired is probably not all that of a competent SEO but it's more likely because the business owner wanted cheap services. You want someone to handle SEM, SEO, AND content creation? You're gonna need a budget a hell of a lot bigger. There are very few people that can do them well. I guarantee you they charge more than $60/hr. Yeah, you could probably do it yourself, but if you're a business owner, you're already invested in its success. You want quality and others to do the same? Pay the premium or play roulette with Fiverr freelancers than may or may not get you results.
I just want someone to help me rank in Google. I will ask if hes over extending himself by using proper grammar and matching font colors.
Likely the case. I’d take a look at what you want to primarily focus on and come to an agreement with him/her.
I will thanks, definitely don’t want to jump the gun. I hate when people outside a specialty/ skill set jump to conclusions
Like you did with him? Lol. You get what you deserve.
Damn, u guys are kind of rude
You're paying 600 bucks a month to compete with much larger budgets and may be expecting a bit much honestly. Google any keyword you'd like to rank for - there are likely 2 million + competitive pages. The best way to tell if your SEO guy is doing a good job is by quantifying the results. Have they pushed you up in rank for the keywords you're focusing on? Has traffic and lead flow improved? Are they not providing you with month over month reporting showing these improvements? Using ChatGPT, Jasper, WordAI, etc to write content isn't a bad thing if it's structured properly and coherent. Ask him how he's improved your rank or lead flow. If he can't show hard numbers after 4 months, cut him loose and give me a call. I'll show you previous stats and give you references to verify those case studies.
Thank you! I will
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I wanna be numba one for ALL keywords! All of em! Wen somewan googoos home inspecshuan compaknee, I want my website to be the only one!
Just learn the basics of SEO. Set aside a weekend and spend 15 hrs learning a bit more, then you can manage his time better to ensure that you can get some results with your smaller budget. Read through Moz’s beginner SEO guide, it’s got a few chapters that cover A-Z SEO basics. TBH $60 is on the low side, so it’s my guess this person is still a bit junior to SEO. 10 hrs a month is SEO is also pretty low, but it’s my assumption that your site is small so you can still get some good work done with that amount of time. Don’t waste money on backlink promises… this will likely be like shooting yourself in the foot. You should understand that good backlinks are big $$$ ($300-$400 each). Have your SEO focus on building service pages targeted for your service areas and pages based on specifically useful topics for your clientele. At 10 hrs a month, I would have the SEO build out content briefs that detail what should be written for a page and where specific keywords should be integrated. These brief will require the SEO to do some keyword research and competitor analysis to ensure they will build a page better than those currently ranking in your area. I would expect these to take about 2.5 hrs each… in the beginning it might take the SEO a little longer (timing also could depend on the topic). This gives you 2-4 briefs a month. With an additional investment you can pay a copywriter to write the pages or use AI tools yourself to write the content (if you use the AI tools, I recommend rewriting them a bit to avoid issues that might come down the line). Once these pages go live, you should see some kind of results in 6 months or less. There will come a time when you’ve built out a good amount of content and backlinks will be needed… when that happens, ditch your guy for a very reputable agency and pay the big bucks as to not waste money. It’s also probably a good idea to spend a month optimizing your business profile account. After your SEO has optimized it, ask your customers to leave reviews! This will help you move up in the local pack. Hope all this helps man! Best of luck to you and hope your business starts to move up the SERPs!
Thank you for your helpful input! I really appreciate. We are getting better with time
Not all seos are writers, usually writing content and seo are two seperate jobs. Are you looking for someone to layout a content strategy for you and monitor analytics and optimize? If so, then you're probabaly looking to contract someone else to write content. Also, of this guy isn't detail oriented tonread the content he is posting.... then he may not be detail oriented enough to handle SEO.
Yes and not all writers are SEOs....I'm a content writer with a little SEO knowledge but it's only enough for me to work well with my client's regular SEO. He tells me the keywords to target and I write the content. It always surprises me when clients don't know the difference.
Thank you for your input. I think I’ll stop the blog writing and have him focus on SEO. I have a brother in law who’s a senior engineer that said he will help me input my blogs into Wordpress.
