Looking for insightful blog posts on content writing, and SEO copywriting? You will find them on Credible Content Blog. Updated almost daily. Fresh, unique perspective.
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.
Choosing between a content writing service or an SEO company
Many SEO experts claim that there are 200+ factors that influence your search engine rankings. Optimized content is one of them. But most of these factors are influenced by the quality of your content.
Often, I advise my clients that if they need to make a choice between hiring an SEO company and hiring a proficient content writer, at least for the time being, make the choice in favor of a content writer. Not because I provide content writing services and if they hire me, they are going to pay me, it is the most obvious choice to make.
Now, when I say writing optimized content is one of the biggest influencing factors for your search engine rankings, I assume that I’m talking about, and your understanding, high-quality, relevant content.
Content is the foundation of the structure of rankings you are going to build upon. This foundation can be solid. This foundation can be weak. But foundation it is. If the foundation is weak, you are either not going to be able to build your structure of rankings, or your structure is going to collapse sooner or later.
SEO experts are important. I’m not saying they are not important. They give your content writing the right direction.
In fact, if you can hire a good SEO expert and a content writer, this can be a win-win situation.
A year before Covid-19 hit, I was working with a UK-based market research company. They had hired a good SEO company to strategize content writing. I could have done that for them, but they preferred to work with an expensive SEO your company. Which was a good decision.
One thing I liked about the SEO company is that they knew exactly what titles I needed to write content for, how tough or weak competition our individual titles faced, and how long must the pages be in terms of the number of words. They had access to some great SEO tools that I don’t have. This saved us a lot of time.
For example, when I am in a flow, I don’t mind writing 1000 words even if the client has asked me to write 600 words (I don’t charge extra for those 400 words). But the people from that SEO company insisted that if they had asked for 600 words, I stuck to 600 words. The logic was, writing those extra 400 words was a waste of time, and they didn’t have much time. To beat the competition, they needed just about more than 550 words. Made sense.
By the end of the day, I won’t hesitate to say that for better SEO, all you need is high quality content that is well written and written in a manner that is easily understood by search engine algorithms.
An SEO company can help you get back links – you need back links to boost your rankings.
An SEO company can audit your website structure to make sure that the content organization is search engine friendly and all the elements needed to make your search rankings better are present.
An SEO company also monitors your current rankings and raises the red flags in case some of the rankings are going down.
So, in that sense, an SEO company provides you the needed vigilance. As a business serious about improving and maintaining its search engine rankings, you need such vigilance. The rest is taken care of by regularly publishing high quality content.
For the past few months, I have been working on a book on how to build your own successful content writing business, and in one of the chapters, I talk about the qualities that make you a great content writer.
Now, by any stretch, I wouldn’t openly admit that I’m a great content writer, although secretly, I may fantasize about being one. I still need to learn a lot. I still need to polish my skill. There are some awesome content writers on the web who can easily give me a run for my money.
But there is one thing: I can recognize great content. I can recognize content writers who really give it their all. It’s like, even if you cannot perform classical music, you can appreciate the quality and the grandeur.
Simply to be able to write doesn’t make you a great content writer, especially not a professional content writer who consistently gets paid for his or her skills. Below I’m listing 7 skills or qualities that make you a great content writer.
1. You are a writer from within
I recently read a writer saying that the process of writing can make you cry the tears of blood. I wouldn’t go that far, at least not while you’re not writing something to challenge Tolstoy, but writing can be difficult.
For the past couple of months, I have been writing for a company that develops blockchain applications. I’m a tech savvy person but for me this technology is fairly new. I know zilch about blockchain, crypto coins, cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens. Nonetheless, I’m quite satisfied by the work I have done so far. It is difficult. Very difficult. Not because the topic is difficult. Anyway…
What I’m saying is, writing doesn’t always come easy, but still, your basic ability to write must come easy. It should flow. You must be a writer from within. When you are writing on complex topics, only the topic should be complex, not your writing process. Your writing must flow smoothly.
When you see a dancer, you can make out whether she is dancing from within, or simply pretending to be a dancer. The same is applied to your writing skills. You cannot pretend to be a writer or a content writer. You need to be a writer from within. No matter how tough the topic is.
