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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.
Combining pay-per-click advertising and organic content writing.
Here is a nice Forbes article that describes in detail 13 smart ways you can integrate paid search results with organic content to improve your SEO.
As a content writer I primarily focus on providing organic content to my clients. Most of my clients don’t want to spend a ton of money on Google AdWords and other PPC campaigns because they understand that once they are able to organically improve their search engine rankings through optimized content, they won’t need to pay for every click they get from Google. Though, I do provide Google AdWords copywriting services.
What are organic search engine rankings?
Your content appears naturally in search results. You don’t need to pay for it. You’re not paying for every click. You appear in search results due to the quality and relevance of your content and not because you are paying Google.
But the benefit of using PPC advertising is that – provided you can afford – you can immediately start getting traffic to your relevant landing pages, for the conversion-friendly keywords. The key is, you need to know what you’re doing. Since you are paying for every click, you need to make the maximum number of sales or optimally tweak your conversion prospects.
This can be tricky. You may need to spend a lot of money before you can figure out how to optimize your campaigns and bring your costs down.
Organically improving your search engine rankings on the other hand is a safer bet. Although you may feel that you are randomly publishing content and hoping that your search engine rankings may improve for your desired keywords, if you use the right tools such as Ahrefs or SEMRush to find the right target keywords and topics for you to focus on, you can get tangible results with optimized content writing within a foreseeable future.
Should you use a mix of PPC advertising and organic content writing?
If you can, yes. Through PPC advertising, as I have written above, you can instantly start getting targeted traffic, and with better conversion rate, you can also start generating some good business.
There is a side benefit though, that I noticed a few years ago. When you start advertising on Google for certain keywords, your organic rankings for some keywords begin to improve on their own. This was quite surprising. I don’t even know whether it was a fluke or it really happened.
For example, I created a couple of AdWords campaigns for a range of around 10 keywords and I selected 2 Indian cities to be targeted because I didn’t want to spend lots of money. I was just experimenting.
To my great surprise, the organic rankings of those keywords that I hadn’t bid for, suddenly improved manifold. The links that were appearing on the fourth or the fifth page, began to appear on the first page. Again, I’m not claiming that it was related. Maybe it was coincidental. Maybe the ranking of those links was bound to improve and then they jumped to the first page just as I was advertising using Google AdWords. Who knows?
It may also be because when Google crawls your website for the paid links, it also ends up crawling and indexing the other links it finds, and then ends up ranking them around the paid links.
So, if you have some money, you can try that out. Use a combination of PPC advertising and organic content writing, and for a while, observe what happens.
Other than this, you can use PPC advertising to increase your visibility. Your website gets indexed faster. It becomes easier for people to find your content. This in turn has a positive effect on your organic search engine rankings.
Want to improve search engine rankings of your e-commerce store? Want to supercharge your conversion rate? You must start an e-commerce blog.
If you’re wondering why you should start an e-commerce blog, you will find your answer here.
The e-commerce space is quite crowded. With websites like Shopify and Rackspace it’s even easier to start an e-commerce website within a few days without knowledge of programming or HTML.
According to this UNCTAD report, Covid-19 has led to a surge in e-commerce business. Due to multiple lockdowns all over the world, almost everyone ordered from home. Even those who were reluctant to purchase stuff online, started doing their shopping from online retail stores. The share of e-commerce in the global retail trade rose from 14% in 2019 to 17% in 2020, according to the same UNCTAD link.
Starting an e-commerce blog enables you to carve a space for yourself on this crowded terra firma.
Data from IBM’s US retail index shows that the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital shopping roughly by 5 years. The non-essential purchases in the conventional, brick-and-mortar department stores declined by 75% in the second quarter of 2020.
