Tag Archives: optimization

Importance of E-A-T for writing SEO content

What exactly is Google E-A-T?

The expression E-A-T began to appear in various SEO articles after a major Google update in 2018. The finer nitty-gritty of the E-A-T part of the algorithm isn’t exactly clear to anyone but in this SEO guideline, Google seems to define “low quality pages” as pages “lacking expertise, authoritativeness, or trustworthiness”. Untrustworthy pages have the lowest E-A-T quotient.

To rank well, according to the Google update, the following needs to be considered:

The level of expertise of the creator of the main content.
The authoritativeness of the creator of the main content, the authoritativeness of the main content itself, and the authority of the website.
The trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the trustworthiness of the main content itself, and that of the website.

Expertise can be of two types:

Something like a medical journal where highly expert people write about medicine and treatments.
Less formal expertise such as restaurant or movie reviews.

It depends on how much the writers and their websites are trusted and believed by the readers and viewers.

The most important factors for E-A-T web pages may include

The main content quality and quantity.
The main beneficial purpose of the content (the web page or the blog post).
The expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the content as well as the content creator.
The reputation of the website and the author.

How to write content according to Google’s E-A-T

Google’s intention is to find and showcase the most reliable and trustworthy information to its users. This is its reason to exist. If people don’t find trustworthy information, they will stop using the search engine and another search engine may fill the gap. You need to write content keeping that in mind. Here are a few things you can do

Write content based on search intent

Why are people looking for your content? Exactly what is the information they seek to solve their problems?

Further reading: What is search intent and how knowing it improves your SEO

When people are looking for content on my website they have to reasons

They are looking for a professional content writer and copywriter.
They want tips and information on content writing and copywriting so that they can either write themselves, or link to the blog post to add value to their own content.

When people link to my content it improves my search engine rankings. Also, when people are easily able to find my content on Google they more eagerly contact me for work thinking that I can achieve the same for them (which, on many occasions, I do).

Hence, whenever you are writing your content or editing existing content make sure why you are writing, what purpose it solves, and whether it delivers exactly what the readers are looking for.

Write blog posts and web pages in question-answer formats

The reason is quite simple. People are constantly asking Google questions and Google intends to provide answers. If you already write in question-and-answer format you deliver a ready-made template to Google.

Writing in the question answer format also helps you write according to the search intent. When you answer a question, you already know what you are writing about. Similarly, when people find your content on Google they already know what answer lies ahead, and more eagerly click your link, improving your CTR, and in the process, elevating your search engine rankings further.

Increase your authority as an author

This happens over a long period of time, but ultimately, it begins to have a bearing on your search engine rankings, especially considering E-A-T (the authority part). Do people refer to you as an expert? Do they mention you as an expert or an authority figure when they link to your content? Do they recommend you?

These things are interrelated. Unless you have content people are not going to find it and if they don’t find it, how do they know that you are an expert in your field?

Now, unless they know that you are an expert (based on E-A-T), how are you going to improve your search engine rankings so that they can find your content?

It may become a vicious loop, but it doesn’t have to be. You need to begin from somewhere.

Be active on social media. Use websites like Quora and LinkedIn. LinkedIn these days have many forums you can post your answers in and once you have built a presence, you can start sharing your content over there.

Pay close attention to search engine optimization when writing content

Don’t just write and publish content because you think you are an authoritative figure in your field. Yes, this definitely matters, but you need to make it easier for Google crawlers to crawl and index your content. For that, you need to follow some SEO conventions when writing and formatting your content.

What can you do?

Use an appropriate title that truly represents what you are writing. Preferably use your keywords or an SEO tool when formulating your title.

Use headings and subheadings like <h1>, <h2> and <h3>. Use <h1> just once for the main heading of your blog post or web page. You can use the subheading tags for multiple headings to make your content scannable.

Sometimes Google crawlers don’t go through your entire blog post or web page. They just skim through the headings and subheadings and bulleted points. Make sure you have useful information in these tags.

Why pay close attention to search engine optimization when writing content?

As I mentioned, it will make it easier for crawlers to make sense of your content and increase your chances of appearing in search results.

However low your rankings are, sooner or later people are going to find your content and start interacting with it. After that, your further rankings depend on how people interact with your content. This is where writing content according to search engine optimization standards is going to help you.

