Hiring a content marketing agency for their SEO services is always a good idea. These agencies can deliver high-quality content for your target audience, resulting in more leads and sales. Their SEO services can also help you establish your digital presence on the internet. With a proper content marketing strategy, these digital marketing or content agencies can set your business up for success.

Of course, it’s not going to be an easy process, at least for you. With so many content marketing agencies out there, how will you know which SEO content provider to work with and which one to avoid at all costs? After all, working with the wrong organization might do you more harm than good, as it might damage your SEO rankings or even your online reputation.

That’s why we’ve come up with the following list of four important things to check before you start working with an SEO content provider. Seeking the answers to the following questions will help you find the best possible match for your SEO content needs. 

1. Is the Content AI-Written?

AI-written content is a big no-no these days. This might sound rather bizarre, given how popular writing tools like ChatGPT have become. However, these tools may help you generate more content in less time, but they don’t do that good of a job with it. 

AI content fails to get the latest data, news, and trends across the world. Instead, they rely on data that are months or even a year old. Sometimes, the AI might even misinterpret data, especially numeric data. As a result, you’ll often get faulty statistics. Besides, there’s also a possibility of plagiarism, something that can easily get your content flagged.

On top of all that, Google and other search engines are considering flagging AI-generated content. That’s mostly because of how unreliable it is and how the internet is flooded with such content.

Therefore, you should work with an SEO content firm only if they promise that they provide content written by actual humans. They may use AI to generate ideas or develop the content structure, but the content itself needs to be human-written.  

2. Who Gets the Rights to the Content?

The agency will write the content, but you get to publish it. However, who owns the content’s copyright? Agencies often leave these matters in the dark. Because of that, clients get confused. 

That’s why content marketing agency WriterArmy has a clear-cut policy where it states that once the client approves the content draft, that project or content is fully theirs in terms of copyright. That way, clients get to avoid any sort of confusion regarding this. You, too, need to look for such clear policies on these matters as you work with a content provider yourself. 

3. Can They Work with Content Related to Your Industry or Field?

Not all content agencies can cover every type of industry or field. Some specialize in content related to technology, some in agriculture, some in real estate, and so on. When you hire a content agency to look after your blog posts and social media content, you should hire a team that knows the ins and outs of the market or industry you operate in.

Ensuring this will mean that the agency will always provide you with the best and most trending content concerning your respective industry. They won’t have to rely on too many third-party sources to generate content ideas either. If they’re knowledgeable in that particular industry, they’ll have what it takes to come up with their own creative ideas.

4. What is Their Search Engine Optimization Process?

Every SEO content agency needs to have an SEO process. That means they will have a fixed approach to dealing with SEO-related matters of their clients. You must inquire what your agency’s process is. 

Do they do keyword research before deciding on a topic or after it? What’s their approach to inserting the keywords? How do they avoid plagiarism? Do they check what your competitors are doing?

These are just some of the many questions you should be asking the agency before you hire them. Knowing the answers to these questions can give you a good idea regarding their SEO process.

Once all this is done and you have studied the agency you want to work with, you can decide whether or not you want to hire them. As you seek the answers to these questions, you’ll have a pretty good idea regarding the agency in question, what their approach is, how they produce content, and whether or not they can actually cater to your industry’s target audience.