Category Archives: SEO

How to evaluate your SEO content writing

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how-to-evaluate-your-SEO-content-writingSEO these days depends a lot on your content writing. Of course, it has always depended because unless you have content, there can be no SEO, but these days you especially need to continuously evaluate your SEO content writing because badly written content can harm your SEO as much as well-written content can improve it. Read 10 tips on how to write SEO content for your website.

Search Engine Journal has published a nice post on How to evaluate the SEO value of a piece of content and I thought, I would add my own thoughts to it. This post on the importance of evaluating your SEO content writing mentions two ways Google determines the SEO value of your content:

  1. Behavioral analysis: Google analyses how people behave while accessing and consuming your content. How much time they spend on individual blog posts and webpages? How often your content is shared among people and social networking websites?
  2. Quality Raters: Everything isn’t algorithmic at Google it seems. Google also hires human search quality raters who use predetermined guidelines to check whether you actually have quality content or somehow you have gamed the system. Read 30+ important takeaways from Google’s search quality raters guidelines (a Moz blog post).

Why is it important to evaluate your SEO content writing continuously?

As mentioned above, Google uses user behavior as well as human quality raters to ensure the quality of its search results. Let’s delve into the behavioral analysis part deeper for a while. What sort of behavior tells Google that you have got quality content, content worthy of being ranked higher?

  • Your content delivers value
  • Your content is useful
  • People like reading your content or watching it
  • People link to your content because it is so valuable
  • People share your content on social networking websites because they think it will be useful to their friends and family

These are human validations. It makes it easier for Google algorithms to evaluate your content because the job of evaluation is being done by humans themselves. By staying longer on your website, by sharing your content, by linking to it, they are telling Google that the content is valuable and of high quality.

So, in order to evaluate the SEO of your content writing, you continuously have to evaluate its relevance, its quality and its value. It’s not just about sticking to Google’s guidelines, it’s about delivering value through content writing. If you deliver value, you automatically stick to Google’s SEO guidelines, unless you do something really stupid, like 60% of your content being your keywords.

What do you need to consider while evaluating your SEO content writing?

Here are a few things you can keep in mind while evaluating the SEO of your content writing:

  • Research your keywords and search terms that people use to find your website. Do a comprehensive research. Don’t assume what keywords and search terms people would use just because you like those keywords and search terms. Think from their perspective. Prepare a physical list using an Excel sheet.
  • Write high quality content that helps people solve problems. Remember that ultimately your content needs to be useful to people and if it is not useful, no matter how much “optimization” you do, it is not going to work. As you have seen above, human validation is very important for Google and even other search engines like Bing. You cannot make people like your content just by the dint of its existence. You actually have to deliver value.
  • Use the right keywords and search terms while writing your content. Search engine optimization is very important because more than 70-80% people, despite social networking websites, still use search engines to find your content. If they cannot find your content, it is of no use to them. They’re not going to read your content and they are not going to share it and they are not going to link to it if they cannot find it. So, use your keywords, and use them contextually. Don’t stuff them.
  • Go an extra mile to make sure that right people can find your content. Share your link on your social networking profiles. Use different formats like images, videos and slides to make your content available in as many formats and as many media channels as possible. This is where marketing comes. After content writing comes content marketing. Read Content writing is just a tiny part of content marketing, but the most important.
  • Google also evaluates the SEO of your content writing by the length of it. If your blog post or webpage is less 300 words, Google calls it “thin content”: although it is content, it is not of much value. The length matters these days. Write blog posts and articles that are more than 1000 words, whenever possible.
  • Never forget accessibility. Does your website comply with the W3C guidelines? When you make your content accessible it’s SEO value automatically increases. This is because when your content is accessible to humans, it is also accessible to search engine crawlers. Use the right attributes to organize your content. Use headline tags and bullet tags to make your content scannable. Use alt text, title text and captions to make your images accessible. Don’t use lots of JavaScript before your content.