2. You have strong research skills
Whereas you don’t need to be a research scholar in a university to be a great content writer, your basic research skills must be solid. You must be able to find the information that enables you to write content.
Researching doesn’t mean doing a few searches on Google, randomly opening multiple links in multiple tabs and then regurgitating whatever content you come across.
Strong research skills means finding the useful information, grasping it according to your own understanding, compiling it in a logical manner, and then expressing it in your own, distinct language.
Of course, it also means finding the right information. For that you must know what search terms to use. To give you a straightforward example, if you want to find information on content writing, you shouldn’t start your search with “content marketing tips” or “digital marketing tips”, because these topics are quite vast. Learn to narrow down your search and know exactly what to look for.
3. You are comfortable with technology
By “technology” I mean the tools of the trade. It may also involve basic knowledge of hardware and software, especially when you are working as a content writer on your own.
Are you comfortable with all the mainstream word processors? Do you know their basic capabilities? If you’re not happy with your current word processor, can you find alternatives on your own? What about not using a word processor at all (I do that quite often)?
What about curating information? Do you use notetaking apps like Evernote, OneNote, or Google Keep? How do you organize the information that you can find even after two years? Do you use mind mapping tools? Do you know basic image editing using Photoshop or another image editing tool?
These may not be a part of a typical content writers daily routine; they instill a sense of confidence in you. Since as a professional content writer, you will be mostly providing your services on the Internet, you should also be comfortable with the related technologies.
4. You can empathize with people
The Oxford dictionary defines empathy as “the ability to understand another person’s feelings and experience.”
Frankly, if you cannot empathize, forget about being a great content writer, you cannot even be an average content writer.
You will be mostly writing content for businesses. Businesses cater to customers and clients. Through their content (which, they get written from you), they aim to solve their customers’ and clients’ problems. You cannot solve their problems unless you understand what those problems are, how those problems are affecting people, and how important it is to solve those problems. You need to be able to connect emotionally. You need to be able to write passionately and passion comes with empathy, understanding, and acknowledgement.
5. You are completely original
Most of the content writers are not original. They’re simply picking sentences and paragraphs and shuffling words here and there and then passing them on to their clients as original pieces. This is mostly junk content.
To be a great content writer you should be able to write original content. By original what I mean is, whatever you write, comes from you.
Of course, the information may not be original. Even the facts that you may be using in your writing may not be original because you will be taking them from other sources.
But how you present those facts and thoughts in your own unique manner, will be original. This is what is valued by clients. Most of the clients who respect their businesses know how difficult it is to publish original content and that’s why they value content writers who can write original content.
6. You can write in an engaging manner
People should want to read what you write. If you simply drone, nobody is going to read. You must write engagingly. You must directly talk to your reader. The excitement must rub onto your reader. If you don’t feel excited about what you’re expressing, believe me, people will get bored and disinterested in your proposition.
How do you write engagingly?
Have a conversation with your readers. Present information in short, digestible bites. Strategically use single words. Use a mix of short and long paragraphs. Ask questions. Instill doubt. Alarm them. Invoke a sense of urgency. Reassure them. Make them feel as if someone is sitting right in front of them and talking to them.
7. You don’t just write for money
There are many content writers who approach me and when I suggest that they should hone their skills by writing regularly even when they are not getting paid, they don’t pay attention. They want to spend their time writing only when there is a prospect of being paid.
Consider any art, or even any sport. If you are an athlete, do you practice only when a major event is approaching, or do you practice every day even when no one is there to appreciate your effort?
If you are the singer, do you sing only when you have an audience in front of you, or when you are being paid for your talent, or do you practice every day? Can you even sing at the performance level if you don’t practice every day? Fat chance.
Nonserious content writers think that since they know how to write, they will be able to write whenever they are offered a paid assignment.
A great content writer knows that just like any other skill, writing skills must be honed daily. You must write everyday whether you’re being paid or not. Whether you want to write or not, you must write because you know this is a skill that you value from your heart.
Writing should be a labor of love, not a forced occupation. If you cannot write without getting paid, you won’t be able to write better when you are being paid.
As you have read above, being a great content writer doesn’t mean that you simply need to write impeccable sentences and paragraphs and you should be able to use grandiloquent words and phrases. You can write very short sentences. You can use very basic words. Still you can be a great content writer if you empathize with your readers, write in a conversational manner, are able to find the right information, and can use the appropriate technological tools.
