Category Archives: Content Writing

5 Reasons Your Website Needs Content Writing Services

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Still wondering whether your website needs content writing services or not?

In the early 2000’s people used to wonder whether their business needed a website or not. Web design agencies had to convince people, had to educate them. Most of the businesses had no clue what having a website could do to their business.

Content writing and content marketing are going through the same phase. There is a massive need for quality content but people don’t realize it. They don’t realize the fact that without content their website cannot do business. They don’t realize that businesses who acknowledge and accept the undeniable importance of closely working with a content writing service are doing much better in terms of getting higher search engine rankings and a better conversion rate on their websites and blogs.

Read What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

The connection between your sales and content writing

An online business does brisk business due to the following reasons:

  1. It has a strong brand presence
  2. People already have respect for the business
  3. There is a fad value attached to using the products and services of the business
  4. The business has a huge marketing and advertising budget
  5. The business has been able to create a noticeable presence with its valuable content
  6. The business who has compelling content on its own website

The first four points are applicable to big businesses. Big businesses have a strong brand presence, their brand is already known and respected, there is a fad value attached to their products (Apple, for example), and they can afford to spend huge amounts of money on marketing and advertising.

Although these businesses have the capacity to spend billions of dollars on marketing and advertising, they have begun to realize that advertising doesn’t pay.

This is why Coca-Cola no longer depends on advertising, but on content marketing. Most of the Coca-Cola websites (they have different websites for different regions) have turned into online publications. Now their website is called “Journey”. Although they promote their products, their primary stress is the stories about the positive impact they’re making in the world.

Coca-Cola content marketing

Similarly, American Express as “Open Forum” where it provides top-notch business advice to its present and prospective customers.

American Express content marketing

IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, Google, they all started relying less on advertising and marketing and more on high-quality content.

The last two points – creating a noticeable presence through valuable content writing and publishing compelling content on the website – is what democratizes the process of promoting online business.

The last two points are applicable to small as well as medium-sized businesses.

Content writing, although requires some degree of expense, isn’t as expensive as conventional advertising and marketing. Every business can create an online presence with targeted, valuable content writing.

The main hurdle faced by most genuine content writing services like Credible Content is that businesses feel it doesn’t make sense to pay a writing service because writing can be done by anybody.

This isn’t so. Although occasional writing can be done by anybody, if you really want to create a successful presence on the Internet, you need consistent content writing that is of great value. Consistency and value are the keywords.

A person or a business who doesn’t write content as a full-time job often finds it very difficult to create valuable content on an ongoing basis.

Listed below are 5 reasons your website needs content writing services:

  1. Content is the next form of online presence: As I have written above, there was a time when people used to wonder whether they should have a website for their business or not. The same state has come for content. Your business needs quality content writing to survive. If you haven’t realized that, your competitors have. Some of your competitors are already months, if not years, ahead of you.
  2. You need to publish high-quality content regularly: Content writing is soon becoming a regular business expense. Just as you need to promote your business constantly, conventional promotion is being replaced by quality content publishing. People don’t want your marketing messages. They want you to become a part of their lives by providing solutions to their problems. Search engines like Google want fresh content regularly. If you don’t publish fresh content, they stop crawling and indexing your website because they don’t expect anything new from it. Only an established content writing service can provide you a non-stop supply of high-quality content.
  3. You need to become an authority in your field: This is more so important in the B2B category. If you are in a business where personal brand value matters, you need to share your knowledge and wisdom with people so that they begin to recognize you for your authority. For this you need to publish expert articles and blog posts on a regular basis and then share your content and social networking websites to create an authoritative presence for yourself. People do business with you when they respect you for your authority.
  4. SEO doesn’t happen without irregular content: I always tell my clients that there are two reasons why SEO cannot exist without closely working with a professional content writing service – quality content encourages people to share your links and Google evaluates how many people share your links; and, Google constantly seeks fresh content because it doesn’t want to serve outdated content to its users. This is why, no matter how valuable your existing content is, if new content is available, Google prefers to showcase that in the search results instead of outdated content. Content writing services can ensure a steady supply of high-quality, relevant content to improve your SEO.
  5. Your content is your business asset: Just like you need professional help to build any other business asset, the same holds true for your content. Although there are many individuals and businesses who develop their own content, and there is nothing wrong in that, I’m primarily talking about businesses that don’t have the resources and the needed talent to publish high-quality content on an ongoing basis. Sure, you can start on your own and initially, since you will feel motivated and inspired, you may be able to carry out content publishing for a couple of weeks or even for a couple of months, eventually, you will need to seek out the help of a professional content writing service that can provide you content every week, every month, year after year.