Finally, this is how you evaluate your SEO content writing

  • Is your SEO content attracting traffic for the right keywords?
  • Is your content attracting enough traffic?
  • Are people linking to your content? This is one of the most important ways of evaluating the SEO of your content writing because people will link only when your content is worthy of linking.
  • Is your bounce rate coming down? Are people spending more time on your website or blog consuming your content? If they stay longer on your website it means they find your website useful and consequently, it tells Google that your content is useful.
  • Are people sharing your content on social networking websites? This is a very nice benchmark to evaluate the SEO of your content writing. Many people sharing your content on social networking websites means your content is valuable, interesting and worth-sharing.
  • Are you linking to other pages and blog posts from within your website when writing new content? This makes it easier for Google crawlers to find your content.

These are a few ways of evaluating the SEO value of your content.

Can content marketing improve your SEO?

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can-content-marketing-improve-your-SEOMany businesses are attracted towards content marketing because they think that it will improve their SEO. Is it true? Does content marketing really improve your SEO?

Yes, it does. Strategic content marketing definitely improves your SEO.

Better SEO is a byproduct of efficient and persistent content marketing.

What do you do when you use content marketing to promote your business?

  • You publish content that helps your visitors.
  • Your content provides answers to questions your customers and clients seek.
  • You are continuously providing content to search engine crawlers to crawl, index and rank.
  • By promoting your content using all available channels you earn social validation for your website (which is used by search engines to rank your website).
  • You are continuously using your keywords and key phrases to generate content.
  • The more quality content you publish the greater are the chances that other websites will link back to you.

If you notice, all these content marketing tactics are exactly the things you need to do to improve your SEO.

How content marketing improves your SEO

Search engines like Google and Bing are all about content. When people use these search engines your landing pages and the main website rarely show up. It’s your content pages and blog posts that show up in the search results. The entire process of content marketing is such that it automatically improves your SEO.

Take for example Google. What does Google consider to rank your individual webpages?

  • The overall quality and relevance of your content.
  • The keyword and key phrases that you have used in the title, in the body text and in the headlines.
  • The contextual analysis of your content.
  • The number of external websites linking to your content.
  • The number of social shares of your content.
  • The overall quality and quantity of your website or blog.

All these can only be achieved through content marketing.

This is how content marketing improves your SEO

  • You publish relevant content that solves your customers’ and clients’ problems.
  • You publish content on an ongoing basis so that you are constantly feeding the search engines with good quality content (this alone improves your SEO).
  • Strategic content marketing makes you create content around your relevant keywords and key phrases consistently, increasing your overall website keyword density.
  • Since you are creating valuable content, it is often shared on social networking websites, providing validation, which further improves your SEO.
  • When you publish quality content that is relevant and helps people, other websites and blogs link to your content, again contributing to your SEO.
  • Improved SEO makes it easier for people to find your content, link to it, share it and talk about it, further improving your SEO.

Your average SEO agency may beg to differ, good content marketing automatically leads to an improved SEO.

Are there times when content marketing doesn’t improve your SEO?

Although I repeatedly stress on my website that good content marketing always improves your SEO there can be instances when content marketing does not improve your SEO.

To understand why sometimes content marketing may not lead to improved SEO you first need to understand what is content marketing and what is SEO.

What is content marketing?

In layman’s terms, content marketing is publishing lots of useful, relevant content that helps your customers and clients so that they begin to trust you and readily do business with you. Content marketing includes

  • Publishing quality content on a consistent basis.
  • Using social networking channels to distribute your content.
  • Publishing content on all available channels so that it becomes easier to come across your business name, brand or your own name.

This is the basic crux of content marketing. Read more on What is content marketing? Explained in detail.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization. The concept is as old as search engines themselves. SEO means creating content so that it’s easier for search engines to

  • Find it
  • Crawl it
  • Index it
  • Rank it higher compared to other links for your desired keywords

The last point is the most important to people who are trying to improve their SEO. They want their content to be found, on the first page, for their preferred keywords. Keywords and key phrases are the most important when it comes to improving your SEO. If your content is being found for all the wrong reasons, it doesn’t help you.

This is very important: your content needs to be found for the right keywords and search terms. Read more on What is Organic SEO?

Content marketing can exist without giving you SEO benefits

This is because you can create quality content without using your keywords. You can use heavy images and complicated JavaScript on your website so that it’s very difficult for the search engine crawlers to crawl your content despite the content being of exceptional quality.

