Tag Archives: Content Writing

Do keyword research before writing content

Leave a reply
The image shows an iPad with the Google homepage on the text says importance of keyword research before content writing

Importance of keyword research before content writing

Although your keywords shouldn’t dominate your content writing, they are an important part of the entire writing process especially when you are targeting search engines.

For me, keywords keep your writing focused. When you know what words to use, you know what to write and you don’t deviate from that.

Focus is very important when you are writing content to attract targeted traffic from search engines. Keywords keep you focused.

Sometimes clients send me a long list of keywords to be included in a single document. Although, with little bit of creativity, scores of keywords can be incorporated into a single document – provided you have a big document of more than 3000 words – normally I don’t recommend this.

Focus on a single phrase – most of the searches these days are based on phrases rather than keywords – and in that one single phrase, try to include the main things that you’re going to cover in the current blog post or web page.

Also keep in mind that an increasing number of searches are voice searches – people use devices they can talk to, to look for information, for example Google Assistant or Amazon Echo.

Nonetheless, it is important that you do keyword research before writing content.

Why keyword research is important before content writing?

The concept of keyword has changed over the years. In terms of SEO, it doesn’t mean a single word, though, people get confused and assume that they should focus on single words rather than complete phrases.

For SEO and content writing, when you talk of keywords, you can safely assume that they mean even complete sentences.

Back to why keyword research is important…

It tells you what language people use when they are trying to find your service or your product or even when they’re talking to each other on various online forums and social media platforms while talking about your service or product.

Search engine algorithms are becoming intelligent by the day. They are fast moving towards a state of being when even if you don’t use your keywords, provided you stick to the topic, they will be able to make out what you are saying and then accordingly, rank your content.

In fact, this is already happening. When SEO experts and content marketing professionals talk about “searcher’s intent” this is what they are basically saying – your keywords don’t matter much, what matters is, whether you’re solving people’s problems or not, especially problems for which they are searching for solutions.

Nonetheless, keywords matter, and they will go on mattering simply because the words that people use to find you on Google, can be distinct for distinct requirements.

For example, if you’re looking for a content writer for your business, you will not be looking for “content writing” or “how to write content”.

Although, these two phrases do have something to do with content writing, for your particular need, you may look for “content writing for my boutique business” or “content writing service for SEO”.

If you’re looking for a writer to write your product descriptions, you’re not going to search for “professional copywriter”. You may search for “writer for writing product descriptions” or “looking for someone to write product descriptions for me”.

These may seem very obvious observations, especially when you are reading this blog post, but when you need to target scores of keywords because your business depends on traffic originating from those keywords, you need to do comprehensive research.

Again, the purpose of keyword research is not to prepare a long list of keywords and then use these keywords to write content (unless you’re using Google AdWords), the purpose is to use these keywords as a guiding force.

You enjoy better search engine rankings if you write in the language that your prospective customers and clients use.

Why before content writing?

As I have written above, the purpose is not to stuff keywords into your writing, the purpose is to use your keywords as a direction towards creating highly purposeful content in a language that people use, especially people who can be your prospective customers and clients.

When you write content, you should ask yourself, “Why am I writing this blog post?”, or “Why am I writing this webpage?”

Of course, you don’t just want to generate search engine traffic from your content writing because search engine traffic by itself means nothing. If your content can draw people from Google and other search engines but people simply leave your website without doing anything, it is an exercise in futility. This happens when you solely focus on SEO.

The primary purpose of your content must always be to provide information people are looking for so that they can decide whether they want to do business with you.

Take for instance this current blog post. Here I’m explaining to you why it is important to do keyword research before writing content. You may say that by merely reading this blog post how am I conveying that I’m a professional content writer and you should hire me?

Through a search engine or through another website or through Facebook or Twitter, when you come to this blog post and you read, you will know that I understand a few things about keywords and writing content based on those keywords.

The layout of my website/blog is such that you easily know that I provide professional content writing services and if you’re looking for a content writer who can focus on your keywords and despite that, also write high-conversion content, you may like to contact me.

If you don’t get such a feeling (despite requiring a competent content writer) then I’m not doing a good job.

Similarly, the ultimate aim of your content writing is to convince people that you are open for business and doing business with you is a good decision.

Hence, when you’re writing content, your aim must be converting people.

Now, this is where it becomes difficult for content writers who are not experienced. They can either focus on keywords to improve your SEO (which is not a big deal) or write conversion-centric content which, though, does not attract traffic, but if people land on that webpage or blog post, they are convinced.

