Tag Archives: Content Writing

Link building with content writing

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Link building got quite a beating after the first Google Penguin update but it is still considered one of the most effective ways of improving your search engine rankings, especially when it is hinged upon quality content writing and well-meaning content marketing.

Why do you need link building?

In case you have been living inside a cave (nothing wrong or extraordinary about that) Google uses incoming links to your website in order to rank it. The more high-quality incoming links your website or blog has accumulated, the higher are going to be it’s search engine rankings. It’s kind of a validation and that’s why linking needs to take place only for the value you provide and no other purpose (for instance, paying websites and blogs to put your links on them).

Link building and content writing

So how does content writing help you in link building? As Google says, people should link to you based on the value you provide. How do you provide that value? By providing valuable and useful content. Why would people link to you if you publish high-quality content?

Writing comprehensive blog posts and articles isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, nonetheless, people want to maintain blogs and websites and they want to publish content on them for the sake of engagement, link building and better search engine rankings.

There are many content aggregation and curation websites and blogs. They don’t want to write content themselves; they want to link to external blog posts and articles, insert couple of paragraphs of their own, and then publish them on their websites and blogs. This way they don’t constantly have to scramble for new ideas. They don’t even have to hire content writers in order to create original content because instead of having to create content, they are aggregating good quality content from other websites and blogs. They want to become a resource, creating further link building opportunities for themselves.

This can work to your benefit. If you can write content they are looking for, they are definitely going to link to it, creating lots of back links in the process.

Of course regular content writing doesn’t just straightaway lead to back links. For example, you may feel discouraged after publishing 20-30 blog posts or articles without getting any back links. Link building doesn’t just happen; unless people find the content written and published by you, how can they link to it?

Herein comes content marketing. Write enough content and then make it easier for people to find it. One way of achieving this is keep on writing on your own blog and then letting the search engines index your content randomly and then presenting it to their users according to their own judgment. This works in many cases, but it may require lots of writing, even to the extent of creating 300-500 blog posts and articles before people begin to even notice you.

A better option is, aside from creating those 300-500 blog posts, disseminate what you have written and published through as many channels as possible. These days you have Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn and various other platforms and channels where you can promote your links so that they begin to get noticed by people and some of them may start linking to them. Even search engines these days list content from social networking websites on their natural search engine result pages. So constant content writing and then sharing your links on social networking platforms can create lots of link building opportunities for you.

One of the most widely used link building methods through content writing is guest blog posting. When you write for other blogs, they include a small bio of yours in which they also include a link to your website, blog or one of the inner pages. Since you should only guest blog for reputed blogs, this can bring you great link building benefits.

In the beginning this may seem a bit difficult because it is upon the sole discretion of the owner of the blog whether he or she wants to publish your blog post or not. It will help you to first understand what sort of content is published on that blog, what sort of language is used and what is the general flow of the content appearing over there. You can also spend some time interacting with the stakeholders of that blog via Twitter or Google Plus because then they will be more eager to publish your blog posts.

Does SEO content writing improve your search engine rankings?

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SEO and content writing

How is SEO content writing different from regular content writing? Does it matter that you pay attention to how you are arranging content on your web pages and blog posts in order to improve your search engine rankings? Right now it does, in the future, things may improve and perhaps the search engines will be able to rank URLs according to their actual value rather than the words being used.

The fundamental challenge of content writing, especially on the Internet, is, striking a balance between meaningfulness of the content and SEO. Frankly, there is no escape from paying attention to the way search engines interpret your content if search engine traffic matters to you. Whatever you are writing, eventually, it’s the algorithms that decide for which keywords and key phrases – whether you’re trying to target shorter phrases or longtail keywords – your content is ranked, or not ranked.

These days I am using ScribeSEO to revamp all the content on my website as well as blog. Although I am an experienced content writer, and I know a thing or two about writing content for SEO, sometimes it becomes difficult to keep track of the language you are using while writing content. It doesn’t happen all the time, but once you start analyzing your content using specialized tools, interesting things get revealed.

