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Simon Sinek wrote a complete book exhorting businesses to find the “why” of their existence. The same holds true for individuals. Why do you do what you do? Why do you work as an engineer? Why do you work as a graphic designer? Why are you in politics?
And the same holds true when you are writing. Know the why of your writing. I’m not talking about the larger picture, I’m talking about a particular blog post or a particular article or even a particular social media update that you’re going to write: why are you writing it?
We all have a general answer. You want to improve your search engine rankings. You want to “engage” your customers or clients. You want to publish fresh content on your website. You want to maintain visibility on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter. You want to regularly reach the inbox of your email subscribers.
These are larger whys. Important, but vague, and cannot be achieved unless you know why you are writing this particular blog post or social media update.
So, the next time you sit down to write something or you take out your mobile phone to write a quick update, think of the why.
What impact do you want to make? What is new you’re going to add? How is it going to help your readers or your followers? How do you want to portray yourself through this piece of writing or this update?
Write as many whys as possible. The more whys you can figure out, the more impactful will be your writing.
When I use “very” before difficult, I mean a topic I have no clue about. Even if I do research, I may not be able to come up with a piece of content that delivers something convincingly and clearly.
Recently I did exactly that. I worked on a topic I wasn’t familiar with. I’m not going to mention it because then the client is going to know which topic I’m talking about (some of my clients read my blog).
I could have said no but I am the only writer going for him. He had given me multiple topics and I had written on all the topics but the one I’m talking about.
I procrastinated for a couple of days but then the project could no longer be delayed. I worked on the document for two hours and I must say, I was impressed.
This wasn’t the first time I was stuck. I am writing for my clients everyday and not all the topics are easy. Some of them are difficult.
What makes a content writing assignments difficult?
There are two ways a content writing assignment can be difficult.
The topic is totally alien. I have no clue what even the title means. I don’t feel like asking the client because then he or she will get uneasy thinking that I may not be able to write.
The topic is familiar but no good information is available on the web. The current content published by other authors doesn’t impress me. The research data is not there.
Very few times I have had to turn down the assignment because it was too hard for me to take up. I can’t even remember.
Yes, I remember recently I turned down an assignment not because it was difficult, but because I thought the client was writing it better than I could. She sent me an outline which in itself was exceptionally written. Once I explained this to her, she agreed, and she was also impressed by my honesty.
Anyway, coming back to the topic, with a little bit of research, I can find the needed information and do a job that meets my standards. But sometimes, the topic is completely out of my league. How do I handle such topics?
Here are a few things I do:
Remind myself that this is not the first time
Starting writing on a difficult topic is the most difficult. It’s because you don’t know what to write. You don’t even know how to begin. How do you write the first sentence? And if you cannot write the first sentence, how do you bring yourself to starting to write?
Have I been in such situations before? Multiple times. So many times I have felt that I won’t be able to complete a content writing assignment because it is too difficult or the information available is too little, but by the time I’m through with the document, it turns out to be a great job.
When I cannot begin, I remind myself that. I remind myself that I have been in such a situation innumerable times. Somehow, I just need to start and once I start, I will finish. As far as I can remember, this has always worked. I cannot recall the occasions when it has not worked. In fact, even right now I’m going through the same phase. I need to start working on an e-book which I’m finding difficult. I need to start writing it. But I know that once I start, I will be able to complete it.
Start preparing an outline
This might be an extension of the above point, but preparing an outline always helps. I start writing random words and sentences in bullet points. This works both at psychological level as well as practical level.
I tell myself: at least I’m doing something. I’m not wasting my time going through social media timelines or spending time on another wasteful activity. I’m working on the project. If I need to write 1500 words, I have written 50 words. That is some work done.
When you’re randomly thinking, lots of useful thoughts come to your mind. If you’re not putting them down, you often lose these thoughts. When I’m randomly writing sentences and words, I’m preserving the thoughts that are coming to my mind. These thoughts can then be used to write the complete piece. Otherwise, once lost, these thoughts rarely come back.
Sometimes these notes are so precise that I simply need to expand them and by the time I’m done with that, I have completed my project.