For an improved SEO the source code of your website matters a lot. The source code of your website should be in such a way that it makes it easier for search engines to access your content as soon as possible. The crawlers shouldn’t have to sift through a ton of gibberish before it can reach your main content.

When you don’t use proper tags, when you don’t hyperlink to your relevant pages using the right anchor text, when you don’t have a site map, when the other websites linking to your content don’t use the right anchor text, you don’t get much SEO benefit from your content marketing.

When does content marketing improve your SEO?

Your content marketing can be exceptional but you also need to help search engines crawl, index and rank your content, either from your own website, or external websites.

Here are a few things to keep in mind in order to help your content marketing improve your SEO:

  • Do comprehensive keyword research – create a long list of keywords and key phrases that your customers and clients are likely to use when trying to look for your service.
  • Without overdoing it, use your keywords and key phrases while creating and publishing your content.
  • People these days normally use questions on the search engines, so provide answers to these questions.
  • Don’t use lots of JavaScript, at least in the beginning of your webpages and blog posts. If using JavaScript is unavoidable, use it in such a manner that you include the JavaScript code at the end of your webpages and blog posts.
  • Try to follow W3C guidelines to create an accessible website because an accessible website automatically improves your SEO on the technical side.
  • Use proper tags like h1, h2, h3, ul, li, etc. to organize your content.
  • Get quality back links to your website on the strength of your quality content.

Although quality content marketing in itself improves your SEO, you just saw above that good content marketing can exist without giving you any SEO benefits. But if you maintain a website or blog that doesn’t stop the search engine crawlers from accessing your main content as early as possible, then persistent content marketing definitely improves your SEO.

How you can band content marketing and SEO together

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Content Marketing and SEO

SEO is a big reason why most of my clients pursue content marketing. Even today I got a query from a German client asking for SEO content that will help them improve their search engine rankings and draw targeted traffic to their website.

SEO and content marketing are related to each other but the problem is most of the small business owners think that the sole purpose of publishing content on their website is to improve their SEO. On the surface there is nothing wrong in this perception, the problem arises when people completely focus on SEO, ignoring the inherent strength of publishing quality, engaging content on the website and elsewhere.

The basic purpose of publishing content and then distributing it using various channels available to you is to provide value to your target audience so that you can establish a long-lasting relationship with them. You need to provide them valuable information. They should hear from you regularly so that they begin to recognise you whenever they come across your content. The purpose of content marketing is creating a recognition space for you and your brand so that it becomes easier to find you, to relate to you and to feel like doing business with you because of a positive association.

Why people use content marketing solely to improve their SEO?

In the beginning content really helped you improve your search engine rankings. Back then the search engine ranking algorithms weren’t as complicated and choosy as they are today. Have 20 webpages talking about a particular topic (with different titles) using your keywords and you could rank well. For straight 2 years in 2004-2005 I used to rank on the 1st page of Google for the phrases “freelance content writer” and “online content writer” because I had published lots of articles on my website talking about these 2 phrases– it was my mistake that I couldn’t take advantage of this privilege and didn’t pay much attention to maintaining my rankings. Maintain an acceptable keyword density, use the keywords in your title and publish 20-30 blog posts and articles and you could enjoy good rankings.

Since then, much has changed, but people’s perception hasn’t. Firstly, they still think that indiscriminately using keywords in their blog posts and articles is going to get them higher search engine rankings and secondly, the confuse content marketing with SEO. Both are partly related and partly unrelated.

Search engines are constantly aiming at indexing high-quality content and while indexing and ranking high quality content, although they take note of the sort of language and words being used, more important is the relevance and the quality of content you are creating and publishing. How is it going to be useful to the search engine users, this is their primary concern. How do they find out whether a particular piece of content is of good quality? There are thousands of factors but the primary factors are:

  • How relevant is the title of the blog post or webpage you have just created
  • How well-written the content is
  • How the keywords have been used (yes, the keywords still matter)
  • How easy it is to access the content on the web page
  • How easy it is to view your content using different devices
  • How many influences are talking about your content
  • How many trustworthy inbound links your content attracts
  • How much buzz it is creating on social media websites
  • How frequently you publish quality content

All these attributes solely depend on the combination of quality, relevance and usability of your content. A well-meaning title naturally contains the subject you are handling. People naturally share content that is useful. Engaging content encourages people to talk about it through blog posts and social media updates. People link to your content if they like it.

