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.

How to achieve on-page optimization with content writing

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On-page optimization with content writing

On-page optimization with content writing.

Search engine optimization has two parts:

  1. On-page optimization
  2. Off-page optimization

Off-page optimization is not directly under your control. It is a long-term process. You publish lots of content. People find your content. If they like it, they engage with your content by linking to it, referring to it on social media websites and mobile apps or finding your content useful enough to spend some good amount of time on your website.

On-page optimization on the other hand is completely in your control. Aside from efficient source code, you can write content that is search engine optimized.

A recent Moz blog post shares a few tips on how you can optimize your content for on-page optimization.

Here is how you can use content writing to achieve on-page optimization:

Format content that is easier to read when writing content

When people visit your website or the page you are subjecting to on-page optimization, they should be able to read it as easily as possible. The same holds true for the search engine crawlers. They should be able to read your content without much fuss.

This means making your content writing scannable. Here are a few things you can do.

Use the H2 tags

I have written on this topic multiple times. You should organize your content under different headings and subheadings. The above Moz author says that you should use your keywords – sometimes even the exact keywords you are trying to target – in the headings and subheadings.

Use headings after every 300 words. In this case, by headings I mean text between <H2> and </H2>.

Between headings, also use the <H3> tags as subheadings. This way, merely by looking at the text between headings and subheadings, your readers should be able to make out what your web page is about.

Use shorter sentences and paragraphs

Everybody finds reading shorter sentences easy. Communicate one idea in one sentence. Of course, when you are feeling like writing a long sentence, do that, but most of the sentences should be short. In grammar lingo, such sentences are called “simple sentences”. Avoid using compound or complex sentences.

Use shorter paragraphs. Ideally, don’t use more than two sentences in a paragraph. I tend to use more than two sentences, but I do that when my sentences are very short.

Use the main keyword within the first 100 words of the write-up

This tip isn’t included in the above link, but this can be useful. What does your keyword represent? It represents the core proposition of your web page.

Sometimes the search engine crawler cannot crawl your entire web page. By the time it reaches the body content, it goes to another link or completely leaves your website.

Hence, enable it to come across your main keyword (that represents the core topic of your web page) as early as possible so that even if it leaves your web page in a hurry, it processes the keyword.

Use bulleted lists

Bulleted lists are easy to read. They don’t even need to be complete sentences. You can just use phrases or even one-word expressions in the bulleted lists. Use your primary and secondary keywords in the bulleted lists. Use your hyperlinks.

Optimize your content for featured snippets

Featured snippets are the highlighted pieces of content that appear on search result pages when you search for something, and the answer is well defined. Here are some benefits of writing your content that is featured snippets-friendly:

  • You occupy “position zero”, even above paid links.
  • Getting featured in the snippets section is the ultimate search engine optimization fete, bringing you lots of traffic.
  • It increases your brand authority.
  • It brings you more back links increasing search engine rankings of other links on your website.

You may like to read: Is there a definitive way of ranking in Google’s featured snippets?

Featured snippets can appear in two forms: paragraph form and bullet form.

How can you optimize for featured snippets? By providing the exact answer being asked in a question, and in a manner that it’s easier to understand by Google’s ranking algorithm.

Although there is no definitive way of appearing in Google’s featured snippets, mention a question and then present an answer. Mention a problem, and then present a solution.

Something like:

Guide to using content writing improve on-page optimization?

  1. Divide your content between headings and subheadings.
  2. Use your keywords in headings and subheadings.
  3. Use bulleted lists to organize main points.
  4. Use your keywords within the first 100 words of your web page copy.
  5. Write short sentences that are easier to read.
  6. Write short paragraphs that are easier to read even on mobile phones.
  7. Optimize your text for featured snippets.
  8. Write text focusing on search intent.

The above is the format preferred by the featured snippets section.

Add an FAQs section

Although, you cannot add an FAQs section on every page, wherever you can, do so. For example, if I’m writing this blog post, it doesn’t make sense to add an FAQs section needlessly. But if I have a web page describing my content writing services, it is a perfect candidate for an FAQs section.

Why is an FAQs section search engine friendly? It delivers exactly what Google wants. It presents content in the form of questions and answers.

In the questions of your FAQs section, write the questions as if they are being asked by search engine users.

Take for instance the following question and its subsequent answer:

Can content writing improve on-page optimization?

Yes, content writing can improve on-page optimization if you format your content in such a manner that it’s easy to read both for your human visitors as well as search engine crawlers. Format your text so that it is easier to scan it. Use important tags such as <H2>, <H3> and <LI>. Hyperlink to your existing web pages.

And so on. You can provide a comprehensive answer. Google loves such question-answer types of web pages.

A good thing about on-page optimization is that it is completely in your hand. My personal experience has been that if you solely focus on on-page optimization, the off-page optimization part begins to manifest automatically.