So, how does one balance between keywords and conversion-oriented content writing?

Use your keywords (phrases, sentences, search expressions) to steer your language so that both search engine algorithms and visitors know what you’re talking about. Don’t simply use them to improve your SEO because that is counter-productive.

Again, take for example this blog post. It talks about why it is important to research keywords before content writing. At the time of writing this, I’m not sure whether people will be able to find this link for the right keywords or search terms, but this is what my intention is – if someone searches with a combination of keywords and content writing and maybe also SEO, he or she should be able to find this link.

But once he or she is on this blog post, only good content writing matters, not what or how the keywords have been used.

Is user generated content good for content marketing and SEO?

Leave a reply
The image shows a group of people working in an office

User generated content for content marketing and SE

Until a few years ago, there was lots of buzz about user generated content. I remember lots of websites used to talk about it. Social networking was catching up and lots of content was being generated by users, without getting paid for it, for websites like YouTube and Digg.

Even smaller websites were encouraging people to leave comments in the comments section and online forums hoping that it would improve their SEO due to highly focused content generation.

User generated content can consist of reviews that people leave on your website, videos, photos, questions and answers and comments. With every new question, with every new comment, a new URL is generated, and it gives Google and other search engines something new to crawl and index.

One thing is undoubtedly clear: user generated content is one of the fastest and cheapest ways of generating targeted content and consequently, boosting your content marketing. Through user generated content

  • You are letting your users, visitors, customers and clients tell your story and participate in your evolution.
  • You let people talk about your brand instead of the marketing message coming from you.
  • Other people, not directly connected to your business, increasing your brand presence.
  • People themselves talk about the pros and cons of working with you.
  • User generated content, especially if it is favourable to your business, provides you ongoing social proof.
  • Your prospective customers and clients find user generated content more trustworthy. According to a Nielsen study 92% of consumers trust organic, user generated content more than traditional marketing messages.

It also gives the search engines lots of content to crawl and index, on an ongoing basis.

This Search Engine Land blog post says that though user generated content can help you, it can also be counter-productive and hence, whenever you plan to make user generated content an integral part of your content marketing strategy, you need to make sure that it helps your SEO efforts, and doesn’t hurt them.

How to incorporate user generated content into your content marketing?

Using user generated content for content marketing isn’t a random exercise that you can immediately kick-start by installing a few plug-ins into your website. You need to keep in mind that unsupervised discussions can take tangential turns and turn into uncontrollable disasters.

But the question of uncontrollable disasters happens only when you have enough content to cause you trouble. So, first, you need to figure out how to make people, how to enable people, to generate content for your brand. Here are a few things you can do:

  • Allow people to leave comments: This facility might already be there on your blog or website if you’re using a content management system like WordPress. Many Webmasters turn this feature off because of the comment-spam problem, but if you can establish a mechanism to monitor your comments, this is one of the finest ways of getting user generated content on your website.
  • Install a discussion forum: Online forums and discussion boards are one of the oldest mass conversation channels on the Internet. Even when there were no browsers, there were discussion boards. Online forums can have very rich SEO-centric content especially when your forum catches on and people begin to use it on a regular basis. Again, spam can be a big problem.
  • Allow people to post blog posts on your website: Many websites allow visitors to set up an account and post content. You can let them submit entries as drafts and later you can review them and publish them.
  • Start a review section: In this section people can leave reviews on your products and services, just like Amazon has it.
  • Start a Q&A section: Questions and answers are favourites of the search engines. This is because most of the searches were carried out in the form of questions – you ask a question and Google provides you the answer. In a Q&A section the questions and answers are already there.
  • Allow people to upload images and videos: This can be an expensive affair because images and videos mean more online storage space and more bandwidth. But if you can afford it, you can generate lots of traffic to this type of content. One-fourth of Google searches are images.

The main problem with user generated content is of course, moderation and protection against spam. Spam bots can post thousands of comments in a single day, bringing your entire website down and irreparably harm your SEO. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why people shy away from installing online forums on their websites. Otherwise, you would find them on every website.

My personal suggestion is, stay away from installing an online forum unless running a forum is your primary activity or you have a dedicated department to oversee the conversations.

The most useful forms of user generated content in terms of both content marketing and SEO are inviting people to write blog posts for your website and encouraging them to participate in the Q&A section. This way, you can control the flow and direction of your content.

How I save time while running my content writing and consulting business

Leave a reply
The image shows a watch

Saving time while running my content writing and consulting business

I must confess that I’m not one of those highly organized and focused online marketers and entrepreneurs writing books and publishing podcasts on how well they optimally manage their time.

