What Should You Consider When Choosing a Content Writing Agency?

You’re posting 10-15 blogs a month on your website, hoping it ranks, drives traffic, and gets calls from your target customers. Then you hit a wall. It’s not ranking at all.

If you’re facing this obstacle in your SEO journey, there’s a high chance you have a limited in-house team, and you’re probably posting generic blogs.

Look, we know how long it takes to actually build a solid writing team in your office. But you’d have also drained all your budget on it.

This is why most businesses choose to outsource their content to a third-party content writing agency.

You may have so many questions; you may ask, “How do I know this particular writing service is the one I’m looking for?" and we’re going to answer that for you in this blog.

Check the Agency’s Portfolio

Most high-performing agencies directly have their client details, their past work, and the results they achieved for their clients on their website. 

Before hiring a writing service, you can directly ask them for their portfolio. 

Any genuine agency will be ready to send you upon request. 

Besides this, if you want to satisfy your curious mind, practice independent research. 

Go to the content writing agency’s LinkedIn page. Find the employees linked to the agency, then review their work if they’ve posted any. 

In their portfolio, check if

• The agency has experience in writing for clients in your specific industry. 

• They offer live links to their active work instead of just documents. 

• They are showing measurable results, like how much traffic they increased for their clients. 

Analyze Their Own Content 

Content writing agencies themselves need to post content so they can turn readers like you into their potential customers. 

Visit the agency’s website and see the evidence for yourself. 

You should check the following on their website to know that they’re legit: 

• They have fresh content and in-depth narratives on their chosen titles.

• The content is engaging, easy to read, and well-structured with a clear call-to-action (CTA).

• See if they’re posting blogs regularly on their website.

• Their blog content has clear structure with proper H1 and H2, relevant keywords, internal linking, and GEO-focused answers and structure. 

• Their website loads fast, has great mobile responsiveness, and is navigable without any hurdles.

• Use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to check the domain authority and traffic of their own website. 

Check Client’s Testimonials

No one can judge a writing service better than the agency’s past clients. See what their opinion is. 

Whether it’s their past or current clients, their judgment can give you insight into the agency. 

You can use many platforms today to check the reviews of content writing agencies. They include 

• Google Reviews is very effective. 

• The ratio of reviews to ratings matters. 500 reviews with a 4.5 rating are far better than just 10 reviews with a 4.9 rating. 

• Third-party reviews such as Clutch, G2, and Trustpilot.

• See the client’s comments on social media such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and X. 

• People sometimes make forums on subreddits or other relevant platforms when a writing service agency is popular. You can check their critique too. 

Are They Communicative and Reliable? 

Even popular agencies are known for their poor communication sometimes. 

Dealing with an unreliable agency is frustrating, no matter how good they are at producing high-quality content. 

You can sometimes smell red flags like this a mile away.

As soon as you sense delays in getting your doubts cleared during the pre-hiring stage, it’s a sign you need to ditch them. 

Ask yourself if the content writing services meets the following standards: 

• Do they offer a small trial period to prove their worth? 

• Are they ready to offer full transparency in reporting, such as organic traffic and conversion rates? 

• Do they have a dedicated project manager to answer your queries? 

• And last of all, did they deliver the content before the deadline of your trial period? 

Check the Client Retention Rate 

Longevity matters a lot. This has to be obvious. 

The best content writing agency is the one that has satisfied long-term clients. 

When you vet the company for their reviews and past work, add this to your list too.

As soon as you see a high concentration of clients working with a particular writing agency for a long time, it’s a good sign, and you know you’ll be in good hands. 

Final Thoughts 

Apart from the usual vetting steps we talked about today, ensuring an agency’s writing service quality matches your company’s energy matters. 

When your worlds don’t align and have completely opposite vibes, it can be an obstacle. However, it’s up to you at the end of the day. 

Feel free to collaborate on a trial project with a content writing agency and see if you can match each other’s energy.

You’re good to go now. 

Key Takeaways 

• Go through a writing agency’s past client record to see the measurable results for yourself. 

• The agency’s own content on its website is evidence of its content quality. 

• A writing service agency’s past client testimonials are the perfect indicators of an agency’s worth. 

• If an agency doesn’t offer reliable and quick answers to your queries, say goodbye because you don’t want to deal with that. 

• A content writing agency having a high client retention rate is a sign that it is great at its job. Otherwise, the clients wouldn’t stay.