Tag Archives: Optimized Content Writing

How do I find the right keywords for writing SEO content?

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Keyword research for SEO content writing

Keyword research for SEO content writing

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.

 

 

How to improve local SEO with targeted content writing

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Local SEO with targeted content writing

Local SEO with targeted content writing

You can improve local SEO were targeted content writing.

For a few months now I have been helping a cab service improve its local SEO through targeted content writing.

In terms of being “local”, it is not a neighborhood business and being a taxi service, it covers multiple cities.

It provides its services locally in the sense that tourists, business people and pilgrims that come to that particular state, should be able to find the taxi service using Google.

Through continued targeted content writing I have been able to improve the rankings of the business, especially when people search for the service combined with the names of the cities or towns they want to travel to, let’s say, from the airport or the railway station.

Why search engine rankings matter for a local business

You may think that having a local business it must be very easy to get customers.

All you need is, open your shop, retail store or office and all your local business is yours for the taking.

This might be the case if you are the only business in your category and you sell something that is in great demand.

Then, yours being the only business, if someone searches for “find this business near me” your listing should appear at the top of the search results.

But, if there are multiple businesses providing the same thing with small variations, it becomes difficult for you to get higher rankings.

Take food delivery business, for example.

In our neighborhood, there are six big and small restaurants in the same row that deliver food.

If I search for “food delivery near me” at least six restaurants show up in the featured list and the remaining in the normal listing.

My tendency would be to check out the restaurant that appears at the top in the featured listing and only when I don’t get what I’m looking for, I will explore other options.

This goes for any service.

Local SEO matters because it’s people’s natural tendency that they try to contact businesses that appear at the top and once they have found a business that satisfies the need, they don’t explore further.

If you don’t feature among the top listings, it will be difficult for your customers and clients to notice you.

Hence, it is very important that you you use targeted SEO content writing improve your search engine rankings on a continuous basis.

Another reason why you should take your local SEO seriously is because bigger brands are constantly threatening smaller businesses.

For example, many local stores have to close because of the constantly mushrooming malls.

As a local grocery store, how can you compete with the bigger brands or even with a multinational company?

The advantage that you have is a better grip on the local nuances.

Bigger brands have money and they also have bigger marketing budgets, but it is often difficult for them to localize their marketing.

So, through targeted content writing and a continuous effort towards improving your local SEO, if you have maintained your search engine rankings, there is a greater chance that instead of finding a shop in a mall, when people Google your product or service, they are going to find your shop.

Improving your local SEO with targeted content writing

50% customers who search for a local business online physically visit the store on the same day (source). 35% of all search traffic is local.

This is a 2017 report and the figures may have increased further by now.

It is easily understandable that local means lots of references to the name of the city or the town where you do your business.

This is a given.

But there are many other attributes that help people find information regarding your city or town.

For example, is there a famous landmark?

If you do your business in Agra, you don’t always have to write about Agra; you can also talk about the Taj Mahal.

If you provide your business services in Paris, you don’t always have to talk about Paris; you can also talk about the Eiffel Tower.

Is there some famous eatery in your locality that draws people from great distances?

Has it become a part of your city heritage?

Why not write about it in such a manner that you can also talk about your own business?

Coming back to my taxi client, there are various reasons why people may hire a taxi service.

They might be visiting the city for business purposes.

They might be on a pilgrimage (luckily for the client, there are many reasons people may like to visit the geographic area he covers).

Millions of tourists flock the place.

So, I’m writing about the top tourist destinations.

The top hotels to stay.

Different landmarks.

The way people dress up.

The cultural sensitivities.

The various exotic itineraries.

The favorite seasons to visit the place.

The famous festivals and rituals.

The local cuisine.

The legends specific to the area.

There is no end to it.

There are practically unlimited opportunities for writing targeted content to improve your local SEO.

Of course, the central point of reference is your business.

How does your business fit in the scheme of things?

This is something you need to figure out.

Remember that you don’t want to end up as an information portal for your locality because then your business message may get lost and your prospective customers and clients may end up being confused.

Many marketers suggest that you only write about things you do.

Make an impact locally, and then write about it.

This way you get lots of opportunities to generate targeted content writing for local SEO.

For example, there is a local event happening.

Can you participate in that event?

If you do, then write about how you participated and how you contributed.

Is there a cleanliness drive going on in your area?

Why not get involved and create videos and images about your involvement and what a difference you have made?

Positive coverage can do a lot to enhance your local SEO.

Even if you cannot get yourself involved physically, you can write your opinion on how, if your business got involved, what impact it would have and if you’re not getting involved, what is stopping you?

You need to be creative.

The purpose of the entire exercise must be to publish lots of content regarding your local peculiarities and then somehow make the connection with your business.

Something or the other is constantly happening in your area.

This gives you limitless opportunities to write targeted content to improve your local SEO.

Is content writing for local SEO different from the usual SEO writing?

The basic guidelines for writing content for local SEO don’t change.

For example, your main keywords must be in the title of the web page or the blog post your writing.

Your headline must have your primary keywords.

Sprinkle your keywords and its different variations all over your writing.

Use headings and subheadings.

Organize the main points in bullet points. Interlink to your other pages.

Follow SEO guidelines when using images and videos.

You may like to read How to write SEO content for your business.

Add to all these the local references.

