Category Archives: Content Strategy

Optimizing your content for search engines? Where do you draw the line?

The world was recently shocked at Robin Williams’ sudden death. As the news spread over the web everybody was searching for it. People wanted to know more about the actor, his depression, all his work and actually what led him to commit suicide, if at all he committed suicide. There was news of his daughter Zelda Williams quitting Twitter and Instagram because of the horrible treatment meted out to her by the notorious Internet trolls. Web-based newspapers and blogs were vying for the top search engine positions for terms like “Robin Williams dead at 63”. One of the news editors at New York Daily actually sent advisory to its writers and editors on which words and expressions to use in the headlines and when to scale up and scale down these words and expressions like “Robin Williams”, “dead”, “suicide”, etc. Here is how the internal email goes (the link above is the source):

From: Everett, Cristina

Date: August 12, 2014 at 5:33:00 PM EDT

To: WebEditors

Subject: ENTERTAINMENT handoff!

NOTES ON ROBIN WILLIAMS STORIES/HEDES!!

Thank you to everyone who did a great story [sic] with keeping our stories SEO strong with the * Robin Williams dead at 63 * header for the first 24 hours. Starting tomorrow morning, we can scale back on the robot talk (meaning no death header) just as long as the stories continue to *start* with his full name and include buzzy search words like *death, dead, suicide, etc.*

If you look at the comment thread in the above-linked short blog entry, you will get some interesting perspectives. Some people are cynical, and some say, well, what’s the choice? Aren’t people searching for these terms? If a renowned celebrity dies, and people are going to search about his or her death, the circumstances and other such bits of information and if you want to be found for such information, why not optimize your titles and content accordingly? What if your entire business model depends on such optimization?

Providing optimized content is my business. If one of my clients were running such an online news portal, would I indulge in such “tactics”? Yes I will. Of course I won’t advise my client to use SEO spam and create scores of meaningless pages talking on and on about the same thing (why Robin Williams committed suicide, for instance), but if a major news is breaking and if it matters that this news be found on the search engines, and considering the fact that many people are going to use “tactics” to make sure that their webpages and blog posts appear at the top, if expressions like “Robin Williams” and “suicide” are relevant to my story, I won’t shy away from using them. Yes, a death has occurred, yes, it is a terrible tragedy, but if covering that tragedy is my business, I need to SEO my content accordingly, too bad. Someone gives a nice example in the comments section that it’s like accusing a coffin seller of making a profit if lots of people suddenly die. What’s the attitude behind the above-mentioned advisory? Nobody knows, and that’s a different issue.

If content creators and publishers have to use SEO “tactics” like these, there is some problem in the way search engine rankings work and people who create truly high-quality content often worry about this. Content that truly deserves to get higher rankings never shows up on the first page just because the people who can follow the “tactics” have an edge even while creating lousy content.

How to pitch for a guest blogging assignment

Leave a reply

Guest blogging is a great way to not just increase traffic to your website but also get visibility on other blogs and websites. Back in the early 2000’s when nobody knew anything about blogging I started my web design business backed by scores of articles that I had written for other websites. They were mostly about web design and web development telling people how to achieve various things with HTML, JavaScript, and sometimes PHP. I got lots of traffic. Those days competition wasn’t much so I also got decent traffic to my website that in turn, gave me decent business. I must confess that when I started my content writing business I lost my mojo for writing for other websites and even when blogging entered the scene rarely did I write for other blogs. Although I help my clients guest blog for other blogs and even advocate this aspect of content marketing, I myself haven’t really been into it for a long time.

Benefits of guest blogging

There was a time when people used to guest blog mainly for SEO purposes. The people who write Google ranking algorithms started frowning upon external links that people obtained just for the sake of obtaining external links. Page rank also mattered – what is the authority of the page that has your link? Search engines like Google also started penalizing websites that would just put links from other websites in lieu of money or link exchange. The only alternative left was, guest blog on other websites so that when they published your blog, they would also include a small bio that would include a link to your website. If you did that with high-ranking websites, the effort was worth it. Your website or blog immediately showed improvement.

Then again things began to change. In this blog post the Chief Search Engineer Matt Cutts at Google declared that:

Okay, I’m calling it: if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.

