Category Archives: Content Writing

How to optimize your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO

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Optimize content writing for DuckDuckGo

Optimize content writing for DuckDuckGo

In this blog post you will learn how to optimize your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO.

According to this MediaPost update in 2018 the DuckDuckGo search engine served more than 9 billion searches.

Here is what DuckDuckGo recently tweeted:

I keep writing on my blog that Google is very competitive about its ranking algorithm and it doesn’t rest on its laurels. Just because there isn’t a significant search engine in sight doesn’t mean the search engine giant start serving lousy search results.

Google knows that before it, there were many “search engine giants” including Yahoo!, Lycos and AltaVista. They can easily be one to take its place at the helm.

Microsoft has half-heartedly tried to capture some portion of the market with Bing, but very few people take it seriously although, as a search engine, you should definitely make sure that your links feature in its search results.

A search engine that can pose a threat to Google’s dominance is the DuckDuckGo search engine.

Why are more people using DuckDuckGo, bypassing Google?

Privacy concerns.

DuckDuckGo does not track your information

DuckDuckGo does not track your information

When you use the DuckDuckGo search engine, it does not store your personal information.

It does not store your search history. It has no intention of using your search pattern for retargeting and for advertising.

With data breaches happening almost on every platform including even Facebook and Google, many people who are cautious about their privacy, have started using DuckDuckGo because they openly claim that they don’t store your private information and your search history.

And even the search results aren’t bad too. It finds the information you are looking for. In fact, off late I have observed that its results are better than Google.

Should you seriously optimize your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO?

Although 9 billion searches in a year don’t match with Google’s 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide (source), sooner or later DuckDuckGo is going to become a force to reckoned with.

There are many reasons why this search engine is going to become the search engine of choice for many.

In Google Chrome you can set it as your default search engine.

In iOS 8 browser options, you can set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine. This means a big number of iPhone users may start using DuckDuckGo increasingly.

Just see below its growth trajectory even for January 2015.

Searches on DuckDuckGo just on January 2015

Searches on DuckDuckGo just on January 2015

You can imagine how fast it is growing.

If you start optimizing your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO, right now you can get a headway because there aren’t many people focusing on it.

Optimizing your content for DuckDuckGo SEO

When I was doing research for writing this blog post, predictably, every good suggestion revolves around the standard advice for every major search engine these days – quality and relevance.

In this Search Engine Land blog post, Neil Patel has made the following suggestions for optimizing your content for the DuckDuckGo search engine:

Create a great website

Great website in terms of usability, quality of information and ease of use. The website must be accessible on all devices, especially mobile phones. It should be a fast loading website.

Focus on your users

Every search engine aims to provide the best possible answers to the questions people pose them. When writing content for your website or blog focus on providing the best value to your users.

Write valuable content so that people naturally link to you

Just like backlinks are important in Google, they are also important for DuckDuckGo SEO.

So, high-quality content isn’t just good for your conversion rate, it also earns you backlinks from authority websites and this in turn helps you improve your DuckDuckGo SEO.

Optimize using semantic keywords

Semantic keywords are the related keywords. Suppose I’m trying to optimize a web page for “content writer”.

Google also does that – DuckDuckGo, when analyzing my web page, don’t just look for “content writer”; it may also look for “web writer”, “web content writer”, “website writer”, and so on.

Similarly, when optimizing a web page for “phone reviews” it may also decide to rank the web page for “phone comparisons” and “phone recommendations”

Concluding remarks on optimizing your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO

A good thing about DuckDuckGo is that it does not use people’s search behavior to filter results or customize results. It indexes and ranks different links according to its own unique method or algorithm.

Relevance and quality rules the roost. Create very topical content. Although longer blog posts are good, try to focus on the subject without stuffing too much information that might be unrelated.

Personally, I wouldn’t suggest that you do something extra for DuckDuckGo. Just follow the best practices for all the mainstream search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo and your rankings will improve even in this latest search engine.

Why quality content writing improves your SEO

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Quality content writing improves your SEO

Quality content writing improves your SEO

In this blog post you will learn how quality content writing improves your SEO.

Text is everywhere. All the home automation devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, although powered by voice commands, in the background, work on text.

Search engine rankings are based on the textual content on your website or blog.

Even cryptic information residing in the deep artificial intelligence lives and breathes in the form of text.

What I’m saying is, content writing isn’t going anywhere despite big push towards video and imagery.

Read this detailed article from The Atlantic on how many major publications were pushed to the brink of collapse (including Facebook) when they fired their writers in favor of videographers.

