Etiquette dos and don’ts when writing content

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Etiquette do's and don'ts when writing content

Etiquette do’s and don’ts when writing content.

I was just browsing my content aggregator and I came across this blog post on the etiquette dos and don’ts of content writing thinking that the post actually talks about etiquettes.

Well, instead of talking about etiquettes it gives you the general dos and don’ts of writing effective content.

Nonetheless, the author has shared some good tips on what to take care of when writing content and what you should avoid.

I am quickly going to present a run down on what to do and what not to do.

Focus more on delivering value when writing content

This must be your primary focus.

Most of the people publish content because they want to improve their search engine rankings (or simply fill up their website because without written content, the website would look odd), but the primary purpose of writing content is to deliver value and engage your visitors.

If you deliver value and engage your visitors, your search engine rankings automatically improve.

Have a doubt? Read this blog post: Relationship between quality content writing, bounce rate and SEO.

Make sure you proofread and edit

Once you have written your content, make sure you go through it. Read it aloud if it’s possible.

What do I do when I’m editing?

I mostly shorten my sentences. I shorten my paragraphs. I remove needless adverbs and adjectives. Sometimes I add needless adverbs and adjectives.

Just make sure your content is easy to read and it does not have embarrassing mistakes.

Write for your niche

Defining your niche makes it easier for you to focus your writing.

When you are writing content, you are having a conversation with the reader.

Just imagine talking to someone who doesn’t want to talk to you.

Of course, defining your niche is not as easy as it may seem, but you should narrow it down as much as possible.

When I’m writing content for my blog, I am mostly targeting people who are looking for an experienced content writer who can help them publish engaging content and at the same time, can also help them improve their search engine rankings.

In the conventional sense my niche is quite broad – I get content writing queries from real estate businesses to blockchain businesses to IT consultants to babysitting businesses to online retail stores, and pretty much everything in between.

One thing is common though: they are all looking for a content writer.

They may need a content writer for their website, or their blog, or their email marketing campaigns or their social media campaigns.

Hence, I have lots of content targeting these categories.

Keep SEO in mind while writing

Though, you shouldn’t obsess about SEO when writing content, this is an aspect that you cannot ignore.

How do you write SEO content?

You may want to read How do I write search engine friendly content for my clients?

There are some other tips that I just wrote about in the link I have shared just above.

These are some basic do’s and don’ts. They’ve got nothing to do with etiquettes.

Anyway, what etiquettes should you keep in mind when writing content?

Here are a few things to consider:

  • Try to write gender neutral content if it is not being written for a specific gender.
  • Don’t offend people on the basis of race, region, religion or class.
  • Don’t use abusive language.
  • Respect your audience and don’t dumbify them.
  • Don’t mislead your audience just to improve your SEO.
  • Don’t keep promises you cannot keep.
  • Don’t be judgmental or condescending.
  • Avoid taking a political stand when you are writing for business.

Since the title of this blog post hints as of the blog post contains some insights on etiquettes, I wanted to write something about this issue. Maybe later on I will do a complete blog post on this.

 

Can you repurpose content for email marketing?

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The success of your email marketing depends on regularity. Repurposing your existing website or blog content can help.

One of the biggest problems you face when running an email marketing campaign is the lack of engaging content.

Email marketing – especially well-meaning and long-term – means building and sustaining relationships with your existing and prospective customers and clients. If you send out email campaigns just to promote your products and services, you’re not using the full potential of email marketing.

But this update is less about the dos and don’ts of email marketing and more about how to repurpose your existing website and blog content to get quality material for your successive email campaigns.

As this Business2Community update suggests, you can re-purpose your existing content from multiple sources including blog posts, web pages, and even social media updates.

I have been doing this for a couple of months now. I mean, getting content from various sources. I have been publishing my newsletter for years, but the only source of content was my blog.

Whenever I published a new blog post, I sent a notification to my email subscribers with a small intro to the blog and then a URL.

These days I do a lot of repurposing. From LinkedIn to my Credible Content blog to Quora, I’m constantly repurposing and remixing content.

For example, I publish an answer to a question on Quora. From there I have started turning those answers into full-fledged blog posts for my Credible Content blog. Then I write a small intro of 200-300 words both for my LinkedIn update and my newsletter update.

Repurposing isn’t just relevant to contemporary content. Maybe you wrote a blog post back in 2017 and it contains some nuggets of wisdom. You can share in your newsletter. But how do you find such content?

I normally use a site-based search query On Google such as “site:credible-content.com email marketing”.

This brings up all the content I have published on my website on the topic of email marketing. Then I quickly go through the links and find something useful to use for my next newsletter broadcast.

