Tag Archives: Content Writing

What makes your content actually meaningful?

If you are just publishing content in bulk because you think content marketing is the way to go, you’re missing the point here. Content marketing isn’t about dominating every possible keyword and key phrase of your niche and getting found on search engines and social networking websites. Well, it may get you lots of traffic (there is always scope for misleading web traffic) but it won’t get you lots of business. Meaningful content gets you business.

Yes, it matters to rank well for your important keywords. It also matters that people are able to find you using their preferred search technology, but these should be byproducts. The primary aim of your content should be, providing the information that your prospective customers and clients need to make informed choices. Do the right thing, and the other right things follow, that should be the motto, and that is something that actually works.

So how do you create meaningful content? A more appropriate question would be, what is meaningful content pertaining to your niche?

Your content, in order to be meaningful, must provide some value. Valuable content is something that provides information your prospective customers and clients need in order to understand your product or service better and also to remain constantly in touch with you. Amidst the cacophony the Internet brings into our daily lives both standing out and constantly being in front of your target audience are of great importance.

Quality and quantity both matter. Quantity does not mean that one day you suddenly wake up, hire a few content writers and publish 20 blog posts or articles in one go and then start waiting for great results. Quantity here means regularity. In order to be visible you need to be regular.

When businesses begin to publish content they get mixed up between creating keyword-oriented content and actually creating value for their audience. Keywords are important but they shouldn’t dominate your content marketing strategy. Instead, they should engage their readers by regularly publishing content they can relate to.

Here are a few ways you can make your content meaningful:

List the benefits of individual products and services in detail
Publish alternative versions that are shorter for people who don’t want to read a lot in the first go
As a service provider (for instance, in my case, a content writer) explain in detail how businesses can improve their bottom lines by working with you
Constantly share your expertise and experience
Publish your content in multiple formats so that your target audience can easily find you
Publish content that helps people arrive at a decision
Create a comprehensive FAQs section
Maintain a business blog
Curate highly useful content from other sources from the Internet

Should you outsource your content writing or do it in-house?

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The answer varies from where you look at it. As a content writer I would suggest you to outsource your content writing work as much as possible, and even time management gurus like Tim Ferris suggest that outsourcing is the key to maximizing your productivity.

On the other hand there are many people who think that efficiency can only be achieved if you have in-house content writers because then they get to understand your business from within and they can relate to you more because they are exclusively writing for you.

Both points are right. Just because I provide professional content writing services I’m not going to insist that you should always outsource your content needs. Every business has its unique needs and restraints and one must act accordingly. There is never a fit-all solution.

But one thing cannot be denied: content marketing is unavoidable. Big businesses have already invested millions of dollars in their content marketing strategies, and even smaller businesses are realizing it’s massive potential. Once you know how important content marketing is for your business, it’s up to you whether you want to outsource your content writing or you want to do it in-house. Being a content writer I can throw some light on why you should outsource, but then again, I’m not saying that you should DEFINITELY outsource. Here are some reasons to outsource your content writing needs:

You don’t want to hire a full-time writer
You don’t have enough office space
You would have written yourself but you don’t have enough time
You’re not very comfortable with the language in which you need to create your content
You want to tap into the global talent pool rather than restricting yourself to local talent
You are totally comfortable working with professionals from remote locations
You don’t have regular content writing needs

In good business sense, you should outsource your content writing if you are a small business because there is greater flexibility and less cost involved. For instance, it doesn’t make sense to hire a full-time content writer if you just require three blog posts every week.

On the other hand, if you are a big business and you need to publish scores of pages every day and almost all the content is specialized, you should have a team of in-house content writers.

What makes your web content successful?

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Content marketing no longer remains at the fringes. There was a time when people thought content marketing merely meant stocking up your website (or, later on, blog) with lots of keyword-centric content to cover all possible keywords. Terms like “SEO content” and “search engine friendly content” were highly sort after. There was a complete, dedicated branch of SEO content writers who specifically created content for search engines (I am using the past tense just for the sake of writing, such writers still do brisk business).

Do such tactics work? In many cases, yes. Google and other search engines still show lots of preference for keyword-centric content. Actually, there is nothing fundamentally wrong in creating keyword-centric content. After all, what are keywords? They are the terms and expressions you use when you talk about your business. They are also terms and expressions your present and prospective customers and clients use when they talk about your products or services, or when they are trying to search for your products and services on search engines and social media websites like Twitter and Facebook.

The problem is, most SEO experts and website owners focus on just creating keyword-centric content. This may get you lots of traffic, but very little business. When you are doing business online, traffic isn’t everything, although it is a big part of your online marketing effort. More than traffic, what you need is a good conversion rate. When you have good conversion rate, your web content can be called successful.

Well-written web content achieves the following for your online business:

Get qualified search engine traffic for the right keywords and search terms
Provide timely information that assists your customers and clients complete the buying cycle
Constantly engage your visitors so that they develop a sense of familiarity with you or your brand

These are the basic traits that make your web content successful.

