Category Archives: SEO

Why SEO companies are putting more stress on content writing?

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Of late I have observed an interesting development. Reputed SEO forums, blogs and websites talk of content marketing and content writing more, rather than simply covering the technical and newsie aspects of SEO.

For instance, this article on Search Engine Land talks about some untapped content marketing assets for B2B SEO. This is just a small example I came across this morning but the trend is persistent and during the previous few weeks I have come across many content marketing and content writing-related articles and blog posts on primarily SEO forums and blogs. Why is it so?

The reason can be historical as well as contemporary. Historically content has always ruled the roost although many would like to disagree. Everything on the Internet is content. Everything search engines like Google crawl, index and rank is content. Whenever you are trying to improve your rankings you are trying to improve the ranking of your content pages. So overtly or covertly it is your content that is evaluated and ranked by the search engines. It is your content that is shared and talked about on social networking and social media websites. So far this has been an unstated truth.

Of late Google has been quite aggressive and it is heavily penalizing websites and blogs that use “illegitimate” ways to improve their search engine rankings. Many of these tactics and methods blacklisted by Google have been a staple of SEO companies. Back links and keywords-centric content – once the most acceptable ways of improving your search engine rankings – if done wrongly can plummet your rankings irredeemably. Many small businesses have had to create new websites from scratch. Engaging an SEO company has become a danger rather than a prudent marketing decision. I’m not saying all SEO companies are like this, but most are.

So what is the safest bet? User-focused content writing.

The Google guidelines say create content as if search engines never existed. Create content, write content for your users. Make your content writing as user-friendly as possible. Focus on the keywords not because you want to improve your search engine rankings, but because you want to convey the right message. For instance, my website and my blog is about content writing and content marketing. You can safely say that these are my keywords. There are two ways I can use my keywords.

Conventional way, the “SEO way” is to create lots of content using these two keywords in various combinations. It actually used to work. I’m not saying whether it was right or wrong, it is just unacceptable to Google. So use the right language, use your keywords but only contextually, wherever they are really needed.

This also goes for content pages and blog posts. Don’t just create content to cover keywords. Create content to serve your audience. Whenever you are creating a new page or a new blog post ask yourself, is it really needed? Does it add value to my website on my blog? Will my visitors really find it useful? Am I just creating it because I need another combination of my keywords?

If the answer to the last question is yes, don’t publish it. It can be counter-productive. You can actually lose your search engine rankings if you do that.

Since most of the conventional SEO has become a double-edged sword and since quality content still reigns supreme most of the reputed search engine optimization companies are focusing more on content writing and content marketing rather than simply selling risky SEO services.

How quality content writing can help you reduce your PPC campaign cost

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According to this article in New York Times more and more small businesses are scaling down their PPC campaign budgets and investing more in creating content that naturally improves their search engine rankings. You can do this too.

Cost of pay per click programs like AdWords are bound to rise as most of the commerce is shifting onto the Internet. From basic services to the most advanced purchases people are turning to the Internet to not just buy but also research in order to make informed purchase decisions.

PPC campaigns can be great if you have the budget. You can target the exact keywords you want traffic for and provided you have created a nice landing page, even the conversion rate can be awesome. Provided you have the budget you can start getting targeted traffic for the most competitive keywords within the next 30 minutes of launching a new website or a new product or service. The key is, “cost”.

Average PPC cost ranges between $ 1-20 depending upon your business. Of course there are many less competitive keywords that might cost you less than a dollar but you have to keep in mind that this is recurring cost and less competitive keywords cost more and convert less.

Content writing can help you reduce your PPC campaign costs.

How?

You can improve your search engine rankings organically rather than through a PPC campaign. Once you have obtained good rankings and your links begin to appear on the first page of search engine results, whether you get 1 click or 1000 clicks the only money you have spent is on the content writing job.

Of course you cannot get good rankings just by creating a couple of pages. You need to optimize your content and make it search engine friendly, you have to cover all the topics and subtopics, and have to publish regularly in order to make search engines crawl your website and index new content. The greatest benefit of improving your search engine rankings through quality content writing is that you don’t have to pay for every click no matter how many visitors you get.

Optimized content writing also improves your conversion rate tremendously. There are technical as well as psychological reasons. When you’re getting traffic via PPC campaigns you don’t pay much attention to the quality of content. You may spend some time on particular landing pages that draw traffic from your PPC programs, but other than that you are not much bothered about user-friendly language and optimized content. This keeps both search engines as well as visitors primarily unsatisfied.

When you start creating content for better search engine rankings you automatically end up creating high-quality content. This is because, due to the recent ranking algorithm changes, search engines like Google insist that the more human-friendly your content is, the better rankings you get. So it becomes a self-serving circle. You create content to reduce your PPC costs, to increase your natural search engine rankings, and in order to do that, you need to create content that serves your visitors better. And when you serve your visitors well, your conversion rate automatically improves.