Back in the day, guest blogging used to be a respectable thing, much like getting a coveted, respected author to write the introduction of your book. It’s not that way any more.

The statement made sense; people were actually using guest blogging to boost their search engine rankings which, in itself is not bad thing to do, but the quality begins to be compromized when the sole purpose is improving your rankings. You know what happens when people simply start sending you email messages to promote their products and services.

Are you wondering why I’m talking about this while I’m trying to tell you how to pitch for a guest blogging assignment? If it doesn’t help you, if it doesn’t improve your search engine rankings and if search engineers at Google frown upon it, why should you indulge in it?

First, many of the advisories broadcast by Google engineers don’t normally work in the real world. There are still SEO benefits of guest blogging because links from quality websites do matter. What Matt Cutts said was guest blogging shouldn’t be done just for the sake of improving your search engine rankings. He talked about low quality links coming to your website that can anyway get your website penalized whether you get those links via guest blogging, link exchanging, or simply by buying the space. If you stick to the quality guidelines, if you provide value to the readers of the blog post or the website where you are publishing your guest blog post, there should be nothing to stop you. Here are the benefits of publishing a guest blog post:

You get exposure to new audiences
By giving expert advise you build credibility in your niche (for example I should be writing more and more guest blogs on content writing and content marketing just to show how much I know of it)
It strengthens your brand across the Internet when your presence is seen on various websites and blogs
It makes you a subject-authority
It lessens your reliance on search engines for traffic (high-traffic websites and blogs can send you tons of direct traffic)
It improves your SEO, yes.

So how do you pitch for a guest blogging assignment?

Thoroughly study the blog: It will be very odd to pitch for a blogging assignment for my blog (that is on content writing and content marketing) that talks about how to dominate the real estate market even during the times of depression, unless of course, you intend to do it with the strength of content marketing. Spend some time reading the blog where you want to pitch. Understand the tone. Get a grasp of the audience. Is it a light-hearted blog? Do they have very serious blog posts? Are they always looking for a great headline? Do they normally publish lists? Only when you have thoroughly understood the nature of the blog you think about guest blogging for it.
Start interacting with the publisher on a regular basis: If you simply one day shoot an email pitching for a blogging assignment there is a great chance your email will be ignored. Not that the publisher doesn’t care about you, it’s just that being a successful blogger, he or she might be receiving 100s of such pitches every day and he or she would rather respond to people he or she is familiar with rather than someone totally strange. So start finding your favorite publishers on Twitter and Facebook and establish a contact with them. Engage them in meaningful discussions without nagging them or wasting your time. They should be able to respect you and remember you on the basis of your interactions. Interact with them for at least a couple of months before pitching your guest blog, preferably, although this differs from situation to situation.
Start interacting with authors of multi-author blogs: There are many blogs and websites where multiple authors write. On such blogs it’s very difficult to elicit response from the editor or the owner and one can only write for such blogs if he or she already knows someone who has access to the editorial team. If you want to pitch for a guest blogging assignment to such a blog, start following their main writers and start engaging them on a regular basis. Then, someday, you can ask them to refer you to the editorial department where you can submit your article or blog post.
Write to serve the audience of that particular blog: Remember that you are not guest blogging to promote your own business (at least not directly). You are adding value to that blog. You are offering something valuable to the audience of that blog. They may have never heard of you so they’re not interested in knowing what a great person you are, or what a great product or service you have got. They are used to a particular format of content on that particular blog. So stick to that format.
Don’t treat the guest blogging assignment as a stepchild project: You may wonder why you should invest enough time on your guest blogging assignment when it is being published on another blog rather than on your own blog. It should be the opposite. Since you are writing on another blog you should put in more effort (not that you shouldn’t put in enough effort for writing for your own blog) because one, someone is providing you a ready-made platform, a platform that he or she must have built with lots of hard work and dedication and two, since it is a branding exercise you don’t want to give a wrong impression by getting average or ordinary content published to serve such a big audience.
Use a convincing subject line while sending your pitching email: Even if the editor or the editorial team isn’t aware of your existence you can sometimes send emails pitching your guest blogging assignment. Use a convincing subject line that clearly states that you want to guest blog. Most of the blogs have a separate section used for accepting guest blog posts. Use that section instead of sending to a random email ID so that when they receive your message, they know that it’s a guest blog post pitch. Clearly mention in the email body what you intend to convey to the audience of the blog and why you think it is an important topic and also why you think it hasn’t already been covered on that blog.