It is not just the big e-commerce websites like Amazon.com, JD.com or Walmart e-commerce that have taken a huge proportion of the e-commerce business. There have been thousands of startups all over the world in the wake of not just the Covid-19 pandemic, but also to leverage the fast-changing consumer dynamics. I was recently reading about a new startup called Dukaan (colloquial for a neighborhood shop in India) that came up during the Covid-19 lockdown when the founders realized that the local shopkeepers were no longer able to sell their products even to the traditional customer base. Hence, they built a platform for traditional shop owners to sell their products using the platform. There are hundreds of such examples.
Naturally, the competition has increased. Whereas the bigger e-commerce websites don’t rest on their laurels and spend millions of dollars to maintain their visibility and push their products in front of their customers, smaller e-commerce websites need to rely on search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media marketing to get their share of the pie that is already being shared by thousands of others.
E-commerce blogging can be a big weapon in your arsenal.
There are multiple benefits or advantages of starting an e-commerce blog.
Why do you buy from Amazon.com? It is a known brand. You have already purchased from it scores of times, in my case, even hundreds of times. You know it’s return policy. More or less, you have had a good experience when it comes to addressing your grievances and you know that you can rely on the company in case you don’t receive the product you have ordered or if you have received a faulty product.
Amazon.com doesn’t have to convince you. You are already convinced. It has been on the landscape of e-commerce for more than 20 years. It doesn’t need to win your trust.
But if you’re a small e-commerce website people hardly know, you need to win their trust. All the attributes that are assumed about Amazon.com, you need to establish them.
You need to convince people that not just their money is safe with you, in case they face a problem, you’re going to be there for them. Lack of trust is a big problem among the prospective e-commerce customers because they don’t know you yet. They don’t know whether it is safe to spend their money on your website.
Recently my wife purchased a kurti from an unknown online retail store that sells women’s garments. The piece of clothing cost double than what such a piece of clothing would cost on Amazon, but my wife liked it so much, that she bought from this website. It was a complete set containing upper and lower garments.
They sent the wrong color. They sent just the upper garment. When we called them, no one picked up the phone. Our email to their support elicited no response. We found that there are lots of negative reviews and feedback on Twitter about the company.
Such companies make it harder even for those e-commerce websites that mean to serve their customers well. This is an unnecessary hurdle created on the way of the well-meaning companies.
Blogging can fill this gap. It can familiarize people to your presence. It can establish a space of trust. Being a small e-commerce website, through your blog, it is easier to engage your customers at a personal level.
This Hubspot report says that e-commerce websites that publish a blog get 55% more traffic than those that don’t. Further, e-commerce websites that publish blogs get 97% more inbound links, and have 434% more pages indexed by Google.
Listed below are 5 reasons why as an e-commerce website you should publish a blog.
1. Blogging improves search engine rankings of your e-commerce website
Although a major part of your business comes from repeat customers (a universal trend among e-commerce websites) if you are an e-commerce store, in the beginning, you need to be found on major search engines like Google and Bing.
Before buying people look for information. For that they use a search engine like Google. They want to read about the product. They look for reviews. They look for opinions. They try to find the ratings.
In terms of improving your search engine rankings through an e-commerce blog, think about your own e-commerce store. It may be unique. It may be quite different from a bigger retail store like Amazon.com. Maybe you’re selling just 10 to 15 items, or even less. You need to educate people about the benefits of purchasing those items from your website. This you can achieve through regular blogging.
Blogging in itself is search engine friendly. Assuming that you update your blog regularly (1-5 times every week) Google crawls and indexes your e-commerce website with greater regularity because it expects to find fresh content. The Google crawler is engineered in a manner that it is constantly looking for fresh content, and even the Google ranking algorithm prefers fresh content over comparatively older content.
Make sure you choose the appropriate blog post titles that include the names of your products and their features. For example, if you sell ladies garments, you can publish something like “How to choose the best evening gown for the upcoming spring ball?” Or something like, “How we can help you if you’re not satisfied with our delivery”.
If you regularly publish a blog, people come to your website regularly. Research has shown that before buying, people need to come to your website for at least 4-5 times.
