Category Archives: Content Writing

10 tips on how to write SEO content for your website

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how-to-write-seo-content-for-your-websiteContrary to popular beliefs – mostly propagated by snakeoil SEO Experts – SEO content for your website is not a different entity. It is not something that you write or publish specifically to improve your search engine rankings.

In fact, if you are publishing content just to improve your SEO without paying scant regard to how your content converts (how it helps you grow your business), you are just like that proverbial dog chasing its proverbial tail. You go round and round, but nothing much happens, and then you wonder, why nothing much happens?

But it doesn’t mean there is no such thing as SEO content. If you want to improve your search engine rankings then you have to pay attention to creating and publishing search engine friendly content that is ranked well by major search engines like Google and Bing. You need to know how to write SEO content for your website and for your blog.

Although just good content doesn’t guarantee better SEO, it is the first step, and first step is always very crucial. After all, if you don’t have content, what’s the search engines going to rank? In order to enjoy good search engine rankings, aside from knowing how to write SEO content for your website, you also need to

  • Publish content regularly over a long period of time
  • Become an authority in your field so that lots of people link to your content
  • Get your content shared on social media and social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and the others

In order for your website to enjoy good search engine rankings, all these activities should go on as a collective effort.

But the focus of this blog post is to know how to write SEO content for your website.

The highlights of these 10 points are:

  1. Define the objective of the webpage
  2. Narrow the topic as much as possible
  3. Try to pack as much information as possible
  4. Thoroughly research your keywords
  5. Optimize for longer phrases
  6. Use headings and sub- headings to organize text
  7. Link to pre-existing pages
  8. Provide answers to questions
  9. Pay close attention to accessibility
  10. Make your webpages as fast-loading as possible

These individual points are explained in detail below…

1. Define the objective of the web page

This is very important. Why are you creating the webpage that you are creating, or the blog post that you are creating? What is the most important message that you want to convey? What sort of information do you want to give to your prospective customers and clients? The webpage should have an aim. It should provide some sort of value to people to find the link on search engines.

When people are trying to write lots of SEO content for their website, this is the aspect that they often overlook. They simply go on publishing lots of webpages hoping that it would improve their search engine rankings. This can have an adverse effect. If you don’t have an objective, how do you think search engines can know what exactly you are trying to do? They need to know it clearly in order to be able to highlight your link in front of the users. If you aimlessly publish content, your SEO credentials will be diluted and your subject-related authority will be undermined.

2. Narrow the topic as much as possible

The narrower the topic, the better will be its SEO prospects. For example, what does this blog post do? It tells you how to write SEO content for your website. It briefly explains that SEO content isn’t the only thing that can give you better search engine rankings, but the topic or the title of the blog post clearly defines what I intend to do. This way, if the search engines decide to rank this blog post, their algorithms will know exactly for what they should rank it: people who want to learn how to write SEO content for their websites.

3. Try to pack as much information as possible

Longer webpages and blog posts are preferred over shorter webpages and blog posts by the search engines these days. This is because writing longer webpages requires effort. Spammers don’t want to spend much effort when creating pages. There was a time when they would simply copy/paste a few paragraphs and that would improve their search engine rankings. Not now. The webpages and blog posts should be well-researched, giving lots of information to the readers. In fact, it’s better if your webpages and blog posts are multi-paged. This way you may be forced to publish fewer webpages and blog posts, but their impact would be much better than smaller webpages and blog posts.

4. Thoroughly research your keywords

Although many discount this, keywords are still important. Most of the search engines these days can rank your webpages and blog posts according to your central message, but irrespective of what language you use, you still need to take care of your keywords.

Keywords are the words that carry the true meaning of your message. They are the words people will be using to look for the content you want them to find. For example, there is a great chance you are reading this blog post after searching for how to write SEO content for websites.

Whether you want to use jargon or not, depends on your audience. Most important is, use phrases and words your prospective customers and clients are most likely to use in order to be able to find your webpage or blog post.

