Tag Archives: seo content

3 tips for hiring a good content writing company for your business

These are not good visuals. Once they have been arrested what does it mean to be done like that

These are not good visuals. Once they have been arrested what does it mean to be done like that

Two things can make or break your content marketing strategy: The quality of your content and the consistency with which you publish it. You have got a good content writing company working for you if it can deliver both.

The problem is not finding the right content writing company. There are plenty. If you search on the Internet “content writing company” Google proudly displays millions of results and also tells you that it found the results in less than a second. Millions of results don’t matter. You will probably go through the top 4-5 results and send them a query.

In a couple of hours or in a couple of days you receive their responses. You set up a Google Meet with them to find out how they can deliver you the content that you need. Things begin to move.

They give you a “competitive” rate. They promise better search engine rankings. They commit to a consistent content supply. They also assure you that they are going to provide you high quality content. A dream come true.

Do such content writing companies exist? Yes, they do. You need to find them. Here are three important tips to find a good content writing company for your business.

Make sure they have a professional website

A professional website is a commitment. It ups your stakes. A professional website is costly. You often need to hire a web designer, or you need to spend time giving professional touches to the website yourself. The website shouldn’t look like a general WordPress template.

The website must have all the components of a business website such as (aside from the homepage) services page, about us page, contact us page, and even a blog section (more about it later). Every page on the website must solve the purpose. I know there are some pages that are essential for search engine optimization but still, every main page of the website must make sense and should be written to communicate the core philosophy and deliverability of the website.

The content writing company must understand your need

This begins when you initiate communication. Do they understand your business? Do they know your requirement, sometimes even beyond your understanding?

I have worked with many content writers and there is a big difference between content writers who run their own business as a company and those who simply provide work as freelancers by listing their names on the various freelancing websites and social media platforms. People who run a business understand your business. You can read that between the lines.

For example, a content writer who doesn’t work in a company will simply focus on the topic without instilling a sense of personality. But a content writer who runs his own business understands how to run a business and he or she brings the same experience to you when writing your content.

The content writing company has a consistent fee structure

Content writing fee is an important issue both for the content provider and the client. There must be a reason for the content writing company to charge what it charges. The fee shouldn’t be random.

When I tell my clients how much I charge they know why I’m charging that much. After that I don’t negotiate because I know that to be able to deliver quality and consistency there is a certain amount of money that I must make. There are many content writing companies who will negotiate to insane lengths and then compromise with quality, originality and deliverability.

Finding whether you are paying the right fee or not can be a tricky question if you don’t understand how important content is for your business. As the famous saying goes, “if you offer peanuts, you get monkeys”.

Hence, look for a content writing company that has a consistent and logically defined fee structure.

As I have written in the beginning, content is a crucial part of your content marketing effort. It is the backbone. You consistently need high quality content. If you are constantly changing your content writing company, it hinders your content writing efforts. Don’t be in a hurry when looking for the right content writing company. Take your time finding one.

How to keep visitors longer on your website with your content?

How to make people stay longer on your website with content writing
How to make people stay longer on your website with content writing

It is important that when visitors come to your website, they spend longest possible time there. This is important for lowering your bounce rate as well as increasing your conversion rate.

Studies have shown that the longer people stay on your website, the greater are the chances of them becoming your paid customers and clients. This is because they become familiar with your presence and grow comfortable with what you represent.

In different forms I have explained on my website how to lower your bounce rate, which means, how to keep people on your website longer. How long people stay on your website or how fast they leave your website, is a reflection on the quality and relevance of your content. The quality and relevance of your content and your lower bounce rate go hand-in-hand.

It’s very easy to bring people to your website. Any SEO company or content marketing company can help you with bringing as many people as possible to your website. The real feat is turning those people into paying customers and clients. The content that you have published on your website accomplishes that, or must accomplish that.

The fact that people stay on your website, explore various sections, and go through your web pages, means that they are interested in your proposition. Here are a few things you can do to keep people longer on your website through your content.