Have a system to save research material
This is a long-term strategy but over the years, I have collected so much material using OneNote (Evernote before that) and Google Keep that once I start going through it, there is not a chance when I don’t get a new idea or when my thoughts don’t get unblocked.
I’m not saying I always get the information that I need from my saved notes, but they get my motor started.
The gist is, start writing. After a while, it starts coming on its own.
In most of the cases, I don’t. The list of keywords is given to me by my clients. I find keywords when I am also helping a client with content strategy.
Whenever I’m writing content I advise my clients not to cram too many keywords in a single web page or blog post. That dilutes the main focus of what you’re trying to convey.
Nonetheless, when I need to find the right keywords for writing SEO content, how do I do that?
There are many tools for that, but the best tool is common sense. After that, you can take help of the Google search engine.
First, you need to know your primary keyword. For example, if your topic is “How to improve your SEO with content writing?” you have a fair idea of what you’re trying to achieve here. You want people who want to know how to improve your SEO with content writing, finds your link.
When you are trying to improve your SEO, there is a thin line that divides people who want to pay you and people who just want to learn something. The above topic, “How to improve your SEO with content writing?” is targeting people who want to learn something. They may also want to hire someone who knows how to improve SEO with content writing, but as far as the topic goes, it is being written to target those people who want to learn how to improve SEO with content writing.
This is a big phrase. Targeting big phases longtail keywords is always beneficial. Not many people may use them but they definitely help you improve your search engine rankings by zeroing in on those people were using exactly the phrase.
After that, there are two more keywords you can focus on, namely, “improve your SEO” and “content writing”.
You may also like to include “improve your search engine rankings” and “website content writing”.
Google also makes its own suggestions. Search for the term “how to improve your SEO with content writing” and see what other suggestions Google comes up with. Here is what I have found:
best practices for SEO content writing
how to write SEO friendly articles
SEO writing for beginners
and some unrelated keywords.
I also have a browser plug-in called “Keywords Everywhere”. It uses the Google database and some other sources to throw up related keywords and also the keywords other people may have used for the same sort of search. Right now, for the search term used above, it is not giving me much different options than what Google has displayed, but for many other keywords, it definitely gives more options.
There are many commercial SEO keyword research tools such as Ahrefs, Serpstat (this, I have used the paid version), SEMRush (more of a content ideas finder rather than a keyword finder), LongTailPro (have used the paid version for a few months but then discontinued) and even Moz.
I have never used the paid keyword research tools for my clients because there are very few clients who actually want to pay me for keyword research. Yes, they do want me to find the keywords, but when it comes to paying for the time that I may spend, they prefer to do their own keyword research, which is fine. So, most of the tools mentioned above, I have used for myself, to improve my own search engine rankings.
Many people heavily recommend the Google Ads keyword tool. Previously it was also called the Google AdWords keyword tool. Since it allows you to find keywords you can bid on, so naturally, Google presents you with an extensive list of alternative keywords to your main set of keywords.
To find keyword alternatives, you can enter 3-4 keywords and then it generates a big list. To novices it may be confusing because you don’t want to use all the keywords. Since Google charges for every click, it is but natural that the company would want you to bid on as many keyword combinations as possible, this is just to get some ideas for your own content writing needs. You need to make your own judgement regarding this.
Sometimes I use Google Analytics to find what keywords people are using when they find my website or my blog. This tells me what sort of traffic I’m attracting. If I’m attracting traffic for all the wrong keywords, I make changes to my content accordingly. Hence, Google Analytics can tell you if you’re targeting wrong keywords through your content.
This is pretty much how I find keywords for SEO content writing.
Want Google Discover to find and showcase your content?
Google Discover is not exactly a new feature. Until recently it was called Google Feed. People have been using it for curation and content discovery.
What is Google Discover?
What is Google Discover?
Do you use the Google app whose bar appears on the home screen of your mobile phone? If you tap on it and then tap on the Google icon at the top left corner, you enter the Google Discover area.
Discover new information and inspiration with Search, no query required.
In the same post (published in September 24, 2018) Google says that 800 million people are using this feature.
Instead of searching, you let Google “discover” quality content for you. Just so that it doesn’t completely take over, Google Discover allows you to enter topics in the Settings area.
