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.

Do I have writer’s block as a professional content writer?

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Do content writers have writer's block

Do content writers have writer’s block

My clients pay me to write. They set deadlines. In most of the cases they are like, “Oh, I needed that blog post yesterday.” And then accordingly I need to write.

Although I am at a stage when most of my clients allow me to follow my own pace (because of the quality that I deliver) I need to write everyday. I need to write for my clients. I need to write for my blog. I can’t afford to have a writer’s block.

Does it mean I don’t have it? I’d be lying if I say that I don’t suffer from writer’s block.

Here are a few things I do when I suffer from writer’s block

Accept that I have writer’s block

Once you know you have a problem, you can look for a solution. Sometimes you don’t know you have writer’s block, and you feel quite frustrated. You wonder why you can’t write even a single sentence. Even raising your arm to type on the keyboard seems like a Herculean task.

Over the years I have come to recognize writer’s block. It doesn’t overwhelm me. It doesn’t disturb me. This is because I have gone through multiple instances of writer’s block, and I know that sooner or later I overcome.

This immediately relaxes me.

Get a reality check

The client doesn’t understand your block. This is more so when he or she has made to the advance payment. If he or she expects a blog post on Wednesday, the document must be delivered on Wednesday.

This gets your creative juices flowing. You know that despite writer’s block you need to deliver your document by Wednesday. You begin to look for solutions.

Just start writing

This always works. Write the first sentence. Write the second sentence. Write the third sentence. The sentences don’t have to be complete. You can write in monosyllables. You can even write single words.

Don’t tell yourself that you have to write 1000 words. Tell yourself to write just 20 or 50 words. This does the magic. Once you have written those initial 20-50 words, you don’t even realize when you have written 1000 words.

Don’t procrastinate

Procrastination can be dangerous. I have learned this at the cost of thousands of lost hours. Procrastination means doing other things than doing the actual work. You may look for interesting blog posts to read. You may want to read a book when you should be writing. You may want to sing songs. You may want to get into political arguments on social media. The moment such a tendency raises its head, squash it. Follow the advice in the above heading: just start writing the first and the second sentences.

Go through previous work

Often writer’s block manifests through self-doubt. When this happens, I go through my previous work. I have also saved some words of appreciation from my clients. There are many clients who insist that I write for them. I also have superstitious clients who think that if I don’t work for them, their business won’t do well. These are quite encouraging facts. Go through your old documents. Visit websites for which you have attracted praise. Go through your best blog posts.

Writer’s block is basically a state of mind. There can be many reasons for such a state of mind. You may be simply feeling lethargic or are suffering from malnutrition. Sometimes you may be dehydrated so try drinking lots of water.

When you write professionally writer’s block is just a simple annoyance you need to deal with there and then, and then move on. Unlike established and famous writers, professional content writers cannot afford to wallow in the luxury of having a writer’s block.

13 tips for writing thought leadership content

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How to write thought leadership content

How to write thought leadership content

What do you mean by thought leadership? Thought leadership is the way you express yourself to demonstrate you have expertise in a particular field or a topic. For example, if I write lots of advice on content writing and copywriting, I display thought leadership.

Thought leaders not just have a command over their subject area, they are also passionate about their subjects. They may even be evangelists for a new way of, for example, writing effective content.

Benefits of thought leadership

Your potential customers and clients trust you more when you establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

One of the biggest benefits of being a thought leader is that you become recognizable.

Isn’t it easier to do business with people whom you know what people who are recognizable, compared to people who are totally unknown?

People are more receptive to your thoughts. Bloggers and news reporters more eagerly cover what you want to communicate. People respect you. They listen to you attentively. Your content is shared more on other blogs and social networking platforms. You are quoted more often. Your visibility increases. You seem more credible and trustworthy compared to people who haven’t worked on their thought leadership.

All these collectively help you grow your business.

How to build thought leadership through writing content?

The Rolling Stone magazine https://credible-content.com has compiled suggestions from 13 thought leaders on how to write content to build your thought leadership. Although the advice is not out of the ordinary, it is always better to revisit the age-old concepts so that you don’t forget them. Some of the advice include

Understand what your audience wants

Publish content that satisfies some pressing need of your audience. Everyone is looking for a solution. When people find the needed solutions through your writing, they respect you and trust you. They begin to believe in your thought leadership.

Write for human beings

When you are writing on the Internet there is often a tendency to write for search engine algorithms and robots. Although it is important to improve your search engine rankings even to build your thought leadership, don’t obsess. Remember that your primary target are human beings. Do whatever it takes to improve your SEO but ultimately, keep the primary focus on your human readers.

