Factor in machine learning when content writing

Content writing for machine learning and AI.

The search engines are increasingly being powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to this interview of Fabrice Canal, Principal Program Manager at Bing, Microsoft.

So, keywords are not important?

For a few years, keywords are going to be important because to be able to ignore the keywords completely and just focus on what your message intends to deliver, the AI will need to be much smarter.

Nonetheless, even at this nascent stage, your SEO depends more on factoring in machine learning and searcher intent and less on the keywords and the search terms.

When you genuinely want to improve your search engine rankings – mostly customers come to your website and not random searchers – you need to know the intent of your average visitor.

I will give you my own example: I publish content for two reasons:

Attract people who will pay me for my content writing services.
Attract people who would like to link to my content, share it on their social media profiles, and in general, help me spread my content as far as possible.

I keep it 60:40 – 60% of my content is for spreading information and 40% is to tell people what I can do with my content writing services.

How important is searcher intent for content writing effectiveness?

The term “searcher intent” was introduced in the wake of the BERT update from Google. It stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. It is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. It not only helps the machines to understand what the words in a sentence stand for, but also the context and the nuance.

Neil Patel on his blog gives very good “Before” and “After” examples of how the BERT update affects the search results.

The point is, the search intent of the search engine user is carefully analysed by the background AI to show appropriate results.

After all, people should be able to find information they are looking for instead of what search engines like Google and Bing think people are trying to find.

Therefore, Fabrice Canal says that the ranking algorithms at the search engines are constantly evolving and the machines learn on their own what people are searching and what search results they need.

What is search intent?

I have explained it multiple times on my website, but I will quickly recap.

Knowing the searcher intent means knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for. The search terms need to be interpreted according to their need and not according to just the words being used.

Thanks to BERT when you search for “the benefits of apple” the search engine completely ignores the Apple company which, previously, it did not. All the top results are about the benefits of eating apples.

On the other hand, if you search for “I have an apple” Google gets confused and starts showing results from various “Apple” products and reviews. It is not taking an inference from my previous search and then sticking to the fruit instead of the tech company.

Anyway, knowing the searcher intent during content writing keeps you focused and helps you write content your target customers and clients are looking for.

Again, I will come back to my own example.

Suppose someone searches for “need a content writer”.

This becomes confusing for the search engine. Is the search about the qualities that are needed in a content writer? Does it mean “I need a content writer”? Does it mean “do you need a content writer?”

Big difference. When someone looks for “I need a content writer” it is a person who needs a content writer.

When someone looks for “do you need a content writer?” question is being asked whether someone needs a content writer.

These are very subtle things, but they can have a big impact on your search engine rankings. Even if the rankings of your core content pieces don’t fluctuate much, the sort of traffic that you get may not generate you much business.

What do I do to solve this problem?

I solve this problem by writing highly targeted pages. For example, instead of trying to target something like “need a content writer” or “I need a content writer” I try to write about “content writer needed for a web design agency” or, “looking for content writer for the real estate company”.

This brings us to the discussion of using longtail keywords. These keywords or search terms may appear long, and you may think that very few people may use them, but at least these people will be clearheaded and precise.

For example, when someone searches for “looking for a content writer for email marketing” and then comes to my website, I know that the person is actually looking for someone who can write email marketing campaigns.

You will get higher conversion rate.

The topic of this post was content writing for machine learning.

Search engine engineers at Google and Bing suggest that don’t worry much about keywords. With every new update, keywords begin to matter less. What matters more is the essence of your message.

Hence, focus on quality. Focus on relevance. Focus on searcher intent.

How to be courageous when writing content for your business

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How to be courageous when writing for your business.

When you are writing for your business (or when your content writer is writing), you want to play safe for obvious reasons. As it is you want to attract clients. If you piss off even those clients who are interested in doing business with you, this is not a good content writing and content marketing strategy.

In his latest update, Brian Clark asks, Are you a courageous content creator?

By being courageous what he means is having the courage to go against the tide. It means doing your own thing whether people agree with you or not. It means not giving in to pressure and sticking to your ground provided you are sure of what you’re doing.

How do you apply this attitude when writing content for your business? How do you become “courageous”?

When you are writing for your business, don’t always try to please your customers and clients. The purpose of writing for your blog or your website is to inform and engage. Give them the right information even if it means, at least at that moment, they decide not to do business with you.

For example, there are some clients who don’t need my content writing services.

A few months ago, a client sent me a “rough draft” to improve. The draft was so well written that I thought it would be a travesty if I meddled with it. I told the client that she shouldn’t get the draft written by me as she herself had written it so beautifully. She just needed to make a few changes here and there and it was perfect to be published.

Initially the client disagreed simply because she thought that she is not a trained content writer and she mostly deals with software. A good thing was, she trusted me as a writer and when I told her that her initial draft was quite well-written, she acquiesced and decided to publish it on her website. I lost an assignment and as a result, some money, but I had the satisfaction that I had been honest with the client.

