Author Archives: Amrit Hallan

About Amrit Hallan

Amrit Hallan is a professional content writer who helps businesses improve their conversion rate through credible and compelling content writing. His main strength lies in writing search engine optimized content without compromizing quality and meaningfulness.

What is topical authority in content writing? How to write topical authority content?

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Building your topical authority

Google is constantly looking for authoritative content. When people search for information, Google wants to provide them with best possible search results. This is achieved by topical authority. What is topical authority?

There may be two definitions, one by Google and one by your readers or users.

If you want to improve your search engine rankings, then topical authority means your authority and expertise in a particular niche or topic. For example, I would like to have a topical authority in the field of content writing and online copywriting. What do I do to achieve that? I try to cover as many topics as possible pertaining to content writing and online copywriting.

As you may know, content writing and copywriting for SEO isn’t just about writing content. There are many factors involved such as

Quality of content
Search engine optimization of content
Writing keyword-centric content
Writing content based on search intent
Frequency of content writing and content publishing
Writing topical, relevant content
Writing style
The authority you have already garnered
Pillar pages and topic clusters
Topical authority

Even these may have subtopics: search intent can be of different varieties such as informational intent, transactional intent, commercial intent, or navigational intent. It goes on and on, and you can keep writing on these topics and subtopics to increase your topical authority.

Why topical authority is important for SEO?

To rank you higher, Google wants to know if you have authority in your chosen field. It wants to know your content density for the topic you have chosen to write about.

Suppose you are an SEO company, and you know that content writing is important for search engine optimization. Therefore, you write a web page describing the benefits of high-quality content.

I have a similar page: benefits of high-quality content. Now, your web page may be excellent, but it is just a single web page dedicated to content writing on a website that is dedicated to SEO.

On the other hand, my page on content writing resides under a website that is dedicated to content writing. Who is supposed to have more authority on the topic?

Of course, if your SEO website already enjoys massive authority then this authority may also trickle down to the page on content writing and consequently, your page may rank higher than mine, but when it comes to topical authority, my page will have a higher authority over yours.

Is topical authority an SEO jargon? As per Google, topical authority is the perceived authority over a niche or a broad idea set, as opposed to authority over a singular idea or term.

What does that mean? Coming to the above content writing blogging example, if you are a digital marketing company and you also provide content writing services and you have published lots of content on content writing, you have authority over a broader niche. On the other hand, being a content writing website (a subset of digital marketing), when I publish content on content writing, I have authority over a single idea or term. In this regard, the digital marketing company has an edge over my website.

As you may already know Google uses artificial intelligence to rank links. Your topical authority signals to Google that your website has a deep understanding and a vast knowledge of the topic. If Google already considers your website a topical authority, then it is more likely to crawl quickly and rank your links higher.

Why should you focus on improving your topical authority?

Not many people are aware that in 2018 Google changed its algorithm, putting more emphasis on the topical authority of a website. Before this, news publishers had an advantage over smaller publishers due to the vast amount of content they have. Now, it is more about a narrow niche.

This way, a national newspaper publishing a gadget review isn’t going to hog search engine rankings if there is another website solely focusing on Gadget reviews publishes a gadget review.

The advantage is that you can focus on your niche instead of worrying about bigger publications inundating search results simply because they have swathes of content.

There are multiple benefits of improving your topical authority. Some of them are listed below:

You will have scores of topics to write about.
Your visitors will find every possible information they need on your website or blog itself.
There will be more content for you to share on social media.
You will have more content to re-purpose.
You will generate a library of information which will be favored by Google.
If people want to link to your website or share your links, they will have plenty of opportunities.
You will be covering and capturing more keywords.
Google will index more content from your website, increasing your presence in the process.
When Google is looking for answers, it will find them on your website.
When Google wants to display additional information, it will find it on your website.

How to build the topical authority of your website?

You can begin by preparing a long list of primary, secondary and long-term keywords that are relevant to your website. These will give you plenty of topics to cover.

You can ask your customers and clients what questions they would like to put in front of you before deciding to do business with you.

You can write case studies and white papers.

When you write blog posts and web pages there are many subtopics that you lightly touch upon. You can extract these subtopics and write complete blog posts and web pages on them, with further details. Later, you can link to these blog posts and web pages to increase the value of your existing blog posts and web pages.

You can either use external tools to track your keywords and what content other websites are publishing on those keywords, or you can do it manually. You can maintain an Excel sheet of the top blogs in your field. Then, once a day, you can quickly visit these blogs and see what new content they have published. You can either aggregate the content or get new blog post ideas from them.

To build your topical authority you need to

Write quality content over a long period of time on your chosen subject.
Primarily focus on creating E.A.T. content – Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness.
Cover as many topics and subtopics as are available.
Strategically link to different topics.
Put in effort towards improving your search engine rankings by paying attention to SEO content writing conventions.
Maintain buzz on social media networks.
Increase your visibility.
Seek feedback and input from the peers.

Regularly coming up with topics to increase your topical authority may be difficult in the beginning, but once you get into the groove the topics will come to you naturally. Otherwise, you can always hire a professional content writer to write and publish content for you.