It gives you suggestions based on your search history and you can also enter topics manually.
Once you are done with that, it automatically discovers new content according to your preferences.
It acts like your social media feed. You come across interesting content instead of actively finding information.
It reminds me of Flipboard. In Flipboard in the Settings section, you can add topics that you would like to track.
It is a passive information consumption. Google calls it “queryless search”.
People mostly use it to find latest news. I used it on some occasions for the same purpose.
Gradually I have also started using it to find content writing and content marketing related information.
Google Discover is available on all Android devices through the standard Google app.
If you’re logged into your Google account, you can also use Google Discover through your browser by going to google.com.
How does Google Discover work?
Google Discover uses AI and machine learning.
Google Discover uses two mechanisms to find what content you want to find without searching for it:
The basic thought process behind these mechanisms is that over a period of time Google traces your behavior on the Internet – what type of content you consume and what type of search queries you use on Google – and then tailors your feeds on Google Discover.
This is a highly advanced technology that Google has been working for many years.
The basic idea seems to be like this: for information you would proactively like to find, you can use the search function, otherwise, let Google find useful and interesting content for you based on your content consumption history.
You can further help the Google artificial intelligence to streamline your feeds by selecting “show more” or “show less” content from certain publishers.
Some also say that Google wants to keep the conventional search activity for advertising purposes (mostly promoted results show up) whereas for other content needs, it finds the content for you.
Content visibility on Google Discover may have a shorter shelf life
Remember that it’s a feed. A feed tends to have the latest information.
For how long your content remains visible on the feed also depends on the amount of content being published in your niche.
For example, news articles are constantly being updated. Hence, if you are a news publisher, your content may stay in front of your users for, let’s say, a couple of days.
But, if I’m tracking something like content writing or content marketing and if Google cannot find content worthy of showcasing, this sort of content may stay longer on the feeds.
How do you increase your chances of being featured on Google Discover through quality content?
You may wonder, if people are merely stumbling into interesting content without looking for it, why bother?
After all, when you target searcher intent, you want to write content for people who are actively looking for your business rather than those who are passively just looking for information.
As someone who is writing professional content all the time, I feel when your content gets featured in Google Discover, it increases your visibility for informational search intent.
If I want to look for a content writing service or a professional content writer, it doesn’t make sense to go to Google Discover and assume that Google is going to find a content writer or a copywriter for my business.
For this, I need to actively query the search engine with my specific requirement, something like “looking for an SEO content writer”.
On the other hand, if I simply want to find interesting content on the topics of content writing or SEO copywriting, instead of going to the trouble of entering the query and sifting through scores of results, I would rather leave it to Google to find the best content for me.
So, how do you encourage your chances of being featured on the Google Discover feed?
Here are a few things you can take care of when you are writing and publishing content:
Publish content keeping the mobile readers in mind
Google Discover is on mobile apps. Hence, write your content accordingly.
Write short, crisp sentences. Be to the point. Organize your content in a manner that it is easy to read on a mobile phone.
Write and publish content that is easy to categorize
Remember that the feeds in Google Discover are based on the topics that people ask Google to track.
For example, “content writing”, “copywriting”, “SEO”, “content marketing” or “space exploration”. These are well-defined topics.
If you are writing something on content writing and you want it to be featured in Google Discover, make sure that your entire narrative revolves around the topic of content writing.
Write and publish useful, purposeful content
This advice also applies to general SEO, but it is more important if you want to feature on Google Discover. There are 2 reasons.
Suppose your content gets featured on Google Discover for a day. People tap on your link but then within a few seconds, come back to Google Discover.
Google assumes that you don’t have valuable content and kicks off the process of removing your content from the feed.
The second reason is, if people discover your content and mark it as “show less” not just your current content piece will disappear from Google Discover but even your future content pieces will have less chances of appearing in the feed.
Use good quality images when publishing content
Featured images help highlight your content. Even if your headline does not draw the audience, your image may.
Remember that Google Discover is a personalized feed. People want to see content that is highly relevant to their content consumption needs.
Don’t try to barge into the feeds simply because you want some exposure for your content hoping that it will generate business for you. This will be counter-productive.