Find credible data and cite authoritative sources

Content writers, especially thought leaders, do lots of research when writing content. They find research data, quote it, and then link to the original sources. This renders credibility to their writing. It’s easier to trust numbers. Find information from multiple sources so that your readers don’t have to do that, and they can find all the credible information at the single source.

If you are an organization, you should also encourage your writers to improve their authoritativeness. You can invite well known authors to write for your blog. Write and publish lots of long form content because it is considered more authoritative and informative compared to thin content. Researching and citing sources also elevates your E-A-T factor.

How to generate more leads with strategic content writing?

How to strategize content writing to generate hot leads?

You need to find out why people are searching for you, when they are searching for you.

Obviously, people who are looking to buy something, or hire someone, or use a software service, are not looking for educational content, at least not knowingly.

For example, if you are looking for someone who can help you improve your search engine rankings and you are not aware that optimized content writing can help you improve your SEO, my blog post titled 5 reasons why content writing is important for SEO can reveal something that you don’t know.

For that matter, even a blog post like 10 SEO content writing tips for your small business can be quite helpful.

You may ask, if all I am doing is teaching people why content writing is important for SEO or how you can write content for your small business to improve your SEO by yourself, how am I generating hot leads for my own business?

Even if your writing is seemingly instructional content, you need to write in such a manner that the central message – your open for business – shouldn’t be lost.

To generate hot leads, you need to create precise web pages, landing pages and blog posts. There shouldn’t be any ambiguity. You shouldn’t club multiple messages under the same web page. When you club multiple messages, the central objective of your content is diluted and people end up getting confused.

Seriously consider search intent to generate hot leads

Not all type of search intent gets you hot leads but writing and publishing content keeping search intent in mind can definitely improve the number of hot leads your content generates.

What is search intent? You may like to read What is search intent and how knowing it improves your SEO.

Most of the information about search intent that I have published on my website and blog is about improving your search engine rankings, but writing your content centered around the appropriate search intent can also help you generate more leads.

Writing content for searcher intent helps you be with your customers and clients throughout their buyer journey.

Again I will give you my own example.

Someone is researching for ways to improve search engine rankings and comes across my blog that talks about how content writing can help you improve your search engine rankings. The person has been informed.

The search intent here is informational. The person isn’t looking for someone to hire. He or she simply needs information that can help him or her improve his or her search engine rankings.

Once a person has read my blog post on how content writing can help improve search engine rankings, he or she finds out that I provide such content writing services, through another web page or blog post. The other web page or blog post has been written keeping “commercial intent” in mind.

These days I’m getting lots of traffic for “content writer for accounting services” or “content writer for life coaching services”. These searches are carried out with commercial intent.

Accountants or accounting companies are looking for a content writer. People providing life coaching services are looking for a content writer. The intent is clear. Search traffic generates hot leads for me

On a related note: do hot leads always convert?

Not necessarily. Hot leads are people who are ready to do business with you but they haven’t yet committed.

Maybe they won’t like my samples. Maybe they won’t find my rates acceptable. Maybe after contacting me, they come across someone else who they think is a better match. There are multiple reasons why even a hot lead may not convert, but that’s a different matter.

How to double or triple your traffic by using long tail keywords in content writing?

What are long tail keywords?

The phrase “long tail keywords” originates from the dragon-like long tail the traffic graph of long tail keywords generates.

Long tail keywords are those keywords that are low competition, that is, not many people are searching for them, but if some people are searching for them, and if you have optimized your web page or blog post for those long tail keywords, your link can be found by them easily.

To understand better, look at the image given below:

As you can understand, it would be very difficult for me to rank for the phrase “content marketing”. Aside from the fact that it makes no sense to optimize for this particular phrase for me right now simply because no intent can be attributed to the phrase “content marketing”, since thousands of people are already ranking above me, it wouldn’t be worth it for me to spend so much effort trying to rank higher for it.

Although this keyword or phrase is very competitive and may generate lots of traffic for websites ranking high for this keyword, in terms of competition and conversion, it has no value for me.

“Content marketing for my website” on the other hand is a clearly-defined phrase that I would like to rank higher for. A person who wants to use content marketing to promote his or her website should be able to find my website.

But again, it is a highly competitive phrase, though, it can be termed as, by definition, a long tail keyword because it contains more than three words.

