Outsourcing content for your website is risky if you don’t know what you are doing. After Google’s algorithm change to ranking factors, (known as “Panda”) content is becoming an integral part of your businesses search relevance.

It used to be, if you had content over 300 words and applied the proper on-page optimization you were primed for SEO best practices. However, Google is now taking in to consideration more factors of your site when determining if it is “high quality” or “low quality.” Last week, Google refreshed their algorithm yet again, boosting rankings for many SEOs that operate sites with quality content, and lowering ranking for sites with poor content. The ultimate emphasis being, if your site has great content, you will rank better.

However this is an issue for many businesses that don’t place an emphasis on content, like e-commerce, and local business listings and directories sites. So if you have see any rankings drop in the last 6 months you may be frantically searching for ways to ramp up your site’s content.

One thing you will learn is that good content isn’t cheap, so if you don’t have an in-house copywriter or simply don’t have the resources to update your site, outsourcing may be your only option. However, with outsourced web content, you should tread carefully to make sure your site doesn’t raise any red flags. Here are few tips to outsource your content and not sacrifice rankings.

Shoot for 500 Words Per Page

A basic benchmark for many SEOs was 300-400 pre-panda. We are finding that pages with 500-600 words jumped the most post Panda 2.3. Although we are all aware of the phrase, “correlation doesn’t equal causation” I feel confident that the extra money spent outsourcing 200 extra words will pay off.

Make Your Blog Viral

Easier said then done right? Outsourced content is known for low-medium quality, stuff that isn’t exactly “viral.” It may be a good idea to spruce up articles or blogs written by a third party by adding statistics, graphs, facts and pictures. Or if you really want to place emphasis on viral content, hire a third party to create an infographic for you.

Copyscape The Content You Receive

A very important procedure that must be taken with the majority of content is to Copyscape your content. Make sure the articles and web-copy you are receiving isn’t similar to another site. Having duplicate content issues can red flag your site and keep you from ranking.

Outsourcing your content is undoubtedly the quickest way to scale your content marketing efforts. However, if you provide the party you are working with specific instructions, expectations and spot check their work you should be able to leverage outsourced content to help you rank.

Source:http://www.resourcenation.com/blog/outsourcing-content-post-panda-update-2-3/33047/