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.

Looking for a content writer? 8 things to consider

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the image shows a computer screen that displays looking for a content writer

Looking for a content writer?

Whether you realize it right now or not, your content writer is one of the most important members of your team. When you start looking for a content writer, keep this in mind.

What do people do when they come to your website?

Do they mostly watch the fancy design, fall head over heels in love with your graphics and animations and then only death can stop them from doing business with you?

People read when they come to your website

Or does it matter to them how you talk to them with your words, how you explain your services, how you describe to them and illustrate how their life is going to change after doing business with you.

It’s the latter part. You realize this, and this is why you’re looking for a content writer, no?

You know that you need a content writer to educate and inform your customers and clients, keep them coming to your website, and then ultimately, convince them into doing business with you.

Your customers and clients go through a pre-determined sales funnel.

Content writing for different stages of your sales funnel

Content writing for different stages of your sales funnel

A sales funnel can be as complex as the stars in the Milky Way, but ultimately, every sales funnel can be wound down to 2 stages:

  1. Educate and inform your prospective customers and clients.
  2. Convince them into doing business with you.

Educating and informing customers and clients is an ongoing process.

They are constantly looking for answers to their questions.

They need a source that can solve their problems.

Although in rare instances someone may land on your website and there and then decide to buy from you or hire you, in most of the cases, it is a prolonged process in which the person visits your website repeatedly and is exposed to your content multiple times before he or she decides to give you money.

Why you need a content writer

The image shows a content writer

Why you need a content writer?

The job of your content writer is to provide what your prospective customers and clients are looking for.

There are practically infinite ways people can come across your content.

They may simply land on your website or blog via search engine results.

They may come across your link on one of the social networking websites.

Someone may recommend your link through email or direct message, or even verbally.

They may discover your link on product packaging. Someone may mention you in his or her article or blog post.

People will be entering your website or blog through different links.

They may check other parts of your website or they may leave just after checking the link they arrived on.

The sales funnel stage where you get people to your website, is the education and information part. This part may manifest on your blog, in your newsletter or in your social media updates.

Once they are on your website, you need to convince them into doing business with you.

This is a convincing part of the sales funnel.

People are on your website, they are a bit informed and intrigued, and now, it is the job of the copy on your website to keep them there and convince them into doing business with you.

At every stage, your content writer plays a very important part.

You cannot educate and inform people with drab content.

Your content needs to be informative, conversational, engaging and in many instances, even entertaining.

It should be easier to read but at the same time authoritative.

Why am I explaining in such detail what sort of content you need for your website to generate business?

Because, when you’re looking for a content writer, you keep these qualities in mind, these needs in mind, and then accordingly, you settle for a content writing service that can help you achieve what I have mentioned above.

Writing content is a serious business. Your entire business depends on how well your writer can write.

Benefits of hiring a content writer and therefore, you should be looking for one

The image shows nutritious food as an example of the benefits of hiring a content writer

Benefits of hiring a content writer

You need to publish content continuously. If you don’t want to, your competitors certainly are.

It’s not just your competitors, in one way or another, everyone publishes content on the Internet, and this makes it hard for your prospective customers and clients to notice your business.

A consistent content marketing means good 15-20 hours every week doing research, writing, updating and editing.

You want to do this yourself? If yes, sure, go ahead.

You should be looking for a content writer because

  • You need to publish fresh content regularly.
  • You need to create long-term value and not just promote yourself in spurts.
  • Your business needs to stand out in terms of providing exceptional content on an ongoing basis.
  • You need to improve your conversion rate, and this can only be done by someone who can write persuasively and convincingly.
  • Bad writing can dissuade people from doing business with you.
  • You need writing all the time for your blog, for your web pages, for your newsletter, for case studies and social media updates.
  • You need to improve your search engine rankings, and SEO these days depends a lot on high-quality, relevant content.