According to the article mentioned above, quality content writing also reduces your PPC bidding. If you are improving your natural search engine rankings, the money that you need to pay for every click is also reduced.

As more and more competitors join the fray the PPC campaign costs are going to rise. They have already become prohibitive for many businesses. Content writing on the other hand gives you an advantage that your competitors may not have because not everybody can create quality content. So don’t stop your PPC campaign if you don’t want to, but along with that start investing in an experienced content writer who can start creating high-value content for your website, business blog and social networking profiles.

Are you over optimizing your content?

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Over optimizing your content can cost you search engine rankings. While all the time you’re talking about optimizing your content for search engine, what exactly do we mean by over-optimization?

We already know that we have to create our content around our important keywords. Up till here it is well and good. The problem arises when we get too obsessed with our keywords and instead of focusing on quality we start focusing on quantity.

Even if you remain conscious of the quality factor, sometimes you can produce too much of similar content. To be frank I tend to do that. Sometimes I simply go on creating pages and blog posts on similar topics. Not being in SEO person I didn’t even realize that my content was having a negative impact on my rankings until it was a bit late. I realized that, and fortunately, I could recover by removing and reorienting my content. Being a professional content writer was certainly helpful.

Here is a nice blog post on how to recover from over optimization.

The writer rightly puts emphasis on quality and purposefulness rather than simply flooding your website with lots of keyword-centric content.

But then what about covering all your primary and secondary keyword combinations? Again, this is no longer acceptable to Google. Have all the primary pages, use the right language that sounds natural to your human visitors and then, on a regular basis, publish content that is relevant, timely and useful.

Is content writing important than SEO?

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This is a question Internet marketers are facing again and again. Should businesses invest more on content or SEO in order to improve their search engine rankings?

I think both are specialised fields and you cannot favour one and ignore the other. Yes, your business needs content, written content, but it also needs to appear among top results in order to make that content accessible to search engine users.

But what if you have limited budget? What if you have to decide between content writing and SEO? What do you choose?

I will choose, certainly, content writing. It’s not because I myself am a content writer, I actually see the logic in it. Why do your individual pages and blog posts get indexed and ranked? What do people share on their social networking websites? It is your content. Without good content there is no hope of getting good search engine rankings, but without investing in SEO and by merely focusing on high quality content, you can always get good rankings.

Content is a communication and information medium. You talk to your prospects through your content. You generate leads and consequently business through your content. No matter how great your search engine rankings are, unless your content is able to convert that traffic to solid business, they are of no use.

On the other hand, have content that has good conversion rate and even mediocre traffic from search engines can get you good business.

Conventional wisdom says that you get good search engine rankings by doing the following two things:

  • Creating valuable content
  • Getting high-quality back links

Take care of these aspects and most of your SEO problem is solved.

Organic search engine optimization with content writing

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Organic SEO through quality content writing

Organic SEO through quality content writing

Organic search engine optimization means improving your rankings on Google and other search engines through the strength and relevance of your content.

The ideal way of improving your search engine rankings is through quality content writing.

The entire  Helpful Content algorithm update by Google rests on the premise that your content must solve problems for your visitors.

It must be of high quality. It must be authoritative. It must be relevant.

Content writing can be the most sustainable way to search engine optimizations because it organically improves your search engine rankings rather than artificially pushing them upward just to plummet due to smallest ranking algorithm changes.

The primary purpose of all mainstream search engines is to find the best content for their users and in order to achieve that they are constantly improving their indexing and ranking criteria.

 

A good example of increasing search engine rankings by constantly publishing highly useful content is Steve’s website TripInsuranceStore.com. I have been working with him since 2002 and ironically, I don’t write content for him – I manage the back-end of the website.

When most of the websites were reeling under the impact of the Google Penguin update Steve was feeling quite smug. The update hadn’t just left him unscathed, it had benefited him.

What does he do?

I have observed that instead of focusing on keywords, he focuses on the questions that his prospective customers may have.

He represents various travel insurance companies so most of the questions concern travel insurance.

His website and his blog are literally the treasure trove of travel insurance related information.

This is what Google and other search engines love. They love information. They rank high webpages and blog posts containing useful and relevant information.

Organically improving search engine rankings with quality content writing

Quality content writing improves your SEO organically

Quality content writing improves your SEO organically

Through your content writing you must provide solutions to your visitors rather than simply creating junk content.

Whether they purchase from you or not is another issue but when they come to your website they shouldn’t feel as if they have wasted their time.

They must take back something valuable.

This is the sort of content that gets higher rankings on Google and other search engines.

Organic search engine rankings are not fickle.

You don’t lose these rankings when their algorithms change because they change their algorithms in order to find more quality content and if you have quality content, you are going to benefit rather than get into trouble.

