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Growing Frustrated with SEO Hire
I’m 34 and know a little about this and that regarding SEO, coding, languages. I recently opened a home inspection company and hired a one man operation to help with SEO. $600 a month ($60 an hour for 10 hours per month). I caught him using chatgpt or similar while “writing” blog content for my website. It was so bad that the blog needed several changes for every sentence. Am I getting screwed here? It’s sure feels like it. Also, the content added to my website does not match my color or style of my website. I believe his primary job is to help with SEO so I’m not sure if he is doing genius work behind the scenes and crappy blog content. I don’t want to tell him I think he’s doing a poor job but damn. Any helpful opinions based on this limited post? Thanks…. Getting ready to cut 3rd check for 3rd month of work.
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1 Reply
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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$600 is not enough for what you’re expecting. I think you rework expectations and agreement to be happy on both sides.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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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.
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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.
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Are you looking for a writer or an SEO? Seems like you might have someone who is neither.
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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
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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
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