Category Archives: Copywriting and Content Writing Tips

Why your website or blog needs unique content

Search engines looking for unique content

Search engines are looking for unique content.

Original content improves your search engine rankings because search algorithms, especially in Google, rate original content highly.

Websites that routinely publish duplicate content are penalised.

What is duplicate content?

It is identical content that already exists either on your own website, or another website.

Why would you publish duplicate content from your own website?

Let’s suppose I want to optimize two pages: one for online copywriting and one for content writing.

Although there are some broad differences between online copywriting and content writing, maybe (hypothetically) I feel the services are more or less the same and hence, I end up assuming that the content too is more or less the same.

What do I do?

I create one original page for content writing.

Then I create a duplicate page where everything else remains the same, but content writing is replaced by online copywriting.

I feel I’m smart. I think I have outsmarted Google.

The Google AI analyzer can process billions of parameters per second.

It can analyze millions of permutations and combinations of your words and phrases to know if you have written and published duplicate content.

It can read between the lines. It can read between the words. It can correlate millions of words, expressions, phrases and sentences before you can read the sentence.

Publish fewer pages and blog posts, but publish unique content.

It is do or die for the search engines when it comes to finding unique content

Various search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! are constantly competing with each other.

Just because they get millions of visitors daily don’t assume they have it easy.

Even a small fluctuation means millions of ad dollars lost.

So they are constantly trying to improve their ranking algorithms and trying to find and index content that is unique.

The uniqueness and the usefulness of the content they find for their users keep those users from switching over to another search engine.

Why would the users use a search engine that finds the same stuff that can be found on scores of other websites?

Hence, in order to get higher rankings you have to make sure that the content published on your website or blog is unique as well as highly relevant.

Social media users want to promote unique content

Social media users are looking for unique content.

Nobody likes to promote content that is being promoted by 500 other users.

Social media websites can bring you tons of traffic if you can lure their users to your website by providing highly interesting, topical and relevant content that they cannot find anywhere else.

But do they promote your links just for altruistic reasons? Not at all.

Take for instance Twitter and Facebook.

Why do people keep posting interesting links on these websites?

They want to show that they can locate and share interesting stuff.

They want to be useful to their followers and fans.

This way, if they are posting 10 useful links from other websites and blogs, they can also post a few from their own website without looking spammy.

Besides, on Twitter, interesting tweets get retweeted and this is beneficial both to the owner of the link and the one who tweets it because both gain exposure.

Then there is conventional logic too.

When you publish useful content on your website it tells your visitors that you take pains to keep them informed.

If you share important information with them you establish yourself as an authority, and in more than 99% cases authority brings respect and trust, and respect and trust leads to loyal customers and clients.

20 benefits of writing and publishing unique content on your website or blog

Benefits of writing and publishing unique content.

Writing unique content enhances your website’s visibility in search engine results.
Publishing unique content attracts organic traffic and increases website engagement.
It sets your website apart from competitors, establishing your brand’s authority.
You build trust with your audience, establishing you as a reliable source of information.
Your target specific keywords and improve your website’s SEO ranking.
More people share your content on social media which further expands your reach and increases brand awareness.
Unique content boosts your website’s credibility and encourages repeat visitors.
You get an opportunity to showcase your expertise and position yourself as an industry leader.
You generate loyal following and build a community around your brand.
More targeted traffic and better conversion rate.
Writing unique content encourages backlinking, improving your website’s authority.
You can tailor your messages to your target audience better, increasing relevancy and engagement.
Publishing unique content fosters a positive user experience, keeping visitors on your website longer.
You educate and inform your audience and build brand loyalty.
Unique content provides fresh perspectives, attracting new visitors and encouraging return visits.
You can adapt your content to the evolving needs and interests of your audience.
More opportunities for guest posting and collaboration with other industry influencers.
You generate more leads and sales, positively impacting your bottom line.
You establish a strong online presence and expand your digital footprint.
You create a valuable resource that can be repurposed across different platforms, maximizing your content marketing efforts.

How do you write unique and relevant content?

Writing unique content.