You must have noticed that on this page I haven’t tried to mince words. It’s the reality of our times that your business needs content. If you don’t use content to promote your business, your competition already does. It’s your choice.

It’s also your choice whether you acknowledge that your website needs content writing services or not. What I can do is, make you aware, make it known to you that yes, your website needs content. Conventional advertising doesn’t work or is gradually ceasing to work. Content is the present, and the future.

10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

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SEO content writing has evolved since the days when the only way to get good search engine rankings was to use your keywords and key phrases indiscriminately. People were becoming experts in “website optimization techniques” and “web page optimization tactics”.

Read 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Although you still have to use your primary and secondary keywords for SEO content writing, the exercise has been superseded by many other SEO factors that impact your search engine rankings. Getting your website on search engines, especially among the top 10 results, has become an integral part of content writing and content marketing.

How SEO content writing rules have changed

As I have mentioned above, improving your search engine rankings takes a lot more than simply using your primary and secondary keywords. Social validation is a must. It matters a lot to Google ranking algorithms how people react to your content.

Of course, keywords and how you use them still matter but along with that, what also matters is the quality of your content. All professional SEO consultants admit that the only way you can get better search engine rankings for your website is through content writing.

Contemporary web page optimization best practices

In order to know how to optimize your website or blog, you have to find the “why”, “what” and “how” of the content that you are writing.

You need to give people what they are looking for. If your content is simply misguiding people into visiting your website, your content begins to lose relevance.

The true value of your content can be gauged better through emotional intelligence which machines cannot have. This is why Google seeks social validation to rank your links.

When people find your content valuable and useful, they begin to interact with your content. They respond to it from their own blogs and website (linking to it). They Share it on social networking platforms in order to endorse it, agree with it, or even to disagree with it.

Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account people’s reaction towards your content. Whether they agree or disagree, how do they react to your content? Do they like it? Do they share it on social media and social networking websites? Do they recommend it?

The web, being web, is interconnected. Google and other major search engines these days have access to data from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (only to name a few social platforms available at this moment, in 2017). If your link is creating buzz, they know it, and then they use this buzz to determine your SEO. Content writing rules take into consideration, along with your keywords, social validations that pour in from various sources.

Read: 10 tips on how to write SEO content for your website

Why do you need to follow content writing rules to improve SEO?

You don’t need to. In fact, they are not even rules. I just needed a catchy title so I used the term “rules”, you can call them guidelines, benchmarks, or pointers or commandments, or whatever you feel like.

You don’t even have to follow these content writing rules to improve your SEO if you don’t feel like. They are there just for your reference. Sometimes you can use them, and sometimes you don’t need to.

But why use them?

They give you a template. This template doesn’t ensure higher rankings in itself, because your rankings depend on thousands of things in the universe, but they will make sure that if Google wants to rank your content, at least it has the information it needs.

It’s like using an SEO plug-in. Have you used the Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress? Seopressor? These plug-ins make recommendations like how long your webpage or blog post title should be, what should be your content-keywords ratio, what sort of information you should have in your description, and so on. Provided you stick to these guidelines, there is a great chance that your link will be ranked higher compared to the links that don’t follow these guidelines.

The same holds true for the content writing rules that I’m listing below. If you stick to them, they may not suddenly improve your SEO, but you will 100% have content that will be optimized for better rankings.