How do I write search engine friendly content for my clients?

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How to write SEO-friendly content

How to write SEO-friendly content.

Sometimes it becomes difficult to come up with interesting content to write about on a regular basis on my blog. I was answering to a Quora question and I thought, answers to some of my Quora questions can also be used to write blog posts.

I was providing an answer the following question: How do I write content that is SEO friendly?

Steps to writing SEO-friendly content:

  1. Include the main keywords in the title.
  2. Include the keywords in the meta description.
  3. Mention the keywords within the first 100 words of your write up.
  4. Focus on writing answers to specific queries.
  5. Write for search intent.
  6. Write shorter sentences.
  7. Use headings and subheadings.
  8. Focus on longtail keywords.
  9. Link to other blog posts and web pages from your current blog post or web page.
  10. Write short paragraphs.
  11. Summarize using bulleted points.

To be frank, I have written on the topic multiple times on my blog, but I can always add new things. I’m constantly learning new ways to write search engine friendly content. In this post I’m going to expand what I wrote on Quora.

Should you go overboard with writing SEO-friendly content?

The problem with writing SEO-friendly content is that sometimes people go overboard and ignore the bigger picture. Your content succeeds not because it gets you higher search engine rankings, it succeeds because it provides relevant information that can be quickly understood.

For many website owners and bloggers it’s SEO that’s most important. This does you more harm than good.

Even if right now you have better search engine rankings because you think you have cracked the search engine algorithm, if you’re not satisfying your visitors, the rankings go down.

This is because your rankings depend a lot on your bounce rate. If people find your link, come to your website, and then leave immediately because they don’t find the information they are looking for, Google and other search engines know that.

So, even in the beginning if you can improve your rankings because of “strategically” using your keywords, ultimately, it all boils down to how people interact with your content.

What exactly is SEO-friendly content writing?

I don’t believe that SEO-friendly content writing means content writing that improves your search engine rankings. Your search engine rankings depend on 200+ factors.

So, solely focusing on writing SEO-friendly content doesn’t help you much.

What is SEO-friendly content writing?

It is writing in a manner that it makes it easier for search engine crawlers to crawl your main content. Once the main content is crawled, the search engine algorithms should be able to make sense of your content. They should be able to make out what you are communicating. This, is SEO-friendly content writing.

Do I keep SEO in mind when writing content for my clients?

I definitely do.

Valuable content is necessary, but how I present that valuable content can have an impact on search engine rankings. Here are a few things I do when writing SEO content for my clients:

Include the main keyword in the title

There is a difference between the title and the headline. The title here means the string of text that appears in in the title bar of your browser window when you visit a website. This is the title:

Example of the website title containing keywords

Example of the website title containing keywords

By main keyword I don’t mean a single word. Target for a phrase of around 3-4 words. Nobody searches for a single word. People either ask a question or search for a phrase that contains a few words.

Many content marketing experts may tell you that it doesn’t really matter if you use your main keyword in your title, but it does. Whether the Google algorithm takes the keyword in the title into consideration are not, is another matter.

There is a logical reason why you must have your main keyword in your title.

Research has revealed that when a part of the search query that a user has just used appears as a hyperlink in the search results, the user is more likely to click the link.

This sends more people to your website or that particular link.

And if your link is relevant, this signals to Google that the rankings of this particular link should be raised.

Include the keywords in the meta description

I know, sometimes meta description text may not be a part of content writing, but many times my clients ask me to write the meta description too.

When you include your primary and secondary keywords in the meta description, Google highlights them.

Example of the meta description containing keywords

Example of the meta description containing keywords.

Again, this prompts more people to click your link and this in turn improves your bounce rate, which in turn, improves your SEO.

Mention the keywords within the first 100 words

I have arrived at this logic by trial and error.

When the search engine crawler comes to your website it may not get a chance to crawl your entire piece of content. Hence, if it does not encounter your main keywords, it may not associate the keywords with the body text.

Therefore, it is important that you mention your primary and secondary keywords within the first 100 words of your web page or blog post text.

Create a context though. Don’t just randomly use the words

Focus on writing answers to specific queries

Google loves the question-answer format. People ask questions and Google find the answers.

For example, you may have come to this post if you searched for “How do I write search engine friendly content?”

I’m not saying that you should always write in the format of question-answer, but this sort of content fares better than the usual content.

Write for search intent

If you want to know what is search intent, you may like to read my blog post on the same topic: Why search intent is most important when writing content for your website.

Search intent is a very big factor when Google is evaluating your content. It is the intention with which a search engine user uses a query when searching for something.

You can easily write content targeting specific search intents described in the above link. The more you write content targeting specific search intents, the more SEO-friendly your content is.