Provide definitive answers to definitive questions

Your bounce rate will be higher if people feel that they have been misled into visiting your website. Suppose they come across your link on Google, click the link, come to your website, and then, after feeling dissatisfied, leave within a few seconds. Why does this happen?

Take your own example. You are moving through an arcade of shops and there is a gripping banner offering you something that you have been looking for, for ages. With great excitement you enter the shop but to your dismay, it’s nothing like that. They are offering something completely different. Something that you don’t need. Disappointed, you come out of the shop. If possible, you may also give it a negative rating if it is listed somewhere.

Exactly this happens when people come to your website through a link they have found somewhere, expecting something, and then not finding it. They immediate leave your website. This is neither good for your conversion rate, nor for your search engine rankings.

All this while Google is quietly observing how people are reacting to the search results its algorithm is throwing up. If the search results don’t come up with the right answers, its performance deteriorates. In retaliation, it takes it out on you. It lowers your rankings.

Hence, when you are publishing content, make sure you are delivering exactly what is being displayed in the title and in the headline. Stick to the point.

Internally link to other web pages and blog posts

Even if somehow, your visitors are unable to find what they’re looking for, maybe they will find some useful information on another link within your website. For example, when writing about SEO content writing, I may have also written about SEO copywriting. Since you are searching for SEO copywriting, but you enter my website through something related to a SEO content writing, you might as well check the SEO copywriting link too, just in case. This increases your chances of staying on my website longer.

Make your content easier to read

Despite finding something valuable, just because you have grabbed everything in a single, large paragraph, your business may get frustrated and leave your website in a hurry, without reading the entire web page or blog post.

Use shorter paragraphs. They are also convenient to read on mobile phones. They also help your readers focus on singular thoughts. Don’t try to express a lot within a single paragraph. Whenever there is an excuse to create a new paragraph, create a new paragraph.

Use headings, subheadings, and bulleted points to succinctly explain complicated topics. This also makes your content easily scannable. Without reading the whole thing, if people simply go through your headings, subheadings, and bulleted points, they should be able to understand what you’re trying to say.

Use relevant and attractive images

Although images are not a part of content writing, they can keep people on your website for a bit longer because even if they are not reading the text, they may like to go through the images, and this increases the time they spend on your website. Even if it doesn’t help you with your conversion rate, it may send a signal to Google that you are providing good content and as a result, your search engine rankings may improve.

Use conversational style of writing

Everyone likes being talked to. Have a conversation with your readers. Use lots of “you” and “me” and “I”.

The good thing about writing in a conversational style is that you write as you speak. You use smaller, direct sentences and expressions. You don’t sound pretentious. Even you yourself feel as if you are in a positive flow of and this reflects through your choice of words and phrases.

Tell stories

Just like people like being talked to, they also love reading stories. This is because it is easier to relate to the characters in a story, whether they are anthropomorphic animals or human beings.

Stories also provide ready-made templates. For example, if a character is going through certain circumstances, one or the other reader too has gone through somewhat similar circumstances.

If I tell you the story of Peter who was reluctant to use content writing to improve his search engine rankings and due to that, he went through extreme hardships. It was almost too late when he decided to give quality content writing a chance, and that too, cynically and reluctantly. But then, he was swept off his feet when he began to experience the results after four months and by the seventh month, his business had taken a U-turn.

In the story you learn that just like you, there is a person Peter who doesn’t understand the power of quality content. He cannot figure somehow that content writing can improve his SEO. When he has tried everything, in the end, before completely giving up, he decides to give content writing a try. The story also tells you that the results aren’t immediate. In four months his search engine rankings begin to improve and by the seventh month, the fortunes of his business had completely changed.

Hence, these are some solid ways you can use content writing to keep people on your website for longer. Keeping your visitors on your website for a few minutes isn’t as easy as it sounds. As I have mentioned in the beginning of the blog post, it’s quite easy to bring people to your website. Simple SEO hacks can achieve that for you. What’s important is, for how long people stay on your website and how many of them convert due to that.