Conduct thorough research to identify trending topics and keywords before writing unique content.
Write unique content by providing fresh insights and perspectives on industry-related subjects.
Incorporate unique personal experiences and anecdotes into your writing to make it more engaging and relatable.
Develop a distinctive writing style that sets your content apart from others in your niche.
Utilize storytelling techniques to captivate your audience and make your content memorable.
Incorporate data, statistics, and research findings to add credibility and relevance to your writing.
Present alternative viewpoints and challenge conventional wisdom.
Stay updated with the latest industry news and trends to ensure your content remains relevant and timely.
Conduct audience research to understand the needs, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
Tailor your writing to address specific problems or provide solutions that your audience is seeking.
Incorporate relevant keywords naturally into your content to optimize it for search engines.
Use headings, subheadings, and bullet points to structure your content, making it more readable and scannable.
Include relevant visuals such as images, infographics, or videos to enhance the value and appeal of your content.
Write relevant content by addressing frequently asked questions or common concerns in your industry.
Use case studies or real-life examples to demonstrate how your content is applicable to real-world situations.
Craft compelling headlines that accurately convey the unique and relevant aspects of your content.
Optimize your meta tags, meta descriptions, and URLs with relevant keywords to improve search engine visibility.
Interlink your content with other relevant articles on your website for better indexing, to avoid writing duplicate content and to provide a better experience to your readers.
Engage with your audience through comments and social media to understand their feedback and refine your content.
Analyze your content performance regularly and make the needed adjustments to ensure it remains highly unique and relevant.

How to regularly come up with unique content writing ideas?

How to regularly write unique content?

Follow industry news and trends to stay informed and generate fresh content ideas.
Conduct keyword research to identify popular topics and create unique content around them.
Engage with your audience through surveys, polls, and comments to understand their interests and needs.
Utilize social media platforms to discover trending discussions and adapt them into unique content.
Attend industry conferences, webinars, and workshops to gather insights and inspiration for your content.
Keep a running list of ideas by jotting down thoughts and observations as they come to you.
Brainstorm with colleagues or other professionals in your field to generate new content ideas collectively.
Analyze your existing content to identify gaps or areas that require further exploration or elaboration.
Draw inspiration from everyday experiences, personal stories, or challenges you’ve overcome.
Explore different content formats such as videos, infographics, podcasts, or interactive content to provide unique perspectives and engage your audience.

How I select and organize keywords for writing optimized content

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Although SEO spammers have given a bad tinge to the art of using keywords in your web page copy, they are still as relevant as when the humans discovered their importance vis-à-vis search engine optimization. Really, it makes common sense. It’s the keywords and the key phrases that tell both the search engines and the visitors what you’re talking about in your web page copy or blog post. Miss the keywords, and you miss the whole point.

But aren’t there various ways of saying the same thing and wouldn’t you prefer to let the feral stallions of your imagination run wild on the meadows of writing, you may ask? Sure, but when you’re writing for your client, or when you’re writing for business (maybe yours), the need to generate business takes precedence over your proclivity for articulating psychedelic expressions.

You need to use the language used by prospective customers and clients.

Researching and selecting keywords and phrases

When I start a new optimized content writing project (to be candid, everything I write turns out to be optimized because of the way I write), I begin with a brainstorming on what sort of audience I’m writing for and this pretty much decides what keywords and phrases I’m going to use. This is often difficult and many content writers end up with near-gibberish content, but you can sort this problem out by making a list of benefits of the product or service you intend to promote through your writing. This may seem like a clichéd approach in the beginning but not every product or service is known by its name.

It is natural if people search for a "web designer" or an online "copywriter" because by now they are very known services, but there might be a few people who don’t know what SEO is and they may search for something like "improve my search engine position" or "get me on google first page". So aside from optimizing for a generic term like SEO, you also need to take care of people who conduct searches using direct benefits as search terms. Similarly if you are selling a mobile application that lets you manage your ERP system through a smart phone, there is a possibility that people look for "smart phone erp application" rather than the actual name of the software. Or for that matter people may search for "safest family car" instead of using known brands. If you are ignoring such search terms, you are missing the real traffic, whether you are a big business or a small business.

Organizing keywords

I use the main keyword in the heading and the title of the web page or the blog post. Although I use it just once in the first paragraph, if the context demands a repetition, use it again, but don’t use it more than twice. If you feel like using it more than 2 times, rephrase your sentence.

If your keyword is an expression comprising multiple words (for instance, online content writing services) you don’t have to use the complete expression all the time. Use it once or twice (try using it at least once in the first paragraph) in its entirety and afterwards, just scatter it across your remaining paragraph. You can repeat the complete keyword in the last paragraph too, but don’t force it if it doesn’t seem appropriate.

Aside from the paragraphs you can also use the keywords — partially or fully — in your headings and subheadings, bulleted lists, and even in your anchor text.

