Is your content writing customer-centric SEO-based or you randomly go on writing and adding content to your website or blog just to cover the keywords you think people must be using to look for your business? There is nothing wrong in preparing your own list of keywords – both small combinations and longtail keywords – and for all you know, since you are an expert in your field, you may very well know what your prospective customers and clients might be looking for, but in many cases I have found, people have no idea.
Most content writing is done to improve search engine rankings
No matter how holistically I look at my content writing and content marketing services, 70% of the clients hire me to improve their SEO. I don’t mean to say that it is less of a service, but rather than worrying about their conversion rate, they worry about their search engine rankings, which, in itself is not bad, but it is definitely bad if you’re trying to achieve this at the cost of the quality of your content.
If I want to make a priority list of things to keep in mind while writing your business content, here is my sequence goes, with number one being the most important thing:
- Highly useful and topic-centric content that is well-written.
- The content highlights all the benefits of the product or service people should buy that product or service for.
- User engagement and two-way communication should be facilitated by your content.
- Content writing with high conversion rate. I put it at number four not because conversion is less important than the three points listed above, it is because if you take care of the above-listed three points, conversion automatically begins to manifest.
- Improved and higher search engine rankings. It is the same as improving conversion rate – if you take care of the above-listed three points – 1, 2 and 3 – your search engine rankings automatically improve. SEO content writing basically means high-quality content written to inform and engage your audience, using the language your audience is comfortable in.
Aligning content writing with your customer-centric SEO strategy
Why do you want to improve your search engine rankings? Don’t laugh, I really mean to ask this question, why are you bothering with SEO? The obvious answer is to get traffic for the right keywords. What are those right keywords? The keywords that you think people are using in order to find your product or service. Are you using any tools to find what keywords people are using? Are you asking those people what words, expressions and phrases, and even questions people are using in order to find what you are offering? Yes, people do type in complete questions like “where can I get an expert content writer for my industrial legal services website?” or, “when I am in Casablanca, which is the best taxi service I can hire?”
This is why I always advise my clients, don’t focus on particular keywords, focus on the answers you need to provide in order to help people become your customers and clients. When you provide answers to the right questions, on your own you begin to improve your search engine rankings.
How to follow customer-centring SEO strategy while writing content?
One thing you can do is, ask people straight away. While making people fill up your contact form, ask them how they found you and if they used the search engines, exactly what keywords they used? Not everybody will respond, so make it an optional field, but some will. You can also ask people once they have become your customers and clients because then they are more prone to replying to detailed queries.
You can ask people face-to-face. Ask them what problems they are facing? Even if they seem to be using bizarre words, note them down – you will be surprised to know how many people actually use those bizarre words.
Obviously this is not going to be a one-day or a one-week, or even a one-month project. It may take time to cover all the important keywords that people are using in order to streamline your SEO process through strategic content writing.