Finding content for your website is not so much about quantity as it is about quality. And quality content can be hard to find.

So where does quality content come from?

First things first,  lets define “Quality” in this context. Quality content is any information that your target audience will find of value and therefore want to read. Quality content can come from many sources but the best person for the job can largely depend on the subject matter. If there is a great deal of information already available on the subject, you can choose to turn to free sources (which can vary depending on the subject) or to license content from another provider. Although these options will provide you with information to fill the holes in your site, it is not likely to win clients or influence sales the way you were hoping for your online venture.

You may be the right person for the job.

If you sell a specific product that you know better than anyone else or have a great deal of experience in a certain area, you may be the best person to write your own content. The problem is that you may not have the writing chops to turn your knowledge into effective content for your prospective clients and I am not just talking about grammar and punctuation either. Sure, you need a decent grounding in those things to communicate effectively and not make your company look bad in the process but the larger issue is the ability to make the information interesting for your average intended reader. If your prose read like stereo instructions, you will lose more people even if your information is the best available source for it.

To write or not to write – that is the question.

Many people can communicate well and in an interesting fashion in text (even the ones like me who have a tendency to write like they talk) but there are an equal or greater number of people out there who should “Just Say No” to writing their own content. Once this realization occurs, it is time to bring in a professional. There are varying degrees of skills out there just waiting to be found. You can find writers with skills ranging from basic press releases all the way up to the ability to write full on technical white papers with web content specialists falling in between. And many of them can do it all end to end so you if find the right person, you can get everything you need all in one place. The thing to keep in mind though is that what you need for web content is a writer who understands how to distill information into easily consumable blocks of content while understanding enough about SEO to help increase the keyword density in your pages. Just because you find a highly skilled writer, does not mean they are automatically skilled at web content.

When it come down to it, the right person is relatively subjective, but if you are going to make the investment (be it with time or money), you have to make sure that whoever you chose is  the best one  for the job.