All these factors are taken into consideration by the search engines while ranking your content.

So while it is important to take care of SEO (so that people who are meant to find your content can find it easily) this shouldn’t be the sole objective of your content marketing strategy. You use content marketing to improve your conversion rate and draw people to your website naturally.

10 ways to find the best content writing/SEO copywriting service for your business

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Looking for the best content writing and SEO copywriting services for your business

Looking for the best content writing and SEO copywriting services for your business?

Finding the best content writing service for your business is one of the most, in fact, the most significant part of initiating an effective content marketing strategy.

A big problem on the Internet is, although you can find lots of information, often it is very difficult to find the information you actually need, the information you can use to grow your business.

The same applies to finding the right content writing and SEO copywriting service for your business.

Whom do you hire?

How do you decide?

Sometimes a company looks lousy but delivers great content.

Sometimes a company looks great but delivers lousy content.

A great problem is you cannot find that out unless you have worked with the service provider for some time.

Content marketing, although is the strongest marketing tool available on the Internet, also takes its own good time to give you results and by the time these results manifest, it is a bit late to realize whether you should have hired this particular content writing service or not.

The same goes with SEO copywriting services. Any decent SEO effort takes anywhere between 4-5 months before it begins to show even small results (especially when you face lots of competition).

By the time you realize that you haven’t partnered with a competent SEO copywriting service, you may have spent lots of time and money.

Is there a sure shot way of finding the best content writing service for your business?

Is there a set formula that helps you find the best SEO copywriting service to improve your search engine rankings?

No, there is not. But of course you can minimize the chances of ending up with a lousy service.

What are the best ways to find the right content writing service  or the best SEO copywriting service for your business?

The best way of finding a content writing-SEO copywriting service for your business

The best way of finding a content writing-SEO copywriting service for your business.

Your business is unique, your customers and clients are unique, so your content requirements are also unique.

Why so much stress on being unique?

It is your USP – unique selling proposition.

This is what sets you apart.

With thousands of people offering almost the same sort of service or the same sort of product, especially on the Internet where one website is just a click away from another, how do your prospective customers and clients decide whether they should do business with you or with someone else?

You need to provide something that they cannot get from someone else or at least it is very difficult to get it from somewhere else, or at least, comparatively much more expensive, or whatever.

The thing is, there must be something that should draw them to you rather than to someone else.

Once this is decided and settled, let us explore some ways to find the best content writing or SEO copywriting service for your business.

The service – whether content writing or SEO copywriting – has a website

For a long-term business partnership this is a must.

Yes, you can find good content writers from niche business directories and portals, they are not very reliable because most of them don’t have much stake in being consistent.

Since most of these business directories accept listings for free or at a nominal fee, you don’t find very dedicated and serious people in these directories (I don’t intend to paint everyone with the same stroke).

Of course, if the very same people also have websites running legitimate businesses, things become different.

When a content writing service has a business website it means it is serious and it has invested time and effort establishing shop on the Internet.

The website looks professional

If they have a website, the website should look decent and professional.

It doesn’t mean it should be able to compete in design contests, but it should have a clean design with all the needed information available on the website.

The homepage copy should clearly explain all the services that are being provided.

There should be terms and conditions.

An FAQs is a must.

All the contact details must be available on a separate, dedicated page.

The SEO copywriting service also has a blog

What’s the use of working with a content writing service if it does not promote its services via content?

Most of my business comes from my blog.

My business also comes from LinkedIn and Google, but even traffic from these websites is drawn to my blog so that is the main attraction.

On my blog regularly sharing tips, guides and my thoughts on content writing an SEO copywriting..

Just imagine, a content writing and SEO copywriting service not being able to promote its own services through its own content.

There should be a business blog that is regularly updated.

The content writing service has a mailing list

This is because no matter what people claim, email marketing still rules the roost when it comes to promoting your services and products on the Internet.

500 people subscribing to your email updates are far better than 5000 people “Liking” your Facebook page or following you on Twitter.

So yes, a serious content writing service would obviously have a newsletter subscription box on the website and if it doesn’t, it isn’t serious about content marketing.