Coming back to the original topic, how to be courageous when you are writing for your business? Since I don’t mean to write a lengthy post, here are a few things you can keep in mind:

Believe in your abilities to deliver and write with that mentality – it will show through your writing.
Don’t avoid disagreeing with popular belief. For example, I don’t believe that you necessarily have to publish very lengthy blog posts for better search engine rankings. Just focus on quality and regularity and your organic search engine rankings begin to improve.
Always come up with something new, not just for the heck of it, but because you have some good ideas to share.
Be yourself.

Some good thoughts to ponder when you are writing content for your business website or business blog.

TOFU MOFU BOFU way to higher organic search engine rankings

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Improving organic search engine rankings

Image source

I know, the title seems funny, but I will come to that later.

We all want to improve our organic search engine rankings.

“Organic” means natural. Instead of having to pay Google for search engine visibility, you want your links to appear naturally in the search results.

In fact, the entire concept of SEO revolves around improving your organic search engine rankings.

Do you feel that despite publishing blog posts and webpages on your website, your search engine rankings don’t improve much?

Now and then they show some spikes but overall, your rankings and consequently, your organic search engine traffic, remains somewhat less than desired.

Why do you think this happens?

This Readwrite blog post says that it happens because you are not writing and publishing your content according to TOFU, MOFU and BOFU.

No, these are not names for three brothers living in a Mogadishu village. They stand for “Top of the Funnel”, “Middle of the Funnel” and “Bottom of the Funnel”, respectively.

These are the three stages for which you have to separately write and publish content on your website and if you’re not publishing content targeting these funnels, there is little chance that you are going to improve your organic search engine rankings.

Why simply publishing a blog doesn’t improve your organic search engine rankings much?

Blogging is great.

In fact, recently I wrote a blog post titled How does blogging help you grow your business?

The problem is not with blogging.

You need your business blog to increase awareness and to engage your visitors.

Having a business blog and maintaining it diligently is indisputable.

But what the above Readwrite blog post says is, don’t just focus on publishing blog posts.

They may give you a sense of achievement and you may think that you’re doing something important for your business, but when it comes to improving your organic search engine rankings for your SEO, your progress is quite slow.

The progresses certainly there – after all, there is a reason publishing a business blog is highly recommended – but not as good as it should be.

Blogging belongs to the TOFU part of your content marketing strategy – it raises awareness about your business. About your brand.

For example, I regularly publish my content writing blog.

Through the blog, I share lots of important information about the benefits of blogging, content writing, content marketing, email marketing and social media marketing.

I also share tips on how to write content better to improve your SEO and other aspects of writing and publishing content.

This is fine. But am I able to attract hardcore clients who would give me bigger projects?

This is where the role of other funnels comes in.

People come to your website for different reasons.

I don’t want to attract just those people who want to write better content and want to blog better or those who want to improve their SEO with quality content writing.

I want to attract people who are looking for a reliable content writing service for their business.

They want to be reassured.

They want to know if I can write high-caliber content.

For this they need case studies, white papers and other authoritative materials.

They also need an analysis of how I can actually help them improve their engagement rate and organic search engine rankings.

More importantly, how cost-effective and efficient is my content writing service?

To achieve this, I need to target all the categories of the funnel.

Hence, if you want to improve your organic search engine rankings in the sense that you can generate more business, you must write and publish content targeting different funnels.

How to build your personal brand on LinkedIn

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Building a personal brand on LinkedIn.

Although I mostly write about content writing, since I have been following a busy schedule, sometimes I don’t get to update my blog for long durations. This begins to have a negative impact on my search engine rankings. So, I have decided, whenever I come across some interesting piece of content that is related to content marketing and digital marketing, I will quickly mention it on my blog.

This is about tips on building your personal brand on LinkedIn.

100% of my clients come from 4 sources: Google, LinkedIn, referrals from my existing clients, and my newsletter.

I must confess that I don’t spend much time on LinkedIn. I simply post my blogs over there. I don’t spend much time going over my timeline and engaging with other LinkedIn users.

Nonetheless, I completely believe that it is an important platform and if a day comes when Google deletes my website from its database, I will be able to rely on LinkedIn.

It is a network for professionals, entrepreneurs, and companies. This is a good thing because when you are engaging with people on LinkedIn, they know that by the end of the day, you are seeking work. You are there to promote yourself as a personal brand or you represent your business and you want to increase your sales.

How do you build your personal brand on LinkedIn?

There is nothing new in the advice that is given in the above link, but it is always better to revise and reorient yourself.

The first advice is, as I have written multiple times on my website also, write and publish content that is valuable to your readers. Increase their awareness.

Check out: Content writing services for publishing blog posts on LinkedIn.

This goes without saying that you need to continuously publish useful content on LinkedIn. This is something I don’t do because, as I have mentioned in my first paragraph, I find publishing on my own blog itself a bit difficult these days. So whenever I get some time, I give preference to my own blog. But, if you have the budget or the manpower, certainly publish quality content on LinkedIn.