So here they are…

10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

  1. Clearly define the “why” of your business: Why would people do business with you? What need do you solve? How do you enrich people’s lives? How do you make it easier for people to work, to celebrate, to entertain themselves or to increase their self-worth? All these bits of information must manifest in your content writing.
  2. Clearly define personas: Whom are you going to target with your content? Who are these people? Where do they come from? What are their aspirations? What problems are they having that they need solved? What are their backgrounds? The more you know about your audience, the better will be your content.
  3. Compile a list of keywords and search terms: Once you have defined the “why” of your business and have also defined the personas of your target audience, it will be easier for you to compile a list of keywords and search terms that you are going to incorporate into your SEO content writing. Remember that you don’t compile the list of keywords and search terms for your own happiness; you need to know the keywords and search terms people actually use to search for your business. You need to look at your business from their perspective. Only then you will be able to compile the right list of keywords and search terms. Having a list of keywords and search terms will also keep you focused and give you a clear idea of what content you should be publishing.
  4. Prepare a list of topics containing your target keywords and search terms: When you talk of SEO we need to take care of these things. Your topics are very important. Your topics are generally the titles of your blog posts and webpages. The titles of your blog posts and webpages are so important that the Google ranking algorithm takes the words appearing within your titles very seriously. This is why it’s very important for your SEO that when you are writing content, your keywords and search terms are present in your blog post and webpage titles.
  5. Start writing engaging content: Once you have created keyword-rich titles, when you are writing content for these titles, initially don’t worry much about their SEO quality. Remember that it’s very important to publish engaging content. Eventually it is the quality of your content that decides your long-term search engine rankings. You will also need quality content to accumulate social validation. Social validation is so important that even if you don’t bother about your keywords and you are able to accumulate enough social validation, your SEO is going to improve considerably.
  6. Whenever possible, write longer blog posts and webpages: To counter “thin content” Google these days has started preferring longer blog posts and webpages. People were publishing lots of “thin content” – meaningless content of 300-400 words mostly to target keywords – and the search results were being filled with lots of junk information. Writing longer blog posts and webpages takes effort and considerable knowledge of the subject. I’m not saying do it always, but whenever you have enough to say, don’t hold yourself back.
  7. Incorporate your keywords once you have completed a blog post or a webpage: Once you are sure that you have created a good quality, engaging blog post or webpage, insert the keywords that you have included in the title of that particular blog post or webpage. Strategically incorporate the keywords and search terms in such a manner that you don’t overuse them.
  8. Format your blog post or webpage in an SEO friendly manner: Your web content should be easily scannable. Use headlines (tags like <h1>, <h2>, etc.) to organize your text under different sections and once or twice use your keywords and search terms within these headlines. If some bits of information can be presented with bullet points, use them. At least once bold your keywords. You can also use your keywords in the anchor text when you link to other blog posts and webpages either on your own website or other websites.
  9. Publish content at regular intervals: SEO content writing doesn’t just mean publishing a few blog posts and webpages and then resting on your laurels. For rare businesses, this works, but not for businesses that need to compete with other businesses. It is because lots of businesses like your business are publishing content with great speed. Even if you rank well for certain keywords and search terms, soon you’re going to be overtaken by your competition with better and more content. This is why you need to constantly supply Google with fresh content. At least to experience the initial SEO boost, you need to continuously post blog posts and webpages for 3-4 months. Holding yourself back would be like getting into a boxing ring and constantly pulling your punches without giving all you have got. If you are not regular, you lose even the slight advantage you have gained by publishing some content initially.
  10. Update your existing content: All the blog posts and webpages that you create are your business assets. You should nurture them and take care of them just as you take care of your other business assets. Constantly update your older blog posts and webpages and resubmit them to search engines to let them know that you have updated them. Add new information. Modify the data that might had been correct two years ago but not now.

Whether you realize it now or five years later, SEO content writing is an ongoing process. As Yoda says, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

yoda quote on SEO content writing

10 Reasons You Need to Hire a Content Writing Service for Your Small Business

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Are you still wondering whether your small business needs to hire a content writing service or not?

When it comes to expense such questions are understandable. After all, there are very few people who actually grasp the importance of quality content. It is very difficult to spend money on something you don’t get.

I have personally seen that people don’t want to spend as much money on content writing as they spend on a typical weekend outing. This is primarily because they don’t realize how important professional content writing is for their small business.