LinkedIn content strategy to generate more traffic to your website

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LinkedIn content strategy

LinkedIn can be a great source of traffic. This ReadWrite update claims that 79% of B2B marketers value LinkedIn as an abundant source of leads. For many B2B websites and blogs, almost 50% of social traffic comes from LinkedIn.

I mostly use LinkedIn to post blog links that I publish on my own website. A few times a year I become active on LinkedIn, but I haven’t been regular.

According to experts, content strategy for your LinkedIn profile may include a mix of native documents, videos, images, and text only posts. It depends on your market.

Native documents are the PDF slides that you upload – these are then converted into carousals like Instagram.

Here are some insights you can use to leverage LinkedIn’s social reach, especially for B2B market.

Native documents attract maximum clicks on LinkedIn

The average conversion rate on LinkedIn is 3X the other networks. The average CTR for native documents is 2.20%. In fact, some posts containing native documents attract a CTR of 3.5%-8.6% on an average. Native documents, as mentioned above, are the PDF files that you upload. The slides of these PDF files are turned into carousals automatically by LinkedIn.

Video content fares well on LinkedIn

This is the case for almost every platform – Video content outperforms text content. 15-20% posts on social media are video content these days. Average CTR for videos on LinkedIn is 3.16%. The data is slightly different if the following on LinkedIn is 50,000-100,000 – then native documents and single images get a higher CTR.

Common copywriting mistakes even pro-copywriters commit

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Avoid these copywriting mistakes

When it comes to writing for the web, copywriting is slightly different from content writing. Though, many writers and digital marketers call content writing online copywriting, the tone of copywriting is a bit more aggressive and CTA-oriented.

You can write content without selling or promoting anything. In copywriting, in most of the cases you are promoting something whether it is a product, an action, or a cause.

No matter how experienced or “pro” a copywriter is, he or she may commit some common copywriting mistakes simply because he or she may be working on multiple assignments. It so happens that sometimes you get so engrossed in the process of writing that even the mistakes that you commit don’t seem like mistakes.

Forbes magazine has published a list of 15 common copywriting mistakes that even pro copywriter’s commit. These mistakes include

Typos in the subject line

Yes, they do happen. When doing email marketing your subject line is very important. It is your subject line that makes people open your email message. If it contains typos, it leaves a bad impression. The typos and spelling mistakes convey to the recipients that you don’t take them seriously enough to proofread this important part of your email.

Writing too much text – very long copy

Long copy works but in many cases it doesn’t. A pro copywriter should be able to find out by analyzing the audience whether a long copy would do or a shorter version. I don’t consider this a pro copywriting mistake because on many instances long copy is needed. You don’t have to go into every detail. You don’t have to write section after section, especially when you feel that you are being repetitive and, in the process, boring your readers.

Visual and text narrative don’t stand alone

What does that mean? As a copywriter these days you often need to mix different media including images, videos and text. In most of the cases the entire package is presented to the viewer, for example a Facebook ad.

But sometimes only text is shown, or only an image is shown, or the video part of your ad is shown. Does it spoil your entire marketing message? It shouldn’t. All the parts – image, video, and text, should be able to stand alone. They should be able to do their job without depending on each other.

Not expressing complex ideas simply

People don’t have time or patience to figure out complex things, especially when it comes to buying something. They want straightforward answers whether the offer you are making is going to solve their problem or not.

Albert Einstein famously said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

Using unnecessary filler words

Filler words are something like “in order to achieve that”, whereas you can simply use “to achieve that”. Or, “he was actually nice” instead of “he was nice”. The advice is that if your writing makes good sense without these filler words, get rid of them.

Depending too much on the default spell check

Your spell checker does the grunt work. All those curly red lines immediately tell you if you have typos or spelling mistakes in your copy. Even the bluish underlines these days highlight structural anomalies and grammatical oversights.

For example, if you have typed “your” instead of “you are”, your spell check won’t highlight that. If you type “their” instead of “there” your spell check may miss that. It won’t even differentiate between “everyday” and “every day”.

Complexity may impress some people, but not many. Most people are intimidated by it. When you are writing copy your purpose is not to intimidate people or to demonstrate how smart you are. Your purpose is to promote or sell the idea or the product.

Missing the main point

This is also a common copywriting error committed by even the pros. They get so carried away by the nitty-gritty of the copy that they miss the main point. Why are you writing the copy? What do you want people to do? What is the most important point that you want to convey, and you don’t want to miss conveying? Which is the thing that if you don’t mention will defeat the entire purpose of writing your copy?

Hence, it is important to write your main headline and then the sub-headline in the beginning itself, and then prepare the entire copy based on them.

Not understanding the audience

You most know whom you are writing for? If you misunderstand your audience, you don’t write effective copy. Be clear who your target audience is. What are they looking for and how do you offer what they are looking for? What information do they need to make up their minds? What is holding them back from doing business with you and how do you allay their fears?

Ignoring the right benefits

Some copywriters get so carried away by the features of the product or service they are writing about that they don’t mention the benefits.