If you need a content writer and you’re looking for someone who can help you create a convincing presence on the web, you may like to look for the following:

1. Look for talent, not for price

I’m not saying price doesn’t matter, but don’t make it the first quality when you start looking for a content writer.

You don’t want to save money at the cost of your business.

Often, it is a mental block that stops you from hiring a good content writer just because he or she seems to be charging more than another content writer.

A good writer is going to charge more, and this is fine.

Just like you need a web designer, you need a programmer and you need a graphic designer to have a professional website, and you are fine with paying him or her what he or she is asking, the same applies to a content writer.

Remember that writing is not a product. It is not something that can be automated. It is not a piece of code someone can save and then use as and when needed.

It takes the same amount of time every time a content writer writes 500 words for you. It may be a few minutes here and there, since you always need original writing, your content writer needs to make the same effort every time. So, keep that in mind.

2. Spend time studying the website of your content writer

If you need a content writer, it isn’t necessary that you look for someone who has a website (many writers work from various freelancing portals) but as a business owner, you can easily understand that someone who has his or her own website is going to be more serious about the business than someone who merely creates a listing in a directory where no stakes are involved.

A professional content writer is going to have a professional-looking website. The content will be well written. All the information you need to make up your mind will be there.

3. See if the content writer publishes a blog

Again, it isn’t necessary that you need a content writer who publishes a blog but, well, a writer must practice his or her art even when he or she is not being paid for it.

I have been writing professional content for more than a decade now and I have seen that writers who write just for money are, may be good writers, but not “good” writers, although, exceptions are always there.

Through the blog you can get an insight into how the writer expresses himself or herself.

4. Ask the content writer if he or she is comfortable writing for SEO as well as for better conversion

SEO no longer remains about using your keywords repeatedly throughout your blog posts and web pages.

Although you still need to use your keywords because that’s what people are looking for on search engines, more important is the quality of writing and the value it provides to your readers.

If the writing is not good, no matter how well-optimized your content is, your rankings are not going to improve.

Google has been updating its algorithm in such a manner that your rankings these days depend on how people react to your content rather than how you have “optimized” it and how many people are linking to it.

The above-mentioned attributes definitely help, but what helps the most is the quality and relevance of your content. An experienced writer must be able to strike the perfect balance between SEO and better conversion.

5. Take your budget into consideration but don’t be stingy

Although I have talked about the importance of hiring a good content writer irrespective of how much he or she charges, by the end of the day, it matters how much you spend on your content.

This is one advice I give to all my clients: if you don’t have the needed budget, don’t aim for having lots of content.

One high-quality blog post is always going to outperform five mediocre blog posts.

If you cannot publish a blog post every day, try publishing on alternative days. If that is also expensive, try once a week. Even once a month.

But never go for inferior content just because you are getting it in bulk. You will be wasting your money, and it is also bad for your SEO.

6. Go with a long-term content writer

This is another reason why I recommend working with a content writer who has a long-established business providing content writing services rather than someone from one of those freelancing websites – someone who has a business is going to stick around for a long time.

Just as you have stakes in your business, the content writer who runs his or her own business too has high stakes. This is why, he or she is going to stick around.

You can easily check these days the age of a website to know how long a particular website has been active.

7. Google your website or blog writer

Once you have come across your website or blog writer, or copywriter, Google him or her. See if you can find some bad references. Purposely use some bad phrases like “this writer sucks”, “stay away from this content writer”, or “very bad experience with this content writer”, or something like that – use the name of the content writer.

8. Pay close attention to your gut feeling

The way the content writer responds to your emails, the way he or she answers to your WhatsApp questions, your gut feeling will tell you whether to trust that person or not.

Does he or she sound too eager to please you, or this is the way he or she aggressively gets business from you (which should be fine)?

Does he or she seems to be over committing?

Remember one thing: if you compromise on the quality of your content, you are going to attract content writers who have no problem compromising on quality just to get work from you.

This is also a general life lesson. You attract the sort of people you want in your life, whether they are good or bad. I know, doesn’t seem like a business advice, but this happens.