Why is effective content writing important for your small business?

Despite the fact that everybody wants well-written content for his or her website, very few give a serious thought to its effectiveness. Very subtle things in your content writing can motivate people to do business with you, or send them away to one of your competitors.

What makes people do business with you after coming to your website? It’s your content. If your content writing cannot convince your visitors, they’re not going to do business with you.

A small business does not have a brand presence like a big business. All you have is, your ability to convince people.

This is why, it is very important that your website has engaging content that informs people, educates them and eventually, convinces them into doing business with you.

You need to convince people, and you need to be in front of them all the time.

If you haven’t been living in a cave, you must have noticed that people these days spend more time on social networking websites. They exchange views. They post updates on what they are buying and what they are eating. They share opinions with each other. They access timely information. Even when they are interacting with companies and businesses, they prefer to do so using social platforms.

Most of the news these days comes to you from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

But timelines move fast. If you post something on Facebook, let’s say, within seconds your Facebook contacts may miss your update because lots of people are updating their timelines with great speed. So, you need to post regularly.

But then, nobody wants to incessantly see your promotional offers. They’re either going to block you, or mute your updates. People have also developed ad blindness.

People are looking for valuable content. People want something that can inform them, update them, make them more knowledgeable, help them improve their lives, enrich their lives, or generally entertain them. They don’t want to know about your latest menu unless they want food. They don’t want to know about the shoes you are selling in your shop unless they want to buy shoes.

People want to know about your business only when they actually need your business.

The paradox is, at the time of need, they forget that you can give what they want. Despite being in your contacts list, they end up buying a product or a service for someone else because it slips out of their mind that you offer the very same product or service.

It’s like people in my contacts list are looking for a content writing service and they don’t realize that I provide such a service.

This is where a professional content writing service can help your small business. It can help you publish highly engaging content that doesn’t put off people but at the same time, keeps them informed.

Read The importance of content writing for small business.

As a small business, you can improve your SEO with the help of a content writing service

It makes more sense these days to improve your SEO by hiring a content writing service rather than hiring a plain old SEO service. In fact, most of the genuine SEO services these days improve your rankings through high-quality, engaging content.

With every new ranking algorithm update Google is giving more importance to quality content. Long gone are the days when putting your keywords here and there and getting a few backlinks could get you good search engine rankings.

Of course, keywords and backlinks still matter, and they matter a lot, but eventually, it’s the quality of your content that decides your rankings.

There are 3 attributes that Google these days considers in order to rank your content:

  1. The quality of your content
  2. The frequency with which you publish new content and update existing content
  3. The formatting and keyword arrangement of your content

Again, quality backlinks matter and you cannot get good search engine rankings without quality backlinks. But backlinks won’t help you if you don’t regularly publish quality content.

If you can devote enough time writing high quality content on an ongoing basis, then good for you. But if you want to focus on your primary small business and let a professional content writing service handle your content, it is always better to hire an agency.

Engaging content can improve your website conversion rate

Better search engine rankings are of no use if your content doesn’t convert well. Your content should be able to reduce your bounce rate. This can only happen with professional writing.

As I have mentioned above, your text should be able to convince people into doing business with you. It should be reassuring. The language should be friendly and conversational. People should be able to trust you. The tone should be casual but professional. No grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. The writing should be genuine. It should neither be very long nor very short. It should be precise. It should make an impact.

If you are a seasoned, talented writer, great! If you have a knack for publishing great content on an ongoing basis, good for you.

Otherwise, hire a content writing service for your small business.

Now we finally come to 10 reasons why your small business should hire a content writing service rather than hiring an in-house team of writers.

1. A content writing service can help your small business bring marketing costs down, drastically

Are you spending lots of money on advertising and marketing? What about PPC campaigns like AdWords?

Although conventional advertising cannot be completely discounted, it comes with its own set of cons.

First of all, for a small business it can be very expensive. Just imagine, if you are using AdWords, or Facebook advertising, or LinkedIn advertising, you are paying for every click.

You can never be sure whether people who actually want to do business with you are clicking your ads, or all sorts of people.

