Welcome to another post in the Content Creator Basics series. Here, we’ll share our go-to tips for flexing your freelance writer muscles—whether you’re writing content for someone else or for your own blog. Check in for more tips to sharpen your online content writing skills.
Part of working for WritersDomain means receiving keywords, business categories, special considerations, and more in order to produce content. It may feel like a lot to juggle, especially if you produce various types of tasks. Here, we’re discussing how to use task information so you can speed up the writing process and avoid revision requests.
Why We Avoid Giving Too Much Information
WritersDomain writers who work on articles can see the business category, country, language, keywords, and sometimes a special consideration (SC). An SC is essentially a brief description from the client about what the keyword means or doesn’t mean.
This isn’t much information, and content writers may wonder why they don’t get more. In order to comply with White Hat SEO, WritersDomain encourages writers to avoid formulaic or overly biased content. Over the years, we have found that this amount of information helps writers use their own writing voice and creativity to tackle otherwise boring keywords without falling into bad SEO practices that would backfire on the clients.
However, as a rule of thumb, the more client-facing your task, the more information you get. So, if you write onsite blogs, then you’ll get more client information because you’re writing on their behalf and need to know exactly what their business does so you can describe it on their website.
How to Use the Available Information
Depending on which tasks you work on, our standards are slightly different. Here, we’ve broken down our tips based on the task.
Articles
As previously mentioned, article writers always receive a keyword, language, country, and business category (BC). Writers may also get an SC. If you get an SC, that information is considered top priority — however, it does not supersede our task-specific guidelines. Since the task comes with specific guidelines, you may wonder how to handle tasks that have confusing special considerations.
Sometimes, writers will get a confusing SC that seems to contradict the guidelines. More often than not, these messages apply to other tasks. A common one might be a request to add the company’s phone number at the end of the content. The guidelines for this task discourages any spammy or company-specific content, so in such cases, you can ignore these requests. You can also email the Support team so we can address this issue from our end.
If you get an SC, it should further clarify the client’s services. Use the clarification about their services to guide your ideation. For example, if they say that they only do commercial and not residential work, focus on commercial building owners. The reviewer might dock your score if your content ignores the SC — even if it technically works with the given keywords.
Onsite Blogs
For onsite blogs, writers have two boxes that may contain special considerations for the client. The Legal Requirements section shares legal restrictions the client follows. Sometimes this information simply gives writers context about the client’s business and industry. But occasionally, this section also includes special requests, such as restrictions on specific words.
We often see legal requirements from clients who are lawyers. For example, you may see an SC that discourages you from using words like “expert” or “specialist.” In the legalese world, these terms might indicate that the client has extra certifications, and that’s not something that every law firm can promise. Since legal requirements can come from any industry, writers should take these SCs seriously.
The other section that contains special considerations for onsite blogs is the Content Restrictions box. This box contains topic restrictions or requests such as “tips/how-to” or “no DIY” or restrictions such as “no reader comments” or “no questionnaires.” If the client has specific requests or additional information about their products or services, that will also be listed in this box.
Clients may leave specific topic suggestions in this box, but writers do not have to adhere to these suggestions, especially if the topic has already been covered for the client. However, all other information in these boxes takes priority. For example, the comment “Please focus on heating services year-round, not just in the winter” would override the onsite blog style guide’s seasonality guidelines. Writers must also avoid certain topics or ideations at the client’s request.
What to Do When You’re Stuck
Of course, there’s always that one keyword or task that will stump you. Instead of staring down the blinking cursor, you can ask us for help. WritersDomain writers can contact the support team at support@writersdomain.net. You can also click “Need Project Help?” and describe your situation. We’ll get all the context we need for the situation and help you figure it out.
Support members can give you enough context so you can finish the task. If necessary, we’ll request an SC so future writers don’t run into a similar issue. Overall, we want you to have the information you need to write and submit work on your schedule.
We hope this quick refresher helps you better understand how to use key information to craft your content. As always, the information on this website and our guidelines are meant to help you write SEO-appropriate content. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions for future topics for discussion.
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