Anyway, if you need a content writer or if you’re looking for one, first most, focus on finding an awesome content writer and then figure out whether you can afford him or her or not. Don’t start with money in mind because that way, you will always end up with a lousy writer.

Secret to effective content writing: understanding customer’s pain points

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My every content writing project begins with an understanding of the pain points of, not my own clients, but the customers and clients of my clients.

Email describes my content writing process

Writing for your customers and clients

When I’m writing content for your business, whether it is your website content, your blog, your newsletter, your case study or your e-book, although you are paying me and I’m writing for you, the audience is YOUR customers and clients.

Why effective content writing means understanding customer’s pain points?

The image shows 2 people talking to each other

Effective content writing by knowing customers pain points

By the end of the day, everyone is looking for a solution to his or her problem.

If you are an app developer, your client is looking for an app developer she can totally depend on in terms of writing perfect code and finishing the project on time, within the stipulated budget.

She may also be having problems looking for an app developer who can work in the technology stack she needs.

As an app developer, you need to tell your prospective clients that you have just the right app development solution they are looking for.

Similarly, what are the pain points of my clients when they approach me for my content writing services?

  • They need well-written, high-quality content on their website or blog.
  • They want to generate more business and hence, they need content writing that converts.
  • The need to improve their search engine rankings for their target search terms so, they need content that is search engine friendly and optimized.
  • They need someone who can write content consistently and with a consistent level of quality.

These are the main pain points.

These are needs. Why am I calling them “pain points”?

It’s just another way of saying what my clients need and what they stand to lose if they don’t get what they need.

A pain point is a specific problem your prospective customer or client is facing.

For example, if you don’t get a professional content writer who can improve your conversion rate as well as SEO, you stand to lose business.

That’s a terrible thought. Hence, a pain point is, not being able to find the right content writer.

In terms of my content writing services, the pain points can be further explained as:

  • Not getting a good writer within their budget.
  • The current writing is lousy, ineffective, and even unprofessional.
  • The current content is not selling and increasing business.
  • They need to publish more content but are not able to do so.
  • They or their current content writer cannot strike a perfect balance between quality content writing and search engine optimization.
  • The email campaigns generate no response.
  • The blog posts generate no traffic.
  • There are no queries from their website.
  • People don’t share the content on social media.

As a content writer eager to get business, my job is to address all this pain points and explain to my clients that they are going to get solutions to their problems when they hire me as a writer.

The same applies to your content.

For effective content writing, you need to understand what you provide, how you help people solve their problems, and what solutions you deliver.

For your content writing to be effective, it needs to be multifaceted.

When people are on your website, they should be able to easily understand what you’re trying to communicate.

Your writing should be able to convince them.

To be able to generate traffic from search engines, you must optimize your content according to the queries your target audience uses.

If you provide hair treatment services people won’t just look for “hair treatment services”, although, in this case, they may look for exactly this search term.

But anyway, they may also look for something like “how to stop losing hair”, or “treatment for dandruff” or “help with alopecia” and so on.

Hence, if you are writing content for a hair treatment services website, you need to write content addressing all the pain points of prospective clients.

Is knowing pain points only relevant to content writing?

Not at all. Yes, knowing the pain points of your customers and clients certainly helps you make your content writing effective, but every product or service in the market succeeds when it is addresses the right pain points.

Take for example word processing.

The developer of a word processor needs to know what difficulties the users face when working on documents.

If the developer goes on his own tangent and instead of focusing on the text he begins to obsess with graphics and video, he is not providing what his users are looking for – quality proofreading, formatting, real-time collaboration and inserting other design elements into the document.

Pain points play an important role in the success of every product or service.

Even your house takes care of the pain points of your need to live somewhere comfortably and feel protected.

How to know the pain points of your customers and clients for better content writing?

This is not as easy as it sounds. But you can do the following:

Talk to people

Talk to people and note down how they talk about the problems and hurdles they are facing in their day-to-day lives, especially pertaining to a particular facet of their lives that may be impacted by your product or service.