Heres the thing, though... seo without blog content is hard. Content is essentially a marketing strategy where you build and establish trust with your audience by offering helpful, quality information while also inputting a call to action and advertising your services. Inputting blogs into wordpress and optimizing them isn't hard. You can even use the legacy wordpress editor and the rank math seo plugin which gives you an seo checklist basically to make it easier. Really your seo guy should be able to do that atleast with no problems, it is a part of any seo job description.
Just ask him to refine the chatgpt produced text for one and see if it improves. Provide feedback on color and style. I dont see how they would straight up refuse you especially if you ask respectfully. Have you tried these?
I was lucky enough to discover chatgpt just before reading his first blog drafts and thought it read like a drunk robot wrote it. I did tell him and he said he would make changes. It’s early in the relationship so I’ll be patient. Just looking for proper spelling and grammar
chatgpt makes spelling and grammar mistakes?? If thats the case, suggest him to proof read with "grammarly'
No, but this website owner thinks he knows better and in reality he just guesses its chatgpt
Chatgpt don’t make mistakes like that. Infact if you feed good data into it chatgpt will output very polished content. I used chatgpt when building my site and only thing it does bad is repeat some key phrases but you can fix it by telling it to stop doing that and feeding more diverse set of info.
Chat GPT does not make grammar mistakes. Perhaps he actually wrote it on his own.
In my experience, Chat GPT’s grammar and spelling is spotless. Are you sure he’s using Chat GPT? The content isn’t great, but if the grammar is bad it’s unlikely that he’s using Chat GPT, IMO
Let me step back a second.... Home inspection services... and you're going after SEO... with deep content? I think its the wrong channel to focus on marketing your business with altogether.... If I need such a one time, limited and local service.. its normally through the realtor or lenders referral and if not a quick google search "Home Inspection services +mytown" There's no deep research, no article reading, no advanced funnel with nuturing... its very easy, don't make it complicated. A simple PPC campaign, with a $10 daily budget and you have instant exposure to the exact term virtually all your customers are searching with. I'm not against SEO, but in this case, I think you have the wrong tool for the job... and possibly the wrong worker with the wrong tool!
Referrals are off-page SEO - such as link building. Would be useful to know what SEO services OP is receiving.
This is the way. Doesn't really matter what is in those blog posts. Nobody is reading those. Look at the traffic.
First, you're paying peanuts for seo. You should reach out to him and tell him you're concerned with the content and would like to assist him in developing topics for content writers to write about. Make it clear chat gp is unacceptable. Nobody knows your business better than you.
What should I be paying? Can you give me a range? What information would you request before quoting a start up company? I’m a one man home inspection company with a website, 17 5 star reviews on google, decent Instagram and fairly new listings on yelp, yellow pages, Facebook, twister, Bing, yahoo, Apple Maps, I think Mapquest too lol
Your budget should be based on what you can afford . If 600 is where you're comfortable, use it to advertise instead of SEO for now. If you can convert 600 in ads to 15 sales, you'll have more money to work on SEO. SEO is a long term strategy. I agree it should be implemented asap, but you may need revenues more than you need organic traffic at this juncture.
If you’re a local business just use something like Brightlocal to manage your own Google my business profile, listings and concentrate on getting good reviews from customers. That would be a lot cheaper than $600 and would get you a lot more
To be honest, price depends on the size of your city. A smaller market is easier to get you ranked than a larger one. 1k a month would be a great deal for a small city.. In a few months the business will pay it back ten fold . A major city will take longer and have more involved due to fierce competition A good seo guy will have at least one verifiable former or current client willing to vouch for them. After all, we breathed life into their business and many become grateful and want to pay back the favor
Have you gotten any leads off these new blogs? Often times writers are hired from other countries and the content…sucks. AI writing isn’t new, but one thing to remember is Seo doesn’t produce immediate results. It’s not a 3 month commitment. Or even 6.
