If you run your own marketing, you have probably asked the same question: a well-chosen blog post could bring the right readers to your site, so why not pay for done-for-you SEO articles? For some small teams that is a sensible purchase. For others it is money spent on articles nobody checks. The difference usually comes down to what arrives in the order, and whether you can verify it.
This guide is an SEO article checklist for that decision. It lists the six parts a paid article should come with, says what each part does, names what no provider can buy for you, and explains when writing the posts yourself is the better choice. For a worked example, it uses the price list of WannaSEO, which sells SEO articles per piece or in packs.
Disclosure: this guide was produced in collaboration with WannaSEO, which is linked above; the prices and process described come from its own website.
Done-for-you SEO articles or your own: start with the trade-off
Writing your own article costs time, and that time usually comes out of the same week as sales calls, client work or product decisions. Paying costs money but buys a finished, fact-checked piece for a stated price. Neither option is better in general.
As a rule of thumb, writing in-house suits a team that already publishes on a regular schedule and enjoys the subject. Paying suits a team that needs a few well-placed articles this quarter and has nobody free to write them. A simple test helps when you plan SEO articles for small business: if the articles will only appear when someone finds a spare afternoon, the spare afternoon is the real cost.
Whichever way you lean, the question stays the same. What exactly will the article contain when it arrives? The six parts below give you a list to check any quote against.
Part 1: a blog matched to your subject
A paid article should appear on a blog whose subject sits close to yours. The reason is practical: as a rule of thumb, a reader who arrives on a blog about the same subject is already interested in it, and your piece reads as part of the blog rather than a stray advert. Search Central's guidance on snippets adds a detail worth knowing: snippets are "automatically created from page content", and they are "designed to emphasize and preview the page content that best relates to a user's specific search". In our reading, a page with one clear subject gives that preview something definite to draw on.
WannaSEO's wording for this part is "a blog matched to your subject". It also says articles publish "on a blog in the network matched to your topic that links to your site, or on your own dedicated blog". Ask which of the two you are getting, and ask what the host blog covers before you agree to anything.
Source: Search Central, snippet guidance.
Part 2: a keyword-planned headline and a search title and description
The headline does two jobs. It has to make a reader want to click, and it has to name the thing being searched for. Keyword planning comes before the headline, not after. A provider should be able to show you the keywords it chose and why, then the headline, title and description built around them.
Search Central's guidance on title links asks site owners to write "descriptive and concise" text for each page's title element. It also says there is no reason for the same words or phrases to appear several times in one title. A headline that repeats your keyword five times is a warning sign, not a plan.
For the planning step itself, the keyword research guide on this blog walks through how to choose terms you can realistically compete for. Use it to judge whether a provider's keyword list makes sense for your business.
Source: Search Central, title link guidance.
Part 3: original, fact-checked writing with real sections
This is the part buyers most often underrate. An article that restates what a dozen other pages already say gives a reader little new, and, as a rule of thumb, there is little reason for anyone to link to it. Ask for a piece with its own structure: sections that answer specific questions, headings that name the topic, and claims that trace back to a source you can open.
Search Central's guidance on helpful content gives creators questions to ask of their own pages, such as whether a page provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis", and whether it clearly demonstrates "first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge". Those are good questions to ask of any article you pay for, whoever wrote it.
WannaSEO describes this part as "original, fact-checked writing", and says that articles "are fact-checked against the brief and its sources". Ask to see the sources list. If a provider cannot show you where a claim came from, the article is not finished.
Source: Search Central, creating helpful content.
Part 4: a link to your site, with the anchor text you choose
The article should link to your site, and you should choose the words of the link. Anchor text is the visible clickable text, and Search Central describes it as something that "tells people and Google something about the page you're linking to". A link labelled "our keyword research guide" says far more than one labelled "click here".
Two things to check. First, the link should be a standard link that a crawler can follow. Search Central says that, generally, Google can only crawl a link if it is an anchor element with an href attribute, and that it can't reliably extract URLs from links that work only through script events. Second, the link should point to the page you want to support, not only to a homepage. If you have a service page, ask for that page to be linked, with anchor text you approve. The service page SEO guide on this blog covers how to structure that page before you point links at it.