What happens at my desk is quite random. I’m not saying that it is ideal and I’m continuously trying to improve it, but having somehow successfully run my content writing and content consulting business for the past 12 odd years, I can at least say that within that randomness, there is some sense of regularity that keeps me going.

I was reading this blog post in the morning, 5 Practical Time Management Tips for the Chronically Time-Poor, and I was just wondering, do I have a take on this? Do I manage my time in a way I can share my experience with my readers?

What do I do to save time, or better put, organise my time? On an average day, I need to take care of the following:

  • Work on content writing and copywriting assignments from clients.
  • Reply to email queries from existing clients and new clients.
  • Update existing website pages.
  • Write blog posts for my content writing and content marketing blog.
  • Engage people on social networking websites.
  • Broadcast email campaigns.

Now, I don’t do all these activities every day. Regrettably, sometimes highly important activities like publishing new content on my blog, updating my content and broadcasting my email campaigns don’t happen for days, even for weeks. Sometimes I get distracted, sometimes there is too much client work.

Distractions can take their toll and how I try to put a leash on them

Talking about distraction – we have a politically charged up atmosphere in the house. My wife is very political. Being a writer first and then a content writer, I definitely enjoy writing political, cultural and social blog posts and consequently, end up spending lots of time tracking such conversations on Twitter, and even reading opinion pieces and news reports.

Our brain has limited resources. This is truer if you are passionate about something so much that you end up spending all your brainpower on a subject that has got nothing to do with your professional work.

This happens unfailingly: when I check my Twitter timeline in the morning, the entire day spirals down.

Multiple times I have experimented, just to see whether my conclusion is right or not, and unless something exceptional has happened (a client whose business is going to collapse unless I immediately submit some documents), within a couple of hours I feel drained, demotivated, and confused. I cannot focus on content writing.

Hence, I stay away from Twitter during workdays.

For this, I use ColdTurkey. It blocks the websites you want to block and once it is activated, you cannot even accidentally open those websites. Once activated, the program is so rock-solid that unless you reset your operating system, it is not going to allow you to access those websites. You cannot even uninstall during the period when the websites are being blocked.

I have used the program in various ways. Last year, I had set it to block all the social networking websites from 7 AM till 7 PM, Monday to Friday.

This was good, but the problem is, for work also sometimes I need to access websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, especially when I’m posting content for my clients.

Now, I use 2-hour blocks. When I need to focus on something, I activate ColdTurkey for 2 hours and just focus on the work.

I keep on expanding this 2-hour block if I don’t need to access the websites.

Taking care of distractions gives you lots of time in a day. Still, you need to manage your time to make sure that you are able to achieve whatever that needs to be achieved.

I don’t check emails in the morning, instead I focus on my task list

I have been playing around with task lists ever since I started doing my own business. It doesn’t matter what app or what medium you use to manage your tasks (these days I use Microsoft to-do list). I have experimented with them multiple times and now I have concluded that creating very long task lists is always a waste of time.

Anyway, before that, the topic of not checking emails in the morning.

Almost every time-management guru advises you to avoid checking emails in the morning, and this is a good advice, especially when you want to preserve your brain resources for creative work and for work that requires uninterrupted focus.

About task list, these days I don’t add more than 5 tasks. I don’t necessarily have to do 5 tasks every day and there can be more tasks, but on the list, if I need to add a task, I make sure that I remove one task (by making sure that it is done). Relentlessly adding tasks is not just distracting, if you cannot tick off all the tasks, it is also demotivating.

Managing energy and priority instead of boxing various activities into various parts of the day

I’m more passionate than methodical. If I suppress my passion, my energy begins to drain out, especially when it comes to writing.

Hence, these days, I work according to the energy level that I have, and the degree of desire that I have to do that work.

For example, writing this blog post is not “work” in the sense that I don’t need to submit it to a client. But I’m writing it the first thing in the morning because I want to write it. Previously it used to fill me with guilt that instead of working on a client assignment, I was working on my blog, which shouldn’t be a priority. That was counter-productive.

Of course, I know there is work to be done and clients are waiting to receive their blog posts and articles, but I also know that if I don’t work on this blog post, there is a 90% chance I won’t be able to work on it, and then, I won’t even be able to focus on the client work.

On the other hand, if I’m able to complete it, or at least, write all the thoughts that are coming to my mind, I will know that I have done something that I want to do, and now, I can fully focus on the content writing project at hand.

