Tag Archives: Written Content

Why written content is going to rule for a long time to come

The image shows a woman writing something

Written content still rules

Many people these days try to write off written content in favor of video and graphic content. “Publish more videos and less written content” they say.

Although 81% of web traffic will be video by 2021, according to Cisco, video in general and visual content in particular has a limit – it is difficult to interpret video content and visual content through voice-activated devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home.

When you ask a question to a device like Amazon Echo, it converts your voice data into text data, searches for the text, finds the needed text, converts the text data into voice data and then plays it for you. So, if you want to be found by voice-activated devices, you need to focus on written content. This is just one example.

It is also easier to go through text. Especially on smaller devices like mobile phones.

If you want to know about a product or a service, unless some visual demonstration is needed, you prefer to read text. Text is easier to scroll. You can easily go back and reread if you want, which is a hassle in video.

Search engines still rank your website according to the text it has. There is a reason businesses publish 2000-3000-word blog posts – they want to dominate the text in their niche.

Even when ranking your videos and images, search engines like Google and Bing analyze the text around your videos and images.

People are watching more videos because well, more people have mobile devices and better connectivity. Video is being watched more because of those highly stupid, mostly cringing, Tiktok videos, cute dog and cat videos on Facebook, and life hack videos and propaganda videos on YouTube that people are constantly watching on their mobile devices.

I’m not discounting video content. Of course, you can build your audience by strategically investing your time in publishing video content and a lot of time I prefer video content over written content (especially reviews for gadgets, software products and appliances), but eventually, when time comes to spend the money, people make their decisions after reading the information on your website.

Why your business needs more written content

The image describes writing materials such as pencils and paper to

Your business needs more content writing

You know what? Written content isn’t going anywhere no matter how avant-garde video and infographics become.

I provide professional content writing services.

Every day I get queries and phone calls from business owners and entrepreneurs who want content for their businesses.

From my website they can easily make out that I provide written content: I don’t provide graphic design services or video production services.

I provide content writing services.

Nonetheless, they have this strange attitude: fine, they have no option but to contact someone for their writing needs, otherwise, they don’t believe writing is worth paying for.

That’s why many would-be clients balk at my rates.

No, I don’t mean that my rates are outrageous – my rates are just enough to make my content writing services affordable to a wide spectrum of business owners while allowing me to make a decent living.

Would I like to charge more? Of course. That’s a different story and right now I’m not going into that.

The point that I’m trying to make is, publishing written content is inescapable, whether you like it or not, and not just any sort of written content.

You need quality content writing.

Constantly, you need to provide something really valuable.

This is because, if you are not providing valuable content, then there are scores of other businesses providing more or less the same products and services as you, providing valuable written content.

Hence, it’s your loss if you don’t. Your choice.

Why does written content matter in the age of video and graphics?

When we need to prove that something matters, we either resort to some research and statistics, or we give our own reasoning.

Statistics are good, and psychologically, they are reassuring, and they also tell us what the rest of the world is doing about a particular trend or tendency.

This Entrepreneur article refers to Zazzle Media’s 3rd annual State of Content Marketing Survey that shows that there has been a 78% increase in the content marketing spend since 2018 (this is May 2019).

This is no surprise, because, a greater number of businesses are discovering the benefits of content marketing.

The interesting finding was, 98% content marketers surveyed said that written content is their main output to achieve content marketing success.

Written content in the form of webpages and blog posts is going to be the main priority for 77% of the market is throughout 2019.

Why written content is important?

Search engine algorithms use text as main source while evaluating your content for ranking

With much more advanced artificial intelligence it is becoming easier to tell what is there in a video or a photograph, but programmatically, when it comes to analysing content, text, or written content, still rules the roost.

Most of the search engine algorithms are more comfortable analysing your written content and then ranking your content accordingly.

You can focus more on video and graphics and then bet on the possibility that in near future search engines will be able to analyse videos and graphics and then rank your content based on the information given in those video and graphics, or you can put your money and effort into publishing lots of written content that is already preferred by the search engines.

Your choice.

Voice search converts voice to text and then text to voice to help you find information

Here is my web page on copywriting for voice search.

You must be aware that in recent years there has been a big shift from PC/laptop to mobile phones.

Even to search information people use their mobile phones and often, people who are not used to typing all the time, speak into their phones.

Voice-controlled devices like Amazon Eco and Google Home have further boosted the use of voice commands and using voice to find information on search engines.

Technology to convert voice to text and then text to voice is quite old now. Every basic mobile phone allows you to convert your voice to text and vice versa.

Hence, on the web, and also, on my own blog, you will find lots of information on how to optimize your content writing and copywriting for voice search.

For voice search to work, when you issue a command, for example, telling Google to find you something, whatever you have said is turned to text, and then the text string is used to find the information on the search engine, and when the information is found in the form of text, the information is turned to voice and communicated to you.

The backbone of the entire operation is, the ability of the technology to process text.

If you don’t have text, there is nothing to process.

Many people find reading more convenient compared to watching videos

In the times of abundant bandwidth and highly efficient screens, watching HD videos and graphics might be fascinating, but reading written content is convenient, and more satisfying.

Reading is more personal and less invasive. You don’t need extra tools to read.

Someone wants to check out your website to know what all services you provide: he or she will prefer to read about your services rather than watching a video or a collection of graphics.

Though, I’m not saying videos and graphics are not important – they are – but they have a limit.

We have been reading since childhood. The habit is embedded. Everybody prefers to read.

Written text is more accessible

Written content makes your content accessible across multiple devices.

All the screen readers can read text.

All screen sizes can accommodate text accordingly.

You can copy/paste text in any basic text editor to read it or edit it.