On the other hand, if you create a presence for yourself through the strength of your content people recognize you for the value you provide. You create a presence on various channels and when people click your links, you are not paying for every click.

With targeted content writing you also improve your search engine rankings. Your small business links begin to appear in search results and you don’t have to pay for every click.

When people are using search engines, they pay less attention to advertisements and paid links, and more attention to links that appear naturally and organically, on the strength of their worthiness.

Wondering how qualified content writing drastically brings down your advertising and marketing costs? I will give you an example using my own current blog writing rates.

Currently I charge $25 for a blog post. Every week you want me to write 3 blog posts for you.

So, every month you are spending $300 on 12 highly optimized and engaging blog posts that are continuously improving your search engine rankings.

Due to your blog posts that are regularly published you begin to create a presence on social media too. People start coming to your website without clicking your PPC campaigns. You begin to generate free traffic.

Have you ever noticed your conversion rate? How much do you spend per conversion? How much are you spending every month on your PPC campaigns?

In your PPC campaign your cost will increase as your traffic increases.

With content marketing, your cost remains the same while your traffic increases. Suddenly, even if a single blog post sends you 10,000 visitors everyday, aside from that measly $25 that you paid me, you’re not going to spend anything else.

2. You get high-quality, engaging content non-stop

If you want to switch to content marketing from conventional advertising and marketing, you need to publish high-quality content non-stop.

This is because everybody is publishing high-quality content. All your small business competitors.

Sometimes, even those who are not directly your competitors, might be publishing content that can take traffic away from your website.

This is why you need to cover all your bases with all possible case scenarios, and do it on an ongoing basis.

Only a professional content writing service can provide you professional quality content week after week, month after month, without mitigating the overall quality.

When you hire a content writing service for your small business, can focus on your business rather than worrying about access to good quality content.

3. You don’t need to hire people and give them employment benefits

Hiring an in-house team of content writers can be expensive. You will have to provide them all the employment benefits you are bound to provide by the law of the land.

If you hire a content writing service you are not bound by such laws. You don’t have to pay for anything else.

4. You don’t need to get into legal troubles in case you need to fire your content writing team

The success of your content marketing efforts depends on the quality of your content and if your content writing team cannot provide you quality content that is engaging and effective, and also search engine optimized, you are wasting your small business resources.

You have no choice but to fire your content writing team so that you can try out other content writers. This can get you into legal troubles. You can’t just fire people. Small businesses are more vulnerable to such cases.

On the other hand, if you hire an outside content writing service, there are no such obligations. Don’t like the work? No sweat. Just switch your content writing service. It’s as simple as that.

5. You save on precious office resources

Office resources can cost you money. With your employees you will have to provide them both hardware and software. They will also take up your office space. There will be wear-and-tear. They will be using your stationery, electricity, heating or air-conditioning and furniture. They will be using your telephone and Internet connection. Basically, they will be using all your office resources.

A separate content writing service will be placed somewhere else and people working over there will be using their own resources.

6. You spend money on just content writing

This point is just an extension of the points above. When you hire a content writing service for your small business, you are just paying for content writing and nothing else. Isn’t it wonderful?

7. You don’t need to monitor the activities of your content writing team

Monitoring your employees can be a big problem. How are they spending time in your office? Are they checking their personal emails? Are they wasting their time on Facebook and Twitter? Are they seeking out new employment opportunities using your Internet connection, computers and laptops? Are they distracting or harassing other employees?

There can be scores of such things you will need to monitor if you hire an in-house team of content writers.

With an outside agency, there are no such headaches. All you are bothered about is whether you are getting your quality content on a regular basis or not.

8. You can easily change your content writing service if you are not satisfied

Changing a content writing service is very easy. All you have to do is, stop paying and then contact another agency. Unless you have signed a legal document that strongly binds your small business to your current content writing agency, there is nothing to hold you back.

9. Quality control is not your headache

For a successful content marketing strategy, there should be no compromise on quality. Even if you don’t have a well-defined content marketing strategy and you need a content writing service to improve your SEO, quality is non-negotiable.