As you must have noticed I have focused less on sending email pitches and more on preparing the ground for sending such pitches. Although I haven’t been guest blogging much (I should), what I have experienced is, sending random pitches rarely elicits responses. If you randomly approach people then it becomes a game of numbers, something like, if you send 50 emails then maybe 5 will respond. If you want to do that, go ahead, there is no problem in that. But if you want to optimize your time, rather than sending 50 emails and then hoping that 5 people will respond, I would rather start interacting with people who can actually help me get through. So more focus should be on networking rather than the number of pitches that you send.

Why you should create evergreen content and how to create it

Leave a reply

Evergreen content is just like an evergreen movie or an evergreen song – something that you can experience and enjoy irrespective of when you watch it or listen to it. Evergreen content never goes stale. It’s like the immortal wisdom of great philosophers; it is timeless, it is fundamental, it can be applied in any age. No one says about evergreen content that it is out of date or irrelevant.

Why should you create evergreen content when it is always recommended you create topical and contemporary content? Both have its value but the benefit of creating evergreen content is that it is always useful. A blog post that you write in 2014 will provide the same value to a person who reads it in 2018. Maybe the examples that you use won’t be relevant, but the inherent message will still be.

A good example of evergreen content would be, writing a blog post on the importance of headlines. Catchy and compelling headlines will never go out of fashion. They were used to grab attention back in the 1700s and they’re still being used to grab attention these days. Their fundamentals never change.

Similarly, writing something about nutrition can be evergreen (they are just examples, you may have your own example coming from your own industry, realm or subject). Can eating nutritious food be ever irrelevant (unless there is no need to have food and we can simply swallow a capsule or tablet or even use a one-time shot to do away with the need for food, forever)?

Why publish evergreen content on your website or blog?

To keep your content relevant for a very long time
To make your content appropriate for long-term content curation
To encourage people to link to your content without worrying about it becoming irrelevant after a while
To enable your content to generate revenue for a long time rather than for a short time
To encourage people to share your content with each other without worrying about irrelevancy and outdatedness
To focus on quality rather than quantity and timeliness – when you prepare evergreen content you are in a more relaxed frame of mind and you are able to focus on the quality rather than worrying about missing the deadline
To create a portal of knowledge – with more and more evergreen content on your website or blog comes to be known as a portal of knowledge for your particular niche
To improve your long-term SEO – evergreen content not just enjoys good search engine rankings, but lasting rankings. This is because as people share your evergreen content more and more the relevancy of your content for the search engines keeps on increasing

How to create and publish evergreen content?

Mind your niche: First of all your content needs to be niche-specific. There is no sense creating evergreen content for a dating website that talks about how to survive in the Sahara (unless of course there is a connection). So make a list of topics that you think will draw people to your website in relation to your business rather than as a random occurrence simply because at that particular time they happen to be looking for how to survive in the Sahara.
Pack as much information as possible: Long form content fares better in search engines compared to shorter articles and blog posts. People tend to curate comprehensive, detailed content because it contains the information they need, in detail. Don’t be so detailed that one piece of content goes on and on. Use your own judgment. Try to think from the perspective of your reader. Don’t assume he or she knows what you know.
Lists are better compared to unformatted paragraphs: Take for instance “15 things that make your content go viral”; it is better than “How your content goes viral” or “How to make your content go viral”, followed by long streams of text. People want to know exactly how much they are going to learn.
Write about occasions and seasons: You may feel that writing about Christmas, Diwali, Ramadan or the Valentine’s Day are once-in-a-year of occurrences and hence might not be evergreen. But they definitely attract yearly traffic if you have written something like, “20 ways to avoid post-Christmas depression” because people need such articles every season. Similarly you can write “50 items to stock in order to survive a long power cut during winter”. Or something like “5 things you should immediately do during an earthquake”.
Create a “Regularly Updated” section: This is a section that, as the title suggests, you update regularly and since you update it regularly it is constantly having fresh content and hence you can call it evergreen. In order to seek fresh, useful content, people are going to visit that section on an ongoing basis. Your business blog can be one example.
Create an FAQs section: When people use your product or service they constantly need to know about it. Sometimes they have technical questions, sometimes they have existential dilemmas, whatever, whenever they have a doubt, they head to your FAQs section.
Create an online forum: Having an online forum is a great way of creating evergreen content because people are constantly posting questions and answers. If you notice, even posts and answers created in 2004 may appear in search results sometimes.