Using Google Trends for better SEO content writing
SEO content writing is all about choosing the right keywords and then creating your content around them. Being a veteran of your business, you may feel that certain keywords must be more popular than other keywords. The reality might be different.
A few weeks back I was writing a blog post on copywriting and while doing some research, I noticed that many writers use “copy writing” instead of “copywriting”. Although Google may not differentiate much between copy writing and copywriting, I wanted to use a word that most people use. On a whim, I went to Google Trends, searched for both the terms, and then compared them. This is what came up:
Using Google Trends to compare copywriting and copy writing
As you can see, worldwide, people are using “copywriting” more than three times over “copy writing”.
This is one way of finding out what words to focus on when writing content. There are many similar sounding words but there are some words that people don’t use often, and some words people use a lot. When writing content, you want to focus on words used by maximum number of people.
This Entrepreneur blog post suggests many uses of Google Trends, including
Search volume: It tells you if there is more demand or less demand for the key phrase or the keyword you are trying to write SEO content for.
Search trend: Since Google Trends presents the data graphically, you can see whether the use of a particular keyword is on the downswing or upswing. It may be that a few months ago the keyword was quite popular, but it is no longer popular, or vice versa.
Related searches: These are for long tail keywords. What different keyword combinations are people using to search for information?
Search filters: You can check Google Trends for your chosen regions. In the above screenshot, I checked worldwide stats. You can check stats for specifically USA or India.
Forecast: Google Trends may not show forecasts for all the keywords you search for, but sometimes it tells you what the trend is going to be in the coming days.
Comparison: Just what I have done in the above screenshot. You want to compare 2-3, or even more words and see which word you should be focusing on.
Aside from the fact that you can use Google Trends to find the right keywords for content writing, you can also use search segmentation for geographical targeting.
There may be certain keywords that are used more in China than in USA. This is just hypothetical: if I want to target China for my copywriting services and if in China people use more “copy writing” and less “copywriting”, I should be using the former phrase with greater frequency when I’m writing about my copywriting services for China.
The forecasting feature can help you plan your content publishing. If you know that the time for a certain keyword is going to rise or fall, you can decide whether to publish more content or less content on that keyword.
Similarly, you can use various features of Google Trends to streamline and target your content writing efforts.
Content syndication can take place in two directions: you syndicate your content, or you publish syndicated content on your website or blog.
Syndication means when your content is republished by a third-party website. Content that can be syndicated includes blog posts, infographics, videos and articles.
Just as someone may be interested in publishing your content, you may also publish someone else’s content.
Many news websites use content syndication. For example, many newspapers syndicate content from Reuters and Associated Press. These are independent news gathering services. Newspapers and magazines pay them a fixed fee and based on the agreement, they get a certain number of news items or images that they can syndicate from the agencies.
Content syndication can also be a good content marketing tool.
What is the difference between guest blogging and content syndication?
You must be wondering, if your content is being published on another website or blog, how is it different from guest blogging? After all, in both the cases you should be getting backlinks or getting your content exposed to a different audience.
Guest blogging is when you write a blog post or an article, preferably exclusively, for another online publication. This blog post or article shouldn’t be published elsewhere, not even on your own blog or website.
Syndication on the other hand allows you to publish your content on multiple websites and blogs. In most of the cases, an API/RSS/XML connection is used to distribute the content.
If someone uses your RSS feed or an XML link to extract content from your website (based on your permission) and then publishes the content with due attribution, it is syndication. The content exists on your website. It also exists on other websites.
You can syndicate product reviews, movie reviews, authority blog posts, or even social media feeds. Syndication can be paid or free, depending on your agreement with the publishers.
The basic idea behind content syndication is that your content appears on multiple websites. Doesn’t it create lots of duplicate content?
Yes it does?
Does Google penalize you for having duplicate content scattered all over the web?
Google says no.
But you need to take care that the websites and blogs publishing your content link back to your website or blog with attribution. You should also advise them to use the canonical link (that tells Google that the original content belongs to your URL).
Most of the content syndication tools automatically insert link to the original website. Content syndication is supposed to be automatic anyway. For example, if someone uses your RSS feed to extract content, whatever script is used to extract content also extracts the original URL and then links back to it.