You need to make this interaction an integral part of your content writing and content marketing strategy. Constantly talk to people and understand how they converse about your industry in general and your product or service in particular, and then use that language to write your content.

Seek advice from Google

Google isn’t just good for searching for information. Once you search for a string, it also presents you with numerous suggestions to improve your search.

The image shows Google search options

Google search for effective content writing

For example, if you search for “effective content writing”, at the bottom Google also gives you the following suggestions you may like to try:

  • content writing format
  • how to write content writing samples
  • marketing content writing examples
  • introduction to content writing
  • content writing tips for beginners
  • content writing tips for beginners pdf
  • content sample
  • content writing tutorial

These suggestions may seem totally disconnected for this particular phrase, for your phrase, they may give you an insight into what other searches people are using to find information on your product or service.

Keep a tab on social media

People use social media to vent out.

Even when they are not venting out, they are constantly posting interesting and thought-provoking questions and these questions can lead you to better understanding the pain points your customers and clients have.

You can use Quora, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to track conversations about your product or service (or whatever social networking thing is going on right now).

Concluding remarks on effective content writing and understanding pain points

Content writing is all about improving conversion rate and drawing targeted traffic from various sources including search engines.

People convert (become your customers and clients, or subscribers) when they are convinced that you are offering the right solution to their problem/pain point.

This means addressing the problem at hand and presenting a solution through your writing.

Even on Google, if the searcher doesn’t feel that you are offering the right solution, he or she won’t click the link and visit your website.

Similarly, unless people are satisfied with your solution, they won’t share your links on their social media profiles.

Understanding pain points of your customers and clients also helps you come up with highly useful content on an ongoing basis. This is because, your customers and clients are always going to have one or another problem and you constantly need to provide solutions.

Why your business needs more written content

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Your business needs more content writing

You know what? Written content isn’t going anywhere no matter how avant-garde video and infographics become.

I provide professional content writing services.

Every day I get queries and phone calls from business owners and entrepreneurs who want content for their businesses.

From my website they can easily make out that I provide written content: I don’t provide graphic design services or video production services.

I provide content writing services.

Nonetheless, they have this strange attitude: fine, they have no option but to contact someone for their writing needs, otherwise, they don’t believe writing is worth paying for.

That’s why many would-be clients balk at my rates.

No, I don’t mean that my rates are outrageous – my rates are just enough to make my content writing services affordable to a wide spectrum of business owners while allowing me to make a decent living.

Would I like to charge more? Of course. That’s a different story and right now I’m not going into that.

The point that I’m trying to make is, publishing written content is inescapable, whether you like it or not, and not just any sort of written content.

You need quality content writing.

Constantly, you need to provide something really valuable.

This is because, if you are not providing valuable content, then there are scores of other businesses providing more or less the same products and services as you, providing valuable written content.

Hence, it’s your loss if you don’t. Your choice.

Why does written content matter in the age of video and graphics?

When we need to prove that something matters, we either resort to some research and statistics, or we give our own reasoning.

Statistics are good, and psychologically, they are reassuring, and they also tell us what the rest of the world is doing about a particular trend or tendency.

This Entrepreneur article refers to Zazzle Media’s 3rd annual State of Content Marketing Survey that shows that there has been a 78% increase in the content marketing spend since 2018 (this is May 2019).

This is no surprise, because, a greater number of businesses are discovering the benefits of content marketing.

The interesting finding was, 98% content marketers surveyed said that written content is their main output to achieve content marketing success.

Written content in the form of webpages and blog posts is going to be the main priority for 77% of the market is throughout 2019.

Why written content is important?

Search engine algorithms use text as main source while evaluating your content for ranking

With much more advanced artificial intelligence it is becoming easier to tell what is there in a video or a photograph, but programmatically, when it comes to analysing content, text, or written content, still rules the roost.