Regular blogging also gets you back links which are important for your SEO as well as wider visibility. Other bloggers and online publishers may link to useful posts from your blog. Also, blog posts are shared on social media with greater regularity.
2. Regular blogging establishes you as a thought leader
Trust matters a lot when it comes to shopping on an e-commerce website. Trust, coupled with familiarity. Familiarity comes from regular visibility. Trust comes from regular exposure to your knowledge, experience, and good advice.
Remember that having an e-commerce website doesn’t always mean having an online retail store where you list scores of products. Even if you’re selling one e-book, it is an e-commerce website, and to make people buy your e-book from your e-commerce website, you need to establish your presence among them as an authority figure.
3. Build a community of loyal customers around your e-commerce blog
The very nature of a blog makes you attract people who are interested in reading what you have to say. If you publish interesting and useful content on your e-commerce blog, they keep track of your blog. They leave comments. They respond to other visitors’ comments. They feel connected to your community. When they feel connected, they show their connectedness by following the footsteps of the community. If many of your community members buy from your e-commerce websites, the others will too.
4. Publishing targeted content is cheaper than advertising
Organic search engine rankings don’t just increase your search engine visibility, they also reduce your reliance on online advertising.
A problem with online advertising, especially when you are spending money on a PPC campaign, is that you pay for every click. Whenever someone clicks your link on Google, for example, and if the link is not a part of organic search results, you pay for that click. Whether the person buys from your website or not, you spend money on the person for visiting your website.
Being an e-commerce website with multiple items in your catalog, you may need to bid on multiple keywords. For example, if you want to draw traffic for, let’s say, 50 items in your e-commerce catalog, you will need to pay for individual clicks for all those 50 items. On an ongoing basis. You can easily guess how much money you will end up spending.
With blogging, the only money you’re spending is the money that you pay to your content writer. If your listings begin to appear in organic search results, whether you get 100 clicks or 1 million clicks, you don’t pay anything. All the traffic is free.
Also, inbound traffic – people coming to your website when they come across your content on Google and other websites – always converts better than the traffic that you get through advertising. This is because when people come across your relevant content, they decide on their own to come to your website. Knowingly or unknowingly, they are aware of why they are coming to your website. This makes it easier for them to decide in your favor when they need to buy something, and you offer it.
5. An e-commerce blog builds you are broadcasting platform
What is a broadcasting platform? It is a place where people come to read about your views, get to know about your products, and display interest in your ideas and opinion. With regular blogging for your e-commerce website, you can generate massive amounts of traffic within a couple of years. Something to the tune of 2-3000 visitors every day.
This gives you the ability to broadcast your side of the story in case some dispute happens. You will have a ready-made audience with you. You won’t have to depend on other websites to tell your side of the story. In case something tarnishes your image on the Internet, you can immediately take corrective measures by publishing an explanatory blog post on your e-commerce blog.
Should you publish an e-commerce blog on your own website or use third-party blogging platforms?
I strongly suggest that you publish a blog under your own e-commerce website. This way you completely own your content. All the traffic that you generate comes to your own e-commerce website.
There are certainly some benefits of publishing your e-commerce blog on a high traffic website like Medium (or LinkedIn), but then you will be diluting your traffic as well as search engine benefits. You may start an e-commerce blog on Medium, and you may get visibility faster, but most of the visibility belongs to the Medium platform. Whereas, from the beginning itself if you start publishing your blog on your own e-commerce website, it may take a while to build traffic and presence, but by the time you have built an audience, you will have your own strong presence.
Difference between content repurposing and content spinning
Although I don’t take up content spinning assignments, now and then I get requests from clients to spin an existing article or blog post. On Quora I found that some people are confused about the difference between content repurposing and content spinning. I’m quickly explaining in this short blog post.
What is content repurposing?
Repurposing your content means creating new pieces of content from existing content. A few years ago, I published a blog post on this topic: How to re-purpose your old content.