How to create the perfect web page title for SEO?

How to create the perfect web page title for SEO

Titles are important. They can have a big impact on your search engine rankings.

Although many renowned SEO experts claim that it is debatable whether creating “optimized” titles can improve your search engine rankings, there are different reasons why the quality of your titles is directly and indirectly related to your overall search engine rankings.

What is a blog post or a web page title? It is not the headline. It is the text that appears between the HTML tags <title> and </title>. This is the text that is picked by search engines and social media websites when you simply insert your link on your timeline.

I have personally observed that your title does matter. Your title is an indicator of what your web page holds. Hence, it naturally gives the needed information to the search engine crawlers. Again, that’s debatable. But there are certainly logical reasons why your titles matter.

Studies have shown that when people see a search term that they have just used appearing in the hyperlink of the search results, they are more likely to click it. Isn’t it natural?

For example, if you search for “content writer for web design service”, and there is a hyperlink that actually contains the phrase “content writer for web design service”, what reason do you have to not to click it? You have a big reason to click it.

Then, there is a direct relationship between the number of people clicking your link in the search results, and your search engine rankings. When more people click your link, Google takes it as a good sign.

It can be a double-edged sword, though.

If lots of people click your link and then immediately come back to Google, it means your bounce rate is higher. It means although you’re able to get the clicks, you are not providing valuable content for the search term for which your link is appearing higher. Your search rankings for that search term begin to go down.

Nonetheless, it is your title that brings people to your website, whether your title appears in Google search results, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media website that creates a thumbnail out of the link and uses the title to highlight the main point of your link.

The point is, no matter what the search engine experts say, as a content writer, I know that your title has a big impact on your search engine rankings.

How to create web page and blog post titles that improve your search engine rankings?

For this, I always suggest my clients to get written highly focused web pages and blog posts. This way, your web page title directly represents the body text.

For example, if I publish a blog post titled “Top 12 tips for writing content to improve your SEO”, Google and search engine users know what to expect from this blog post. All those people who want to read about how to write content that can improve their SEO, are going to find this link worthy of clicking.

If you stick to the core topic, that is, explaining how to use content writing to improve your SEO, people are going to stick around. They’re going to spend a few minutes reading the blog post as much as it appeals to them. They may also check other links on my website or blog.

This tells Google that the title for which my this particular link is ranking high, appropriately represents what my blog post contains. It takes it as an indicator of quality content and consequently, it raises the ranking of this particular link further.

Hence, when writing titles to improve your SEO, keep the following in mind:

Let the title exactly represent what the main body content contains.

Include the main phrases in the title for which you want to optimize your web page.

Don’t needlessly or randomly stuff keywords into your title. This decreases the quality of your SEO. You only have limited number of characters – 60-70 – and within those characters, you must represent a complete phrase, a sentence that can stand by itself.

Taking the above example – Top 12 tips for writing content to improve your SEO – it wouldn’t make sense if you simply use the keywords as your title, “content writing, SEO, top tips, writing content”. People are not going to click it.

Hence, try to represent the complete phrase, a long tail keyword that people actually use to look for your content.

Is SEO all about writing optimized content?

Choosing between a content writing service or an SEO company
Choosing between a content writing service or an SEO company

Many SEO experts claim that there are 200+ factors that influence your search engine rankings. Optimized content is one of them. But most of these factors are influenced by the quality of your content.

Often, I advise my clients that if they need to make a choice between hiring an SEO company and hiring a proficient content writer, at least for the time being, make the choice in favor of a content writer. Not because I provide content writing services and if they hire me, they are going to pay me, it is the most obvious choice to make.

Now, when I say writing optimized content is one of the biggest influencing factors for your search engine rankings, I assume that I’m talking about, and your understanding, high-quality, relevant content.

Content is the foundation of the structure of rankings you are going to build upon. This foundation can be solid. This foundation can be weak. But foundation it is. If the foundation is weak, you are either not going to be able to build your structure of rankings, or your structure is going to collapse sooner or later.