For instance, one of my pages, despite different tries, was optimized for “your content” despite the fact that I was targeting for “content writer”. Who would, and how many, would search for something like “your content”? The language that I had used, seems to have misled the ScribeSEO analysis software.

No, I’m not saying that you should get too much bogged down by what a particular SEO tool advises (or for that matter, an SEO expert) you to do in order to improve your search engine rankings. Nothing can surpass your own judgment and analysis. Of course when you need to do lots of content writing one or another tool comes handy, but eventually it is your own way of writing that can help you in terms of SEO.

Are SEO and content writing interrelated

SEO or conversion rate

It depends. Pure SEO doesn’t mean good conversion rate and effective content writing doesn’t always mean higher search engine rankings. That is why I said in the beginning, an experienced content writer tries to strike the perfect balance. When I’m working for my clients, I know that search engine traffic for them is as important as, if not more, their conversion rate. If there is no traffic, or very little traffic, there aren’t many people to do business with. Conversely, if the content doesn’t convert, no matter how much traffic you get from search engines, it hardly matters.

How do you make sure your content writing caters both to the search engines and the human visitors?

It’s very easy to do once you decide to write what really matters rather than being manipulative. SEO content writing actually depends on writing content that is totally user-friendly. There are primarily 5 things you need to take care of

  • What language does the target audience use vis-à-vis the product or service you are writing about
  • How focused you are going to remain on the topic of that particular page or blog post
  • What are the key words or phrases people use on search engines while trying to find what you are going to write about
  • Use those keywords and key phrases judicially while creating content
  • Use those keywords and key phrases at prominent locations such as the first paragraph, the title tag, the description, headings and subheadings and bulleted points

The language is important because this is the same language people use while talking about your product or service, whether they’re trying to search for it on Google or talking about it over there social networking profiles. The problem with SEO content writing is that it has a sort of, bad reputation. People relate it to keyword stuffing. It actually means writing content that search engines think the users will appreciate and like.

It doesn’t always have to involve your core topics. There may be some interesting news, or even political news that directly or indirectly affects your business or the way your prospective customers and clients do business with you. SEO content writing can involve sharing your thoughts with your readers and somehow relating them to your own business.

Remember that these days search engines, especially Google, are very touchy about the overuse of keywords. So don’t use them if there is no need to use them. That is why you need to vertically focus on the topic of the page you are writing the content for, so that you can naturally use those keywords and key phrases.

So should SEO be in your mind while writing content? It should be, even if getting good rankings isn’t one of your priorities. Good SEO practices while writing content automatically make your content more focused, subject-specific and easier to read. Search engines want to index and rank content that they think is useful to their users. By following good SEO practices while writing content, you make it more user-friendly.

Inbound marketing with content writing

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Content writing and inbound marketing are interrelated. Not much explanation is needed for the former term, but the latter may require some explaining. Inbound marketing is the opposite of outbound marketing (you may also call it conventional marketing).

Everything boils down to conversations

We live in an interconnected world. This connection is not through businesses, companies and organizations, it is through the people. Of course these people use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or blogging to share their thoughts and opinions, but at the crux of everything that goes on, it is the people-centric conversations that make up the world these days. Most of the reading, writing, communication and interaction happens online. Even opinion-making is happening online to a great extent. Even the politicians are taking people seriously these days due to the way people have been empowered by accessible publishing tools and information dissemination services.

As a business you need to participate in these conversations in a constructive manner. Once you become a part, inbound marketing begins to manifest. When people come across you for the first time they’re not bothered about what a great service you provide and what a magical product you have got to sell. They want to know you as an individual. They want to know how they are going to benefit from you if they allow you to post messages on their timelines. Whether they follow you on Twitter, add you as a friend on Facebook or like your Facebook page, it basically means allowing you to share your messages with them. Among friends, colleagues, family and prospective mates they don’t want to experience your business overtures.