Yes, every form of content has its importance but ultimately, everything boils down to writing.

Try publishing just videos or just images on your website and blog, and see what happens to your SEO.

Quality content writing and SEO are interlinked.

Vis-à-vis SEO, what does quality content writing mean?

What does quality content writing mean in terms of SEO?

What does quality content writing mean in terms of SEO?

The quality attribute is multifaceted when it comes to writing for the web, especially to improve your SEO.

I’m using the example of search engine optimization because this is the focal issue of this particular blog post, otherwise, I never advise you to solely aim for SEO. Aim for quality content and SEO is automatically taken care of.

Quality here means it solves your purpose. What is your purpose?

Get more business, of course.

But, there are many stages in between – from someone realizing that he or she needs what you have and then that someone not just finding you, but deciding to do business with you. Many stages.

These are the stages when most of the business is lost.

The job of quality content is to convince people into believing you and then deciding to pay you for what you are offering.

For that, you need to improve your conversion rate.

Your conversion rate can only be improved when you are able to convince people.

Since you cannot convince 100% visitors who come to your website, you have to somehow figure out the maximum number of visitors you can convince into doing business with you.

Suppose, 5%.

This means, if 100 visitors come to your website, 5 of them become your customers or clients.

With the same conversion rate, if you want to get 50 customers or clients, you need to get 1000 visitors.

How do you get these 1000 visitors? You have 3 options:

  1. Improve your SEO for your targeted keywords
  2. Become active on social media
  3. Use paid advertising

If you want to use paid advertising, it must be in your scheme of things.

But if you don’t want to use paid advertising and you would like to go for a more sustainable mode of generating targeted traffic to your website, you will improve your SEO and you will become more active on social media, and for both these activities, you need quality content.

The quality of your content writing began to matter first on social media – nobody would care for you if you didn’t provide value – and then even Google began to change its algorithm to rank only quality content.

So, it isn’t important what you write and what you publish, what’s important is, how people react to it.

If they don’t react to it properly, even the search engines ignore it.

Quality content writing improves your SEO – explained

Your SEO these days solely depends on how valuable, purposeful and relevant your content is.

Why?

Why must people find your content when they look for a certain keyword or search term?

You may say that they must find you so that you get a chance to promote your products or services to them, once they are on your website or blog.

Fair enough. Even I want that.

But what about those people who are searching? What do you give them?

Now, if you didn’t face much competition, you could easily say that if someone is looking for a web designer, he or she should come to your website because you provide web design services.

In my case, if someone is looking for a professional content writer, he or she should come to my website because I provide professional content writing services.

There are thousands of web designers. Also there are thousands of content writers.

People who appear for “web designer” and “content writer” on the first top 10 search engine results, have definitely done something to appear there.

They must have gotten scores of quality back links.

They must be quite active on social media to elicit lots of positive response from their followers.

The must have lots of quality content on their websites so that their bounce rate is very low (a high bounce rate is bad for your SEO).

They must have been in the game for quite some time – the age of their domains must be very old.

People searching for products, services and information have no personal interest in finding your website or blog.

Even Google doesn’t have any personal stake in your website. The search engine solely depends on the algorithm and it’s the algorithm that decides the rankings of your individual links.

Now, this algorithm is constantly evolving.

For a machine, no matter how evolved artificial intelligence gets, it is very difficult to gauge the true value of a piece of content.

This is why Google heavily relies on the reaction of people.

I’m writing this blog post on “why quality content writing improves your SEO”.

Based on my existing rankings Google may rank this blog post in whichever manner.

Then it begins to gather data about how people interact with this piece of content on the Google search engine itself, and also on other websites and social media platforms.

People retweet my tweet with this link – good, Google notches up my rankings perceptibly or imperceptibly.

People like my update carrying this link on Facebook and they also leave comments and they may even share my update. Another boost to my rankings.

When people find my link in search results they come to this blog post and read it.

The more time people spend on this link, the more Google gets convinced that this link solves the purpose of the search query that was used to find this link. Hence, improve its rankings.

If most of the people no longer search for the same query after accessing my link, Google assumes that my link solves the purpose of the query and further improves its rankings.

The cycle goes on and my link keeps moving up.

Now, why would people react positively to this particular link?

They are not emotionally attached to me or my website. Most of them don’t even know me. They couldn’t care less about my SEO.

The only reason they retweet or share my link is because they like it and they like it only because I provide quality content to them. This can only be achieved through quality content writing.