Read What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

A professional content writing service like Credible Content has an inbuilt mechanism to ensure quality. I make sure that

  • Your content is well-written, factual and without errors.
  • Your content is optimized for the selected keywords.
  • There exists no plagiarism and duplicated information.
  • Your content is engaging, conversational and topical.

If I don’t provide you quality content, you will no longer like to work with me. It is as simple as that. So, I have to ensure quality.

10. You have easy access to subject matter experts

Sometimes you need subject matter experts – people who really know their stuff – to write expert-level content.

Being an established content writing service, I am in touch with writers from various fields of expertise almost from all over the world.

Even if right now I don’t have a writer specifically for your needs (it rarely happens) I can arrange such a writer.

On your own, getting a good writer as well as a subject matter expert would be a great problem.

Successful content writing is personality-based, to be frank. Only an experienced content writer can get under your skin and then directly address your audience. Your content writer should be able to empathize with your customers and clients because they are the targets. You’re not getting content for your website or blog to make yourself happy; you want to make your prospective customers and clients happy.

If you can do it on your own and write engaging content for your small business, well and good, otherwise, I suggest that you hire a professional and experienced content writing service to carry out your SEO and marketing campaign.

5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

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Do you know that your SEO begins and ends with quality content writing?

It is so important that every major search engine optimization agency these days doesn’t implement your optimization strategy without a solid content strategy.

SEO benefits of content writing have been copiously documented by now.

What is SEO content writing?

It means writing content in such a manner that it begins to rank higher for the related keyword searches. You use the keywords in the title of the web page or the blog post and then strategically use them at various places. Ideally, your content should be optimized for search engines as well as humans.

Read How to evaluate your SEO content writing.

Before you comprehend and decide to use content writing to improve your search engine rankings you need to learn

  1. What is SEO content writing?
  2. What type of content you can publish on your blog or website?
  3. What is going to be your long-term content strategy?

For this section, I’m going to explore the various aspects of writing content specifically for higher rankings.

Although, merely pushing content doesn’t have a great impact on your SEO, it is the most important aspect of your ranking strategy. If there is no content, there is nothing to rank.

As explained above, in order to write content for SEO, you need to follow certain steps including

  1. Make sure that the main keyword phrase appears in the title of your web page or blog post.
  2. The main keyword phrase and its various parts should be scattered all over the content of your web page or blog post.
  3. You should also use the alternative phrases, what they call LSI keywords. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and these are the related keywords to your main keywords. If you feel that you are over-using your main keywords you should replace them with LSI keywords.
  4. Use your keywords (including LSI keywords) within the <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags to put more emphasis on them.
  5. Use your keywords (including LSI keywords) as anchor text when linking to other web pages and blog posts on your website.

These are all a part of on-site SEO. These are the technical side of SEO. These alone don’t decide how Google is going to rank your content, but they are a part of the building blocks that you need in order to write SEO content.

Of course, the fundamental aspect of your content writing must always be its quality, its relevance, and the value it delivers to your visitors. Without quality content writing, there is no hope of getting good search engine rankings. Quality content writing is the most important part of your SEO.

Read 20 Evergreen Characteristics of Quality Content

With quality, SEO-friendly formatting is very important because the Google algorithm looks for important words at particular places on your web page or blog post.

Now coming to the “content” part of writing search engine friendly content. Here are a few things you need to follow:

  1. Do keyword research: Before you start writing content make sure you have a comprehensive list of the right keywords and key phrases you are going to use. These must be the search terms your target customers and clients are most likely to use when trying to find you or your service or your business or your product.
  2. Start writing high-quality content: I can never understate the importance of high-quality content. If your content quality is inferior, no matter how much time you spend optimizing your content, all the SEO benefits will be lost. Remember that the only reason your content exists is to serve your prospective customers and clients. So, whatever you write, keep in mind that you have to provide some sort of solution.
  3. Incorporate your keywords: Once you have written content that you feel is going to convert well, incorporate your keywords. Insert your keywords at strategic locations. Don’t overuse them. Whenever you feel that you cannot help using them, use alternatives – as mentioned above, use LSI keywords.
  4. Promote your content: Marketing your content, making sure that your target audience is able to find your content through various social media and social networking channels, is an important aspect of SEO. Google wants social validation. Try to get social validation from as many resources as possible. Promoting content will also get you precious back links.