Write shorter sentences

Shorter sentences are easier to read. They are also easier for search engine algorithms to process, analyze and evaluate.

Using shorter sentences does not mean that you are a novice writer. In fact, it shows that you are a confident writer. You have got nothing to prove to anyone.

Well, that’s a different issue, but one of the biggest benefits of writing shorter sentences is that you express a single thought in a single sentence, which makes it easier even for your readers to read. It doesn’t tax the brain.

Use headings and subheadings

Screenshot of headings and subheadings

Screenshot of headings and subheadings.

Headings and subheadings amplify your primary and secondary keywords. They also make it easier to organize your content under various sections. Headings and subheadings also make your writing scannable.

Since you use your primary and secondary keywords in your headings and subheadings, the Google algorithm thinks that they must be important to your message.

Focus on longtail keywords

Shorter keywords are quite competitive. For example, if I try to optimize my writing for “content writer” or “content marketing services” it may be difficult for me to rank for these keywords because they are highly competitive, and many bigger companies are already ranking quite high for them.

So, what do I do?

I aim for something like “indisputable benefits of content marketing”. This makes it easier to rank my content.

You will be surprised to know that most of your traffic comes from longtail keywords.

Longtail keywords exist in the form of longer such queries. They are phrases that contain 3-4 words.

Link to other blog posts and web pages from your current blog post or web page

Contextually, though.

Suppose, I want to elaborate on the indisputable benefits of content marketing. If I have already published a blog post on it, I will be creating duplicate content needlessly if I explain the same thing again. Hence, I just say, in case you want to read about the indisputable benefits of content marketing.

This does not just make it easier to refer to your existing content, it also allows the search engine crawlers to come across your old links in case they haven’t yet been crawled.

Write short paragraphs

The logic is the same as writing short sentences. It is easier to read shorter paragraphs. Both for humans and the search engine algorithms.

In fact, there are many renowned content publishers who use just a single sentence in a paragraph, but you can easily use a couple of sentences.

Another benefit of writing shorter paragraphs is that they are easier to read on mobile phones.

Summarize using bulleted lists

Just as headings and subheadings make your content scannable, so do the bulleted lists. People tend to read the bulleted lists more than plain sentences and paragraphs.

In bulleted lists, you don’t even need to write complete sentences. You can sum up your points in monosyllables. In bulleted lists, the information is more important than how you write it.

These are the main points that I wanted to cover. If you take care of them, it can make it easier for you to write SEO-friendly content.

Can there be too much content publishing?

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Recently I unfollowed some content publishers who were (of course they were not aware of my annoyance) crowding my timeline and preventing me from seeing updates from other content publishers.

Normally when I tweet something or write an update for LinkedIn, I am either linking to my latest blog post or video, or I have something to share with my followers.

I thought those content publishers are publishing lots of content and hence, they are constantly tweeting about it. That was not the case. Some of the links that they posted were published back in 2016-17.

This is a good practice, in fact. I have nothing against that. I was just wondering that they were publishing lots of content.

This made me wonder further: as a service provider, how much content is too much content for your blog?

Recent studies have shown that on an average a business must publish around 16 blog posts. This Hubspot recommendation says that you should publish 3-4 new blog posts every week. This comes out to be one blog post every alternative day.

But, what about if someone publishes 3-4 blog posts every day?

Some people do it to improve their search engine rankings.

Is it a good thing to do?

I’m neither against it nor for it.

I mean, if I’m constantly publishing content, when do I get time to work on client assignments?

Of course, if I am a multi-employee business and if I have dedicated writers to keep on writing blog posts for my blog, I have no problem with that.

As long as content is of good quality, your search engine rankings definitely improve.

When you publish content multiple times in a day, Google crawls your website/blog multiple times in a day, sometimes, every 10-15 minutes.

This is good. It means your latest content begins to appear in search results quickly.

Is too much content beneficial for your business? Only if you are a publishing platform.

For example, instead of providing content writing and copywriting services, if I am simply publishing educational content on content writing and copywriting, it makes sense to publish as much content as possible.

On the other hand, as a one-person business, publishing lots of content can be counterintuitive.

Maybe in the beginning it makes sense to publish multiple blog posts every day. But once your search engine rankings have improved, you should slow down.

One blog post every day is a perfect way of maintaining your blog, I think.

Strategy for creating effective B2B pillar pages

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Content clusters and pillar pages for B2B enterprises

Content clusters and pillar pages for B2B enterprises.

What are pillar pages?

A few years ago I wrote a blog post explaining what are pillar pages: What are topic clusters and pillar pages? And how to use them to improve your SEO.