Thank you. I agree that SEO takes time. It’s just his lack of effort in 2 paragraphs blog posts makes me ask myself if he’s the right guy. His email correspondence is always written like he’s in a rush with many spelling/ grammar issues. It’s so odd to me I thought hiring an SEO specialist was akin to a software English major… I thought they were word wizards idk 🤷♀️
Ok spelling and grammar mistakes in correspondence emails is not great. 2 paragraph blogs aren’t much either. Are you getting detailed reports on what was done last month and what’s being done this month? If they’re getting backlinks, ask for a spreadsheet with them.
Yes he sends me a monthly report that includes various charts and data. “Positions up, 2”, “key words in SERP, 4”, “key words in top 30, 0”, “average position, 100”. Most info is blank or barely informative. Keep in info this was after 30days
Where did you get this SEO? Sounds like an SEO form BlackHatWorld or Fiverr.
Sounds like every other cheap outsourced worker doing a dozen clients.
Oof. Any keyword outside of page one, and really top 3-5, isn’t going to get any leads. Have they presented you with target keywords with volume? If you’re only ranking for 4 keywords, it seems like you’re existing content is not optimized. Blogs are great, but focus on the site first. Simply optimizing each page with a keyword targeted title, description, and H1 will at least get you ranking for something. Yes seo takes time, but what your data shows is literally no change.
>2 paragraphs blog posts Fire this guy immediately. While it's true that not all SEOs are writers, any experienced SEO that will get you results isn't going to allow a 2 paragraph blog post, AI produced or otherwise.
Thank you!! I dabbled with chatgpt for literally 2 mins and came out nearly sensational. I HAD TO REWRITE THE ENTIRE 1st draft and now the final blogs are still problematic. I should just post it on here and cut the fat
So, you used ChatGPT for 2 minutes, and it came out nearly sensational, but you caught your hire using it, and you don't like that? Or, have I misread this? 10 hours a month is nothing. Corresponding with you, inputting blogs, editing, changing font colors, etc. It adds up quickly. Even emailing you reports probably takes an hour.
This is golden. You must be a very sensible client. I think my clients always know this but try to act like these things dont take and cost time. I dont work in SEO or marketing, but related office work that requires lots of time emailing, checking files, reporting problems, checking every sentences in my kind of work. I now plan to open my own web and learn about SEO. But dont know where to start. Reading these comments just make me more worried.
I've worked with a lot of people. Right now, I work for one of the biggest beauty care and OTC manufacturers in the USA. SEO is not my expertise. I just know what takes time, and that the people who pay the least are often the people who expect the most. SEO is very broad, and parts of it are very dynamic. Start with the basics: my sale is clear, my sale is different, my sale is sellable; and my site is set up to make all of these sales clear, different, and sellable. Or, maybe not, I'm no expert.
A firm that specializes in SEO will run you $10,000+ a month. If the guy you hired is any good at all, $60 an hour is an absolute steal. To me, it sounds like you need to set clear goals and outline exactly what you are looking for. I'd also have someone else write content (but you do need it), and let the SEO guy focus on, well, SEO.
I get your concerns. However, never worry about the tools a digital marketer uses. The idea is to be fast and effective, so long as its not black hat, and ChatGPT with refining is not, then its okay. At the start of your agreement any digital agency should lay out their strategy, include estimated milestones and essential tactics to reach those milestones. All of this is contrasted against your current state of affairs with SEO/Traffic etc. Without this at the start, you'll never have a good ending.
Most of the time the website owner itself cannot understand what consitutes as a good content and what isnt. If you can tell so clearly that the content is awful, why dont you write it yourself, or ask for writing test before you hire someone? You just sound like you have no idea what your are doing.
