As the demands for digital marketing and online exposure grow, so does the need for content creation. For many organizations, creating enough content across multiple channels has become a full time job. But in pursuit of higher content volume, brands often make the mistake of implementing cost-cutting strategies that sacrifice high quality content. The result is outsourced content that ends up hurting their brand image, fails to engage the target audience, and compromises their ability to engage customers with their marketing efforts.
Within the context of content creation, one of the biggest points of friction occurs when businesses decide whether to rely on in house writers or pursue outsourcing content creation. While content creation outsourcing can be an effective way to scale content production, it can also introduce quality concerns if not handled correctly.
Done well, outsourced link building, outsourcing content production, or broader content marketing efforts don’t need to suffer from a lack of quality. When aligned with a clear content marketing strategy, outsourced initiatives can support search engine optimization, drive organic traffic, and boost visibility. The question is, does your brand know how to handle outsourcing the right way?
Table of Contents
The Benefits of Outsourcing Content Creation
Many successful businesses – both small and large – actually outsource all of their content creation to freelance content creators, content creation agencies, and content agencies to support ongoing content development. These organizations choose content outsourcing for a number of reasons, including:
- Cost savings. Hiring an in-house team of content writers can be cost prohibitive. This is the major reason SEO is so expensive. When you outsource SEO, you’re able to get quality content without having to offer benefits, cover payroll taxes, or provide any of the resources that you’d generally give your employees. You simply pay for the content you receive. By contrast, outsourcing content creation allows brands to save money by paying only for the content assets they need, freeing budget for other core business tasks.
- Improved efficiency. Many businesses deal with the demands of content creation by requiring different employees to write content in addition to their core responsibilities. As a result, content ends up inhibiting productivity in other key areas. Outsourcing enables your internal team to focus on core tasks, while external partners handle content production, helping with saving time and meeting deadlines.
- Fresh ideas and perspective. It’s easy for things to get stale within a company – especially when the same in house team is consistently tasked with the same responsibilities. Having an outsourced content partner can allow for a fresh perspective. External professional content creators and industry experts bring new insights, awareness of industry trends, and exposure to new content opportunities.
- Increased reach. While you may not enjoy this benefit when working with a single independent contractor, you’ll often find that working with established content creation agencies often opens doors to new audiences, online platforms, and lead generation opportunities. This may include access to new publishing platforms and online audiences. Experienced agencies understand how to distribute engaging content across social media, blogs, and other digital assets.
Regardless of size or specific industry, outsourcing content creation can make sense for businesses. It can serve as a powerful extension of your brand – allowing you to enjoy the benefit of regular content creation without the headaches that frequently stem from handling it in-house.
The Traditional Challenges of Outsourcing Content Creation
While the benefits of outsourcing content creation have been made quite clear, it’s impossible to ignore some of the traditional challenges that have stemmed from outsourcing content creation. They include:
- Steep learning curve. When you work with someone outside of your company, you have to spend a great deal of time introducing them to your brand and making sure they have an accurate understanding of your brand voice, writing style, intended audience, and position in the buyer’s journey. Depending on the circumstances, this can take a considerable amount of time and effort.
- Back and forth communication. There’s a difference between walking down the hallway and popping your head into an employee’s office to ask a question versus emailing an outsourced content partner and waiting for a response. In a time crunch, the back and forth nature of communicating with content creators across different time zones can prove to be frustrating.
- Reliability. Outsourcing forces you to give up some control that you would otherwise enjoy in an in-house scenario. Should reliability become an issue, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re unable to move things along. Without strong editorial oversight, outsourced content may lack proper fact checking, originality, or alignment with business goals.
- Issues with quality control. Finally, and most importantly, businesses sometimes find it hard to maintain the same sort of quality that they enjoy when content is produced internally. And in many situations, this can be a deal breaker.
It’s important to remember that these are traditional challenges. As content creation services evolve, so does the practicality of outsourcing content creation. With each passing year, these pain points are becoming less palpable, while the notion of outsourcing — better workflows, clearer expectations, and stronger content strategy — is becoming more realistic.
How to Outsource Without Compromising Quality
Within the context of this discussion, many businesses are left asking one simple question: How can we outsource without compromising on quality?