Make sure that the use of keywords and phrases is natural. Use the keywords when they seem like a part of your writing. Don’t force them. The search engine algorithms are so smart these days that they can easily make out if you are needlessly creating excuses for repeatedly using your keywords and phrases. The density of the keywords shouldn’t be over 3-4%.

Definitely use your main keyword phrase in the title.

5. Optimize for longer phrases

People don’t use single keywords. They use sentences and phrases. When people are searching for something, they are prone to asking questions, especially these days when many might be using voice when using search engines, instead of typing their queries. The gist is that people use a combination of three or four words to do searches.

6. Use headings and sub-headings to organize text

Using headings and sub-headings makes it easier for people to quickly scan your content in case they don’t want to read everything. After reading the headlines and the bullet points you can get a fair idea of what I’m trying to say in this blog post.

Whenever possible, try to use your keywords and main phrases in headings and sub-headings.

7. Link to pre-existing pages

If you have links to webpages and blog posts that you have created before, you can link to them from the new webpage or blog post you are creating. This not only encourages people to check out other links on your website, it also makes it easier for search engines to crawl and index more links from your website. Remember that the more links Google can crawl and index from your website, the more SEO significance it gives to your website.

When you link to other webpages and blog posts from you website, use appropriate hyperlink text. This adds weightage to your keywords. For example, if I use the phrase “content marketing”, instead of writing it plainly, I can hyperlink it in such manner: content marketing.

Two things will happen…people visiting this link may also visit the content marketing link, and the search engine crawlers will know that I have more content dedicated to the phrase “content marketing”.

8. Provide answers to questions

Most of the people search for how, why, what, when, who and where. Formulate your SEO content in such a manner that you provide answers to people’s questions. Solve problems and this improves your search engine rankings.

Another benefit of answering questions and solving specific problems is that it helps you narrow down your topic and this in turn helps your SEO. Also, people tend to share the best answers to their questions on social networking website, further boosting your rankings. Search engines like Google favor websites that are large repositories of questions and answers.

9. Pay close attention to accessibility

Accessible content is good content according to the search engines. Don’t hide your content under JavaScript lawyers. When using images use captions that properly describe the images. Use the alt text attribute to indicate what information the image hold.

If you are using dynamic menus use CSS because then the menus can be accessed even when just the text of your website is being accessed.

The accessibility conventions have been formulated in such a manner that if you follow them your website automatically becomes search engine friendly, and so does your content.

10. Make your webpage as fast loading as possible

Yes, even in the times of broadband, how fast your webpage loads, matters.

An Akamai study has concluded that 40% of your visitors may leave your website if your webpages don’t completely load within 3 seconds. It’s an old study, but its significance still stands.

Want to know how fast your individual webpages and blog posts load? Try loading them via Pingdom.com.

In fact, the speedy availability of your content is so important that Facebook has launched Instant Articles so that articles and blog posts can be immediately loaded on mobile phones.

So these are the 10 most important tips on how to write SEO content for your website.

Again, when you are writing content for your website, good SEO should be a byproduct of good writing. If you follow good formatting practices, if you write useful, relevant content, you automatically write SEO content.

Content writing is just a tiny part of content marketing, but the most important

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the-importance-of-content-writingNo, I’m not saying this because basically I’m a content writer. It really is the most important.

Today in the morning I wrote an email marketing content for one of the clients. The kind of message they wanted to convey in a most convenient manner could only be written. They have hundreds of images on their website. They also have many videos on YouTube. But these images and videos wouldn’t have done the trick. Only written content could.

There used to be a time when everything was text. Then came images. Then came video. Then came images and videos. Then images and videos kept on coming. Images and videos are still coming.

While content writing is a potent tool when you want to communicate and strike up a rapport with your prospective customers and clients, images and videos can make a greater impact because everything is presented before you visually. You can just sit back and watch, view or listen.

Besides, in images and videos, you can actually show things happening rather than talking about them happening. As goes the clichéd proverb in the world of writing: show, don’t tell.