Focus on quality content. Format it well. Use the right tags. Be persistent. Write and publish content on relevant topics. The rest gets taken care of on its own.

Some free writing tools that can be helpful

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I don’t use any writing tools. On-and-off I may have tried using some, but I always find them constraining rather than helpful. Nonetheless, they can be quite helpful to many writers who are learning the ropes.

This Fast Company blog post has reviewed some free writing tools that can help you improve your writing and take care of all those nasty mistakes that creep in while you are having a go at your creativity.

Although I don’t use writing tools, I keep an eye on the latest tools and the tools that have been evolving over the years.

Take for example Grammarly. Many years ago, when they were just launching, they gave me a free account to use and then write a review. I used it for a couple of days and then found it too interfering.

Tools like Grammarly are great for people who are still struggling with grammar and spelling and a bit of sentence formation. I’m way past those hurdles and all those peculiarities highlighted by Grammarly are just a part of my writing style.

I even purchased the Hemingway Editor – the test version – a few years ago hoping that it would help me write shorter sentences. Again, as a writer, I found it too interfering. Though, I must admit that help in turning long sentences into 2-3 shorter sentences is definitely wanted.

But then, if you’re using “than” instead of “then” and if you have gotten into the habit of using lots of passive voice (I do it sometimes) such tools are certainly helpful.

Don’t I use the editing features in MS Word and Google Docs? I definitely do. In fact, that might be the reason why I don’t use the third-party tools because the editing features in MS Word and Google Docs are enough for me.

Anyway, the tools featured in the Fast Company blog post are

Upon visiting the links, you will notice that not all are conventional writing apps. For example, LibreOffice is an open-source Office Suite just like Microsoft 365 or Google Docs. Hence, just like any Office Suite, it has a word processor, and the word processor has all the writing tools.

Similarly, Reedsy is a writing community of writers and editors. It also has a book writing tool.

“The most dangerous writing app” gives you prompts to inspire you.

Not everyone will find these writing tools obstructive. They definitely have their use.

Outranking your competitors – can strategic content writing help?

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I’m not an SEO expert so I won’t claim that I can give you a concrete answer. I was going through my content aggregator, and I came across this blog post from Search Engine Journal: How do you outrank bigger sites for high competition keywords?

Can strategic content writing help you outrank your competitors? It can. It requires effort and persistence.

Aside from other things, what I found revealing and surprising is that the author says that the word count doesn’t really matter as long as you have structured your content well.

This means, a web page with 500 words can outrank a web page having 2500 words if the content on the web page having fewer words is organized better than the web page with more words.

I have observed this pattern even on my own blog. Sometimes I’m able to rank well even when the blog post has just 300-400 words. There might be many other reasons, but what I’m trying to say is, a blog post doesn’t always have to be very long to rank well.

So, what can you do to outrank your competitors according to the above Search Engine Rank blog post? Here are a few things you can do:

  • Your web page should be relevant to the query being searched for.
  • The information should be easy to read and longer text should be organized using headings, subheadings and bulleted points.
  • Schema should be well defined – what is the web page about? Is it an FAQs page? Is it a product description? Is it an information article? Is it a review? Does it explain your pricing?
  • You should use interlinking. The crawlers should be able to access other parts of your website and blog through the current web page or blog post they are crawling.

Aside from these tips the author has also explained a few SEO-related things you can do.

How does strategic content writing help you outrank your competitors?

First of all, at least in the beginning, don’t focus on outranking your competitors if you are just starting. Focus on publishing lots of relevant and quality content.

Your competitor – assuming he or she has used fair means – must have spent months or years to deserve the rankings he or she enjoys right now. You cannot suddenly decide to outrank just because you want to.

The better approach is, start providing information that your visitors will find useful. Write content on interesting topics.

Make a list of all the topics that you can write about. The list should be around 50-60 topics.

Then write or get written the best possible content around these topics.

Of course, simply publishing content is half the job done. You need to spread your content. Follow SEO content writing practices. Make sure that your content is written and formatted in such a manner that it is easy for search engine crawlers and human visitors to read.

Share your content on social media websites. Broadcast the links using your newsletter. You need to promote your content. You can also use paid advertisements on LinkedIn and Facebook to promote your links.

Also, focus on longtail keywords containing your main keywords for which you want to outrank your competition.

Even if it is extremely difficult for me to rank for “content writing services”, I can try “content writing services for email marketing”. Or, “content writing services for web design agencies”.

As I have mentioned above, rather than worrying about outranking your competition, try to provide better content than your competition. Your rankings will automatically improve.

Your content strategy requires a blogging schedule

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Do you have a blogging calendar or a blogging schedule?

Do you have a blogging calendar or a blogging schedule?

