SEO Content Writer wanted | 12-20 cents per word

COMPANY/PUBLICATION: THE BLOGSMITH

Please watch before applying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c3qzkDXIdg

The SEO Content Writer will help produce SEO blog content for The Blogsmith’s clients.

You’ll be helping us create relevant, high-quality content that matches the technical use of SEO keywords with a nuanced understanding of search intent. Understanding search intent involves asking why someone used a certain keyword phrase and predicting what they’d expect to find when clicking through on a relevant search result.

The ideal writer will balance that reader expectation with championing the interests and voices of the brands we represent. Our writers create content that combines a deep understanding of the audience’s needs with a meticulous adherence to brand guidelines.

The freelance writer should be passionate about conducting in-depth research on topics and brands they may not be familiar with, comfortable following thorough processes, and committed to continual improvement.

In short, we’re looking for someone who is:

• Passionate about helping readers and brands
• Ambitious
• Detail-oriented
• An excellent communicator

What It’s Like Working With The Blogsmith

The Blogsmith is a process-oriented company with thorough content checklists designed to help you make great content. You will follow The Blogsmith Style Guide to create high-quality content to our standards.

You’ll work with an editor on our team to fine-tune content for clients across the outline, draft, and editing stages. You may also work with a project manager and virtual assistants to accomplish relevant tasks. Assignments are typically 1000+ words in length.

Our clients typically fall in these niches:

• Financial
• B2B technology SaaS clients
• Small business and e-commerce

Indicate your experience with these on the application.

You can work whenever you want as long as you’re able to respond to team communications within 24 hours on Monday – Friday and can consistently meet deadlines without micromanaging.

This role is perfect for the freelance writer who just wants to write but doesn’t want to deal with all the extra details that include keyword research, client management, or the bulk of editing work.

We want to empower you to do your best work with The Blogsmith, which means we set high expectations, but our established processes make them easy to meet. You’ll have access to:

• Pro Statista account
• Designers and design agencies
• SEO tool access
• Grammarly Premium

Working for The Blogsmith has been a wonderful growth experience. I get the chance to write for major companies, learn about various topics, and improve my SEO content writing skills. Maddy and the team are supportive and always happy to answer questions and provide more insight into the content writing process. It's a collaborative environment with a team that's always striving to be better.

-Amanda Moutinho (Former SEO Content Writer, now working as the Content Manager of The Blogsmith)

Why The SEO Content Ghostwriter Role Matters for The Blogsmith

The Blogsmith helps B2B technology companies build relationships with their target audience via search. The writer helps to find the balance between incorporating SEO requirements while ultimately focusing on the needs of the human reader over search spiders. After all, it’s the human reader who will ultimately help us achieve conversion-related business goals.

While the clients vary and the content formats change, we always set out to create genuinely helpful content that resonates with the readers and represents our clients perfectly.

Here’s the bottom line:

We don’t just want to create content for content’s sake — we explore topics with a unique stance so that we’re providing a unique benefit (compared to similar content) for anyone who reads the work we produce.

Technical Skill Requirements

• An understanding of SEO preferred. This will help you understand our clients and writing process. We can teach any knowledge gaps.
• Experience with creating content for the web. Digital content requires an understanding of readability, scannability, visual art direction, and SEO. It will be hard to be successful in this role if you’ve never created digital content, even if you have some writing experience.
• Skill with adding art direction to your content. You’ll work with designers to source and create imagery that supplements your articles.
• Experience writing for a publication that’s not your own with the ability to follow a writing style guide, content brief, editorial process, or an SEO writing checklist.
• Willingness to use Slack for communications and Process Street for task management. We use a bunch of tools and expect you’ll get up to speed as part of working with us.
• Ability to conduct in-depth research on topics that you may not be familiar with and synthesize unique, compelling content.
• Ability to scope projects with our team as outlines that clients approve. The purpose is to get everyone on the same page to avoid wasted time later in the process.
• Skills interviewing sources. You may be asked to reach out to expert sources and should feel comfortable asking them questions.
• Ability to become a brand chameleon to meet client requirements. You’ll work with many clients and need to be committed to nailing each one’s brand voice and comfortable switching between them.
• Comfortable with client communication. Ideally, we’re looking for someone able to build a relationship with our clients directly to best understand their content expectations.