Most of the search engine algorithms are more comfortable analysing your written content and then ranking your content accordingly.

You can focus more on video and graphics and then bet on the possibility that in near future search engines will be able to analyse videos and graphics and then rank your content based on the information given in those video and graphics, or you can put your money and effort into publishing lots of written content that is already preferred by the search engines.

Your choice.

Voice search converts voice to text and then text to voice to help you find information

Here is my web page on copywriting for voice search.

You must be aware that in recent years there has been a big shift from PC/laptop to mobile phones.

Even to search information people use their mobile phones and often, people who are not used to typing all the time, speak into their phones.

Voice-controlled devices like Amazon Eco and Google Home have further boosted the use of voice commands and using voice to find information on search engines.

Technology to convert voice to text and then text to voice is quite old now. Every basic mobile phone allows you to convert your voice to text and vice versa.

Hence, on the web, and also, on my own blog, you will find lots of information on how to optimize your content writing and copywriting for voice search.

For voice search to work, when you issue a command, for example, telling Google to find you something, whatever you have said is turned to text, and then the text string is used to find the information on the search engine, and when the information is found in the form of text, the information is turned to voice and communicated to you.

The backbone of the entire operation is, the ability of the technology to process text.

If you don’t have text, there is nothing to process.

Many people find reading more convenient compared to watching videos

In the times of abundant bandwidth and highly efficient screens, watching HD videos and graphics might be fascinating, but reading written content is convenient, and more satisfying.

Reading is more personal and less invasive. You don’t need extra tools to read.

Someone wants to check out your website to know what all services you provide: he or she will prefer to read about your services rather than watching a video or a collection of graphics.

Though, I’m not saying videos and graphics are not important – they are – but they have a limit.

We have been reading since childhood. The habit is embedded. Everybody prefers to read.

Written text is more accessible

Written content makes your content accessible across multiple devices.

All the screen readers can read text.

All screen sizes can accommodate text accordingly.

You can copy/paste text in any basic text editor to read it or edit it.

It is the lightest form of content.

Does any form of content writing help you?

Depends on what you want to achieve.

If you want to publish lots of junk content, who am I to tell you not to do so? Go ahead.

For better search engine rankings and for a good conversion rate, your content writing needs to be purposeful, relevant and of good quality.

Search engine rankings these days are all about efficiently providing information people are looking for.

You see, search engines like Google don’t produce and publish their own content. They have outsourced the service to the masses.

But, if they don’t provide good information to people’s queries, they lose users.

Hence, let’s focus on Google for a while, the search engine is not going to rank your content well simply because you have “strategically” used keywords and hyperlinks.

It ranks your content high only if you provide information people can really use.

To help Google achieve that, a group of 300 odd maths PhDs is constantly working on the algorithm.

If you think you can beat these maths PhDs with some SEO tactics without ever intending to publish high-quality content, well, as I said, who am I to tell you not to do so?

Are SEO and content writing interlinked?

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With an example of the bee and the flower, the image shows how content writing and SEO are interrelated

Content writing and SEO are interrelated

What impact does your content writing have on SEO?

I know, this is an age-old question.

Most of my clients contact me for my content writing services because they want to improve their search engine rankings, which is perfectly fine.

If you are serious about getting traffic from search engines, you need to put in lots of effort getting to the top positions.

Depending on who is telling you, between 60-70% of all clicks are taken by the top 5 search results.

The only problem is that they think once they have published the “optimized” blog post or web page they are all set. They are going to rank higher and get traffic from Google and the motor of their business will start whirring.

They are right and wrong at the same time.

Yes, SEO and content writing are interlinked but content writing in itself doesn’t lead to better search engine rankings.

To get better rankings, you need to understand what search engines like Google are looking for, and what role your content plays in that.

Google doesn’t rank your content because you have “optimized” it.

The search engine could least care.

Google ranks your content based on how much valuable information it provides for the query that has been used.