Why SEO companies are putting more stress on content writing?

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Of late I have observed an interesting development. Reputed SEO forums, blogs and websites talk of content marketing and content writing more, rather than simply covering the technical and newsie aspects of SEO.

For instance, this article on Search Engine Land talks about some untapped content marketing assets for B2B SEO. This is just a small example I came across this morning but the trend is persistent and during the previous few weeks I have come across many content marketing and content writing-related articles and blog posts on primarily SEO forums and blogs. Why is it so?

The reason can be historical as well as contemporary. Historically content has always ruled the roost although many would like to disagree. Everything on the Internet is content. Everything search engines like Google crawl, index and rank is content. Whenever you are trying to improve your rankings you are trying to improve the ranking of your content pages. So overtly or covertly it is your content that is evaluated and ranked by the search engines. It is your content that is shared and talked about on social networking and social media websites. So far this has been an unstated truth.

Of late Google has been quite aggressive and it is heavily penalizing websites and blogs that use “illegitimate” ways to improve their search engine rankings. Many of these tactics and methods blacklisted by Google have been a staple of SEO companies. Back links and keywords-centric content – once the most acceptable ways of improving your search engine rankings – if done wrongly can plummet your rankings irredeemably. Many small businesses have had to create new websites from scratch. Engaging an SEO company has become a danger rather than a prudent marketing decision. I’m not saying all SEO companies are like this, but most are.

So what is the safest bet? User-focused content writing.

The Google guidelines say create content as if search engines never existed. Create content, write content for your users. Make your content writing as user-friendly as possible. Focus on the keywords not because you want to improve your search engine rankings, but because you want to convey the right message. For instance, my website and my blog is about content writing and content marketing. You can safely say that these are my keywords. There are two ways I can use my keywords.

Conventional way, the “SEO way” is to create lots of content using these two keywords in various combinations. It actually used to work. I’m not saying whether it was right or wrong, it is just unacceptable to Google. So use the right language, use your keywords but only contextually, wherever they are really needed.

This also goes for content pages and blog posts. Don’t just create content to cover keywords. Create content to serve your audience. Whenever you are creating a new page or a new blog post ask yourself, is it really needed? Does it add value to my website on my blog? Will my visitors really find it useful? Am I just creating it because I need another combination of my keywords?

If the answer to the last question is yes, don’t publish it. It can be counter-productive. You can actually lose your search engine rankings if you do that.

Since most of the conventional SEO has become a double-edged sword and since quality content still reigns supreme most of the reputed search engine optimization companies are focusing more on content writing and content marketing rather than simply selling risky SEO services.

How to make your content unique, engaging and high-quality

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With more and more Google updates penalizing websites for the way they publish content and aggregate incoming links, it has become necessary to carry out a thorough website content assessment to make sure that your website doesn’t lose its rankings.

Your website content, as the latest Google guidelines state, must be prepared with your user in mind and not the search engines. Actually, it makes more sense. When you’re creating content for search engines, knowingly or unknowingly, you end up trying to manipulate your content. On the other hand if you just focus on your users, if you create your website content totally for your users, you focus more on quality and communication.

Why in the first place you create website content?

If you are creating content for your business website you want people to do business with you. Why would they do business with you? If, through your content, you can persuade them, you can make them believe in what you are saying and you can instil a sense of trust in them, they will do business with you. For that you have to provide them with as much information as possible. The information must be clear, to the point and devoid of misrepresentation. Every bit of important information should be available within 2-3 clicks.

You create content on your website to tell them about the benefits of your product or service. You use different pages to talk about your company, your skills, your offerings, and the people who work in your organization. You also talk about all the activities you participate in as an organization as well as as an individual. The entire idea of creating content for your website is to provide engaging, useful information so that your visitors can make an educated decision.

Ensuring high-quality and unique content

Every business is unique. You cannot possibly be an exact copy of another business. Even though there are 100s of search engines out there, you can easily distinguish between Google and Bing. Similarly, there are multiple social networking platforms but still you can easily differentiate between Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

In the same vein, although there might be many business similar to what you are doing, your offering in some way or another will be unique. This gives you an opportunity to create unique content. It is totally centered around your online presence. It will be catering to your audience.

And now we come to high quality. Here is a nice blog post on how to ensure error-free high quality website content. The basic tenets are universal. Before publishing content just check the following:

You ensure that all the information is accurate
If you are using factual information back it up with either the original source or multiple sources quoting the same piece of information
Make sure there are no spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
The structure of your content is in such a manner that your visitors can easily follow it
Question yourself whether you actually need the content you are preparing to make sure you are not simply preparing your content in order to attract search engines
Provide a human-friendly site map that people can easily access from your main page
Make your content as relevant to your business as possible
Make it as useful to your visitors as possible