I will give you a recent example of repurposing my blog post.
Within this blog post there a subsection titled “10 benefits of publishing a business blog”. I created a YouTube video out of this subsection:
This is called content repurposing. You use your existing content to create new content. The objective of repurposing is not to create duplicate content, but to create content in other formats.
These days I often pick up small portions from my existing blog posts and web pages and then turn them into social media posts and even carousal posts. Sometimes I pick up a subsection, and create a complete blog post on it.
What is content or article spinning?
Content spinning means rewriting the same piece a blog post or article but using different words. Nothing is original in the spinned article. Just so that Google doesn’t take it as duplicate content, you use different words and different phases.
People pick up a blog post that is doing quite well. Rephrase the title. Then rewrite the whole thing using synonyms and alternative words.
Is article spinning bad? Is it plagiarism?
It is certainly plagiarism in the sense that if you do the same thing as a journalist, as an author, or even as someone who is writing a research paper, you’re simply picking information from someone else and using it as it is, and you can be sued for that. Just because you’re using different words it doesn’t mean it is original or it belongs to you.
I don’t like such work. As a writer I find it offensive if a client expects me to spin an existing article.
Wondering how to make money with your blog? In this post I’m going to share 6 ways you can make money from your blog. There are multiple blogs and articles on the topic offering you 25 ways or even 50 ways to make money from your blog, but they are basically a regurgitation of the 6 ways that I have mentioned here.
In the beginning when people started blogging, it was for a hobby. People wanted to share their hobbies. They wanted to share their coding expertise or their web design techniques. Some mothers and fathers shared their travails with their kids. Some early bloggers started giving health or self-improvement advice.
As their traffic grew, people began to see the commercial prospects of their blogs, mostly by publishing AdSense ads. People started making money with blogging. Many bloggers made lots of money with AdSense. Some bloggers are making $300-$600 per day from the AdSense ads – or at least that’s what they claim.
I have been publishing a blog on content writing, copywriting and to an extent, content marketing, for more than 10 years now. I never thought of publishing AdSense links because it is a business blog. I mostly use it to promote my content writing services.
My blog has been gradually picking up traffic. My search engine rankings have improved for many related keywords and search terms. Therefore, I get at least two queries from my website asking if I would publish sponsored blog posts.
Sponsored blog posts mean they are ready to pay for the blogs that I publish on my blog (provided by them) along with a “do-follow” link. I turn them down. I create content for my blog on my own. I do accept guest blog posts. But not sponsored blog posts.
If you want to publish a blog and wonder how you can use it commercially, I’m listing 6 ways you can commercially use your blog.
Now, before you can use your blog for making money or for any commercial gains, you need to build traffic. Lots of traffic. Whether you want to make money through advertising, affiliate links, or any other means, you need to build an entire platform where hundreds of thousands of people come to your blog on monthly basis. Even if you’re getting around 1000 visitors every day, it is difficult commercially milk your blog.
Hence, if you want to use your blog to make some decent money, in the beginning don’t get desperate. Focus on the quality of your blog. Provide maximum value. Build traffic. Just focus on that. It may take you a year of regular publishing (1-2 blog posts every day) before you get some decent traffic.
How quickly you can start commercially using your blog also depends on your niche. There is a great chance of early success if you don’t face much competition but there is great demand for the topic you have chosen for your blog.
If the market is quite competitive or saturated, you have got an uphill task for yourself. It will be a bit difficult to make money and you may have to persist for a long time.
For example, if you want to start a technology blog, you should keep in mind that there may be hundreds of thousands of technology blogs. Every major news website or magazine has a technology section. And they are publishing 10-15 updates every day. As a single person, it may not be possible for you to compete. Therefore, before starting a blog, make sure you choose a topic or a field that is less competitive, but people do want it.
With this out of the way, let us go through the 6 ways you can make money from your blog.