SEO experts are important. I’m not saying they are not important. They give your content writing the right direction.

In fact, if you can hire a good SEO expert and a content writer, this can be a win-win situation.

A year before Covid-19 hit, I was working with a UK-based market research company. They had hired a good SEO company to strategize content writing. I could have done that for them, but they preferred to work with an expensive SEO your company. Which was a good decision.

One thing I liked about the SEO company is that they knew exactly what titles I needed to write content for, how tough or weak competition our individual titles faced, and how long must the pages be in terms of the number of words. They had access to some great SEO tools that I don’t have. This saved us a lot of time.

For example, when I am in a flow, I don’t mind writing 1000 words even if the client has asked me to write 600 words (I don’t charge extra for those 400 words). But the people from that SEO company insisted that if they had asked for 600 words, I stuck to 600 words. The logic was, writing those extra 400 words was a waste of time, and they didn’t have much time. To beat the competition, they needed just about more than 550 words. Made sense.

By the end of the day, I won’t hesitate to say that for better SEO, all you need is high quality content that is well written and written in a manner that is easily understood by search engine algorithms.

An SEO company can help you get back links – you need back links to boost your rankings.

An SEO company can audit your website structure to make sure that the content organization is search engine friendly and all the elements needed to make your search rankings better are present.

An SEO company also monitors your current rankings and raises the red flags in case some of the rankings are going down.

So, in that sense, an SEO company provides you the needed vigilance. As a business serious about improving and maintaining its search engine rankings, you need such vigilance. The rest is taken care of by regularly publishing high quality content.

How to use Google Trends for better SEO content writing

Using Google Trends for better SEO content writing
Using Google Trends for better SEO content writing

SEO content writing is all about choosing the right keywords and then creating your content around them. Being a veteran of your business, you may feel that certain keywords must be more popular than other keywords. The reality might be different.

A few weeks back I was writing a blog post on copywriting and while doing some research, I noticed that many writers use “copy writing” instead of “copywriting”. Although Google may not differentiate much between copy writing and copywriting, I wanted to use a word that most people use. On a whim, I went to Google Trends, searched for both the terms, and then compared them. This is what came up:

As you can see, worldwide, people are using “copywriting” more than three times over “copy writing”.

This is one way of finding out what words to focus on when writing content. There are many similar sounding words but there are some words that people don’t use often, and some words people use a lot. When writing content, you want to focus on words used by maximum number of people.

This Entrepreneur blog post suggests many uses of Google Trends, including

  • Search volume: It tells you if there is more demand or less demand for the key phrase or the keyword you are trying to write SEO content for.
  • Search trend: Since Google Trends presents the data graphically, you can see whether the use of a particular keyword is on the downswing or upswing. It may be that a few months ago the keyword was quite popular, but it is no longer popular, or vice versa.
  • Related searches: These are for long tail keywords. What different keyword combinations are people using to search for information?
  • Search filters: You can check Google Trends for your chosen regions. In the above screenshot, I checked worldwide stats. You can check stats for specifically USA or India.
  • Forecast: Google Trends may not show forecasts for all the keywords you search for, but sometimes it tells you what the trend is going to be in the coming days.
  • Comparison: Just what I have done in the above screenshot. You want to compare 2-3, or even more words and see which word you should be focusing on.

Aside from the fact that you can use Google Trends to find the right keywords for content writing, you can also use search segmentation for geographical targeting.

There may be certain keywords that are used more in China than in USA. This is just hypothetical: if I want to target China for my copywriting services and if in China people use more “copy writing” and less “copywriting”, I should be using the former phrase with greater frequency when I’m writing about my copywriting services for China.

The forecasting feature can help you plan your content publishing. If you know that the time for a certain keyword is going to rise or fall, you can decide whether to publish more content or less content on that keyword.

Similarly, you can use various features of Google Trends to streamline and target your content writing efforts.