So yes, these days, content writing is just a tiny part of content marketing. But this tiny part is still a big part. You see, everything comes down to writing. Whenever you say something, it’s basically writing, its text. Whenever there are words, there is content writing.

Besides, when people come to your website you cannot simply bombard them with videos and images. Videos and images are complementary. Content writing, though, a seemingly tiny part of content marketing these days, takes the centerstage.

Content writing is easier (provided you know how to write convincingly) – you just need a keyboard and a basic text editor or if you prefer, pen and paper – whereas images and videos always require some sort of an extra device. I’m not downplaying them because these days creating a video is just a matter of using your mobile phone but still, if you want to sell your bonsai plant you cannot just click a few photographs or record a video and then upload. You have to describe your bonsai plant. Through your words you have to touch the right chords. You have to explain the process. Your pricing needs to make sense. Your choice of seeds and the species of the plant need to make sense. You do this with content writing.

So yes, this is the age of images and video but still, when it comes to the core of content marketing, content writing still rules the roost. It is not going anywhere. It is here to stay.

When should you spend money on a content writer?

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when-should-you-pay-a-content-writerOr when you shouldn’t. It depends on what you want. The problem with people’s attitude is that since content writing is mostly writing, they think it should either be free but it should be available at a very low cost. So low that one doesn’t even feel it. So, the moment it comes to paying a content writer, people start wondering, why should I pay for a content writer?

Everybody can write, right? You write emails. You write Facebook posts. You post updates on Twitter and LinkedIn. So how difficult would it be to quickly write a blog post or a webpage or an article?

Mostly two types of people hire me for their content writing needs and eagerly pay me:

  1. Those who are not comfortable writing business-critical copy and content. Although they have basic writing skills they’re not confident that their writing skills will be able to get them business. They want impeccable writing. They want a writing style that engages their visitors. Most of them want the writing to be casual, but error-free.
  2. Those who are, although, comfortable writing business-critical copy and content, cannot do it consistently over a long time. They want someone who can create great content on an ongoing basis. They are looking for a content writer they can rely on. Once they have assigned topics, they want to be rest assured that content will be delivered on time and according to their guidelines.

You should spend money on a content writer if you really want to use your content as an asset. You value your content. You recognize its importance. You know that your content can take your business places. You realise that quality content writing improves your conversion rate and if search engine rankings matter to you, it improves your search engine rankings.

There is a gentleman in Itarsi, a very small industrial town in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. His business doesn’t have a website. He uses my services for his official correspondence. Though, you can write in Hindi, he cannot write in English. So he jots down whatever he wants to say on a paper, and clicks a photo with his camera and then sends the image to me on WhatsApp and within a few minutes, I send him back a professionally written communication in English. So yes, although he doesn’t have a website, he pays for my content writing services because he values what I deliver.

How to strike a balance between SEO and quality content writing

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balancing-quality-content-writing-and-seo-content-writingI’m writing this blog post because people ask about this: how to create SEO content while maintaining the quality of the content? But they are not separate. If you practice quality content writing, the SEO part handled on its own.

These days, SEO doesn’t mean creating keyword-rich content. I don’t mean to say that you don’t use your keywords when writing content, because keywords are important. But they are not the only thing that matter. Other things that matter are:

  1. The quality of your content writing.
  2. The depth of information and wisdom that you have shared.
  3. The usefulness of your content writing.
  4. The approval and endorsement that it attracts from people.
  5. The collective competition your content writing faces.
  6. The quantity of quality content writing that already exists on your website or blog.

All these attributes are necessary to get good search engine rankings. Without them, no matter how hard you focus on your keywords, you’re not going to get much headway.

