Evaluating content
Best Content Marketers: What Separates One From a Writer
Most content hires fail on distribution, not quality. Ask who will read the piece and why it will still be read in a year.
Written by Younus Fardeen, Marketing Manager at Masai School.
Last reviewed · 4 sources
What the job is
Content marketing is choosing what to publish, reaching someone, and knowing when it worked. Writing is one of four parts and the one most outsourced.
- Topics from demand and the sales conversation
- A distribution plan before the piece is written
- Formats matched to how the audience reads
- Updating and retiring pages, which usually beats new ones
- Measurement tied to pipeline, not sessions
- An editorial standard that survives handover
7 criteria I would actually use
- 01
They ask what you would stop publishing
Most programmes carry pages that cost upkeep and return nothing.
- 02
Distribution is in the plan
Ask how one piece reaches its reader. Publish and share is not a plan.
- 03
They can actually write
Ask for something they wrote, not something they commissioned.
- 04
They talk to sales or support
The best topics sit in objections and repeated questions.
- 05
They resist volume targets
Pieces per month is a production metric that survives because it is easy to report.
- 06
They have a view on AI drafting
Refusal and uncritical embrace are both warning signs.
- 07
They can show a piece that failed
Explaining why shows a feedback loop, not a portfolio.
Questions to ask before hiring one
Tick them off as you ask. Copy the list into your brief.
0 of 5 done
0%
Claims to doubt
Claims I would be skeptical of.
Includes claims I could make myself. Flip a card for the reason.
Claim
Content at scale
Claim
We increased traffic by 300%
Claim
SEO content as a category
Claim
A full content calendar for the quarter
Claim
Thought leadership
Worth evaluating alongside me
A freelance writer with an in-house owner
If someone internal knows the strategy, buying writing is cheaper than buying strategy.
A subject-matter expert who will write
In technical categories a credible practitioner writing roughly beats a polished outsider.
A content agency
Worth it when throughput across formats and languages is the constraint.
Publishing less, on purpose
Some companies do better with four strong pages a year and the budget to get them read.
Where I fit
The part where I make a caseI treat content as part of organic growth. Topics are chosen against search and AEO demand, and distribution is planned before writing.
I am most useful deciding what to publish and what to stop, and building a format the team keeps running without me.
For sustained output across many pieces a month, hire a writer or an agency.
Questions
Asked most.
How much content should we publish?
Less than you were told, and consistently. The constraint is usually distribution: how many pieces can you get read?
Should we use AI to write content?
For structure, research summaries and first passes, it saves time. Google says AI-assisted content must still meet its spam policies and Search Essentials.
How do we measure content marketing?
Pick something that survives a bad month: assisted conversions, branded search, sales cycle length. Traffic is a diagnostic, not a target.
Content marketer or SEO specialist?
The titles overlap. Ask both which of your pages to remove.
Evidence, labelled
What is confirmed, what is reported, what is a hunch.
Each claim is labelled and sourced. Google rows speak only for Google.
Last reviewed · 4 sources
- Confirmed
- Stated in the platform's own documentation or measured in published data.
- Reported
- Third-party study or vendor data. Method and conflicts noted.
AI-assisted content is allowed if it meets spam policies.
Confirmed
Google says AI-assisted content must meet Search Essentials and its spam policies. Tool use is not the test.
Sources, quotations and statistics lift visibility.
Reported
30 to 40% in a 2024 benchmark on older engines. Keyword stuffing gave little to no gain.
Readers should see who made it, how and why.
Confirmed
Google's people-first guidance. It also says E-E-A-T is not itself a ranking factor.
Scaled pages for query variants are a policy risk.
Confirmed
Google names large volumes of unoriginal content made mainly to manipulate rankings.
Sources, fetched 19 October 2026
- 01Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search (opens in a new tab)Google Search Central · Updated 10 Jul 2026
- 02GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024) (opens in a new tab)arXiv 2311.09735 · v3, 28 Jun 2024
- 03Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (opens in a new tab)Google Search Central · Updated 5 Oct 2026
- 04Spam policies for Google web search (opens in a new tab)Google Search Central · Updated 28 Aug 2026
By market
- BangaloreSEO and AEO for startups and engineering-led companies.Learn more
- IndiaVernacular and Hinglish retrieval, DPDP, and a market where agencies sell the category.Learn more
- UAEBilingual structure, GCC regulation and a live page-one hospitality build.Learn more
Worked with
- Masai School
- Sparkling Sandset
- Under 25
- Snapchat India
Next step
Put these questions to me.
Use the questions above on me too. Send any in writing and I will answer plainly, including where someone else is the better hire for "best content marketer".