There will come a time, if it hasn’t arrived already, when you’ll begin to feel overwhelmed by the ongoing tasks associated with keeping your blog or site up to date, current, and full of that updated relevant content Google loves so much. So what is there to do? Many people seek to automate some of these tasks, and while this is a terrific idea, there are also some concerns to be aware of. Let’s examine these.

There are a load of tasks that can be automated or outsourced. Some of the more common ones include content creation, blog writing and posting, building links, managing a PPC campaign, webmastering, creation of new pages and more. In fact, I’m sure you can think of many things you simply find yourself putting off, or feel entirely unqualified to tackle.

For instance, instead of taking a few days of your life and trying to learn how to code a certain part of your site, or install a script, why not hire someone who can do the job within an hour or so, for what works out to a fraction of what your time is worth in monetary terms.

Many people who have WordPress blogs like to use software to drip in posts over time, or to write ahead of time, and load up the content into their blog scheduled to post on a certain day and time. There are many solutions like this, and they can be beneficial.

The concerns about using software are that they may be posting things you aren’t particularly fond of. Many of the automated WordPress solutions and certain “automated site building” programs scrape from the article directories, and while they follow their TOS in doing so, leaving author links intact and so on, the relevancy and quality of the content may not be what you’d like to see, and you may end up going back in and fixing things.

Also, when scheduling even your own blog posts, be careful not to go too far out in time with it, as you might find that what you’ve written about no longer applies, and it will look a bit silly.

Certainly the benefits of automating or outsourcing these tasks are of immense value. The SEO benefits, the increased traffic, links and site development alone are worth it. You just need to find that critical balance between what’s a help and what’s not.

Consider using a virtual assistant or an outsourcer as automation as well. You may pay a bit more, but the quality will be there, and you’ll be able to control things far better. They will be far more able to write as you’d like to see your content read, and they can also take on many other tasks that a piece of software may perform but not as well, such as link building, blog commenting and more.

Trying to work in as much automation and outsourced work as possible into your business will free you up to work on expanding it, which is something only you can do!