Of course, it helps if you make your writing crawler-friendly and through the right use of words you give the ranking algorithm enough material to analyse your text, but other than that, it is the value, I repeat, the value that you provide that ultimately decides how your content ranks.

How are content writing and SEO interrelated?

The fundamental block of your search engine optimization is content writing.

Without written content, you can’t think of improving your search engine rankings.

So, this is settled.

How can you improve your search engine rankings with content writing?

Here are a few things you can do:

Provide answers to questions

This is a sure shot way of improving your SEO. Someone asks something from Google and Google provides the answer.

Total win-win.

This is exactly what Google wants to do.

The search engine wants people to ask questions and then it wants to give them the best answers.

If you have got the best answer, your answer will be shown at the top.

Hence, if you haven’t yet started writing content for your website (or you haven’t yet hired a content writer), the best first step would be to create a long list of questions people may have regarding your business.

These are the first most pages you want to write. This in itself can boost your SEO tremendously.

Write shorter sentences and paragraphs

The ranking algorithm after all is a machine. It gets confused if you write complicated sentences.

I’m not saying that you avoid complex sentences altogether.

Sometimes you don’t want to avoid writing longer, complex sentences, and this is fine.

You should definitely write the way you want to write and if you deliver value, people will read it anyway.

But when it comes to talking about the core issue and using the targeted search terms and keywords, use smaller sentences.

Preferably, don’t have more than one sentence for a paragraph.

It may seem odd in the beginning, but when you consider people going through your website on their mobile phones, you will realize that even a small sentence may appear like a big paragraph on the mobile phone.

Mobile-friendly content is also search engine-friendly content.

Publish new content consistently

This is something many clients don’t understand. They think that once they have covered all the keywords, they can relax.

Remember that this is Internet. Everyone can publish without spending much money.

Even if people don’t publish high-quality content, they can create enough noise to drown your voice.

By the time you say “content writing and SEO” there are scores of blog posts, webpages, press releases, news reports, case studies, podcasts and social media updates on your industry, pushing your content down.

The search engines also need new content to crawl all the time. You can call them content-hungry.

Pay for quality writing not for quantity writing

Writing and publishing 5 high-quality blog posts or web pages is far more effective than publishing 50 blog posts or web pages that are mediocre.

Improving your SEO through quality content writing works like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well-written, good content gets good feedback from readers and users and this feedback helps search engines like Google evaluate your content.

Due to positive reaction and feedback your search engine rankings improve and then more people who can give you positive feedback and reaction get to find your content.

Even if initially you can get good rankings if people don’t stay on your website, if they don’t spend much time on the link that they have found in the search results, you begin to lose your rankings.

Hence, quality content writing is of utmost importance for sustained SEO.

Why it is important to solve problems with your content writing

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Solving problems with content writing

Solving problems with content writing

When I continuously talk about solving problems with your content writing I don’t mean you turn into a Messiah and relinquish all thoughts of making money and just focus on helping people.

There are many business models that solely revolve around helping people and this in itself generates good money, but there’s a reason why, when you solve problems, especially through content writing, you generate more business.

This Copyblogger blog post says that every audience has these three subgroups:

  1. People who read your content.
  2. People who don’t just read but also share your content on their timelines.
  3. People who take action on the advice that you publish through your content.

The last subgroup is very important.

People who take action obviously read your writing.

People who take action obviously agree with you, like what you’re saying, and consequently, they may also be sharing your content.

People who take your advice are also most likely to buy from you because since you are already solving their problems, they trust you with solving more problems.

Even if they don’t buy from you, they become your advocates and help you reach people who may buy from you.

Remember that on the Internet, it isn’t just important to reach your customers and clients, it is also very important to create a tribe of people who help you promote your business, preferably by word-of-mouth.

Someone sharing your content on his or her timeline may be more valuable than someone buying from you and then forgetting about you.

So, the next time you’re planning to publish a blog post simply to cover a topic, make sure you solve a central problem in such a manner that people can, at least some of them, use the solution to better their lives.