So how do you become a part of a conversation that doesn’t involve your business but still makes people aware of your business?

Through targeted content writing. Actually, since I provide content writing services I am speaking about this particular medium, but when it comes to sharing content you can share any format such as video, audio, photographs and images, presentations and animations. Multiple channels can bring multiple inbound marketing opportunities.

Persistent content writing helps you build a vibrant platform that facilitates inbound marketing. You share your expertise. You provide answers to all the questions your prospective customers and clients may have. You talk about topical issues in the context of your business and show that you are interested in people’s day-to-day lives.

The ideal situation is that by the time a person is ready to do business with you he or she is fully aware of what you stand for and what is the value of the product or service that you provide. Through methodical content writing you can achieve that. People again and again come to your website whenever they seek useful information.

In inbound marketing it’s not necessary that people straightaway click your links. They can come across your information on other people’s profiles and timelines. They can find your content among search engine results. Your guest blog posts and articles on other blogs and websites can highlight your links. One of your articles, videos or images can go viral and this can make people aware of your website.

Why inbound marketing, supported by content writing, is more effective?

This graphic explains the basic concept of inbound marketing vis-a-vis content writing:

In the beginning, people are strangers. Neither you know them, nor they know you. Then they start coming across your content. They start finding what you have written useful and interesting. Regular content writing makes you familiar to them. They start visiting your website again and again, you encourage them to sign up for your e-mail updates and they become your leads. As you constantly keep in touch with them via quality content writing, they are bound to purchase from you as and when the need arises. And if you keep them happy after they have purchased from you, they become your friends, they start promoting your product or service without you having to tell them to do so. This is the power of inbound marketing.

Here are a few reasons why inbound content marketing is more effective:

  • People don’t want to block you: You must be aware of the fact how people constantly try to block out advertisements and promotional materials. On the Internet there are pop-up blockers. There are also some online services that allow you to access the content without accompanying ads. Many TV services these days allow you to fast-forward advertisements or at least pause them while they are being telecast so that you can fast-forward them after a couple of minutes (we do this at our household all the time). This doesn’t happen with inbound content marketing because people access your content at their own discretion, at their own convenience and according to their own preference. There is no inherent resistance as you see in the case of conventional marketing.
  • It easily scales: Content based inbound marketing is easily scalable and this characteristic can be of great use when people are accessing your content via multiple devices and channels. So the same blog post can be read on a computer, on a laptop, on a tablet and also on a smart phone without much inconvenience.
  • It suits every budget: The great thing about inbound marketing with content writing is there is no entry barrier. You can initiate your inbound marketing strategy by publishing just a single paragraph on your website or blog. From day one you can start uploading slides, videos and text. Even a single 20-minute advertisement on television may cost you a year’s worth of content production and distribution.
  • It doesn’t have recurring costs: Once you have created high-value content it is always there. The inbound traffic that that content generates is free of cost once it starts attracting traffic. For instance, if your blog post or article is able to get good rankings on search engines, the traffic that comes from there is practically free. Agreed, you needed to pay your content writer or had to spend a few hours creating that high-quality content, but after that it gives you free traffic forever. Just imagine having to pay for every click for the 2000 clicks that your recent blog post generated.
  • It is more targeted: With inbound content marketing you’re not throwing darts in the darkness. You know exactly what you are doing. For instance, if I am writing something on content writing and content marketing, I am pretty sure that people interested in these topics will be reading it. I also know that many among these people one day will become my clients. This sort of precision is not available in conventional marketing.
  • It is inclusive: Inbound marketing via content writing (or whatever sort of content publishing you may find fit for your own business) is inclusive and engaging. Rather than talking to people, you talk with them. You engage them in conversations. You get there feedback and then create the subsequent content accordingly. You take their questions and concerns seriously and then try to provide as many answers as possible on the website and blog itself.