Here are a few things you can do to improve your search engine rankings organically with content writing

Focus on your readers

For organic SEO write content to deliver value

For organic SEO write content to deliver value

This is not a holistic thought, it actually benefits you.

When you focus on your readers you create content that is useful to them.

Help them, instead of pushing your offers and forcing them to buy your products or services.

Provide them useful information convincingly and then let them decide.

Of course you should use call to action phrases and words but they should be used as extra promptings.

Focus on the language your readers use

Organic SEO-write in the language your readers use

Organic SEO-write in the language your readers use

This can also be covered in the above point.

Use the language that is used by your readers and this way you will use the keywords people actually use rather than the ones you think they are using.

Organic SEO is all about reaching out and making people stay longer on your blog posts and web pages.

You may be writing and publishing valuable information but if people don’t read what you are writing, it doesn’t benefit your organic search engine rankings.

One of the most important attributes of quality content writing is that it is easier to read.

Writing in the language of your readers not only increases your search engine rankings for the actual, working keywords, it also improves your conversion rate.

Make your content problem-centric rather than keyword centric

Organic SEO-solve problems with your content writing

Organic SEO-solve problems with your content writing

This is what Steve does on his website.

He creates articles and blog posts that provide answers to people’s concerns.

He uses queries left by his visitors as well as his own common sense to create questions and then create webpages and blog posts to answer.

This automatically takes care of the phrases his prospective customers use in order to find such information.

Focus more on quality and less on SEO

Focus more on quality and less on SEO

Focus more on quality and less on SEO

The search engine optimizations problem begins to manifest when people get bogged down by too much SEO-oriented activities.

Just focus on creating quality content and the rest of the pieces fall in place on their own.

This is not to say that content writing is the panacea for all your search engine optimization concerns.

Your rankings depend on lots of internal as well as external factors and that’s why such engine marketing and optimization services charge a premium.

But valuable content is the most essential part of a viable SEO strategy.

What is organic search engine optimization?

SEO marketing can be done in two ways:

  • Through paid advertising on Google and other search engines.
  • By naturally increasing your visibility through publishing lots of high-quality content.

You can read more on What is organic SEO.

Organic SEO is when you don’t use advertising to improve your search visibility but your rankings naturally improve over the time.

You routinely publish content using your specific keywords or phrases.

The goal of organic SEO is to attain higher search engine rankings “naturally” in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

What are the advantages of improving your search engine rankings organically?

Organic search engine rankings don’t lose their spots when Google changes its algorithm.

Remember that the sole reason why Google exists is that it finds information for you.

For example, if you’re looking for a reliable content writer who can help you improve your search engine rankings, and if you search for a “content writer to improve my SEO”, you should be able to find content writers who can actually help you rather than those who have spammed their way into top rankings.

Despite all the algorithm updates, can people still trick Google?

Google is after all an algorithm (I’m talking about the ranking mechanism and not the company).

Your organic search engine rankings through quality content writing are sustainable

Organic search engine rankings are sustainable

Organic search engine rankings are sustainable

Algorithm, no matter how advanced it gets, can always be tricked, or there is always scope for confusion and exceptions.

Even now, after more than two decades, you find search results that are of no use.

But Google is constantly trying to downgrade content that does not deliver value and highlight content that does.

It means, if you are writing valuable content, Google wants your content highlighted in front of its users.

Quality content leads to organic search engine optimization which is sustainable over a long period of time.

Of course, your rankings are going to go up and down because of your competitors constantly publishing content.

Even if you improve your search engine rankings through high quality content, sooner or later, other people who are publishing similar content on the same topics, and provided they can match your quality, are going to overtake you.

This is bound to happen if you have people competing with you.

Hence, it goes without saying that you need to continuously publish relevant content on your website or blog.

Other than this, the best advantage of improving your search engine rankings organically is that the respective search engine algorithms are not going to upstage your links.

Even when your rankings go down for certain keywords, they will immediately improve when you update your website.

The best thing about improving your search engine rankings organically is that you are never going to be penalized by Google.

Even if your rankings go down – this is bound to happen if you cannot keep up with your competitors (and there are going to be many competitors) – you can quickly bounce back by adding more content to your website.

When you organically improve your search engine rankings through quality content writing you don’t pay for every click (as it happens with paid advertising).

The problem with paid advertising (for example Google AdWords) is that as you get more traffic, you spend more money.

For example, if you are paying $0.10 per click, for 100 clicks you will pay $10 and for 1000 clicks you will pay $100.

Clicks for some keywords cost more than $10 per click.

When you organically improve your search engine rankings, the only money that you spend is on content writing.

Once your content is written and published, whether you get 10 visitors or 100,000 visitors, you don’t pay anything to Google.