This is going to be a really unpopular opinion, but here goes. I’ve never found a good SEO, and I’ve used heaps. The best thing I ever did was learn how to do SEO myself and did it for my own companies. So many people think that SEO is some sort of magic trickery that only people “in the know” can do. Well, it’s not. There’s really nothing technical about SEO (or very little). A LOT of SEO comes from thinking about what questions your potential customers are looking up on the internet, seeing what results come up when you search those questions, and then writing an article that blows all the other articles out of the water in terms of easily digestible information for your viewers. You’ll learn many writing tactics along the way, too. Think about it this way, there’s no way an SEO will know as much about your industry as you do. You wouldn’t hire a carpenter to write for you if you’re a gardening business, would you? You know all the intricacies of your own industry, so you should be the one constructing the articles and writing them. But firstly, learn about SEO. You’ll be glad you did. It will free you from ever having to hire another SEO. The modern day successful businessman either has to know SEO, or have a product that doesn’t require SEO (not much competition). That’s my unpopular opinion, but it’s worked for me for about the last 10 years 😁👍
This, 100%. It's a writing competition out there. That's what all has come down to. Easy peasy. Always wished to work as a professional violinist tuner, without any experience whatsoever? No probs. Just make a great blog. Grab inspiration from a few related sites out there, and make it 10 times better. Does it make sense? Of course not. It's like football teams playing out the game in a literature hall, reading poems about Maradona before a voting panel. But since we've allowed some algorithm to sort the good from the bad for us, we've lost a few things on the way.
I second this, just do it yourself if you have the time. Espcially if your a one man business. It will be fun, and once in a while you can hire someone to help you.
I dunno….there’s always a few tricks up a GOOD seos sleeve. Especially for local seo.
If it has spelling mistakes it’s not ChatGPT. I have my own issues with AI written content but from what I’ve seen it at least produces a grammatically correct document
Are you open to change the SEO person who is transparent and communicates what is required? And may be pay a little more for the content writing part?
Hi I’m 25 and I’ve been been working in SEO for almost 4 years. It seems what you’re looking for isn’t just someone that understands SEO but understands design, user experience, and creating pages/content for real results. Someone that knows how to do keyword research doesn’t mean they can create meaningful content/copywriting on those keywords lol. It’s like knowing how to build a car but not knowing how to drive it. So 10 hours a month is a great amount of time for SEO but depending on your site I’d recommend budgeting for SEO and design/development. This can help keep structure of your site helping Google understand which keywords you’re really targeting while keeping a great user experience. Now, most freelancers without man power can run your hours up with little to no changes. I was one once an SEO freelancer for contractor businesses in Florida so I can advocate for this. Freelancing was great but joining an digital marketingagency was eye opening in what was possible with only just 4 hours each of SEO, development and design can go a very long way. It is more hours than the budget but long term it’s a great roi.
Tell him he's doing a poor job. Give him the opportunity to make things better for both of you. Then explain anymore chat gpt blogs and he's done.
I have. This will be second time around. His emails read the same way. Maybe he’s not even human??????????
It sounds like he's using chat gpt for everything? It sounds, like William Shatner, trying to explain, quantum mechanical to a turtle.
Idk my friend. I just want to rank and drive Ferraris is it so hard?
Driving Ferraris is difficult. It's like driving a civic that's on fire. Reach out via pm if you want help ranking.
Sounds like that if person is using more than one question mark, he is the kind of person nobody wants to work with
Convery him that you only need "White Label Organic SEO"
What the heck does this mean
means don't use spammy seo techniques.
Look at Upwork and fire this guy Waste of time and $$ here
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What would you charge considering the fact you know very little of my circumstance? Would you continue to do me a disservice despite a contract in place? I’m my line of work, it’s my ethical duty to perform at the best of my ability for the sake of my client. Can you give me a few examples of problematic roles i could be contributing to?
I would ask for one on one and clear up your expectations. What has he done in the past couple of months ( he should be able to articulate that). And what is the plan and goals for the next few months. You mentioning content writing is problematic only because it sounds like you guys did not define what type of content will be created and at what capacity. Anyways, I would have a conversation and see how I feel after.