Keep an eye on the future

Everyone is worried about the future. Thought leaders don’t worry, but they are constantly thinking about the future of their field. For example, in the field of content writing, what is going to change five years down the line? Understanding the future helps people prepare for it.

Use personal anecdotes and examples

Being a thought leader is all about you. How you are achieving great feats. How you are discovering new things. How you form opinions. How you are discovering new insights. Share your experiences. Tell your unique stories from within the industry. How you are constantly solving problems for people who work with you.

Always be relevant

Well, this goes without saying. If your content is not relevant, it is not going to be valued, and if it is not valued, you cannot build your thought leadership.

Deliver a clear value

Always be aware of what you are delivering and what impact your content is making. There must always be a purpose. Your readers must be able to experience tangible results when they access your thought leadership content. For that, you will need to understand what drives your audience, what makes an impact on them, and what they truly value.

Have a unique perspective

Express original thoughts. Have the courage to say something that is right and valid, but the others don’t have the courage to say it. Take risks. Make predictions even if there is a risk of being proven wrong in future. As a leader you must lead. Things that people haven’t yet thought of, you should be able to think.

Improve your specialization

One of the best aspects of building a thought leadership is that it motivates you to constantly improve yourself. If you don’t increase your treasure of knowledge, how are you going to share that knowledge? If you don’t gain experience by taking risks and doing things that others don’t do, how are you going to share that experience?

Act on your own advice

Words are easier, action is difficult. People are not looking for a preacher, they are looking for a leader who acts. Come up with new ideas, implement those ideas, face the results, and then share those ideas, whether they succeed or fail, with your readers through your thought leadership content writing.

Have a consistent set of values

Values are ideas and ways of thinking you believe are important and you must adhere to them. They render a sense of clarity to your thought and purpose. They define your identity. People begin to recognize you by the values that you have on display. Therefore, as a thought leader, you must be consistent with your values. Of course, in the beginning it will take some time to define your values, but once you are clear about them, stick to them.

From Me, make a shift to You

A leader is always thinking of the others. A leader is selfless. When you are writing content, no matter how much effort you need to make, no matter how much pain you need to go through, always have in mind how your content can help your readers. You need to be at the forefront of action and leadership.

Make your advice practical

As a thought leader you may apply many unconventional methods to your field of profession, but for your readers, keep things practical. Before sharing your thoughts, think how you would like to implement your own advice to your own work. People should be able to implement your advice, if not easily, then at least, in terms of manageability.

Be authentic

When you are authentic and unique, people can easily recognize you. You stand out for your opinions and for your voice. You can be authentic in the manner you write your content, you can be authentic about your ideas, and you can be authentic about how you help people who follow you. Don’t tread the already beaten

SEO content writing: Should you write content for robots or humans?

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SEO content writing – should you write content for robots or humans

SEO content writing – should you write content for robots or humans

This is an age-old question, and it has been asked and answered umpteen times.

It is quite tempting to target search engine robots when writing content because after all we all want to improve search engine rankings. Not just improve, but possibly, get our legs at the first spot.

A FirstPageSage analysis has found that links that rank at the top on Google have an average CTR of 39.6%. Compared to this, the CTR of a link at the fifth position drops to 5.1%.

Therefore, it is tempting that writing for robots takes precedence over writing for humans. The problem is, it can be a pyrrhic victory if all the traffic that you generate does not lead to proportional business.

Whom to write for when you write content for SEO?

This Moz blog post tries to answer that. Although we all know that ultimately it’s the humans find your content on search engines, click the link, and come to your website or blog, to do whatever you want them to do, how to strike a balance?

Is there even a need to strike a balance? Shouldn’t good content automatically rank well on Google?

There are two worlds regarding this: an ideal world and an actual world.

In the ideal world, and even Google sometimes claims that this ideal world exists, you should simply focus on quality and your rankings are taken care of on their own.

It is like the concept of Dharma: you do your deed, and the outcome comes on its own.

But in the real-world things can be quite chaotic. Roughly 70 million new posts are published just on WordPress. Hundreds of billions of web pages are competing on Google to get at the top spot. Therefore, you cannot take the search engine robots for granted no matter how much you simply want to write for your human visitors. You need to strike a balance.

How do you do that?

SEO content writing: how to balance between robots and humans?

I’m writing about my own experience with search engines and humans. When I’m writing SEO content for my clients my first priority are the humans. I believe you write content so that it generates business for you. If it doesn’t generate business for you, no matter how much traffic you get, it is of no use.

On the flipside, no matter how good and relevant your content is if you don’t get targeted search engine traffic, all the effort of writing quality content goes waste.

Here are a few things I follow:

Use the primary search term in the title

This often proves effective. The primary search term must be an expression your visitors are most likely to use when looking for information regarding your topic.