Again, why would people spend more time on this link?

Because they have a reason to go on reading the matter. They find the content useful. This brings down the bounce rate of this link or blog post.

They have no personal interest in lingering on the blog post without reason. The only reason is, they are getting what they were looking for.

Best possible scenario: they don’t go back to Google with the same search query. They don’t check out other links for the same search query.

This indicates to Google that the link solves the purpose of the search query and the user no longer has to check out other links.

These things can only happen if you provide quality content, relevant content, content that is engaging, useful and solves the purpose.

If you focus on providing value to your visitors, you don’t have to worry about your search engine rankings because search engine rankings these days depend less on how you use your keywords, and more on how people react to your content.

Their reactions decide your SEO.

So, when writing content, simply focus on getting positive, constructive reaction from your visitors. The rest is taken care of on its own.

How to write content for informational search queries

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Writing content for informational search quarries

Writing content for informational search quarries

In this blog post you are going to learn what are informational search queries and how to write content to target such an audience.

Informational search is when people search for your content to get more information about your product or service. They might not be ready yet to purchase from you, but they need more information.

Take for example my content writing services. May be right now you’re not ready to hire me (or any other content writer) but you are seeking more information. You want to educate yourself. You want to be in a better position to make an informed decision.

Maybe you just want to know why hire a professional content writing service at all.

You carry out informational search.

You may search for: “How can content writing help me improve my SEO?” or, “How can content writing help me grow my business?”

Right now, you’re not looking for a content writer who can help you improve your SEO for the purpose of hiring him or her. You are not looking for a content writer who can help you grow your business. You’re simply looking for information because you want to educate yourself.

Wikipedia content is a good example of informational content. People access the Wikipedia content merely to gain knowledge and to educate themselves, whether you find this information reliable or not is up to you.

Content writing targeting informational search queries

Although you can never be sure whether the person coming to your website after an informational search query will become your paying customer or client, majority of traffic on search engines happens through such search queries.

So, if people are simply looking for information, why should you target them through content writing?

Many reasons. Many solid reasons.

You generate goodwill and authority by writing content to inform

When I’m sharing my content writing and content marketing experience and insights with you, what am I achieving?

I’m generating goodwill.

You may use the tips and insights that I’m sharing through my blog posts to do your own content writing, hire your own content writer and train him or her according to the content on this blog, or one day, hire me as your content writer.

If one day I publish a book on content writing and content marketing, since you have already been getting valuable information on my website, you will also like to purchase my book.

If I request you to promote one of my links, you will readily do it because you appreciate the work I’m putting in here.

So, you’re not directly purchasing my services at the moment, but you are helping me expand my presence and this in turn generates more business for me.

You will improve your search engine rankings

Informational content improves your SEO

Informational content improves your SEO

Continuously publishing informational content improves your search engine rankings because Google prefers content that educates and informs people.

If you publish high-quality information content, some people will bookmark it.

Some people will share it on their social media accounts.

Some people will link to it from their own blog posts, web pages and articles.

Some news publications and media publications may also pick these informative blog posts and articles and link to them, further increasing your search engine rankings.

Your bounce rate will decrease because people spend more time when they are accessing informational content. When your bounce rate decreases, it has a direct, positive impact on your search engine rankings.

Informational content improves your conversion rate

Your conversion rate improves when people spend more time on your website or blog and your informational content helps you keep them there.

The content that you publish to educate and inform your audience is mostly well-international content. It is meant to provide answers to particular questions, very specific questions and hence, you will receive highly targeted traffic.

Targeted traffic is more likely to convert.

How to write content or generate content for informational search queries?

How to write content for informational search queries

How to write content for informational search queries

Content for informational search queries can be of 2 varieties: “time-limited” and “evergreen”.

Time-limited content can be something like real-time updates on an ongoing event, a conference or a sporting event happening that has a direct or indirect impact on your business.

Evergreen content is like the “how-to” content you find on this blog or on other websites and blogs that teaches you to do things. For example, how to set up a WordPress blog, or how to create a content marketing calendar.

But basically, when you want to write content for informational search queries, you want to publish blog posts, articles, videos and infographics that provide solutions to people’s problems.

Suppose you provide insulation services.

You can create blog posts or videos on topics such as “How much insulation is needed for your house?” or “How to insulate my outer walls?” or “Which is the best insulation material?”

You may think why you should provide this information to people? After all, wouldn’t they do the job themselves without hiring you if you provide all the instructions through your blog posts and videos?