1. Use your blog as a business blog
Since I publish a business blog, this is the first topic I want to talk about. Every business these days seems to have a blog. It may be a fad, or they actually see a merit.
Publishing a business blog has multiple benefits:
It builds an audience.
It gives people a reason to visit your website frequently.
Your search engine rankings improve.
Higher ranking blog posts improve the rankings of even your main website web pages.
More people link to your website.
Your prospective customers and clients feel more connected because they are constantly reading your thoughts and observations.
Search engine crawlers crawl and index your content with greater frequency.
Your website becomes a knowledge hub and you come to be known as an expert.
You have original content to share on social media websites.
People readily subscribe to your mailing list when they see that you are publishing quality content.
2. Publish AdSense and other promotional links
As you know, Google makes most of its money through advertisements people place on the search engine itself as well as on partner websites. These partner websites publish AdSense links. Whenever someone clicks the link, Google makes money.
According to a good AdSense explanation published on the SEMRush blog, Google pays 68% of the click amount. How much advertisers are paying per click depends on the niche. They can range from $0.20 to higher than $25. The above blog post also explains how to find the niche that can make you the most money. It is better to choose a niche that pays you higher per click if publishing a blog for commercial purposes is your primary goal.
Promoting affiliate programs is one of the earliest forms of making money on the web. Even when there was no blogging, people were making money off affiliate programs. In fact, in a sense, even AdSense is an affiliate program because you are helping Google sell its product, advertising.
In affiliate programs, you don’t need to have a product or a service. Someone else has a product or a service. You simply promote it through your blog. When someone purchases the product or service through your blog, you earn a commission, which is called affiliate commission.
Amazon.com has a widespread affiliate program. People publish reviews of various products and within those reviews they include Amazon links. Once you have created an affiliate account with Amazon, you get custom links that you can include in your blog posts. If someone clicks on those links, goes to Amazon.com and purchases that item, you get a commission.
There are many companies that offer such commissions.
4. Promote your brand
Personal branding can be greatly beneficial. Take for example Seth Godin, a speaker, an author, and a marketing expert. He has been blogging since the inception of blogging. The legend has it that he never misses publishing a blog post.
If you are an expert in a field – leadership, business management, data analytics, politics – you can share your thought leadership blog posts to maintain visibility and establish yourself as an authority figure.
Once your blog becomes famous, you can get book deals and speaking assignments. You can organize seminars and workshops and podcasts and whatnot. Some people have turned their blog posts into books.
If you’re a consultant, it’s very important for you to build your brand through publishing a regular blog displaying your expertise.
5. Publish sponsored blog posts
As I mentioned above, many people approach me to publish sponsored blog posts on my business blog. Once your blog builds traffic, people are ready to pay for getting published there. Many high traffic blogs publish sponsored blog posts, and they mention at the top that it’s a sponsored post.
Suppose someone is launching a product or offering an attractive discount. It will be easy to get exposure on a high traffic niche blog. If you are one of those niche blogs, you can charge a premium for publishing a sponsored blog post or a press release on your blog.
Don’t overdo though. Keep a 9:1 ratio – nine non-sponsored blog posts and then one sponsored blog post.
6. Offer premium content
This is a good way of making money from a blog for people who are experts, and the others are ready to pay to them for their expertise.
Suppose you publish a great blog on web design but there are some much-needed but difficult-to-get techniques that you know but aren’t sharing publicly. You can make them available in a private section on your blog which you can call a premium section. People who subscribe to your monthly updates can get access to that premium content.
Conclusion
Just like any other business venture, it takes hard work to build a blog that can make money for you. A moneymaking blog has the following characteristics:
Persistently high traffic for relevant keywords.
A very narrow niche.
Less competition and more demand.
High-quality content that is published regularly.
Is there a formula for commercially successful blogs? I cannot say there is a formula, but if your blog has the above-mentioned 4 attributes, you can certainly create a blog that makes money for you.
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.