Moz recently published a whiteboard update titled A step-by-step strategy for B2B pillar pages.

Why pillar pages for B2B?

There is greater competition in B2B. Pillar pages increase your stickiness as there a greater number of topics to explore.

Your B2B customers and clients need to process more information before they can decide to do business with you because the stakes are higher.

Pillar pages constructed with the help of topic clusters prove that you have enough knowledge about your field.

Not just pillar pages, B2B customers and clients prefer to read white papers, case studies and even e-books. The more content you can provide them, the better it is for your business.

The whiteboard from Moz update is primarily focused at helping you improve your search engine rankings to creating B2B pillar pages.

Obviously, it involves studying your keywords and creating a proper URL structure.

As I always tell my clients, when it comes to researching keywords for your business, don’t think in terms of what or how you think of your business; think in terms of how your prospective customers and clients think of your business.

Address their concerns. For that, you need to understand their language. What words do they use when you talk about your business? This becomes the basis of your keywords.

Now that I have read the script of the whiteboard, it doesn’t contain lots of good information. Anyway, I will try to cover some topics.

Making more sense of topic clusters and pillar pages

Although these days I have been repeatedly writing posts on why I prefer smaller blog posts, when it comes to improving your search engine rankings, pillar pages hefted by topic clusters definitely have an advantage over smaller, standalone blog posts and web pages.

In fact, topic clusters are exactly multiple short blog posts that are a part of a bigger pillar page.

Pillar pages are used to improve your search engine rankings for a broader topic. You choose a topic that may have 10-15 subtopics.

You cover all these 10-15 subtopics in individual blog posts – this forms your topic cluster. You can interlink these topic list of pages or blog posts.

Then you have a pillar page, or a pillar blog post that links to all these cluster links.

You can create a pillar page by writing small intros about all these 10-15 subtopics and then link to them.

What is the benefit of creating topic clusters and pillar pages?

The benefit is multifaceted. In terms of creating content, it is easier to create a topic cluster because you can publish individual blog posts and web pages on smaller topics.

Managing the flow is easier when you write and publish segmented content. It’s like writing smaller chapters of a book. Every blog post belonging to the topic cluster can be around 400-800 words, which are easier to write.

You can create the pillar page or the pillar post in the beginning and then keep updating it with new intros and your links. It can be an evolutionary exercise. Don’t rush over it. Take your time.

Pillar pages and their related topic clusters improve your search engine rankings in the long run.

How to create topic clusters and pillar pages for B2B enterprise?

Pillar pages and topic clusters are mostly related with improving search engine rankings, but they shouldn’t just be created for that. Pillar pages and topic clusters, especially when you write them for your B2B enterprise, also increase engagement and conversion.

They help you establish your authority. So, don’t just try to cram as many keywords as possible into your topic clusters and pillar pages. Have a plan to create a knowledge base. Here are a few things you can do to create effective topic clusters and pillar pages for your B2B enterprise:

Use a main pillar page topic

This could be something like “Step-by-step guide to creating a B2B content marketing strategy”.

It is obvious that this topic needs to cover a broad range of subtopics such as digital marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, PPC campaigning, multiple format content publishing, quality content writing, creating a publishing calendar, and others.

The broad topic doesn’t have to be exactly the keyword you want to optimize for. In the above topic, maybe you want to optimize for “B2B content marketing services”. But, such a topic may not attract enough traffic and besides, it might be quite difficult if other businesses have already created content clusters around this topic.

You will need to be creative. A pillar page topic shouldn’t be something that you must come up with in a hurry. Spend some time. Brainstorm. Do keyword research. Then create a topic that would attract people to your content cluster.

Create smaller posts containing your keywords

Within your B2B content marketing, there are many subtopics such as B2B digital marketing, or B2B email marketing, or B2B search engine optimization, and such. Write and publish individual blog posts on these topics and then link to them from your main pillar page.

Creating a pillar page or a content cluster may be a long-term undertaking

This is going to be a comprehensive project. Don’t be in any hurry. It is like building a structure that is going to generate business for you for years to come.

Do enough research. Write quality content. Deliver maximum quality. Don’t try to exploit some sort of search engine vulnerability by creating random content on chosen keywords.

Remember that your bounce rate can affect your search engine rankings. Bounce rate depends on how people interact with your content. Keep this in mind. Writing and publishing inferior quality content will be counter-productive.

Well, I intended to write a short blog post with just an intro to the Moz whiteboard update. But then, when I started writing, I noticed that the whiteboard doesn’t have enough information and it is a simple regurgitation of often-repeated topics. Hence, I ended up writing more words than I had initially intended.