The purpose of quality content writing for LinkedIn is that you become known as an authority. When people continuously encounter useful and knowledgeable content from you on LinkedIn – which is a professional platform – they begin to recognize your expertise and your professional position is consolidated.

Share content from other influencers

Sharing content from other influencers solves multiple purposes. It fills up your timeline with useful content because you can safely assume that the influencers in your profession write and publish quality content.

It is easier to go through the timelines of other influencers than coming up with your own topics, doing research and then writing and publishing those topics. Sharing content from other influencers hardly takes 15-20 minutes every day.

When you share their content regularly, they begin to appreciate your gesture and when it comes to sharing YOUR content on their timelines, they won’t hesitate.

Publish articles on LinkedIn

Articles are different from posts. Articles are bigger. It is like publishing full-fledged blog posts on your own blog. The above-linked article from Entrepreneur.com says that only 0.2% users on LinkedIn publish articles using the platform. This means there is less noise and there is enough scope to increase your visibility by tapping into this unique medium that is used less by publishers.

When people hire you or buy from you based on your personal brand, it is very important that you have a formidable presence on one of the best professional networks in the world.

Many people hire me for my content writing services, but the references that I get from my existing clients mostly come because of my reputation. This is a small part of personal brand building. They wouldn’t refer me if they were not happy with my service.

How does blogging help you grow your business?

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How business blogging grows your business.

More than a decade-and-a-half ago, blogging transitioned from a mere hobby or an AdSense money making tool to business branding platform.

Almost every mainstream business has a blog these days.

You may like to read: 10 Beginners Tips for Business Blogging.

Most businesses claim that they publish blogs regularly because they want to provide useful information to their visitors and customers & clients and also to keep them engaged.

This is a very good reason, but in reality, most of the businesses publish blogs because blogging improves their search engine rankings. Hence, it is a multi-pronged benefit.

In this blog post I would quickly like to discuss how blogging helps you grow your business. The post is inspired by another blog post published on Entrepreneur.com, titled 5 ways to grow your business through blogging.

Blogging improves your SEO

There are multiple reasons why blogging is good for your SEO, assuming you blog regularly. Here are some reasons:

Blogging platforms like WordPress are structured in such a manner that they make your content search engine friendly.
Individual blog post is also structured in a search engine friendly manner as it has the main title, headings and subheadings and categorization.
Writing and publishing new and fresh content is easier using a blogging tool like WordPress and hence, you don’t need a web designer to add new posts or edit existing posts. It means there is a greater incentive to publish regularly and without much fuss.
Since you can write and publish new and fresh content you are constantly providing Google and other search engines new content to crawl, index and rank.
Search engine crawlers can access every single blog post from your homepage (provided you haven’t taken extra measures to prevent this from happening).
Interlinking to other blog posts makes it easier for search engine crawlers to jump to different portions of your business blog.
Since you’re constantly publishing interesting and useful information, other bloggers and website owners have a reason to link to you, improving your SEO in the process.

So, writing and publishing regularly on your business blog is good for your SEO and when your search engine rankings improve, especially when they improve for your targeted keywords and search terms, your business grows.

Business blogging increases your direct traffic

One of the biggest benefits of regularly publishing a business blog is that it increases your search engine traffic, but additionally, it also increases your direct traffic.

As mentioned above, other bloggers and website owners link to your blog or individual blog posts.

For example, American Express publishes Open Forum and I have linked to this business blog multiple times from my website.

Hence, when you regularly publish valuable and link-worthy content many high traffic websites link to your website or blog, and in this way, you get direct traffic from there.

Sometimes even mainstream journalists find the information on your website useful and from their articles, they link to your website, generating more direct traffic in the process.

Business blogging increases your newsletter subscribers

There are multiple reasons why your newsletter subscribers increase when you publish valuable and useful content on your business blog. These are

They don’t want to miss out when you publish fresh content.
More people coming to your blog through search engine traffic as well as direct traffic means more people subscribing to your newsletter.
The blog content can be repurposed as newsletter content, attracting more subscribers.

Publishing a regular newsletter has proven to be one of the most potent marketing tools to grow your business.

Business blogging increases your social media engagement

When you publish a blog post on your blog you can share the link on your social media profiles. This in turn creates buzz.

There are many businesses who simply post content directly on their social media timelines. There is no harm in it but when you first publish useful and authoritative content on your business blog and then you encourage people to talk about your content on social media, it establishes your authority and when you establish your authority, people develop interest in your capabilities and they pay more attention to what you say.

How to build a successful business blog?

To build a successful business blog, you need to do the following:

Write high-quality, useful blog posts.
Stick to a publishing schedule.
Publish regularly – maybe three blog posts every week.
Market your content – use your social media profiles and your newsletter to let people know that you are publishing new blog posts.

The most fundamental thing you can do is publish regularly. This I have observed across the spectrum. Even if the design is not great. Even if you’re not very active on social media. Provided you publish great content and publish it regularly, your business blog is going to succeed.