It is the lightest form of content.

Does any form of content writing help you?

Depends on what you want to achieve.

If you want to publish lots of junk content, who am I to tell you not to do so? Go ahead.

For better search engine rankings and for a good conversion rate, your content writing needs to be purposeful, relevant and of good quality.

Search engine rankings these days are all about efficiently providing information people are looking for.

You see, search engines like Google don’t produce and publish their own content. They have outsourced the service to the masses.

But, if they don’t provide good information to people’s queries, they lose users.

Hence, let’s focus on Google for a while, the search engine is not going to rank your content well simply because you have “strategically” used keywords and hyperlinks.

It ranks your content high only if you provide information people can really use.

To help Google achieve that, a group of 300 odd maths PhDs is constantly working on the algorithm.

If you think you can beat these maths PhDs with some SEO tactics without ever intending to publish high-quality content, well, as I said, who am I to tell you not to do so?

Written content: 5 reasons why your website needs it

Benefits of written content

You might think that since I’m a content writer I advocate the benefits of written content rather than various other formats of content that you find on the Internet, and basically in every medium. I don’t mind telling you that yes, I prefer written content over video or graphic content because I write and make a living off it.

Does content marketing constitute just written content?

No way. Every format of content has its own place and importance. If that were not the case websites like Pinterest (for posting images) and YouTube wouldn’t have been such great hits. These websites are not just for posting images and videos, they also get lots of traffic for various business websites. So if you hire me as a content marketer I would carefully study what sort of content your target audience prefers and then help you execute a content marketing strategy accordingly. In that sense I’m not biased towards writing simply because I provide content writing services.

Why your website needs written content

There are many people who think that their website does not need written content and they have their own reasons. If they don’t need written content, well, it’s their prerogative and I’m sure they know what they’re doing. Some websites actually don’t need text and they can do fairly well by solely depending on images and videos – it depends on your business model. But since I provide content writing services, my primary focus is highlighting the reasons why your website needs written, textual content.

  1. Improve your SEO with written content: Yes, every sort of content these days gets indexed but there is a reason why you require text to search engine optimize your images and videos. Technology that can rank multiple formats of content mainly by processing visual cues hasn’t been developed yet. The rankings depend on the text surrounding images and videos. If you’re using images on your website, you need to put appropriate text within the alt attribute of the image HTML tags and you need to surround your image with related text to convey to the search engines exactly what the image represents. The same happens with your video. Even if you post your video on YouTube or one of the social networking websites, it’s the text that you use to describe your video that decides what type of rankings it enjoys. Given a choice between written text, images and videos, it’s the written text that enjoys better rankings because it’s easier to process text.
  2. Educate your prospective customers and clients: You can do this even with videos and images and in fact, there is a popular saying “a picture is worth thousand words” but can you create something like FAQs using images or videos? Yes, you can create how-to videos that may look more friendly compared to written content but it’s always easier to follow step-by-step written instructions rather than watch a video, pause it, do what needs to be done, then play the video again, then again pause it, and so on. The written content on the other hand, simply stays in front of you – you can read the instructions and do what you need to do seamlessly.
  3. Create scalable content: Written content is easily scalable. It can be viewed on every possible device including smart watches. The text doesn’t distort no matter how big you make it, which is not possible with images and videos. Text can be easily printed without wasting paper and ink. It can be easily copy/pasted without needing extra software or tools. No matter what width your browser window has, your written content can be easily viewed.
  4. Produce and publish written content easily: It’s easier to publish and also less expensive. I don’t mean to undermine my profession, but you can easily find content writers but it’s always very difficult, and very expensive to work with a graphic designer or videographer. An infographic can easily cost you upwards $350 whereas you can get a blog post or an article of the same quality for $50. You don’t need special applications to produce written content. You can do it even using notepad. Publishing platforms like WordPress are meant to publish written content although these days they also allow you to seamlessly publish videos and images.
  5. Create accessible content: Many governments these days make it mandatory to create accessible websites and this means the information on the websites should be readable by screen readers. These screen readers for the visually impaired can process text but they cannot process images and videos.

As I have mentioned above the intention of this blog post is not to say written content is better than images and videos. Every business has its own unique requirement and if your business does not require written content, I don’t recommend it for you.

What exactly is “content”?

What exactly is content?

We are constantly using terms like content marketing, content writing, content strategy, SEO content, social media content and so on, but what exactly is content?

People who write think that what’s written (text) is content. Those who produce videos think that videos are the content. The ones who deal with images think that it’s the images that make a major chunk of content. So if you have a blog where you’re constantly writing about your business the text that you have written for your blog is content for it. If you’re posting videos that are somehow related to your business, your products or services on YouTube then it’s video content. If you find your muse on Pinterest than images are your content. What you have written on your homepage, the images that you have used and if you also have animations and videos on it, they all constitute content. The product descriptions and service descriptions are a part of your content and so is your company profile and the “about us” section.

Everything existing on your website that communicates with your visitors, conveys something, elicits some response, is content.

Why am I writing this?

Because people don’t take content seriously enough. They think they require content only to improve their search engine rankings so for them, content means publishing informative articles and blog posts. This is why they want to pay pittance to content writers and this is why content writers are ready to work for pittance: both have no idea how important content is.

You lose at 2 fronts if you don’t take your content seriously or if you don’t understand properly its significance:

  • You don’t optimize your existing content
  • You wrongly optimize the content that you get created for better rankings

So in the end you aren’t exactly gaining anything.

Have a close look at the content that you have on your website and this means, all the pages and not just blog posts and “SEO content”. Even streamlining your existing content can significantly improve your conversion rate and search engine rankings.