This is no way a comprehensive list because every business need is unique but this list gives you a basic idea of how to create evergreen content for your business that generates ongoing traffic for a long time.

How to find the killer content writer for your website or blog

Leave a reply

Once you have decided to create quality content for your website or blog it is very important that you find a killer content writer for the job. I know I’m using a clichéd phrase, but what I mean is, you need a person who understands your business, understands your audience, knows what language to use, and then communicates your message convincingly, preferably, repeatedly, using the appropriate language, to your audience. I know, a long sentence, but you get the point, right?

So how do you find such a content writer?

You first have to decide whether you want to hire someone full-time, part-time or you would rather outsource the content writing job. Since I am a content writer, I’m going to write this from the perspective of someone who is looking to outsource the job. So with this settled, how do you find a content writer who can really deliver with a punch and build you a formidable business asset? Here are a few things you can do

Recognize, acknowledge and accept the importance of content writing for your business

What the heck does that mean? you must be wondering. Aren’t you looking for a content writer because you know that your website needs content writing? Many business owners think that way but still they don’t understand content writing and therefore, they expect their content writer to charge as low as $ 5 (just a ballpark figure to explain the trend) for “quality” webpage content or blog post. Just as you have to pay a premium for a quality computer, quality smart phone, quality software, quality web design, quality food in a quality restaurant, and a quality four-wheeler, you also have to pay good money for a quality content writer. If you don’t think that, you’re either not serious about getting content written for your website, or you have a different perception of the real world.

Acknowledge that the content writer you’re planning to hire is running a serious business just like you

Considering the amount of money some people want to pay to their content writer (for example, $ 5) they think that the content writer is just a good-for-nothing, out-of-job fellow who has somehow gotten hold of a computer and an Internet connection and is now trying to make a living off the Internet without having spent any money. I’m not saying such people don’t exist, but if you want to hobnob with such people, then maybe you also have the same sort of attitude and running the same sort of business in your basement, mostly surviving on freebies abundantly available on the Internet.

If you’re doing serious business, then you have to collaborate with a serious person. If you need business class services, then you need to get a person who is running a business. If you want professional content for your website or blog, you need a professional content writer who provides his or her services as a business rather than as a hobby or an in-between-jobs activity.

But how do you know that the content writer you’re contemplating working with is a serious business owner or at least a professional content provider? Here are a few things to consider:

He (or she) has a website with all relevant sections (homepage, services, about section, FAQs, contact form, etc.)
His website shouldn’t look as if it was designed back in 2003
He has clearly and convincingly described how he works and what procedures he follows in order to deliver effective content
He has good command over the language (the language in which the content is to be written)
He has a visible presence on the web – since there is a great possibility that you will be looking for a content writer on the Internet, you should be easily able to find him.
He should have a blog that is regularly updated. Being a content writer he should have lots of content on his own website so that you can get a fair idea of how he communicates
His fees and rates should be there on the website
He shouldn’t be one of those “professionals” who would go to any length vis-à-vis the pricing in order to get your work. If he is too eager to please you it’s an indication that he is not very confident and if he is not confident he won’t be able to apply his skills with confidence to your writing too.
He should reply to your email messages or phone calls or Skype messages within a decent time span. It doesn’t mean his replies should reach you within minutes because he is supposed to be working and not constantly monitoring the messages people send him, but a time gap of, let us say if it is not very urgent, should be at least eight hours.

Remember that these are basic traits and there might be many more characteristics that you may look for in order to find the right content writer for your business.

Have a clearly laid out plan for your content marketing campaign

There is a reason it is called “content marketing”. Hiring a content writer doesn’t mean your job is done and now it is up to him to do your content marketing. Have a plan. You should know what you’re trying to achieve by getting content written for your website or blog. You should know what topics need to be covered and why and what sort of effect they should have on your traffic as well as the people who decide to stick around your website for awhile. Remember that you are the one running your business. You know it’s nitty-gritty. You know more about your customers and clients than the content writer. You know there are various triggers (if you don’t, you need to do your research you need to hire someone who can do it for you) that motivate your customers and clients.