Every best content writing and SEO copywriting service publishes a newsletter.

Here, I’m using the superlative “best” as a category. I know there cannot be multiple best services.

It has a solid social media presence

Most of the world these days spends time on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn (just to name a few).

It is also a good way to attract people.

Want to find someone?

Want to find the best products and services recommended by people you interact with on daily basis?

There is a great chance that you will find its reference on Facebook or Twitter (or whatever social networking platform is in vogue when you are reading this).

Also, if the content writing service can be easily reached on Twitter you can get a response faster in case you have some problem.

Your best content writing or SEO copywriting service puts greater stress on quality than quantity

If you have quality content on your website or blog, your search engine rankings automatically improve.

So if a content writing and SEO copywriting service says that you should have lots of content to cover all your keywords so that your search engine rankings can improve, you are being shortchanged.

Of course you need to cover your keywords but that is secondary.

The first priority should be the quality.

The content writing service has a strict policy on plagiarism

Just because text is digitally present everywhere on the Internet it becomes very easy to copy/paste it and then slightly spin it to pretend as if you have unique content at hand.

This is what those $ 5-per-article services do.

It’s a sure shot way of nipping your content marketing strategy in the bud.

The service you’re planning to hire for your business must have a strict policy about how to handle plagiarism and how it controls its content writers in case it has multiple content writers.

Its content writing an SEO copywriting charges are reasonable

Actually what’s reasonable differs from business to business, but you can find out what the industry rates are and do the calculations accordingly.

As I have mentioned above, those $ 5-per-article services can wreak havoc with your content marketing campaign for your SEO strategy, but in the rarest of rare cases, they can also work to your advantage.

If your content writing service is charging pittance try to figure out how it sustains itself.

Take for example charging $ 5 for an article or a blog post.

If I charge you this rate, try to figure out how much money can realistically make.

Even if I write 10 articles or blog posts in a day I will only be able to make $ 50.

How much can I be worried about providing you quality content this way?

It also sends me a signal that if you desire cheap content then maybe you aren’t even interested in quality that much.

It works both ways.

You get what you pay for.

So if a content writing service or an SEO copywriting service charges a very low rate, always be cynical about their offer.

The charges should be reasonable from both ends of the spectrum.

It can scale according to your requirements

It isn’t always about how much content writing and SEO copywriting the service you’re planning on hiring can do, it’s also about how much content you need.

Perhaps you require 10 blog posts or articles everyday but your content writing service can only supply 2-3 at the most.

This deal is not going to work for you.

Similarly, if in a package they offer 20 blog posts every month but you require only 5, and they don’t have an alternative package for you.

Again, it’s a no-deal.

So you should look for a service that can scale according to your business.

Many businesses and individuals vouch for it

Recommendations and testimonials tell you that the agency has provided excellent services – services that have actually helped businesses grow.

Simply writing content doesn’t help much.

The content must be able to take a business forward.

It isn’t also just about improving your SEO.

Your content should also be able to improve your conversion rate and in fact, this is much more important compared to your SEO.

So if a content writing service has actually helped businesses, they will readily provide testimonials and recommendations.

Despite taking care of the above-mentioned 10 attributes that can help you find a content writing & SEO copywriting service for your business you can end up with a lousy service provider, but then this can happen in any industry, in any service and with any product.

Taking care of these 10 things will just reduce the chances of ending up with an inferior service.

Content is king when it comes to improving your search engine rankings

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You cannot improve your search engine rankings without your content so it’s not just in the field of conversion where your content rules the roost, it is also your SEO. So if you want to improve your SEO, the primary focus should be your content.

This infographics at Brafton.com uses the recent Content Marketing Institute study to graphically explain that when it comes to integrating SEO with content marketing, 88% B2B businesses put more stress to it. 82% businesses have, one way or another, acquired new customers through their blogs and 67% have been able to generate more leads. Here are some illuminating content marketing statistics I have written about in one of my previous blog posts.

Statistically, 347 blog posts are published every minute every day and 2 million blogs are written every 24 hours but this is not the reason why content becomes the king of the Kingdom of SEO. It is because high-quality content, content that is engaging and valuable, enjoys higher search engine rankings compared to use less content created just to boost SEO.