Is there some other way you feel the keywords can be researched and organized? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Educational content helps you sell more

Benefits of educational content

I had lots of "educational" stuff on my website when I was designing and developing websites; in fact people had started suggesting that I should publish an e-book teaching how to become a web designer and start selling it. The downside of it was, most of my visitors wanted to learn web designing and very few wanted me to work for them. This shouldn’t happen when you are publishing lots of educational content on your website. They should definitely learn and get more informed, but they should also be interested in buying from you. Once you’ve figured out how to achieve that, here are a few benefits of publishing lots of educational content on your website/blog:

Educational content gets you more search engine traffic. Search engines are more interested in finding the right information for their users and somehow the guys working at the major search engines think educational content should get priority over commercial content.
It helps you establish your authority. When people know that you know your stuff, they develop a respect for you, especially when you share your knowledge again and again and they find that knowledge useful. I’m not regretting that I published lots of educational content on my website, it’s just that my targeting was misplaced. Share your knowledge and experience consistently – if I’m consistently sharing my thoughts on copywriting and content writing on my blog or website people will prefer to hire me rather than the person who merely has 12 drab pages from where he or she urges his or her visitors to hire him or her.
It familiarizes your prospective customers with your product or service. Many people don’t do business with you because they don’t know enough about your product. When they read lots of material on your website or blog they get to know about the benefits of your offer and then they are in a better position to make up their minds. In fact after reading your educational content people who aren’t even thinking of buying your product or using your service may decide to do so.
It helps you in establishing a social networking and social media presence. Most of the content promoted on Twitter, Facebook and Digg is educational or newsworthy. Sales copy rarely makes it there because why would people promote your links where you simply urge people to hire you or buy from you, what is there in it for them? Educational content on the other hand deserves to be promoted because it helps others and increases the goodwill of people promoting it.
You open yourself for challenge and hence broaden your growth prospects. When you share your ideas, your knowledge, your wisdom openly and then invite people to share their thoughts, you expose yourself to criticism and counter arguments. This either earns you critics or admirers, and it’s definitely better than having none.

Can you come up with more benefits of publishing educational content on your website? Please do share them in the comments section.

How does incorporating keywords increase your search engine traffic

When you use keywords just for the sake of generating traffic, it hardly works, and even if by some fluke it works, it still doesn’t work because that traffic never converts. Sure, using keywords in your content does increase your traffic because this is how you tell the search engines what topic you are talking about, but they should appear naturally, as a part of your overall copy. In fact their occurrence should be so critical that without using them your copy makes no sense.

How does using keywords increase your traffic?

Once you have made a list of your important keywords, you start preparing your content. You use those keywords to convey your message, and if somehow you don’t seem to be able to use them in your copy, then they’re probably not important to you. If your keywords are important to you, then there should be no dearth of material for them.

For instance I provide online copywriting and content writing services. I have more than 60 pages (I know, it isn’t sufficient, and I must have more) discussing various aspects of online copywriting and content writing. I’m constantly writing for my blog on the topics of online copywriting, content writing and SEO, and so I get plenty of reason to use keywords and expressions relevant to my business, and this is gradually increasing my traffic for various combinations.

It’s not always possible to rank well for your keywords due to massive competition; what do you do then? Try for longtail search expressions. Longtail search expressions constitute of longer strings of 5-6 words. It’s often not easy to make a list of longtail search expressions; they gradually begin to surface as you regularly generate interesting and valuable content for your website, using your important keywords.

Online Copywriting: difference between features and benefits

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Online copywriting-difference between features and benefits.

Don’t sell features.

Sell benefits.

What does that mean?

Product features are the factual attributes of a product.

I won’t say that product features are not important. To some people they matter.

Features also automatically communicate benefits on many occasions, especially people who are aware of technicalities.

For example, if my cloud storage service gives me 2 TB space, I know that I’m going to be able to store plenty of stuff there.

If I know that my tablet comes with an easy-to-use interface, I know that even beginners can use it.

Nonetheless, to appeal to a broader audience, it is better to talk about the benefits while mentioning features.

Don’t chuck the features. But associate them with the benefits they deliver.

People don’t buy a product. They buy its utility. They buy emotions and experiences.

You don’t buy a 50-inch TV because it is a 50-inch TV.

You want to watch your favorite programs on a bigger screen with greater clarity, more pixel depth, and a better immersive experience. You want to play high-resolution games.

Or you want to flaunt a big TV in the sitting room.

Here are a few examples:

Feature: The phone comes with 16 GB RAM.

Benefit: Run multiple apps without lagging. Even multiple heavier and graphic-intensive apps can be run simultaneously.

Feature: 1 TB cloud storage

Benefit: Store thousands of videos and images in your cloud storage account. It will last you years before you need to upgrade.

Feature: 16 MB front camera

Benefit: Take high-definition selfies that will leave everyone breathless. Your face will be crystal clear even in darkness. Look stunning in your video calls.

Feature: Water and dust proof

Benefit: Make videos in the rain or in the swimming pool. The phone keeps working even under extremely dusty environments.