If you want to optimize your content writing for Google Discover, focus on quality and relevance and of course, mobile friendliness.
For better search engine rankings, you must publish content regularly.
It has been observed that one should publish at least 16 blog posts or other pieces of content every month to sustain a better position vis-à-vis SEO.
B2B and B2C blog publishing frequency impact on traffic.
The HubSpot study mentioned in this blog post makes an interesting observation: There wasn’t much difference in traffic between websites that published on an average one blog post every month and between 4-5, but then, the websites that publish on an average 11 blog posts every month get six times more traffic than those who publish fewer blog posts. The difference is starker in the B2C segment.
Although, regularly publishing content is great for your content depth and consequently, search engine rankings, there are certain content writing mistakes that are bad for your SEO instead of improving it.
If you continue to commit these mistakes and on top of that, if you continue to publish your content, your digging yourself into a hole from which it will be difficult to come out.
Is regular content writing a risky proposition if you can be penalized by Google
Is regularly publishing content risky?
This is the most obvious question that must come up in your mind if I talk about content writing mistakes and how they can negatively affect your search engine optimization efforts.
You may think, if you publish content regularly, and if inadvertently you are committing these mistakes, are you undoing whatever gains you have made so far?
Should you stop then?
It is up to you.
How often you should publish depends on whom you are talking to, but if you want to improve your search engine rankings as fast as possible, you must publish fresh content on your website or blog daily.
The problem with not publishing content is that if you are not publishing, your competition certainly is.
Just as you are trying to out-rank the others, the others are trying to out-rank you.
Just as you want to improve your search engine rankings, the others too want to improve them.
Hence, the question is not whether you should publish content or not, the question is, how much you should publish.
This is my personal experience: publishing lousy content is better than publishing no content but if you get into a policy of publishing lousy content (inferior quality, thin content with plagiarism issues) regularly, you can get your website blacklisted.
But these are extreme case scenarios. An average website owner or blog publisher knows that plagiarism is a big no-no.
The same is the case with duplicate content.
Although clients who contact me know the risks involved with duplicate content and they specifically mention that their content must be unique and original.
I am saying this because no one wants to commit content writing mistakes knowingly and whatever mistakes are committed, they are either due to ignorance or overzealousness.
Penalization happens in extreme cases.
The negative impact of these content writing mistakes on your SEO can be so slow that you don’t even realize that your rankings are going down for a few months.
It’s only when you view the traffic graph in Google Analytics for 3-4 months that you realize that the slope has been downwards.
It helps to avoid these content writing mistakes. They are very easy to avoid. I’m listing seven such mistakes below.
1. Ignoring search intent when coming up with topics
Here is a small video that explains what is search intent:
Search intent is the “reason” why a search engine user does a search on Google (or any other search engine).
You should be clear in your mind whom you are writing for.
I’m writing this blog post for people who want to avoid content writing mistakes that can harm their SEO.
The objective is clear.
If the objective is not clear, if you have no clue about the right search intent, you are going to end up publishing lots of content with no clear purpose.
2. Not compiling a list of keywords to be used or using too many keywords
I know, the concept of keywords has become a clichéd topic.
Everybody advises you to use the right keywords.
There is an entire industry around helping you find the right keywords for your individual web pages and blog posts.
Compiling a list of your keywords can be easy and difficult depending on the search intent you are trying to target, as mentioned above.
The keywords for this blog post can be “content writing mistakes”, “content writing mistakes to avoid”, “what is bad for my SEO”, and so on.
I often suggest that you have one or maximum two primary keywords and then a collection of five or so secondary, LSI or longtail keywords.
A big problem I have seen with many clients is that they want to use as many keywords as possible in a single blog post.
This doesn’t work.
Choose a single keyword. Choose a related keyword. Then choose a few LSI and long keywords. That’s it.
3. Not writing mobile friendly content
Many years ago, Google switched to “mobile-first” indexing.
This means, when Google comes to crawl your website, it first looks for its mobile version and it first ranks your website according to its mobile version.
If you don’t have a mobile version, this is bad for your SEO.
If you have a mobile version but your content is not mobile friendly, then again, it is bad for your SEO.