The benefits of content syndication
There are many. You can promote your best performing content on bigger websites if they are ready to syndicate your content because of its quality and relevance.
Your old content, if it is still relevant and useful, can be repurposed and syndicated.
You generate backlinks automatically sometimes, which in turn benefits your SEO.
You can also use professional content syndication platforms such as Taboola and Outbrain to spread your content on other websites and blogs.
How to find content syndication partners
You can search on Google. You may use the following phrases when searching Google:
• “published from”
• “originally published in”
• “original source credited to”
• “republished with permission from”
You can also combine these phrases with the niche you’re looking for. For example, you can search for [“originally published in” “content writing tips”]
I have used [] just to club the two phrases together, you don’t need to use these brackets. The above combination should bring up websites that have published on the topics of content writing tips and somewhere they also contain the phrase “originally published in”, which indicates that they may have syndicated the content from somewhere else.
I have never pitched for guest blogging. If I ever did, I have forgotten – maybe in the late 2000s. But I definitely get pitched on a regular basis.
Mine is a decently successful blog. Therefore, every day I get at least one guest posting pitch. I mostly ignore them not because I don’t want to publish guest posts. I need to regularly publish content on my blog and if I’m getting free content, why not? Especially if it is well written and provides value to my readers.
Why do I ignore most of the guest blog posting pitches? Because they are not directly written to me. They are template pieces. They sometimes don’t even refer to my website properly.
Here is what I recently posted on Twitter:
They don’t even sometimes take enough trouble to go through the blog and try to find out what sort of content I publish.
Hence, even if I don’t pitch for guest blogs, I certainly know how not to pitch. Here are a few things you can do to get a positive response from a blog publisher.
Carefully go through the blog you’re pitching to
Not knowing what sort of content the blogger is publishing and despite that pitching for a guest post can be quite annoying.
People send me pitches for beauty products, cloud-based software, gaming mobile apps, search engine optimization, web design and all sorts of professional fields. Rarely do they go through my blog and send me an appropriate pitch for a blog post title that would be appropriate to my niche – content writing, copywriting, blog writing, email writing, and to an extent, content marketing.
Mention in the subject why you are writing
I won’t pretend that I get a ton of email and one needs to be specific to be noticed. I notice almost every email that arrives in my inbox.
Nonetheless, if you are writing to a very busy blogger, clearly mention in the subject that you are proposing a guest blog post. If possible, even suggest the title although, in the subject line it may be a bit difficult.
Describe why the blog post will be useful to the blog’s audience
Every blogger publishes content for his or her audience. Hence, while talking about the subject you have chosen, describe how the subject is going to help the visitors of the blog and what value it is going to add.
Include samples of your previous writing, preferably published
It doesn’t matter to me, but it may matter to some bloggers. When I find a good guest post idea, I don’t worry much about samples. I simply tell the person to send me the draft along with the author profile. If I like the draft, I publish it, if I don’t like it, I either request the person to revise it, or simply refuse to publish.
Ask if a blogger has a preferred format
I have a particular way of publishing blog posts and even writing them in MS Word or Google Docs. I have a style sheet defined. For example, for the main name of the blog post, I use the title tag. Then for all the headings and subheadings, I use the <h2> and <h3> tags (in MS Word, these can be simply H2 and H3).
I don’t like long, convoluted sentences. I keep the paragraphs preferably short although, longer paragraphs are fine too if they maintain a flow. Up till six months ago I was publishing paragraphs that were just one sentence long. Since then, I have abandoned the practice because it sounded quite phony and just catering to the search engines.
Main points should be described in bulleted points.
Anyway, if you ask for a preferred style, it shows that you care about the blogger’s time and you’re going to send a blog post that will be easier to publish.
These are the basic points. My main gripe is that most of the people pitching for guest posts send a mass email. This is not a good way of approaching a blog publisher, especially someone who works hard at creating focused, quality content.
It hardly takes a few minutes to go through a blog and get the gist of what type of content is being published. Prepare a direct, personal messages. Address the blogger by his or her name. Give an example of the blog post – from his or her blog – you have really liked to strike up a conversation. Again, let it be known that you’re specifically writing to that particular blog and you’re not sending the template message.