For example, the focus of this blog post would be “Should I write SEO content for robots or humans?” or something like that.

Distribute the primary and secondary keywords throughout the text

But don’t force them. Keep them contextual. These are for search engines as well as human readers.

When you are making a list of primary and secondary keywords make sure your list contains all the words your target audience is likely to use. Be mindful that the way you talk about your business might be totally different from the way people talk about your business.

Use your keywords within the first 100 words.

The reason for this is that the Google crawlers may not crawl your entire web page or blog post. They may leave midway. This way, they will gather all the necessary keywords from the first or the second paragraph.

Use your keywords in headings and subheadings

Just as humans may skim your web page or blog post without reading the fine print, Google crawlers may do the same.

Both robots and humans skim your content by quickly going through headings and subheadings. If you use your target keywords in your headings and subheadings Google crawlers can make out what message you are trying to convey and they will also know what keywords you are using.

Write compelling titles and descriptions

These are meta tag descriptors, and they appear in search results when your link is ranked and displayed. The meta title appears with a hyperlink in the description appears below.

These are your marketing messages. Usually the main headline of your blog post or web page is the same as your meta title but they can also be different. Through your title you are targeting the search engine users.

Even if your link begins to appear in search results, if the title is not inspiring enough, people are not going to click. Use your copywriting skills.

Remember that if your CTR is low the rankings for the same link begin to deteriorate and if your CTR is good, the rankings improve.

Just as your title, your description is important too. Your description gives you further chance to convince search engine users to visit your link and read what you have written.

Use simple language

Writing is a beautiful, expressive medium. As a writer I wouldn’t advise you to curb your writing skills, but remember that people are reading your blog post or web page because they are looking for information and not for great literary work.

Use simple words and expressions. Express just a single idea in a single sentence. Don’t have paragraphs more than two sentences.

You can use a Flesch score analyzer in the beginning if you are not used to writing SEO friendly content. It scores your text between 0 to 100. The higher your score, the easier reading your content is. It can give you statistics such as ease of readability, average sentence length, and average number of syllables per word. According to various scores

  • A score between 90-100 is easier to read for a fifth grader.
  • A score between 60-70 can be easily understood by eighth and ninth graders.
  • Score between 0-30 is easily understood by college students.

Structure your content using the proper HTML tags

Appropriate HTML tags contribute a lot towards your higher search engine rankings.

<h1> is used for the main headline. It should be used just once on a web page or blog post. If you repeat it for every headline, it dilutes its effectiveness.

When you divide your text under various headlines the individual headline can be highlighted using the <h2> tag. They should preferably contain your keywords.

<h3> can be used for smaller subheadings that may come under the bigger headings of <h2> level.

In between you can also have bullet points as the Google algorithm thinks they usually contain useful information.

Be mindful of the length

Longer blog posts and web pages are known to perform better than the smaller ones but the rule is not written in stone.

Even a 300-word blog post can rank well depending on the reputation your domain enjoys and your brand presence on the web.

Nonetheless, write at least 1000 words. This is what I suggest to my clients. Even when I’m writing for my own blog I aim for 1000 words.

I have published more than a thousand posts and I have a decent presence on Google, so sometimes, I can also get away with small blog posts of 300-400 words.

My personal experience is, it is a mixture of frequency, relevancy, and eventually, the number of words you use, that decide your search engine visibility. The more high-quality content you publish (at least one post every day) the faster your content gets indexed by Google.

If you follow these guidelines, you pretty much automatically write for search engine robots as well as humans.

10 SEO copywriting tips to use whenever you publish a blog post

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10 SEO Copywriting Tips

10 SEO Copywriting Tips

A big reason why you publish blog posts every day is that you want to improve your search engine rankings. During the past 15 years since I have been providing professional content writing services, I have come across only 3-4 clients who wanted to publish blog posts for the purpose of broadcasting their messages. Otherwise, the primary purpose is always improving SEO. I’m not saying there is anything wrong in that.

SEO copywriting is an integral part of writing for the purpose of improving your search engine rankings. Copywriting doesn’t always mean writing for ads or promotional literature. You maintain a business blog because you want to increase your sales. You want to convince your ideas compellingly so that your readers believe you and then do business with you. Whenever your writing involves convincing people, it is more copywriting and less content writing.

SEO copywriting and SEO content writing are often interchanged but the sole difference is that when you use copywriting when writing, you also promote your business.