The point is, people who don’t want to hire you right now, anyway, are not going to hire you.

Even those who hire you, would like to get themselves educated so that they can see how well you’re doing your job. In fact, this is the reason why many people carry out informational search queries – they want to know more about the job being done by the professionals they have hired.

Why you should pay for good quality content writing

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Is quality content writing worth paying for?

Is quality content writing worth paying for?

Over the years what I have learnt is that it is not difficult for people to understand the importance of quality content writing. Everybody knows he or she needs good content to improve conversion rate as well as search engine rankings.

What is difficult is, convincing people to pay for quality writing.

Yesterday someone who had been inquiring about my content writing services called and told me that he was getting content 60% cheaper than what I was quoting.

Until a few years ago I used to get worried. Fortunately, situation has changed.

If there are 5 clients were more worried about the money they’re spending and less about the quality of content writing, there are also 5 clients who understand that for quality content writing, they need to pay, because it is a job for the content writer they are hiring.

“Good for you,” I replied. “Please hire him or her.”

Of course, he was trying to bargain because even when I curtly told him to go to the writer who was charging a lot less, he asked for my samples and insisted that he was more interested in getting his writing done from me.

Why it’s worth it to pay a good content writer for quality content writing

As rightly explained in this blog post, your content is long-term investment.

It is going to be there all the time.

If you’re serious about your business, if you’re confident about your proposition, if you know that you are providing value for money, it needs to show through your content.

Frankly, everybody can write.

But when you’re writing for a business website, it is less about writing and more about communicating, and communicating convincingly.

When you work with an experienced content writer like me, the writer brings along the entire package of experience, knowledge and ability.

When you are writing for a business website or even an email marketing campaign, it isn’t just about writing. Even an 8th grader can writer.

It’s those sentences. Those pauses. Using right words at right places. Knowing when to use shorter sentences and when to use longer explanations. The call to action words.

There are scores of things that you use when you are writing for a business website to make the right impact.

You cannot immediately learn these things and then start writing. You acquire them through years of practice and writing for real businesses.

The above blog post lists the following reasons why it is worth it to pay to an experienced content writer for quality content writing:

  • Good content generates business on an ongoing basis: As explained above, quality content is a long-term investment. It goes on generating business for you. If it is written well, for years it will draw customers and clients to you. You pay for it just once but it gives you repeat business.
  • You get well-researched content: Research is essential to quality writing. Whenever you make claims in your writing, you need to back those claims with credible data and research. You have to quote your sources, and those sources themselves must be credible. An experienced content writer is used to the rigors of writing high-quality, research-based content.
  • Quality content conveys personality: People should be able to recognise your content by its quality. A capable and experienced content writer knows how to adapt to your personality, or the characteristic of your brand and then write content accordingly. Without personality, your content will be unable to engage and draw audience to your website.
  • SEO (search engine optimization): SEO is and the way it used to be. There was a time when you could use some keywords and search terms by splattering them here and there and you could improve your SEO, this no longer works. SEO these days depends on the quality of your content, its relevance, and the purpose it solves. Only a good content writer can deliver content that gives you lasting SEO benefits.
  • You get a higher conversion rate: Ultimately, the only thing that matters is conversion – how many people become your paying customers and clients. There is no use improving your search engine rankings if you don’t improve business. Only an experienced content writer can achieve this for you.
  • Sounding like a human: Most of the cheaper content writers seem like machines. The use poor grammar. The use half-baked sentences. They simply use key words here and there thinking that it will improve your search engine rankings. They don’t communicate. They don’t convey your passion. They don’t talk to your audience. They don’t engage in conversations.

These days I don’t argue much with people who tell me that they can get cheaper content writers.

Well, maybe this is a business model and maybe it even works for them.

But if you’re looking for quality content writing, you must know that it comes at a price because the person who is writing that content does it for a living.

Does quality content writing worth paying for? Definitely.

How to optimize content writing for voice search

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Optimizing content writing for voice search

Optimizing content writing for voice search

You can optimize your content writing for voice search by using shorter, relevant sentences. Stick to the point. Address the main issue immediately.

Google Assistant, Siri, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, voice search is everywhere these days.

It is very important that your content writing is optimized for voice search.

With voice search, a user doesn’t have to be using a PC or a laptop or even a mobile phone.

For example, using Google Home or Amazon Echo, you can just speak into the device and search for the information you are looking for.

Voice search technology uses the basic search engine. For example, if you use Google Assistant to search for something on Google, the most relevant information is brought up according to the way it has been indexed and ranked by the Google algorithm.