Help your customers with your content and grow your business

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Creating helpful content

The biggest hurdle in the way of publishing high-quality content on a regular basis is what to write about? Sooner or later you run out of topics. Remember that quality and relevancy is of utmost importance. Never write and publish content just for the sake of it because it does more harm than good. So how do you go on producing quality content without compromising on quality?

Publish content to help your customers.

This involves knowing what your customers want (in terms of content consumption) and then producing content accordingly. The biggest purpose of investing in content marketing is creating a presence people can relate to. Familiarity breeds more business (provided it is positive and not negative) and it is the regular appearance of fresh and relevant content from your side that familiarizes your target customers with your presence. And what can generate more positive familiarity than constantly helping your customers?

But let’s be realistic, you cannot provide help for everything under the sun. By the end of the day what matters is how much your business grows – how much money it makes. So while creating helpful content you also have to create an appropriate context to relate that help to your core business. That’s why, in order to execute a high-performance content marketing strategy you need a dedicated person who can continuously find a context and then create matching content.

Whenever there is a problem, there is a solution. People invest in your product or service because it fulfills a certain requirement. Let’s suppose you sell a word processor. Already in the market there are plenty of word processors, and many of them are totally free (Google Docs, for instance). Still, people buy the MS Office Suite (or just MS Word). They spend lots of money fully knowing they are not going to use more than 80% of its features. Not just MS Word, there are other niche word processors. Then there are people who are not looking for a conventional word processor. I, for instance, use a full-screen simple text editor called Q10 because it plays the typing sound when I’m typing (helps me concentrate) and it also covers the entire screen to give you a distraction-free writing environment. Then there are writing applications for novelists, research writers, thesis writers and journalists. For bloggers there are inbuilt writing tools.

So you can see, just in the field of writing there are multiple working preferences. Why do people choose one application over another? Despite being a professional content writer why do I use just a text editor rather than a full-fledged word processor? I have strong preferences. Similarly, people looking for your product may have strong preferences but somehow are finding it difficult to make the switch. They either haven’t found you yet or haven’t fully realized or understood the benefit of using your product or service. You can help them decide by being there exactly when they need you.

How to create helpful content?

Helpful content can be of multiple dispositions. You can help people understand your product or service better. You can help people realize in how many ways they can benefit from your product or service. You can solve people’s problems that they might be facing while using your product or service. You can also help them by publishing case studies of how you have helped businesses and individuals do their jobs better with your product or service.

Then there can also be topical help that may not promote your product or service directly but it will certainly make people feel good about your presence. Recently Google decided to shut down its RSS feeds management service and people all over the web were clueless regarding what will happen to thousands of subscribers they have acquired over the years. I wrote a quick blog post on how you can move to another RSS feeds management service and retain most of the subscribers in the process.

Then some people wanted to know what is all the fuss about the Author Rank and what is the benefit of creating your own Authorship. I featured the topic in my weekly content writing newsletter and the response was great. These are just two examples of how I was able to help people through my content writing.

You will need to use your own discretion while writing helpful content.

Using latest news to create fresh content and improve SEO

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A quick link to a nicely written article on how to improve your SEO using latest news. The writer has termed it as Newsjacking.

With search engines like Google attaching more and more importance to the freshness and topical significance the content that you publish, news automatically get higher importance. The only problem is what if your industry has no particular news to offer? Then you create a context. For instance, in my content writing and content marketing business, how can I use the latest news to highlight my content writing services in terms of getting some SEO benefits? That’s where creativity comes in. Let me use a small example.

Recently, Google decided to shut down its RSS feeds management service “Google Reader” and people to whom the RSS subscribers matter were really worried (most of them still are). So I quickly created a blog post explaining to them how they can salvage their RSS subscribers in the event of Google shutting down its RSS reader. As I mentioned above, the trick is, creating a context. RSS subscribers matter to those who regularly publish blogs and those who publish blogs need content for their blogs. This is just one example. In a similar manner, you can create a clever context and use topical news to get some leverage.