When writing content, write simple, shorter sentences.
Simple and shorter sentences are easier to read on mobile phones.
Even for the Google crawler, no matter how advanced AI and machine learning have become, learning shorter sentences is easier.
Capture one thought in one sentence.
Unlike conventional writing, avoid using multiple sentences in a single paragraph.
This reminds me: a few months ago a client was mad at the way I have written content for him.
“Are you writing poetry or blog posts?” his message screamed.
He was referring to the single-sentence paragraphs that I had used because I wanted to give him mobile friendly content.
4. Just focusing on improving search engine rankings
Yes, we all want better SEO but if this is your singular goal, you are going to be neither here nor there.
In Hindi, there is a famous saying, “Duvidha mein dono gaye, maya mili na Ram”.
When you have wrong priorities in life, you neither get worldly comforts and wealth, nor Ram (proximity to God).
Similarly, when you are just chasing SEO through content writing, you neither improve your SEO nor get more business.
Some years ago, Google started using human intelligence to evaluate your content and as a result, decide your search engine rankings.
In this video I explain how your rankings and quality content are interrelated:
Google has modified its ranking algorithm in such a manner that unless actual human beings find your content valuable, you’re not going to enjoy higher search engine rankings.
And anyway, what do you achieve out of search engine traffic if this traffic does not convert?
What is your goal?
Do you just want to improve your search engine rankings and then feel good about it, or you want to generate more business from your website?
Obviously, you want to generate more business.
Higher search engine rankings are just a means to an end: more business needs.
If you simply focus on improving your search engine rankings without paying attention to the meaningfulness of the content that your writing, you’re going to get yourself trapped in a vicious loop.
Make quality content your priority.
Have a clear purpose.
Provide value to your readers.
Only then, think about improving your search engine rankings.
5. Not making your content scannable
Scannable content means, even without having to read everything on your web page or blog post, people should be able to make out what you’re trying to say.
Hence, use headings and subheadings to organize different sections of the main messages that you want to highlight.
If you have multiple points, use bulleted lists.
Of course, as I have already written above, shorter sentences make it easier for your readers to read your content.
6. Not using your keywords and hence, not talking about the main topic within the first 100 words
There is a reason why most of the SEO experts advise you to use your main keywords within the first 100 words of your webpage or blog post.
Google is not always going to crawl your web page or blog post.
The crawler has just a few seconds to make sense of your content.
Sometimes there is lots of source code before it can even reach your main content (for example, you are using lots of WordPress plug-ins).
The connection may get lost before it can crawl everything.
The point is, there is no guarantee that Google is going to access your entire link.
Hence, you should pack everything important within the first 100 words.
At least use your main keywords creatively so that the Google crawler can make sense of your main topic.
Then, even if the crawler leaves your web page halfway, it will have some idea of what you’re trying to convey.
7. Not taking your meta title and description seriously
Examples of meta title and description.
Recently, a client paid me separately for writing meta titles and descriptions for 25 web pages.
Your meta title and meta description appear in search results.
They also appear when someone posts your link on his or her social media timeline.
Your title is very important.
People are prompted to click your link on Google when your title is compelling.
In the search results, if your click-through rate is low, you begin to lose your current rankings.
Hence, if you want to improve your present search engine rankings, you need to convince people to click your link when they come across it in search results.
This happens through a compelling title.
The same goes with your meta description.
This is the text that appears below your listing.
People first read your title, and then for extra convincing, they read your description. Then they click the link.
Since they are not visible to your visitors when they visit your web page or blog post (because they are part of your source code) , sometimes, clients don’t take these two attributes seriously, but they are very important and they can have a big impact on your overall search engine rankings.
Concluding remarks on the common content writing mistakes
The primary purpose of publishing quality content on your website is to help your visitors as much as possible.
Even when you want to improve your search engine rankings, you want to do so that they can easily find the content that can help them.
Hence, whether you want to improve your conversion rate or your SEO, the sole purpose is to provide helpful content that people can use to make better decisions.
If you focus on this, and then make sure that your content is easily accessible and all the vital information is present on your web page, it is easier to avoid these common content writing mistakes that are bad for your SEO.