Source: Search Central, crawlable links guidance.
Part 5: sitemap inclusion and search-engine submission
Search Central defines a sitemap as "a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them". Including a new article in the sitemap gives search engines a list of pages to look at, so it is a basic step that should not be skipped.
WannaSEO lists "sitemap inclusion and search-engine submission" as part of the article. Ask two follow-up questions. Which sitemap gets updated, and who updates it? And is the submission done after the article goes live? Submission should follow publishing, not come before it.
Source: Search Central, sitemaps overview.
Part 6: a report of every live URL
The last part is the paper trail. Without a list of live links, you cannot tell which articles went out, where they sit, or whether they still load. A useful report contains every live link, comes as a web page, a PDF and a plain list of the URLs, and stays available.
WannaSEO describes its report as "a web report with every live link, the same report as a PDF and a plain list of the URLs", and says the report link does not expire. Whoever you buy SEO articles from, save a copy of the URL list in your own files the day it arrives.
What no provider can buy
Two things are off the table, and an honest provider will say so before you pay.
The first is a ranking. WannaSEO's own stance is that "nobody can honestly promise a ranking", and that what the company controls is "the work: keyword planning, the title and description, structured data, internal links, sitemap and submission to search engines". That list is useful, because it separates the work a provider can deliver from the result that search engines decide.
The second is indexing. WannaSEO's FAQ says "search engines decide for themselves what to index and when". A paid article is a delivered piece of work. It is not a promise about what the search engine will do with it, and any provider that offers indexing as a paid extra should be questioned hard.
Doing it yourself or paying: a decision rule
Writing in-house makes sense when three things are true. You already publish most weeks, so the process exists. You know the subject well enough to check facts yourself. And you want the learning, and control over every sentence on your site.
The in-house route has a cost beyond time: you need some way to research keywords and see how pages perform. As a rule of thumb, a free or paid tool covers both jobs, and learning it is part of the cost. Price that tooling into the comparison, and weigh it against what the same money buys in finished articles.
Paying makes sense when you need a few pieces on a schedule and cannot write them in-house. It also makes sense when you want the checks, the link placement and the report handled against a fixed checklist, so that nothing depends on one person's memory.
The price structure matters too. WannaSEO lists an SEO article for $15, and says packs bring an article down to $10.50, with the 120-article pack at $1,260 ($10.50 each). Its Pro level adds $69 for deep research before writing and an FAQ section. The order is one-time: there is no contract or monthly fee, you pay per piece or per pack, and nothing renews automatically. Anything that misses your brief is corrected at no charge, while a different offer, audience or topic counts as new work. WannaSEO also says you see the exact total before you pay. In our view, per-piece buying lets a team test one article before it commits to a pack, which suits a cautious buyer; it is not a promise about results.
Frequently asked questions
Does a done-for-you article guarantee a ranking?
No. No honest provider can promise one. What a provider can deliver is the work: keyword planning, a title and description, structured data, internal links, a sitemap entry and submission to search engines. As a rule of thumb, whether a page ranks depends on search engines and on the competition, which is why the checklist above focuses on verifiable parts of the job.
What happens if the article misses my brief?
WannaSEO says anything that misses the brief is corrected at no charge. A different offer, audience or topic is new work and is priced as such. Put the brief in writing before the order, so both sides know what "misses the brief" means.
Do I need to log in to anything or install software?
No, according to WannaSEO, which says you never log in to anything or install anything. For a small team that already has enough tools, that matters: the work arrives as a finished piece and a report, not as another dashboard to learn.
Who owns the copy once it is published?
It depends on the provider, so get the answer in writing. WannaSEO's terms say the copy, design and images are yours to use however you like, and that articles placed on the network stay hosted there. If you want the articles on a blog of your own, ask for that option before you order.
Next step
If the article should send readers to a page that asks for an enquiry, WannaSEO also sells sales pages, and says every sales page carries an enquiry form wired so enquiries reach you. Readers who need articles and that page together can start from its SEO content package page, which sets out what the articles and the sales page each include.
Whatever you decide, use the six parts above as your checklist. A provider that can show each part in writing is easier to compare, and easier to hold to what it promised.