As I have written above, keywords matter. If you are spending sleepless nights thinking how to strike a balance between SEO and quality content writing, here are a few things you can do to give yourself some peace of mind:

  1. Create a list of your primary and secondary keywords. Take a printout of them. Keep them in front of you when creating content for your blog or website so that you never lose sight of them.
  2. Create vertically focused webpages and blog posts. Don’t try to cramp too much into a single webpage or blog post. Handle one topic at a time and pack as much information as possible on that one topic. Create bulleted lists discussing various aspects of the topic. Create hyperlinks wherever possible. Make ample use of headlines and sub headlines. Provide as much information as possible without sounding repetitive. Don’t insert needless sentences just to accommodate your keywords. Your keywords will be covered if you already talk about your subject.
  3. Give precedence to quality content writing. When you are preparing your first draft focus on the quality. Write well. Collect all the information you can collect. Create concise, simple sentences. Organise the information in a scannable manner. Use a language that your core audience can understand. What I mean to say is, totally focus on quality in the first draft.
  4. Then, strategically, start inserting your keyword. They must appear natural. Try to create headlines and some headlines with your keywords. Try to use your keywords in the information that you present in bulleted form. When linking to other webpages and blog posts on your website through hyperlinks, use your keywords in the anchor text. When inserting images, name your images using your keywords. Use your keywords in the alt text of your images.

There is only this much you can do to “SEO” your content writing. Mostly it depends on the quality of your writing and the competition your writing faces.

How to measure the success of your content

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Measuring-success-of-your-contentMany people wonder how to measure the success of their content, especially when they have to spend money and time on getting content for their website or blog.

Just like any other aspect of your life, success can be measured in terms of tangible returns. The success of your content is not as esoteric and vague as it is made out to be by some content writers and content marketers. Solid results can be obtained from your content and the metrics of success can be as clearly defined as in any other marketing field, or for that matter, even better.

Whenever you need to measure the success of an event or an effort, you need “before” and “after” data. If you haven’t yet started your content marketing and you haven’t yet started publishing content on your website or blog, you must make note of your current situation. Gather data on

  1. How much traffic you are getting from search engines
  2. How much traffic you are getting from social media and social networking websites
  3. How much traffic you are getting from your email marketing campaigns
  4. How many people are subscribing to your email updates on a daily basis
  5. What is the engagement level on your website (how many people leave comments on your blog posts and online forums)
  6. How much time people are currently spending on your website
  7. How many back links you have got
  8. How much you are part of conversations happening on other websites and blogs
  9. How your primary and secondary keywords are performing right now
  10. How many business queries you are getting on a daily or weekly basis
  11. How much business you are generating currently

The list can have more attributes but this can give you a fair idea of the data that you should make note of before beginning to publish regular content on your website or blog and initiate your content marketing strategy.

Unless due to some fluke or unless you have got a ton of money to spend on marketing, your content won’t give you success in a few days or even a few weeks. You will have to observe the performance of your content for a few months before you can see the signs of success.

What are the signs?

Content marketing is very scientific whether one realizes it or not. The sort of content that you publish on your website or blog is going to decide how success manifests.

Depending on what sort of content you use in your content marketing strategy you may experience more traffic from search engines, more people talking about your brand on websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, more people clicking the links in your email marketing campaigns, more people linking back to your website or individual webpages, more people spending more time on your website and eventually, more people doing business with you.

The greatest measure of success of your content is that people begin to trust you. They begin to recognize you. People trust you if through your content, you deliver value and they perceived the value of your content.

After publishing content and using the available channels to distribute your content you will need to revisit the 11 metrics mentioned above and see if they have improved or not.

  1. Has your search engine traffic increased?
  2. Has traffic from social media and social networking websites increased?
  3. Are you getting more clicks from your email marketing campaigns?
  4. Are greater number of people subscribing to your email campaigns?
  5. Has engagement on your website or blog increased and its quality improved?
  6. Are people spending more time on your website?
  7. Compared to the time when you had just started your content marketing, has the number of back links to your website or blog increased?
  8. Are more conversations taking place about your website or your brand on other websites and blogs?
  9. Has search engine traffic for your primary and secondary keywords (keywords that you are using in your content) increased?
  10. Are you getting more business queries on daily and weekly basis?
  11. Has your overall business increased ever since you started content marketing?

I would say, if the answers to even 2-3 questions above are yes, it can give you enough data to measure the success of your content.