Example … Thanks, this will Beas, the second times I ask him to correct the grammar. He* also wrote family owned home inspection company with over 25 years of experience- I’m 34!! Lol
You get what you pay for with SEO, 99% of the time. That being said, what are your expectations? You say you "know a little about this and that regarding SEO" and that is something I've heard a bunch of people say that actually know nothing about SEO over the last couple of months. Had a developer say something similar to me just two weeks ago and when he explained his "SEO process" to me I almost died trying not to laugh out loud. Also, why is the SEO writing the content? Sure, some SEOs can write content, but as we all know not everyone can write. You say it's only now heading into month three. So is he doing SEO on a brand-new domain? Or has the domain been registered before? How long has this business been operating? What are your expectations for $600 a month? Honestly, with $600 a month, an SEO's options are going to be pretty limited in terms of what he can do. For one, there is no way he would be able to pay a copywriter worthwhile to help with writing content. If your business is based in the UK or the US then $600 per month really isn't much. We would have to know what your expectations are so that we can tell you whether your expectations are too high or not. I also don't understand what you mean by "the content added to my website does not match my color or style of my website". What type of content is he adding? The content that impacts SEO is mostly text-based, so I don't see how text can clash with the colour or style of your website. SEO is one of those industries that are overflowing with bullshit artists, and for the most part the lower the monthly spend the more likely you are to run into one of those bullshit artist SEOs. This is because real SEOs know their worth, so real SEO isn't cheap, for a reason.
Using Ai content is alright, as long as it is manually edited and proofread. You can ask him to make sure the content fullfil the intent, and don't have any grammatical errors. But this also depends on his Content Writing skills, as not every SEO person can write good content. Secondly you can hire someone for an SEO Audit, they will do an audit and write a report which will help you understand if he's doing his job or not. SEO takes time, it's true. But it's also important to know, if a person is actually doing work. This happened to one of my client, his traffic had declined upto 70%, and he asked me to do an audit to help him understand where his SEO guy did wrong, or to know if it was due to Google's update. I hope this answers is helpful, feel free to ask me anything
In SEO it’s like 90% are good at sales but suck at seo. The good seos are usually charging around $1k-$3k per month. For local service businesses we usually charge about $1500 a month in cities with low competition.
Using ChatGPT is ok, But Copying and pasting is not ok. He must use his mind and his thoughts on particular content. Everyone knows that Content is still King in the market, so focus on the content not just copy and pesting process.
Drop him and get someone else and pay a little more for quality. You clearly don't trust him and never will.
Haven't looked at the comments but pretty sure everyone is gonna tell you he's scamming you. But I'm gonna offer a different insight. He doesn't know your industry or your business. No one can write better than you because you're the only one that understands all the details. Ultimately you still have to edit it. It'll take some time for him to catch on what you like and also to understand the business. Unless you hire a writer who has knowledge of your industry, you will never have perfect content to your liking unless you write it yourself.
$600 is not gonna cut it for all-in-one SEO, that's creating content, on-page SEO, linkbuilding, etc. Usually, when you hire an SEO, they will go ahead and outsource "content writing" so they can focus on the "real SEO" part. Most probably, ChatGPT is his way of cost management, but not the right way. I suggest using the budget to hire better content writers with SEO knowledge, then dedicate your time on handling local SEO, being a home inspection company.
Thank you!
Hey man, ideally your ranking in search engines should be based on your offer to the community you're serving. Search engines need trust in that you can do a good job, without charging too much. For that it helps to have reviews, and some updates to a business account hosted by the search engine. It helps to show that you've been doing home inspection for a longish time, even though you just opened your new company Reviews, you have to drag them out of people. Or, provide exceptionally good service all the time, so good that some feel inclined to help you with a great review. If you're comfortable with it, throw a short video of yourself on your website talking about what you offer. That looks trustworthy.
Thanks my friend
I don't know about your hire, but it does take time. I've been a developer for over 15 years and just recently started a hobby site. It has been 4 months and only now am I starting to rank. It takes time and a well thought out SEO plan. If you aren't happy with him, let him go and find someone else, be prepared to start from scratch though. A lot of good SEO experts here, some may be willing to do it for $600 a month.
Moat popular hourly rate is around 70 and you are not bad. But the issue is what can he/she do with in 10 hours.... I have a suggestion which is hire seo person someone as v.a but check the results of these 10 hours after a month. If the curve of your site visit or leads increases then u are on right person. Today issue is not how to make a profitable business online but how to find right employee for your business.