Once you have a plan you will know exactly what your content writer needs to do.

Decide what you want: a content writer, a content marketer, or both

A perfect solution would be a content writer who knows a bit or two about marketing too. This is because effective content writing has less to do with impeccable writing and more to do with convincing writing. How do you convince people? If you can market your idea in a compelling language. Remember that it shouldn’t be perfect language. It should be able to persuade people into doing business with you. A knack for marketing makes your content writer confident and lucid. He knows how to communicate the strengths of what you’re offering in an effective manner (to streamline your sales funnel).

Be ready to let your content writer do what he does best

In order to let the killer content writer create killer content for your website or blog, you will have to let him do his job the way he likes to do it (as long as he is delivering something that helps you grow your business). Once you’re convinced that he understands your audience and he is able to create content accordingly, don’t meddle too much. Don’t force him into writing something he is uncomfortable with. Don’t impose your ideas about how to write because it’s he who is in the business of writing content and not you. You might be a legal eagle but writing is not your calling (unless you are John Grisham, of course), so stick to your expertise and let the content writer do his job.

Well, I have never said that Content Is King

Leave a reply

I’m not writing this to dispute anybody’s claim whether content is king or not because it is just a way of telling someone how important it is. I may have mentioned it in the passing that yes, content is king, that is, marketing doesn’t exist without content, but it isn’t just content that gets things going.

Content is like fuel. Without this fuel, you cannot run the engine of your business, that’s an established fact. Now, it is up to you what sort of fuel you want to use. You can use low quality or high-quality fuel. You can use fuel that wears your machinery down or creates lots of pollution. Or you can use good quality fuel that gives you better mileage.

Are you wondering why I’m comparing content with fuel rather than with King? No reason at all actually, I could have compared it to anything, as long as it is important. The whole point is, it’s not just content that matters. Your content needs to be backed up with:

High-quality
Regularity
Relevance
Distribution
Engagement
Publishing platform

The old saying, “build it and they will come” no longer works because there is so much of everything. So after building it, you need to get people to it. “It” in this case is your content. It is given that you need to write and publish high-quality content. Low quality content neither works with search engines nor with human readers.

Regularity is very important because millions of pages are being created everyday and and some of them are exceptionally well-written. You are constantly getting competition. Besides, search engines as well as people love new content. For instance, if I want to know what’s the latest happening in the field of content writing, I would rather check out something that is a few months old rather than something that was written back in 2011 (this is February 2014). When you post regularly it gives people a reason to visit your website or blog repeatedly (even the search engine crawlers visit your website with greater frequency if it is constantly updated).

Relevance in the context of content writing means you need to offer something people can actually use and benefit from. There is no use creating content that exists just for the sake of existence. It needs to solve a purpose.

How do people access your content? If your content exists in isolation then again, you’re just wasting your time. Content is published to make an impact and that impact can only be made if people actually make contact with your content. So you need to distribute your content. You need to use all available channels to you including social networking websites, blogs and online forums.

Engagement, although is a new buzzword, it has existed since the time immemorial. Engagement basically means two-way communication. You talk to people, and then people talk back to you, and then you talk back to people and engagement begins to happen. Without constant engagement it is difficult for people to remember you, and remember you for the right reasons.

You need to choose your publishing platform carefully because once you have chosen it, you will be spending lots of time writing and publishing content for it. For instance, it is a critical choice whether you publish a blog under your own domain name or you decide to use a third-party platforms such as Tumblr. Businesses these days are also using LinkedIn as well as Google Plus to publish long blog posts and articles. The only problem with choosing third-party platforms is that your content doesn’t belong to you. It will be sending all the traffic to those websites and then some of the traffic will come to your website. On the other hand, if you publish your blog under your own domain name than all the traffic will come to you. The benefit of using a third-party platform that is well established is that you can start getting traffic to your content from day one. Finally, the decision is yours.

These qualities and attributes collectively make your content the King. Without these attributes your content is just another piece of information aimlessly lolling around in the limitless wilderness of the Internet.