Still, thousands of businesses might be looking for “content marketing for my website” because, well, one, almost every business these days has a website, and two, almost every business wants to promote itself some way or the other, and among these businesses, who are aware of the concept, would like to use content marketing to promote themselves.

Now we come to “content marketing for my web design website”. It’s an out and out long tail keyword because fewer people (compared to the two phrases described above) are searching for it and hence, it is not as competitive as the keywords mentioned above.

So, it is easier to rank higher for this phrase and since it is easier to rank higher, even if fewer people are searching for it, it can generate decent traffic.

This example can be applied to any business.

Suppose you sell “handwoven socks” from your website. Although it is a very attractive keyword or key phrase, thousands of people might be searching for “handwoven socks”. On the other hand, if you try to rank for “handwoven socks for babies” or “blue handwoven socks with white pattern” it will be easier to rank higher and get very specific traffic with greater conversion rate.

Such keywords or phrases are called long tail keywords; they are normally 3-4-5 words long and are very specific.

Why you can ill afford to ignore long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are also important because most of your traffic is already coming, or is going to come, from mobile devices. On mobile devices, since search is supported by voice, people tend to use phrases or common sentences to search for information.

There is a greater possibility of someone searching for “content writing service for my boutique website” then “content writing service”.

So, it is better to optimize for search terms and keywords your prospective customers and clients are actually using.

Another big reason is, the more specific the search is, the greater is the chance of the person buying from you.

This is where “intent” comes in.

If someone is searching for “content marketing” you never know what she is looking for.

Does she want to learn about content marketing? Does she want to find websites on content marketing? Is she a journalist writing an article? Maybe she is looking for books, articles and blog posts on content marketing? You can never be sure.

Even if someone is searching for “content marketing for my business” you cannot be sure whether she is looking to hire someone, or she wants to do it on her own.

“Content marketing service for my business” is more targeted and it means someone is looking for a content marketing service for her business.

“Content marketing service for my interior design website” is even more targeted. You know precisely what she is looking for.

Targeting for long tail keywords gives you an edge because it sends you highly targeted traffic that in turn, improves your conversion rate.

How to improve your SEO and double, or even triple your traffic with long tail keywords

As I have already explained above, since long tail keywords are less competitive in terms of SEO and may attract even less traffic, since they are more targeted, they enjoy better conversion rate and easy, higher search engine rankings.

You can either use common sense to create a list of long tail keywords pertaining to your business, industry or profession, or you can use something like LongtailPro (disclaimer: affiliate link) to find the long tail keywords in your niche.

With LongtailPro, you can enter a “seed” keyword and based on that, the app will suggest all the combinations that you can optimize your content for.

A good thing about LongtailPro is that along with giving you all the possible suggestions, it also shows you how competitive a particular phrase is for your website, specifically, and how many queries are done using the phrase for the long tail keyword.

If you don’t want to use LongtailPro, you can also use the Google AdWords tool. Just be wary, since Google would like you to bid on maximum number of keywords and phrases, it throws at you all sorts of keyword combinations that may confuse you. It is better to use the tool to get the ideas but eventually, create your own list, manually.

Remember that the amount of search engine traffic that you get is not important, what is important is, how many people do business with you. For that, you need to target very specific keywords and search terms.

Once you have created the list, start creating content around those long tail keywords.

The best thing to do is, create a web page or blog post with the title having your long tail keyword. For example, I can have something like “How to use long tail keywords for content marketing?” or “how my content writing service can help your restaurant website?”

If you have a TV shop in Lajpat Nagar it doesn’t make any sense trying to optimize for “Sony TV”.

On the other hand, you should optimize for “TV shop in Lajpat Nagar” or better, “Sony TV shop in Lajpat Nagar”, or even better, “Leco Sony TV Lajpat Nagar”, because this is how people search when they really want to buy.

Below I’m summing up how and why optimizing for long tail keywords can improve your search engine rankings as well as conversion rate:

Long tail keywords are less competitive in terms of SEO and hence, you can easily rank higher for them
Since you can easily rank higher for them, even if fewer people are searching for them, they will come to your website
Since search terms for long tail keywords are very specific, the traffic generated through these keywords have a clearly-defined intent and this is why, they enjoy a greater conversion rate

In fact, while writing content for my clients, I have experienced that writing content for long tail keywords is a lot easier than writing content for generic, high competition keywords because, since long tail keywords use logical phrases, it is easier to write conversational, engaging content for them.