Soft Skill + Availability Requirements

• Willingness to learn and take feedback gracefully: It will take time for you to get used to our style and processes. We will patiently guide you through to success but you must be willing to spend the time and effort to get there.
• Good communication skills: You’ll be working with fellow team members to accomplish tasks related to producing great content. We appreciate overcommunication when it comes to content delivery, client questions, etc. – our workflow depends on it.
• Respectful: You’ll be expected to treat everyone you interact with as an extension of The Blogsmith with respect.
• Following directions: Successful writers are happy to approach our topics methodically, following instructions carefully.
• Ability to work on a deadline: The article creation process involves many interconnected, dependent steps that have to happen on deadline for the sake of our clients. Timely responsiveness during the workweek is necessary to work on this team so that we can address edits when relevant. We have high expectations and any failure to meet them in terms of things like communication issues or missing deadlines will result in fewer assignments or a contract termination.
• Problem-solving skills: When there’s an issue, Blogsmith teammates use their resources and each other to get it solved before it becomes a true problem. You’ll have access to our intranet in Notion that contains answers to most questions.
• Storytelling skills: You’re able to breathe life into seemingly dull content by finding angles and creating a narrative people are interested in.
• Organization/planning skills: Successful writers on our team don’t wait until the day a project is due to get their questions answered or address any issues with the brief. We assign most projects a week before they’re due to give plenty of notice for planning.
• Write “Hi Maddy” (in addition to any questions or comments you have) at the end of the application form so that I know you’re paying attention to detail, which is important for being a part of this team.
• A passion for writing: In order to create great content, you have to take an interest in the process. Please do not apply unless you enjoy the process of writing, because it will show across the various topics and clients we have assignments for.
• Journalistic curiosity: You should have the desire to create content that’s truly unique and digs deeper than the surface level.

Benefits and Compensation

Starting at $0.12/word (experienced writers can pitch their rate in the application) with up to two revisions included. There will be an opportunity to review the rate at three months, based on performance and writers with significant experience can pitch their rate when applying. $20/hour for projects outside of normal blog content writing. $0.20/word for website copy projects.

• $200 onboarding bonus for adjusting to our systems (paid out as a lump sum when you complete your second month).
• Work 100% remote.
• Work whenever you want while meeting weekday deadlines for planned assignments.
• As much work as you want, focusing on the writing - not the admin, seo research, sourcing free stock images, etc.
• Mentorship and training around the important parts of the content processes — we’re here to help you get better.
• Opportunities for growth as we grow.
• Work with well-known brands.
• Learn well-tested processes for content creation that you can apply to other writing work. We provide:Step-by-step checklists for content success
  Straightforward templates for every type of content
  Video walk-throughs and explainers
  Internal educational resources for SEO, style, and image guidelines
  
• Payout via Gusto so you don’t have to pay any processing fees or Wise to minimize foreign transaction fees.
• Up to one hour per week continuing education credit: we’ll pay your hourly rate to learn about something related to content marketing.
• Startup-esque environment - we’re interested in tools, processes, staying up to date with best practices. We don’t settle, we’re always striving and many writers comment on that, that they like it.

Fill out this form to apply as a SEO Content Writer at The Blogsmith: https://blogsmithb2btech.paperform.co/

Take 10 minutes to complete this skills test: https://the-blogsmith.vervoe.net/job-page/the-blogsmith-content-writer/8c5bd807-af9b-4b9b-948f-b63785da4eca

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Applications: Via the webform

Website: https://www.theblogsmith.com/

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