SEMRush published an infographic listing 10 SEO copywriting tips to follow whenever you write a blog post or web page. Here is the infographic:

SEMRush infographic on SEO copywriting

SEMRush infographic on SEO copywriting

As the name suggests, SEO copywriting is meant to improve your search engine rankings. Therefore, you need to take certain steps, you need to follow some procedures, to make sure that you are optimizing your copy for better search engine rankings. Here are a few things you can do

1. Find the right keywords

There are rumors that Google no longer needs keywords and you can use contextual language to convey to Google what keywords to optimize your content for. But the keywords still matter. You can use various online tools to find the keywords people are using to find your business. You can even use as simple a tool as Google. When you search for something on Google, Google also suggests other search terms. The search terms are being used by people.

2. Find out which questions people are

Questions and their answers are ranked better by Google. Questions are generally a treasure trove of keywords because they use exactly the language people use when they are searching for your business.

Therefore, there is a greater chance of ranking a web page with a question “How to find the best content writing services” higher than a web page having a simple title as “We provide the best content writing services”.

3. Keep search intent in mind

Figuring out search intent further helps you refine your keywords and reorient your language. What is the reason people are trying to find your particular web pages or blog posts? Are you satisfying that intent? Are they able to find what they’re looking for? The more emphatically yes the answer is, the better will be your search engine rankings.

4. What are your competitors writing?

If your competitors are enjoying better search engine rankings than you, they must be doing something right with their content. What type of content are they publishing? What keywords and search terms are they targeting? The infographic suggests research at least 10 competitors before you start writing content for your own website or blog.

5. Gather original data

Original data helps you write authoritative content. You draw your own conclusions. You make up your own mind. You display concrete results to your prospective customers and clients. You can conduct polls and surveys on your website for original content. You can also write case studies and white papers.

6. Optimize headlines and meta information

Headlines hook your audience. Your headline tells your readers what awaits them and why they should read your piece of content. In SEO copywriting writing headlines is one of the most important aspects of writing content. Meta tag information is the web page title and the description. This information appears in search results and have a great impact on your CTR.

7. When SEO copywriting, write easy-to-read text

Write smaller sentences. Write smaller paragraphs. Express a single idea in a single sentence. Don’t use complicated words. Remember that many people might be reading your web page or blog post on their mobile phone and on mobile screens it is difficult to read longer sentences.

8. Include relevant images

Images complement your copywriting. Images are not an integral part of copywriting because copywriting involves writing words, but when you are writing for the web you need to use images that keep your readers hooked. Images also present a welcome distraction.

9. Use appropriate CTA

Call-to-action is very important in SEO copywriting. You may not tell your readers directly to do this or do that, there must always be a hidden intention. What must your readers do after reading your web page or blog post? Should they subscribe to your newsletter? Should they download your e-book or white paper? People’s response to your call-to-action is an important KPI of your SEO copywriting.

10. Link to other blog posts and web pages from your current piece of writing

Interlinking solves multiple purposes. It makes it easier for search engine crawlers to crawl important parts of your website or blog. It also helps your readers find relevant information on your website or blog. It prevents you from writing duplicate content because if there are some concepts you have already written about, better link to them rather than writing about them repeatedly.

SEO copywriting is important at multiple levels. It allows you to write engaging content that prompts people to take an action while they are on your website or blog. It provides relevant information and at the same time encourages people to reach out to you for doing business. The SEO part is, writing your content in such a manner that it is interesting to read for humans and at the same time easier for search engine crawlers to crawl, index, make sense, and then rank for the appropriate keywords.

How to use subheadings to make your writing more effective

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When you are writing a blog post, a web page, a landing page, or even an email, you use a headline. Then you use headings. Then you use subheadings.

In terms of HTML, your main headline should be <H1>, headings should be <H2> and subheadings should be <H3>, or at least this is a format that I follow when I’m writing content for myself and my clients.

The headline grabs your reader’s attention and headings, and subheadings keep them reading. When they are getting distracted, your subheadings bring them back to your writing. The subheadings tell them why they should read further.

In this Copyblogger post Sonia Simone explains how to use subheadings to break a long piece of content into manageable pieces, separated by many headlines or subheadings. She compares subheadings to the steps in a staircase. Every step takes a person up or down the staircase of your blog post or your web page.

In the subheadings you can capture

  • Some irresistible facts you don’t want your readers to miss.
  • Phrases and expressions that spark interest
  • Underscoring what lies ahead so that the reader is prepared and excited.

Not just for readers, subheadings make even writing easier for you. In fact, as suggested by the author above, before writing the main body text, it is important to organize your thoughts under headings and subheadings and then you can expand them.

Search engine crawlers too find subheadings easier to read and process. If there is a hierarchy of processing the text then the title, the headings and subheadings are processed before the remaining text and hence, if you can capture the entire essence of your web pages and blog posts using subheadings, it also improves your search engine rankings.