Article Marketing: Should You Outsource Your Article Writing?

Most article marketers begin by writing their own articles. This is usually the best scenario as you have complete control over the content.

With all the discussion these days about duplicate content, and the penalties associated with them, it's reassuring to know that the content is original. The problem is, writing articles takes a commitment of time and energy and because of this, many article marketers stop article marketing all together.

Many article marketers decide to outsource their article writing and this can be extremely rewarding. Even so, it's important to be aware of the pitfalls in finding a quality article writer before you commit to this course of action.

There are many issues, including the quality and uniqueness of the articles produced, the cost per article, how well the article is "optimized" for the search engines and the list goes on.

There are many outlets for article writing services and the list is growing everyday. If you're just getting started, I suggest looking around on Elance.com, Guru.com or even on Craigslist.com

Most people involved in article marketing overlook the "classified" sites like Craigslist.com and sometimes these provide the greatest treasures. The only downside is that they do not provide some of the "protections" of a more full-featured freelance site like Elance.com

After locating a pool of article writers, you may want to give the same assignment to three-to-five article writers and see which perform the best. This will give you a few article writers to choose from in the future.

Doing this, you'll be able to discern several things about the article writers you've selected. You'll know the costs involved, their ability to follow directions, their capabilities as a writer and whether or not they met your time deadline.

However, you'll still want to check the articles you receive for uniqueness as you'll find some article writers making only minor "tweaks" to private label right articles. Worse yet, some may have used someone else's article without permission.

Here are two ways to check an article for uniqueness:

1. Use Copyscape's service at: http://www.CopyScape.com

Copy the article you've received from the writer and paste it into an HTML editor like FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Upload this page to your server.

For instance, if you've named your new page "testarticle.html" and have uploaded it to your server, your URL for this article would be:

YourDomainName.com/testarticle.html

Go to CopyScape.com and paste in the full URL, including the "http://," into the appropriate window. CopyScape will search the web to see if it can find duplicate content.

If the content is unique, you can submit it to the directories. If it's not, you'll need to have the article writer re-write the article until it is.

If CopyScape found large portions of duplicate content it is best to avoid the article writer who submitted the piece in the future.

2. Use DupeFree Pro software which is available at: http://www.dupefreepro.com

DupeFree Pro has many features. In addition to searching for duplicate content, it will tell you the total word count of your article, check for "keyword density," which is vital for proper search engine optimization, and much more.

DupeFree Pro will also check two articles against each other to find similarities. This is important if you are re-writing a Private Label Rights article and want to ensure the newly created article is considered unique.

Outsourcing article writing can greatly improve your article marketing efforts but it pays to do your homework. It will take some effort to find a few article writers you enjoy working with but your efforts should pay huge dividends in the end.