The answer to this question depends on numerous variables, but it’s not something to lose sleep over. With a proactive, well-developed plan, you can enjoy the best of both worlds – outsourcing content creation allows brands to scale content production that’s crisp, original, and on-brand. Here’s how you make it happen:
1. Identify Your Needs
As is the case with any major marketing decision, begin with a list of your specific needs. In this case, you need to start by defining your content goals, required content formats, and overall content strategy. Are you creating blog post content for top-of-funnel awareness, visual elements for social media, or digital assets to support lead generation throughout the buyer’s journey?
Your specific content needs will, to a degree, dictate how you proceed. There’s a significant difference between needing one 500-word blog post per week for your website and 25,000 words of original content published to specific platforms each month. A failure to account for these differences could lead to wasted resources and inaccurate expectations.
Clarifying content volume, channels, and the intended audience ensures your content development aligns with business goals and supports your broader marketing strategy.
2. Develop a Budget
With your specific content needs in mind, begin developing a budget. This will help you determine how much content to outsource and whether to work with freelancers or content agencies.
You’ll have to account for a number of company-specific elements, but it’s helpful to know what others are spending. According to the Content Marketing Institute, B2B companies are allocating an average of 26 percent of their total marketing budget to content marketing. Nearly 40 percent of these marketers expect their content budget to increase in the near future. B2C marketers allocate roughly 22 percent of their total marketing budget to content marketing, while 37 percent expect to see this figure scale up in the coming years.
Again, these are just estimates, but they show the importance of budgeting with a purpose. If nothing else, come up with some soft numbers to guide your content strategy through the initial stages of outsourcing. Strategic budgeting helps balance saving time, maintaining quality, and scaling content production without overextending team resources.
3. Create a Style Guide
Every company should have a content style guide – but especially those who choose to outsource their content creation efforts.
A content style guide is simply an organized document with a set of copywriting rules that are specific to your company. These rules address things like grammar, sentence structure, banned words, preferred words, company description, audience profiles, competitive research, boilerplate information, formatting expectations, voice, and tone. This is a critical component of outsourcing content creation that ensures consistent quality, reinforces brand voice, and helps external writers create original content aligned with your standards.
A style guide should be made into a concise and digestible PDF document that can be easily shared with any new writer who creates content for your company. In fact, you shouldn’t let an outsourced partner write content for your brand until they can prove mastery of your style guide and content assets requirements.
4. Review a Writer’s Portfolio
Whenever possible, ask for a writer’s portfolio so that you can review content that they’ve previously written and published. Evaluating portfolios helps identify professional writers with experience writing across different content formats and industries.
When reviewing a writer’s portfolio, don’t get so caught up in any one individual piece of copy that you miss the bigger picture. The mark of a skilled content writer is the ability to change the way they write for different clients without compromising quality. So instead of making a judgment based on a single piece of copy, look for specialized talent that demonstrates adaptability, not just isolated examples. Strong content creators can shift tone and structure while maintaining quality—an essential skill when serving multiple stages of the buyer’s journey.
5. Require Content to be Pitched
Many of the issues with content quality can be avoided by developing a rigorous quality assurance routine that takes place prior to the first draft ever being developed.
Before drafting begins, require pitches that outline topic focus, angle, and how the piece fits into your content marketing strategy. This step improves efficiency, reduces revisions, and ensures the final outsourced content meets expectations.
The best thing you can do is have your writers get in the habit of developing a pitch that’s sent over for approval. This allows you to review the pitch and critique any issues you find prior to writing.
6. Hire an In-House Editor
It pays to have a person on staff who knows your brand and what’s happening behind closed doors. You’ll also benefit from having someone who is accessible at all times. So if you have the resources to do so, consider hiring an in-house editor.
Your in-house editor may double as one of your key marketing staffers. This person should have a detailed understanding of the style guide and the ability to articulate content goals to writers (whether they’re in-house or outsourced).
Partner With SEO.co
Whether you run a small startup with large aspirations or an established corporation with very specific brand needs, you need an outsourced partner that you can depend on for all of your content needs.
At SEO.co, we offer high-quality content creation, strategic link building (via our white hat link building service) and powerful digital branding that helps our clients establish, maintain, and grow their brands. For more information on how we can work together, please feel free to thumb through one of our case studies. Better yet, give us a call and we’ll talk through what a fresh content strategy could do for your brand!
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
- Digital Marketing Services: A Comprehensive Guide for 2026 - January 28, 2026
- Digital Marketing Trends: 11 Must-Follow Marketing Trends In 2026 - January 20, 2026
- Video SEO: Optimizing & Promoting Your Videos for SEO in 2026 - January 8, 2026