So, I don’t have any elaborate time saving or time management technique I can write about. These things help me:

  • Removing distractions.
  • Strategically using my energy levels.
  • Not checking emails and social networking updates first thing in the morning.
  • Having a clearly defined task list not going beyond 5 tasks for a day.
  • Giving priority to writing that energises me.

Looking for a content writer? 8 things to consider

Leave a reply
the image shows a computer screen that displays looking for a content writer

Looking for a content writer?

Whether you realize it right now or not, your content writer is one of the most important members of your team. When you start looking for a content writer, keep this in mind.

What do people do when they come to your website?

Do they mostly watch the fancy design, fall head over heels in love with your graphics and animations and then only death can stop them from doing business with you?

People read when they come to your website

Or does it matter to them how you talk to them with your words, how you explain your services, how you describe to them and illustrate how their life is going to change after doing business with you.

It’s the latter part. You realize this, and this is why you’re looking for a content writer, no?

You know that you need a content writer to educate and inform your customers and clients, keep them coming to your website, and then ultimately, convince them into doing business with you.

Your customers and clients go through a pre-determined sales funnel.

Content writing for different stages of your sales funnel

Content writing for different stages of your sales funnel

A sales funnel can be as complex as the stars in the Milky Way, but ultimately, every sales funnel can be wound down to 2 stages:

  1. Educate and inform your prospective customers and clients.
  2. Convince them into doing business with you.

Educating and informing customers and clients is an ongoing process.

They are constantly looking for answers to their questions.

They need a source that can solve their problems.

Although in rare instances someone may land on your website and there and then decide to buy from you or hire you, in most of the cases, it is a prolonged process in which the person visits your website repeatedly and is exposed to your content multiple times before he or she decides to give you money.

Why you need a content writer

The image shows a content writer

Why you need a content writer?

The job of your content writer is to provide what your prospective customers and clients are looking for.

There are practically infinite ways people can come across your content.

They may simply land on your website or blog via search engine results.

They may come across your link on one of the social networking websites.

Someone may recommend your link through email or direct message, or even verbally.

They may discover your link on product packaging. Someone may mention you in his or her article or blog post.

People will be entering your website or blog through different links.

They may check other parts of your website or they may leave just after checking the link they arrived on.

The sales funnel stage where you get people to your website, is the education and information part. This part may manifest on your blog, in your newsletter or in your social media updates.

Once they are on your website, you need to convince them into doing business with you.

This is a convincing part of the sales funnel.

People are on your website, they are a bit informed and intrigued, and now, it is the job of the copy on your website to keep them there and convince them into doing business with you.

At every stage, your content writer plays a very important part.

You cannot educate and inform people with drab content.

Your content needs to be informative, conversational, engaging and in many instances, even entertaining.

It should be easier to read but at the same time authoritative.

Why am I explaining in such detail what sort of content you need for your website to generate business?

Because, when you’re looking for a content writer, you keep these qualities in mind, these needs in mind, and then accordingly, you settle for a content writing service that can help you achieve what I have mentioned above.

Writing content is a serious business. Your entire business depends on how well your writer can write.

Benefits of hiring a content writer and therefore, you should be looking for one

The image shows nutritious food as an example of the benefits of hiring a content writer

Benefits of hiring a content writer

You need to publish content continuously. If you don’t want to, your competitors certainly are.

It’s not just your competitors, in one way or another, everyone publishes content on the Internet, and this makes it hard for your prospective customers and clients to notice your business.

A consistent content marketing means good 15-20 hours every week doing research, writing, updating and editing.

You want to do this yourself? If yes, sure, go ahead.

You should be looking for a content writer because

  • You need to publish fresh content regularly.
  • You need to create long-term value and not just promote yourself in spurts.
  • Your business needs to stand out in terms of providing exceptional content on an ongoing basis.
  • You need to improve your conversion rate, and this can only be done by someone who can write persuasively and convincingly.
  • Bad writing can dissuade people from doing business with you.
  • You need writing all the time for your blog, for your web pages, for your newsletter, for case studies and social media updates.
  • You need to improve your search engine rankings, and SEO these days depends a lot on high-quality, relevant content.

If you need a content writer and you’re looking for someone who can help you create a convincing presence on the web, you may like to look for the following:

1. Look for talent, not for price

I’m not saying price doesn’t matter, but don’t make it the first quality when you start looking for a content writer.

You don’t want to save money at the cost of your business.