5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Now that we know what is SEO content and how to write it, let’s come to the main topic of the blog post: reasons why content writing is important for SEO.

SEO is actually all about content marketing. And since content writing is indispensable to any genuine content marketing effort, we can safely say that SEO is actually all about content writing. How come? I’m describing that below.

1. SEO needs strategic usage of keywords and search terms

Although big advances have been made in terms of ranking web pages and blog posts according to their true value, keywords still matter. You can judge the importance of keywords by the fact that your ranking depends on whether you have used your keywords or one of its alternatives in the title of your web page or blog post, or not.

It is only through strategic content writing that you can use the right keywords to satiate Google. If there is no content, it is very difficult for you to rank for the right keywords.

2. Social validation can only be obtained due to quality content

I have personally seen that many web pages and blog posts rank well due to the social validation they have been able to attract despite having inferior quality content. But this can only be achieved by brute force and lots of money. For a small or medium-sized business, the only way you can get social validation is by quality content writing.

When your content is great, when it delivers value, when people find what they are looking for through your content, they tend to engage with your content through social media and social networking websites. When they share your links on their timelines, Google sees these actions as social validation and then uses this validation to rank your links.

3. Quality back links can only be obtained due to quality content

Back links are also a form of social validation but you don’t necessarily have to focus on social media and social networking websites to garner back links.

Why would people link to your website or blog? Apart from the fact that sometimes you can pay websites and blogs to link back to you, in most of the cases, people link to you because they appreciate what you are publishing.

This, Google sees as validation and its algorithms use this validation to rank your webpages and blog posts.

4. In order to rank your website and individual links, Google needs content

This is a straightforward logic. If you don’t have content, what is Google going to rank? In Google Images Google ranks images, in Google Video, Google ranks videos and in the same manner, in the normal Google section, Google ranks text, your written content.

This is why content writing is important for your SEO: it is giving Google something to rank. It also tells Google for what keywords and search terms your content should be ranked.

5. Content writing contributes to the “Search Task Accomplishment” factor

This is a new trend emerging: does your content solve any purpose? Search Task Accomplishment is becoming a new buzzword on the Internet, especially in the content marketing and SEO circles.

Soon, Google is going to rank your content according to the true purpose it solves. A user should be able to find exactly what he or she is looking for when he or she uses the Google search engine. Google is working on an algorithm that will be able to find if people are able to find exactly the information they need on your link. If yes, your rankings will start improving and if no, your rankings will start deteriorating.

Additional SEO benefits of content writing

  1. People voluntarily link to your content.
  2. People have more reasons to link to your content because you give them a wide choice of topics and interest areas.
  3. There are greater opportunities for your content being shared on social media.
  4. With high quality content people spend more time on your website indicating to Google that you have quality and relevant content.
  5. Content writing boosts your content marketing efforts and this in turn improves your search engine rankings.
  6. Organic rankings achieved through quality content writing last longer and attract more traffic because people prefer to visit links that appear organically rather than promoted by advertising.

There was a time when SEO existed in isolation. No longer is the case. SEO these days is the sum total of your entire content marketing dispensation. Without great content, you can never hope to enjoy good search engine rankings. With every preceding month, content writing is becoming more and more important for SEO.

Google’s Featured Snippets: How to rank at #1 with strategic content writing

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Google-featured-snippets

I was checking the rankings of my blog posts that I have recently published and I suddenly found one of my links in Google’s Featured Snippets box. Here is the screenshot

credible-content-showing-up-in-Google-snippets

What Are Google’s Featured Snippets?

Nobody knows exactly how Google decides to feature a particular piece of content in its “featured snippets” box, but you must have noticed that sometimes when you do a search on Google, one of the links appears at the top with highlighted paragraph, or some portion of the web page or blog post, along with the link.