What’s the difference between features and benefits? The feature of a mobile phone might be that it gives you 200 GB of memory space. The benefit is that you can store thousands of photographs and hundreds of videos without having to delete your data.

Some people find features appealing and some benefits. You need to strike a balance but when it comes to giving preference, when writing copy, give preference to benefits rather than features.

Ignoring search engine optimization

Many pro copywriters commit this common mistake when writing for the web. SEO copywriting is a complete branch in itself. When you are writing a blog post or a web page getting targeted search engine traffic is quite important.

Use appropriate keywords. Create the title of the web page that resonates with your keywords in the main copy. Use a headline, preferably having your main keyword. Strategically use the keywords throughout your copy. Use headings and subheadings.

Presenting too much detail

Another common pro copywriting mistake. Most of the people these days don’t have time to read 500-600 words. Long copy works in some instances but otherwise, keep it as short as possible. Remove extraneous sentences. Get rid of irrelevant expressions. Make sure you are not repeating what you have already said.

There are a couple of more points in the original blog post but they are repetitions so I’m wrapping up with these points.

Should you delete or re-purpose your existing content?

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Should you delete old content or re-purpose it?

You have been publishing content for years, right? By now you must have a couple of thousand blog posts and web pages. Some of the web pages and blog posts on my blog are from 2008-2010. Some of the information is evergreen. For example, some writing tips that I have shared can be used even now. I have little time sensitive content.

Read: The difference between content repurposing and content spinning

Should you delete or re-purpose your old content, is the question asked by this CMSWire blog post.

If you are not a professional content writer yourself and you also don’t write by yourself, you must have spent money on your content. Your existing content is the asset you have invested in.

Right now, the five-year-old content may look outdated and stale but when you published it you paid good money for it and it was quite up-to-date. You were proud of it.

Of course, if your business direction has changed than the old content solves no purpose if it was written for your old direction. It is irrelevant content. Its time has passed. Even if it is drawing traffic, it isn’t benefiting you. If you want, you can remove the content from your website. You can even request Google to remove it.

Other than that, I always advise my clients to re-purpose content. You can rewrite it. If the old information is relevant, you can update it. From a subsection you can write a completely new blog post. If you think the language of the blog post or the web page doesn’t truly represent your brand correctly now, you can update that.

Being a content writer, I am possessive about what I create. Since for the past 15 years more or less I have been providing the same services, nothing much has changed. Maybe a few sentences here and there, but other than that, with little revisions, I can easily update my old content. You should do the same if your content is not completely irrelevant.

How to write like the best writers in your field?

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How to be the best writer in your field

Writing these days is all pervasive. You are writing blog posts. You are writing social media updates. You are writing text messages and emails. You are writing proposals if you do business.

There are many people who cock a snook at the concept of writing well, writing well still matters. It can tarnish your reputation if there are too many typos, spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes in your writing. But, when we talk of writing like the best writers in your field, I assume you already write without typos, spelling mistakes, and grammar mistakes.

What do writers due to be the best in their field?

There is one common trait that I have found in the writers who are the best in their field: they are consistent. They are constantly writing and publishing.

“Show up every time and don’t wait for your muse to show up,” advise many established writers.

They always have great ideas to write about. Other than this, here are some traits that you can develop to become the best writer in your field.

Have a unique style

Among us there is always this tendency to write like our favorite authors. I used to write like Charles Dickens, and then Salman Rushdie. Even when I wrote content, I emulated my favorite authors. This drew applause from some clients, but most were disenchanted and wanted me to write something simpler for the audience.

Gradually I discarded the styles of other writers and started writing in my own style. I can’t claim to have a style that makes people recognize my writing without reading my name, but at least I write the way I want to write rather than following someone else’s style.

Understand your audience

You become the best in your field when you gain recognition, and you gain recognition only when you deliver what people want.

Before writing a blog post or web page carefully consider what your audience wants.

For example, my content writing and copywriting blog attracts two types of audience: people who want to improve their writing and potential clients who want to feel reassured that I know my stuff. Therefore, I’m constantly writing for these two categories.

Use simple language when writing

Simple writing doesn’t mean you write unimaginatively. Juggle with words. Get creative with sentences. But not at the cost of making it difficult for your readers to follow you.

The best writers write smaller sentences. Write smaller paragraphs. They don’t use very big words.

Somewhere I read a very nice writing advice, “If it sounds like writing, rewrite it.” What it means is, you should write in a manner as if you are talking to people. Be a conversationalist. Write as if you are sitting and talking to someone.

Use active voice as much as possible. “This is done” instead of “This has been done”.

Read and learn constantly

Writing is a skill that you need to hone continuously. Your writing muscles get atrophied if you don’t stretch them regularly. Read other authors but don’t let them rub onto you. Learn how they express themselves.

If possible, read books on writing. There are many blogs dedicated to the art of writing.

Not just writing, also become a thought leader in your field. Go deeper into your topic.

As a professional content writer, I’m constantly learning about how to write effectively. I’m regularly learning what to do and what not to do when writing. Similarly, if you are an architect, then then read on architecture. Expand your knowledge. Then share your knowledge with your readers.