Often, it is a mental block that stops you from hiring a good content writer just because he or she seems to be charging more than another content writer.

A good writer is going to charge more, and this is fine.

Just like you need a web designer, you need a programmer and you need a graphic designer to have a professional website, and you are fine with paying him or her what he or she is asking, the same applies to a content writer.

Remember that writing is not a product. It is not something that can be automated. It is not a piece of code someone can save and then use as and when needed.

It takes the same amount of time every time a content writer writes 500 words for you. It may be a few minutes here and there, since you always need original writing, your content writer needs to make the same effort every time. So, keep that in mind.

2. Spend time studying the website of your content writer

If you need a content writer, it isn’t necessary that you look for someone who has a website (many writers work from various freelancing portals) but as a business owner, you can easily understand that someone who has his or her own website is going to be more serious about the business than someone who merely creates a listing in a directory where no stakes are involved.

A professional content writer is going to have a professional-looking website. The content will be well written. All the information you need to make up your mind will be there.

3. See if the content writer publishes a blog

Again, it isn’t necessary that you need a content writer who publishes a blog but, well, a writer must practice his or her art even when he or she is not being paid for it.

I have been writing professional content for more than a decade now and I have seen that writers who write just for money are, may be good writers, but not “good” writers, although, exceptions are always there.

Through the blog you can get an insight into how the writer expresses himself or herself.

4. Ask the content writer if he or she is comfortable writing for SEO as well as for better conversion

SEO no longer remains about using your keywords repeatedly throughout your blog posts and web pages.

Although you still need to use your keywords because that’s what people are looking for on search engines, more important is the quality of writing and the value it provides to your readers.

If the writing is not good, no matter how well-optimized your content is, your rankings are not going to improve.

Google has been updating its algorithm in such a manner that your rankings these days depend on how people react to your content rather than how you have “optimized” it and how many people are linking to it.

The above-mentioned attributes definitely help, but what helps the most is the quality and relevance of your content. An experienced writer must be able to strike the perfect balance between SEO and better conversion.

5. Take your budget into consideration but don’t be stingy

Although I have talked about the importance of hiring a good content writer irrespective of how much he or she charges, by the end of the day, it matters how much you spend on your content.

This is one advice I give to all my clients: if you don’t have the needed budget, don’t aim for having lots of content.

One high-quality blog post is always going to outperform five mediocre blog posts.

If you cannot publish a blog post every day, try publishing on alternative days. If that is also expensive, try once a week. Even once a month.

But never go for inferior content just because you are getting it in bulk. You will be wasting your money, and it is also bad for your SEO.

6. Go with a long-term content writer

This is another reason why I recommend working with a content writer who has a long-established business providing content writing services rather than someone from one of those freelancing websites – someone who has a business is going to stick around for a long time.

Just as you have stakes in your business, the content writer who runs his or her own business too has high stakes. This is why, he or she is going to stick around.

You can easily check these days the age of a website to know how long a particular website has been active.

7. Google your website or blog writer

Once you have come across your website or blog writer, or copywriter, Google him or her. See if you can find some bad references. Purposely use some bad phrases like “this writer sucks”, “stay away from this content writer”, or “very bad experience with this content writer”, or something like that – use the name of the content writer.

8. Pay close attention to your gut feeling

The way the content writer responds to your emails, the way he or she answers to your WhatsApp questions, your gut feeling will tell you whether to trust that person or not.

Does he or she sound too eager to please you, or this is the way he or she aggressively gets business from you (which should be fine)?

Does he or she seems to be over committing?

Remember one thing: if you compromise on the quality of your content, you are going to attract content writers who have no problem compromising on quality just to get work from you.

This is also a general life lesson. You attract the sort of people you want in your life, whether they are good or bad. I know, doesn’t seem like a business advice, but this happens.

Anyway, if you need a content writer or if you’re looking for one, first most, focus on finding an awesome content writer and then figure out whether you can afford him or her or not. Don’t start with money in mind because that way, you will always end up with a lousy writer.

Why your business needs more written content

Leave a reply
The image describes writing materials such as pencils and paper to

Your business needs more content writing

You know what? Written content isn’t going anywhere no matter how avant-garde video and infographics become.

I provide professional content writing services.

Every day I get queries and phone calls from business owners and entrepreneurs who want content for their businesses.

From my website they can easily make out that I provide written content: I don’t provide graphic design services or video production services.

I provide content writing services.

Nonetheless, they have this strange attitude: fine, they have no option but to contact someone for their writing needs, otherwise, they don’t believe writing is worth paying for.