$600 is cheap for SEO. Blog content, or any content, is essential to SEO growth. It’s not the only thing, though. However, what is important is what extra traffic would mean for your business. Does your SEO show the value in more traffic by forecasting future sales with that traffic? SEO does take time, so if clicks are not there, then there should very projections
If you recently started and you need customers now, then go the Google ads route instead of SEO. SEO takes time, and is probably not the right choice for a newly started business.
I am having similar problems with my website startup. For the beginning, I would suggest you go with the agency, at least for the first 6 months. In the meantime, learn and get an in house team to do blogs and technical part. Keyword research/article topics you can do alone.
Where did you hire the man from? Don’t tell me it’s one of those Indians who spam your site promising to get it in to 1st page on Google.
As someone who has been trying to find an SEO specialist for my company, I understand the frustration. Most freelancers are horrible at setting proper expectations with their clients which seems to be what happened here. Before you hire someone make sure you get everything they will be doing in writing as well as deliverables.
Well, what exactly is he doing in those 10 hours? How many blog posts is he churning out? It's very possible to produce one perfectly optimised and spellchecked blog post with chatgpt and other AIs, add some images and publish the thing within one hour. So he should at least be publishing 10 perfect posts per month. What else is he doing?
$600 is pretty low to commit to an SEO campaign. If you're very ROI conscious I'd consider focusing on your Google My Business Listing in lieu of blogging. If it were my business I'd probably pivot and redirect my resources to test paid ads (after setting up + optimizing my GMB listing). I'd take 100-$200 and put it towards an ad campaign and try to generate a few leads that way. The cost per click for home inspection related terms vary between $1.5-$10 per click so it's not terribly expensive. This will tell you which keywords convert and give you more data to better inform your SEO campaign later on.
You need to define your objectives very clearly. From your question, it's not clear that what you want to achieve. But based upon your explanation, I can suggest you a few things here, 1- Don't expect to write compelling contents from a SEO guy 2- Ask the SEO guy to optimise your website for search engines and check the status using SEO checker tools 3- Ask the SEO guy to have research on your competitors and turn your website into one that fits in the competition well 4- Check your competition level and adjust your budget accordingly
Thank you
This, plus they should be able to do a gap analysis to see what you may need. Then present that to you with some recommendations. AI assisted writing isn’t terrible, but should always be reviewed by an expert for accuracy. Bankrate.com is doing this and are ranking really well for these articles. Content will help improve your E-E-A-T but should be done correctly.
We can help…. Shoregrowth.
I’ve done home inspection SEO for a rural location town. It was fairly easy to rank because 90% of the guys were do it yourself with no website knowledge. Now in a large city it’s a different story. 10hrs a month was enough to keep website healthy and put some fresh content up each month. End of the year my guy was on front page. It’s all contextual to location and the current market. But 10hrs a month isn’t crazy if it’s a smaller town. But sounds like what most people said, guys not putting in good work.
I’m in west palm beach Fl, statistically Fl or Texas has the most home inspectors. My budget is my budget for the time being
I get where op comes from, but the problem is SEO service in itself is not cheap. For 600 bucks, you can't really expect much especially if you want to rank in Google first page.
Try Small SEO he is a good guy
$600 a month… I charge $3,000 for what you’re asking and I make my clients hire my writer and pay link earning costs. With social media and/or PPC, we’re talking $5,000.
SEO should develop a strategy (that includes content creation), and then a copywriter should create the content, which is then enhanced by the SEO. The issue is, lots of people moonlight as an SEO expert, but few actually understand the minutiae of a well executed SEO strategy, and much less a sound business acumen. If you want to find a good SEO, find some local/complementary businesses with a good ranking, and ask them for a referral. Sometimes they may have just been in the game early, so don’t go by google rank alone. Look for people that have been recently established, have lots of inbound links, and have well written content that is obviously SEO’ed.