It is not a different technology as far as the data goes. The same data is used, but now, it is found according to the expression spoken into the device.

This Forbes article says that voice search will dominate SEO in 2019, and whenever there is SEO, there is content writing. The article goes to the extent of saying that by 2020, 50% of the online searches will be made through voice search. There will be 67 million voice-assisted devices operational just in the US by 2019, according to Adweek. In his keynote in 2016, Sundar Pichai said that 20% of mobile queries were already voice searches.

Naturally, Google is paying more attention to voice search optimization.

Remember that Google wants to find only the best information for its users. If it cannot do so, there are many competing search technologies people can move onto.

So, naturally, it goes on improving its algorithm to find only the best results for text as well as voice searches.

The above-linked article further says that by January 2018, on an average there were 1 billion voice searches every month.

Shift towards voice search began to manifest many years ago. The Hummingbird update from Google began to focus on user intent and the contextual meaning of the keywords and search terms instead of exact words.

Here is a very nice description of how Google voice search works. It’s slightly old, but the concept is explained very nicely.

When you are speaking into your phone or any other device, you may not use the exact terms. When you are writing, you have the time to think and manipulate your words, and you do it even unconsciously, without making extra effort.

When you say things, you’re more spontaneous. The way you search becomes conversational.

Are you making your content voice-search ready? What does it even mean? Won’t your current content work?

Whether your existing content works or not is never guaranteed, even in the conventional search. Search engines keep on indexing and ranking newer content which is either better than your content or smarter at getting itself ranked higher.

All you can do is, do your best. Provide the best content you can.

Still, there are some things you can do to optimize your content writing for voice search. Here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Use conversational, longer search expressions when optimizing your content writing

People use longer, precise expressions when searching with their voice.

When you are searching by typing, you may search for “best content writer”, but when you speak into your phone, you may search for “find me the best content writer who can improve my SEO” or, “find me a content writer who regularly writes for web design companies”.

This is one thing.

Use conversational language. Avoid creating very complicated sentences. No matter how smart artificial intelligence gets, if you create very complex sentences containing multiple phrases and clauses, it may not be able to interpret what you’re trying to say, properly.

Even in normal language (ignore Woody Allen) people speak in shorter sentences. Mostly in phrases unless they’re speaking about something very specific.

Provide an answer in minimum number of words

Backlino in its voice search SEO study found that on an average, an answer dug out by voice search is 29 words long.

This is interesting.

What it means is, when you are providing a very specific answer to a very clearly-defined question, try to contain it within 29 words.

Just as we don’t speak very long sentences, it becomes difficult for us to comprehend longer sentences. Create your sentences in such a manner that one sentence expresses one thought and one answer is for one question.

When you write something, say it loud and see if it is easily understandable. If not, rewrite.

Make use of “what”, “how”, “who” or “when” whenever possible

Question-based content is better suited for voice search. Most of the people, when using voice search use expressions like “what”, “how” and “who”. For example, “How to optimize your content writing for voice search?”

Although, you may go on explaining your chosen concept in a couple of thousand words, but somewhere, preferably in the beginning, provide the answer to the question in the headline that can be easily picked by the search engines.

Focus on providing the answer rather than obsessing over optimization

Optimization should be a byproduct of good quality content that delivers value.

Your content writing is affected if you are continuously thinking about optimization rather than addressing the problem at hand.

Remember that when people are using voice search they want to find an answer to the question and if you don’t provide that answer, they are going to move on, and depending on their interaction with your content (whether they move on or stick around) is going to have an impact on your current rankings.

Focus on the core issue at hand and do your best to deal with it.

Write for the mobile phones by default

When you write keep in mind the mobile layout, you automatically write shorter sentences that are to the point.

Remember that on mobile phones people don’t prefer to read long sentences and bigger paragraphs. They want to quickly scroll up or down.

Similarly, when mobile devices read your content, it is easier to speak up shorter sentences.

People are usually distracted when they are using their mobile phones. They don’t specifically sit on desks to browse their mobile phones. They’re moving, they are chatting, there are even watching programs on TV when checking your updates. Write accordingly.

Concluding remarks on optimizing your content writing for voice search

Of course, the keywords you want to optimize your content for need to be taken into consideration when writing content for your website or blog, they should be integrated naturally rather than being forced.

Focus on value. Focus on quality. Focus on what you are delivering to your readers. Make sure you provide them what they are looking for. This is most important.