That’s why many would-be clients balk at my rates.

No, I don’t mean that my rates are outrageous – my rates are just enough to make my content writing services affordable to a wide spectrum of business owners while allowing me to make a decent living.

Would I like to charge more? Of course. That’s a different story and right now I’m not going into that.

The point that I’m trying to make is, publishing written content is inescapable, whether you like it or not, and not just any sort of written content.

You need quality content writing.

Constantly, you need to provide something really valuable.

This is because, if you are not providing valuable content, then there are scores of other businesses providing more or less the same products and services as you, providing valuable written content.

Hence, it’s your loss if you don’t. Your choice.

Why does written content matter in the age of video and graphics?

When we need to prove that something matters, we either resort to some research and statistics, or we give our own reasoning.

Statistics are good, and psychologically, they are reassuring, and they also tell us what the rest of the world is doing about a particular trend or tendency.

This Entrepreneur article refers to Zazzle Media’s 3rd annual State of Content Marketing Survey that shows that there has been a 78% increase in the content marketing spend since 2018 (this is May 2019).

This is no surprise, because, a greater number of businesses are discovering the benefits of content marketing.

The interesting finding was, 98% content marketers surveyed said that written content is their main output to achieve content marketing success.

Written content in the form of webpages and blog posts is going to be the main priority for 77% of the market is throughout 2019.

Why written content is important?

Search engine algorithms use text as main source while evaluating your content for ranking

With much more advanced artificial intelligence it is becoming easier to tell what is there in a video or a photograph, but programmatically, when it comes to analysing content, text, or written content, still rules the roost.

Most of the search engine algorithms are more comfortable analysing your written content and then ranking your content accordingly.

You can focus more on video and graphics and then bet on the possibility that in near future search engines will be able to analyse videos and graphics and then rank your content based on the information given in those video and graphics, or you can put your money and effort into publishing lots of written content that is already preferred by the search engines.

Your choice.

Voice search converts voice to text and then text to voice to help you find information

Here is my web page on copywriting for voice search.

You must be aware that in recent years there has been a big shift from PC/laptop to mobile phones.

Even to search information people use their mobile phones and often, people who are not used to typing all the time, speak into their phones.

Voice-controlled devices like Amazon Eco and Google Home have further boosted the use of voice commands and using voice to find information on search engines.

Technology to convert voice to text and then text to voice is quite old now. Every basic mobile phone allows you to convert your voice to text and vice versa.

Hence, on the web, and also, on my own blog, you will find lots of information on how to optimize your content writing and copywriting for voice search.

For voice search to work, when you issue a command, for example, telling Google to find you something, whatever you have said is turned to text, and then the text string is used to find the information on the search engine, and when the information is found in the form of text, the information is turned to voice and communicated to you.

The backbone of the entire operation is, the ability of the technology to process text.

If you don’t have text, there is nothing to process.

Many people find reading more convenient compared to watching videos

In the times of abundant bandwidth and highly efficient screens, watching HD videos and graphics might be fascinating, but reading written content is convenient, and more satisfying.

Reading is more personal and less invasive. You don’t need extra tools to read.

Someone wants to check out your website to know what all services you provide: he or she will prefer to read about your services rather than watching a video or a collection of graphics.

Though, I’m not saying videos and graphics are not important – they are – but they have a limit.

We have been reading since childhood. The habit is embedded. Everybody prefers to read.

Written text is more accessible

Written content makes your content accessible across multiple devices.

All the screen readers can read text.

All screen sizes can accommodate text accordingly.

You can copy/paste text in any basic text editor to read it or edit it.

It is the lightest form of content.

Does any form of content writing help you?

Depends on what you want to achieve.

If you want to publish lots of junk content, who am I to tell you not to do so? Go ahead.

For better search engine rankings and for a good conversion rate, your content writing needs to be purposeful, relevant and of good quality.

Search engine rankings these days are all about efficiently providing information people are looking for.

You see, search engines like Google don’t produce and publish their own content. They have outsourced the service to the masses.

But, if they don’t provide good information to people’s queries, they lose users.

Hence, let’s focus on Google for a while, the search engine is not going to rank your content well simply because you have “strategically” used keywords and hyperlinks.

It ranks your content high only if you provide information people can really use.

To help Google achieve that, a group of 300 odd maths PhDs is constantly working on the algorithm.

If you think you can beat these maths PhDs with some SEO tactics without ever intending to publish high-quality content, well, as I said, who am I to tell you not to do so?