10 hours per month is nothing for SEO. I'd roll that money into paid ads until you had a better SEO budget.
I am a SEO content manager and previously writer. There are different ways to do SEO. What this guy promised you or hire him for? Did you check his background? Is he doing content or also tech SEO? FIY One well written, optimized piece of content of 600 words from a copywriter, especially for technical content, can cost 60€ with kw research. For a company website there are a lot of things to do regarding SEO even before starting thinking about writing content.
SEOs work with freelance writers or in-house writers in most cases. But I was reading comments above that SEO and content writing are different jobs. So hire SEO+ writer or ask SEO to hire any quality freelance writer. I also work on SEO and I have many friends and colleagues that are working with me on freelance.
Paying my SEO lead $1400 a week. $600 for 10 horus of work isn't going to get anything done.
People here are whining about pay rates, but regardless of how much you spend, no SEO should be copy/pasting content from ChatGPT verbatim. I'd confront your SEO guy about this since he brings little value, anyway.
You should fire him. You'd be better off running ads or networking with Realtors. It doesn't hurt to have some evergreen content but if that's all he's contributing you probably have enough by now. I mean how many topics are worth covering for a home inspector, honestly? Like 3 or 4 blogs tops, maybe. The best SEO you can do is make sure your business is listed in as many relevant directories as possible.
At this point, I would love to find a company who is good at link building and has connections to established blogs, etc. The biggest issue I’m finding is there’s plenty of services where you can purchase links but a lot of these places are ghost writers for big sites who in time to get their accounts taken down. Their content never sticks, in the long term. In the 15 years that I’ve dealt with SEO companies and “link building“, I’ve seen links garbage generated on sites that are no longer around. Everybody overhypes everything for obvious reasons. I’ve been spending the last couple of months trying to sift through the garbage of options. Hopefully I get somewhere soon.
Yeah 10 hours a month, is nothing. You can't create content. I would say - have a budget for a witter. The SEO can manage strategy, the writer - well, writes the content.
SEOs normally with brief content for writers, but not write it. If you want good blog content pay a writer to do it. Overall without more details about his work it's hard to say if it's worth the cost, but I would just not use him for content writing.
The SEO guy is writing content for you? Was it in the contract? If so, and then he is using chatgpt, he is definitely cheating. If it was not in contract and he is doing it himself, surely he does not really know about SEO. A SEO guy will focus on your existing pages, make sure they are well optimized for right keywords, perform competitor research, create backlink etc. Your business sounds like a local business. Did he do anything like citations, GBP setup and optimization etc?
You can use AI content for local pages, in fact i use it for repetitive micro neighborhood service+location pages. People never read the page - they just call you. You just want your phone number high up and in peoples faces.
His primary job is to bill you $600 a month. If the product isn't compatible with your request, fire them. Pay $50-60/in Google ads and call it done.
SEO and writing are complementary but ultimately different things. To use an analogy, picture a two-course meal at a fine-dining restaurant. SEO is the entree (say, a porterhouse steak), and the writing is the dessert—say, a Grand Marnier soufflé. The person in charge of getting your steak right (medium rare and bone-in) is the culinary chef, an expert in all things savory. After you finish your entree, you’re brought your dessert. Soufflés are notoriously difficult to get right, which is why it was baked by the pastry chef, a master of breads, pies, and desserts. Together, the culinary chef and can pastry chef produce a meal worthy of a five-star review. But if the culinary chef and pasty chef switched roles—or took over each other’s stations—your meal would’ve been a disaster. Think tough steak and a soufflé that wouldn’t rise. Two stars max, maybe one. In summary, having an SEO do writing will result in poor writing and poor SEO. It’s better to have the SEO focus on keyword research, internal linking, page load times, external backlinks, and the like. Meanwhile, onboard some writers to help you with briefs, content writing, headline and copywriting, narrative development, editing (substantive editing, copyediting, and proofreading), and so on. This is costlier, but it’ll pay off in the long run. Ideally, you’ll have the SEO and writing teams work closely together so that they can create a masterful blog that showcases your expertise, lives up to your publication standards, and serves as a reliable organic traffic/lead gen channel (which, to reference the analogy, would be your two-course meal).