You cannot have a content strategy without publishing a blog. Of course, you can publish content on social media platforms, but if you want your website to remain the focus of the buzz that is created around your content, instead of generating content on third party websites, your time and money are better spent publishing content on your own blog.

Recently I published a blog post Why do most blogs fail and what you can do to avoid that?

One of the reasons why most blogs fail is that the blog publishers don’t have a schedule. They don’t have a calendar.

Why do you need a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar?

To give you a direction and also to help you prepare and write quality blog posts.

Without a blogging schedule you are last. Think of a blog like any other enterprise. To run your business or to run your office, you need a schedule. There is a time for all the employees to come to office. You know that by Wednesday you need to submit a report to the higher-ups. You know that your computers need to be upgraded by the 15th of the next month.

When you have a calendar, you plan accordingly.

The same goes for your blog. If you don’t have a schedule, if you don’t have a publishing calendar, things go haywire.

A publishing calendar also helps your content writer. He or she can prepare content writing or blog writing according to the priority of your topics. By checking your calendar, you can immediately know that certain blog posts have been published or not.

A content calendar also gives you consistency. Every blog post has a unique purpose to solve. You want to target certain customers with certain blog posts. At the same time, you don’t just want to focus on a single niche.

There are some customers who need to be convinced. There are some customers who need to be educated. There are some customers who need to be informed.

You need different blog posts for these purposes. In your calendar you can assign days that on Mondays, your blog posts will cater to a certain audience, then on Wednesdays, they will target another set of audience, and so on.

The benefits of creating a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar

  • You can assign different topics to different days of the week.
  • You can collate all the related information at a single place such as the title, the target audience, the KPIs, the keywords, the images to be used and the people responsible for successful publication.
  • You can track the topics that have already been published to prevent duplication.
  • You can track the performance of individual topics in terms of engagement, KPIs and search engine traffic.

How can you prepare a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar?

Creating a blogging schedule or a blogging calendar can be easy or complex depending on what all you want to include in the schedule.

I use Google Calendar. Since I don’t run a multi-author blog, my schedule is quite simple. Sometimes I don’t even schedule – I simply publish whatever comes to my mind.

I use a combination of Google Calendar and Todoist. In the calendar I make entries such as the topic and some research links that I may have come across. This entry automatically appears in my Todoist schedule.

Some blog posts are short, and some blog posts are quite long. Shorter blog post can be completed in an hour and longer ones can take a couple of days. Hence, I schedule drafting and publishing over the stretch of two days, if need be.

I don’t want to mislead you or anything. I don’t have a complex blogging schedule or calendar for myself because, as mentioned above, I go with the flow simply because I write my blog posts by myself. Sometimes I suddenly pick up my phone, write a short blog post on it, and publish it from the phone itself.

But if you’re managing multiple content writers and you are an organization with an elaborate content marketing strategy, then you cannot hope to succeed without having a documented blogging schedule.

Difference between content aggregation, content curation and content writing

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This is an interesting question I came across while surfing the web.  Content writing means writing original content. You may like to read What does a content writer do?

But what do content aggregation and content creation main?

According to this article, this is how you explain the two:

  • Content aggregation: You extract content from different sources and then publish it without giving credit to the original sources.
  • Content curation: You manually go through various links and decide which piece of content you would like to showcase on your blog, and then publish the link to it, with your own comments, attributing completely to the original source.

Interesting. By the way, I must have come this link via a content aggregator, Flipboard.

Though, to read the full article on the link mentioned above, you need to register.

I have written about content curation multiple times. You may like to read 5 benefits of content curation.

These days I do lots of content curation. Even right now in this blog post, I have linked to another article and then I’m quickly adding my own take.

Content curation normally involves gathering multiple links on the same topic. For example, I can publish something like “13 content writing tips shared by content writing experts”, and then I can find 13 different links, publish the links with individual excerpts, giving full credit to the original authors.

But even if you don’t publish multiple links, you’re curating content. If you link to another article or blog post and then add your thoughts, it is also content curation.

What about content aggregation? Many websites use content aggregation but it is mostly automated and content writing doesn’t play much role in that. You probably use a script that crawls the web looking for certain keywords or phrases and when it finds those keywords and phrases, it extracts the content and publishes it on your blog.

Lots of my content is aggregated in this way by other publishers. Sometimes a link back to my website is automatically added, but most of the time, it is not.

I don’t find the concept of content aggregation appealing because one, if you cannot spend enough time to create original and unique content for your business, how can you work hard for your customers and clients, and two, you can never be sure if the content is going to be of good quality.

Content aggregation is mostly used by people who want to make money through advertisements. For them, as long as they enjoy good search engine rankings and as long as people are clicking on ads, it doesn’t really matter how good or bad the content they are aggregating is.

As mentioned above, content aggregation is also used by known aggregators such as Flipboard and Feedly.