Some call it ranking #0 because the link that is featured in Google’s Featured Snippets box appears even before the first link on the search results page. But many would be scared with #0 so, in my title I have used #1.

As you can see in the image above, the Google’s Featured Snippets box appears at the top, within the highlighted box, and a description almost as long as a paragraph.

It isn’t always a paragraph that is featured in the snippets area. Even if you represent the information in bullet points, it can appear over there. See for example, this one…

another example of Google snippets

How does Google pick a particular link for the Featured Snippets box?

As I have written above, it is unclear how Google decides which link to feature in the snippets area. Many SEO experts and content marketers have tried to figure out but there is no algorithmic logic to it. Google seems to be picking the information randomly.

Here is a very extensive blog post on how to optimize your content so that it can feature in Google’s Featured Snippets box [HubSpot link].

The author says that whether you get featured in the snippets box or not doesn’t depend on the SEO quality of your link. Your link may not even appear on the first page of search results and still appear in the snippets box.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that even if you throw all SEO benchmarks out the window you are still going to feature in the snippets box. No, that won’t happen. Your content must be of good quality and it must give some indication to Google that it deserves to be featured in the snippets box. Read What is quality content and how does Google recognize it?

Is focusing on the Google Featured Snippets box good for your SEO?

People are sometimes worried that featuring in the Google Featured Snippets box deters people from clicking the link because what they are looking for is given in the box itself. Since they have found a solution to their problem, there is no reason for them to click the link.

The author of the above HubSpot link says:

From a sample of just under 5,000 queries, I found that the CTR to the HubSpot website for high volume keywords increased by over 114%, even when we ranked #1

What he means to say is that even when their link was already appearing at #1 there CTR increased by over 114% once the link started appearing in the Featured Snippets box.

Even I feel that this should actually increase traffic to your website because one, people who know how important search engine rankings are, are quite impressed that you are bang there in front of them, at the top, even above the link at #1, and two, they want more information. A single paragraph may provide a concise view of the solution they are looking for. They can only find a detailed description when they visit the link. Most do.

Here is a Moz link that demonstrates that traffic to your website actually increases if your link features in that box.

How to write content for #1 ranking by Google’s Featured Snippets?

As I have mentioned in this blog post titled 20 Evergreen Characteristics of Quality Content, focus on quality.

Provide to people what they are looking for. Don’t mislead them. Don’t create titles and headlines in such a manner that people are tricked into visiting your website and then when they come there, they are disappointed.

In fact, due to the “Search Task Accomplishment” factor, web pages and blog posts that don’t provide straightforward answers to people’s questions will start ranking lower even when they are decently optimized and even when they have quality back links. It matters what you are providing.

In order to be able to feature in Google’s Featured Snippets box, it has been observed that

  1. Try to create a question out of the main expression and put that question within the <h1> or <h2> tags.
  2. Try to enclose the main quarry by the user in the above tags.
  3. Just beneath the question, provide an answer. Try to provide the answer within 50-60 words.
  4. Use the language as if you are providing an answer to a question. Your answer should follow the question naturally.
  5. For question-oriented keywords, Google prefers bullet points but if you are searching for something like “content writing services”, Google prefers to pick a paragraph.

Focus on answering questions when writing content keeping Featured Snippets in mind. Ask a question, and then immediately provide an answer, preferably in 50-60 words.

Does this guarantee that your link will appear in the Featured Snippets box? No.

It is quite random.

Then how can you get your link featured in this coveted section?

Create lots of content. Create many webpages and blog posts providing high-quality content.

You have to establish your authority. Many of your links should already be ranking well before Google begins to notice useful chunks of information on your web pages and blog posts. You cannot suddenly start publishing blog posts and then expect that your links will be featured in the snippets section.

Follow the pattern. Follow the SEO format that includes

  1. Use the main search term or the keyword at least once within <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags.
  2. Write shorter paragraphs under the headings and try to provide as complete an answer as possible to the main quarry within 40-60 words in a paragraph.
  3. Use bullet points wherever possible to present stepwise information.

I would like to stress again that there is no set formula for appearing in Google’s Featured Snippet box. All you can do is, keep publishing great content.