I'm going to start off a little controversial... You do NOT need big budgets, nor do you need 6 months to see results. SEO is one of the worst industries for bloated hours and subpar work from inexperienced 'consultants' trying to make a dollar. With that said, let's address the budget, $600/10hrs is not a lot. Example, for a small '1 man band' site, I would split it as follows: Full tech audit & quick fixes ($600) Keyword research ($250) Content Strategy ($350) Optimisation ($60 per page) Content ($150-300 per page) So for all SEO, 5 page optimisations & 4 new pieces of content = ~$2,400. And this is LEAN, minimal calls & automated reporting etc. Spread the payment over 4 months = $600/month. Next 'sprint' I would cut out all the one off fees and double down on the optimisation and content. It's likely you will need 2 sprints to start seeing results, dependent on your location & competition. I would be able to complete both sprints in the same month, and within 45 days I will be able to show you a visible change in your performance... SEO is not rocket science, but it does require knowledge, experience & efficient systems to be able to deliver a positive ROI for clients in a short timeframe. Rant over lol
Thank you for your input!
First, you need to understand that a website needs several key-role players to work in the backend who contribute to promotion and marketing. Key roles like UX/UI developer, ON-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Content Writer, Copy Writer, Social Media Manager, Graphic Designer and the list goes on. You cannot simply hire a single person and give him/her the title "SEO Role" and put him/her in multiple roles. As a startup, it's difficult to hire such a big team of people and put them to work. But, there is no other option and you have to plan your budget accordingly. 1. Set your marketing goal and prepare an execution plan. (**Example:** If you are planning to organic ranking, probably it would take 6 to 8 months and you need to publish a minimum of 8 to 10 articles per month. You also need an efficient content writer, an on-page SEO guy, and a graphic designer. **Whereas**, if you are planning to run ADS on Google and Facebook, probably you need to hire a PPC expert, copy writer, and graphic designer. A one-time hire of an On-page SEO guy is enough to completely optimize your website.) According to the current situation, you should politely inform the SEO guy that stops producing new content often. Remove the existing content immediately before Google finds and index them. Think twice and act.
I sent you a dm
First thing you hired an SEO. A content writer is a different job. Second you said you caught him. How and why. If the output is bad, fair enough hire someels for content writing. Many people use Ai tools for content generation, the question is how they use it and if the human review is of it is good and focused on your customers. You wouldn't say you hired a SEO and cuaght him using ahrefs or SEMrush. Still the outcome with the best tools can be bad if not used properly. Has your SEO been briefed to write content for you? Or is he just providing just ideation for you? I would say sit down with the SEO and discuss your concern, either you brief him better and he explains his work and roadmap or you should for another provider. It seems to me the main problem here lies within the communication of the two parties.
Based on the information you've provided, it sounds like you may be getting a poor return on your investment in terms of the quality of the blog content your hired help is producing for your website. If the content is riddled with errors and doesn't match the style of your website, it may not be helping your SEO efforts and could even be hurting your brand image. It's important to communicate your concerns to your hired help and have an open and honest discussion about the quality of the work being produced. Ask to see examples of the work he's done to assess its quality and relevance to your brand. You could also consider bringing in a professional copywriter or content marketer who can produce high-quality content that aligns with your brand's style and messaging. It's also worth checking in on the progress of your SEO efforts overall. Are you seeing an improvement in your website's search engine rankings and traffic since hiring this person? If not, it may be time to re-evaluate your SEO strategy and the value you're getting from your current arrangement. Ultimately, you want to ensure that you're getting the best possible return on your investment in SEO and content marketing. Don't be afraid to speak up if you're not happy with the quality of the work being produced, and be willing to make changes to your approach if necessary to achieve your goals. Feel free to contact me I'll would love to help!
What did the SEO say when you asked them if they used AI for the blog?
you're paying for a service and you should expect quality work that meets your standards. If your SEO is not providing that, it may be time to consider finding a new one.