Feature: Long lasting battery

Benefit: No need to charge for three days. 20 hours of non-stop music play, 10 hours of non-stop video, and 40 hours of non-stop phone calling.

More examples of product features and product benefits in copywriting

Examples of features and benefits in online copywriting

Features	Benefits
The laptop has a 15-inch screen and a 10-hour battery life.	Keep multiple windows open to work better. Watch movies and TV series. No need to charge for long durations.
The shampoo is made of natural ingredients. No sulphates and parabens.	Gentle and safe ingredients for your scalp. Won’t damage or dry your skin. Won’t cause dandruff. Will not make your hair brittle.
The jacket is made of waterproof and breathable fabric.	Wear the jacket in winter, in rainy season, and even during summer. Keeps you warm in cold. No sweating during summer.
The blender has a powerful motor and a pulse function.	Make smoothies, soups and sauces even from hardest materials and vegetables. No need to chop small pieces. Smoothness and consistency in smoothies and soups.
The course teaches you how to write effective sales copy.	Boost your conversions. Generate more sales. Attract and convert your ideal customers with persuasive and engaging copy.
This app tracks your steps, calories, heart rate, and sleep.	Improve your sleep quality. Keep daily track of how much you work. Become more active when awake. Improve health and fitness. Monitor your heart rate for vital signs of heart disease.
100 recipes in this book.	Endless cooking fun with household ingredients and stuff you can easily get from the market. Give healthy meals to your family. Enjoy breakfast, lunch, and dinner times.
The mattress comes with memory foam layer and a cooling gel layer.	Sleep soundly. Wake up without body aches. The mattress adopts to your body shape and body temperature.

More good examples of products, their features, and benefits

Product	Feature	Benefit
Headphones	Bluetooth connectivity	No tangled cables. Easier to carry. Fewer chances of getting damaged.
Air fryer	Cooks by hot air	Healthy cooking. Minimum oil required. Can replace microwave and oven.
Retail store	Open 24 hours	Buy groceries whenever you need to. No need to rush. Do shopping on your own schedule. Suits people with multiple shift jobs.
Grocery store	Free home delivery	No need to travel. You can spend your time doing something else while your grocery gets delivered. Don’t get stuck in traffic. Order when convenient.
Meal kit	Heat and eat	No need to cook. Saves time. No grocery shopping. Fewer utensils to wash.

What is the difference between a feature and a benefit?

Difference between features and benefits in online copywriting.

Umbrella feature: Made of waterproof cloth that is very difficult to tear.

Umbrella benefit: Protects you from rain and sun. Doesn’t break easily in strong wind.

Feature may be the size of the product or what it is made of or what technology it uses.

Benefit is, what problems the product solves. What needs it satisfies. What emotional satisfaction it delivers.

You purchase a mobile phone with a high-end camera because you want to take high-resolution photographs or you want to look good during business-related videoconferences.

Features

Let’s suppose you are selling a desktop blog editing software. It’s features would be:

Ability to add multiple blog accounts.
Inbuilt word processor, thesaurus and spell-check.
FTP functionality to upload images.
Support for offline and online editing.
Support for CSS formatting.

These are the features, things that the software lets you do. But how do you benefit from these features?

Benefits

Post blog posts extremely fast and conveniently.
Work in a familiar, world-processor like environment.
Reduce spelling and grammatical errors.
Upload images easily.
Format your blog posts to your heart’s content.

All in all, become a better, prolific blogger.

Not all features are equally beneficial to all, but we use products and services for their benefits and not for their features. This is why it is very important to highlight the benefits when you are preparing the copy to sell a product or a service.

Should you always prefer benefits over features?

Should you always prefer benefits over features in online copywriting?

No. Your customers need important information during their buyer’s journey and sometimes, a few technical details can pack lots of information.

Take for example organic food. This is a feature. In fact, it represents multiple features such as they don’t use pesticides and artificial fertilisers. Certification is difficult to get so if a supplier claims that they give you organic food, they must have gone through rigorous inspections.

What are the benefits of organic foods? You don’t consume toxins. Your food is devoid of chemicals and other harmful ingredients. There is less strain on your gut. There are no pesticides to damage your lever and kidneys.

But if you simply say that your food is healthier and does not use artificial fertilisers and harmful pesticides, your target consumers may not get the message. Hence, you must tell them that it’s organic food because they are familiar with the term.

Similarly, if a mobile phone comes with 32 GB of RAM it is quite reassuring to know the number because most other devices come with 8 GB or 16 GB. Of course, you must also explain what these 32 GB of RAM achieve for the consumer such as the ability to run resource heavy applications and the ability to manage multiple apps without crashing the phone.

So, don’t chuck the features, but whenever you’re mentioning features, explain the associated benefits in a compelling language.