How to write content for the Google RankBrain System

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Content writing for Google RankBrain

Content writing for Google RankBrain

For a couple of years now Google has been using its RankBrain system to rank your content.

RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence system that helps the Google algorithm in ranking various links and websites.

Although it hasn’t totally taken over the Hummingbird algorithm (the current ranking algorithm that Google uses) many SEO experts are claiming that the Google ranking algorithm derives almost 30% of its influence from RankBrain.

What exactly is Google RankBrain?

What is Google RankBrain?

What is Google RankBrain?

It’s an artificial intelligence system, and just like any contemporary artificial intelligence, it learns itself. It sometimes writes and modifies the ranking algorithm on its own.

The overall ranking process at Google is handled by the Hummingbird algorithm. RankBrain is a component of that algorithm that contributes towards assigning ranks to different links according to their relevance to the searcher’s intent.

Just like RankBrain, there are multiple components in the Hummingbird algorithm that analyze content.

Panda, Penguin and Payday components are used to fight spam. Pigeon is used to improve local search results.

Then, there is a Top Heavy component of the Hummingbird algorithm that assigns negative marking to ad-heavy pages.

To reward you for your mobile-friendly pages, the ranking algorithm uses the Mobile Friendly component.

Copyright infringement is taken care of by the Pirate component (source).

Whereas conventional SEO is based on the type of keywords you have used when writing your content and the quality of backlinks, RankBrain calculates the relevance of your content according to its own interpretation, according to what it thinks should be ranked rather than according to how the web page of the blog post has been “optimized”.

You must have read it at multiple places – even I have mentioned it multiple times on my blog – that when you are writing content, focus on the “intent” of the searcher instead of simply creating content based on your keywords.

The intent is what matters to RankBrain.

Unlike conventional ranking methods, RankBrain doesn’t rank web pages according to predefined formula.

It modifies the rank according to the interpretive need of the user.

It practically thinks like the human brain. It interprets meaning and gives you the best search result according to your particular need.

For example, if someone searches for “what are the best shows this week on Amazon Prime?” RankBrain will show the latest results no matter how well an article or blog post you wrote on the topic last month and how many people have linked to it.

Even if in terms of SEO practices your link should show up on page 10 or page 20 of the search results, if it is fresh and fresh content needs to be shown, your link will appear on the first page, even at the top.

So, how do you write content according to the Google RankBrain system?

How to write content for Google RankBrain

How to write content for Google RankBrain

To be frank, there is no particular way you can optimize your content for the RankBrain system.

As mentioned above, RankBrain doesn’t rank your content according to some predetermined parameters.

But it doesn’t mean you cannot benefit from RankBrain.

Content writing for RankBrain is very matter of fact: does your content solve a purpose? If it does, it will enjoy good search engine rankings.

The age-old wisdom that your content should provide the needed information to your human visitors still stands as in fact, such systems are developed by Google and other search engines to make sure that content creators create content that is relevant to people rather than machines.

When content is specifically created for machines it is open to manipulation. This is why Google has incorporated multiple algorithmic components to make sure that people don’t try to game the system.

How to make sure you enjoy good rankings in the times of artificial intelligence?

Search engine companies like Google aren’t creating sophisticated algorithms to stop your content from ranking well. They’re creating the sophisticated algorithms to make sure that content that deserves to rank well, does rank well.

So, instead of worrying about getting good ranks, focus on the quality, the relevance and the purposefulness of your content.

Do keywords matter when you are trying to optimize your content for the Google RankBrain system?

Not necessarily, but it doesn’t mean you stop neglecting them.

What are keywords after all? They are part of the language that you use to write your content.

Take for example this blog post. I’m writing about RankBrain, so I’m referring to it repeatedly, not purposely, but contextually. I’m not trying hard to use it repeatedly. It’s just happening.

Another focus of this post is content writing. I’m trying to explain to you how to write content that can convince the RankBrain ranking system.

Obviously these two terms are going to occur in my writing more than once, even multiple times. This tells Google that the foci of my blog post are RankBrain and content writing. There is nothing wrong in that.

But don’t just focus on your primary keywords. Use LSI keywords. Use semantic keywords. Even use the trending keywords if they are related to your topic.

Keywords matter when you’re writing content, but just make sure that they are there naturally and not stuffed. Quality, is what matters the most.

Focus on a better user behavior vis-à-vis your content writing if you want to make RankBrain happy

Since RankBrain avoids depending on conventional SEO benchmarks, it depends more on user behavior vis-à-vis your content. It observes the following while ranking your content:

What is your bounce rate?:

How many people stick to your website after finding your links on Google?

Do they immediately leave your link and come back to Google or do they linger on your website because they find useful information on it?

If your bounce rate is low RankBrain likes your content and improves its rankings.

How many people interact with your content?:

If your content is useful people engage with it.

They link to your content. They share your content with their followers and friends on social media and social networking websites. They even sometimes re-purpose your content.

The more people interact with your con tent, the better rankings it gets through RankBrain.

How in-depth is your content?:

The days of highly narrow content pieces are gone.

Remember when people used to create dedicated web pages and blog posts for every keyword combination for the same phrase? It is no longer acceptable.

You need to cover all your keyword combinations through a single web page or blog post, and this means, writing in-depth content pieces.

When you’re writing on a topic, cover practically every aspect of the topic within a single blog post or web page.

Is your content writing conversational?:

Conversational content writing is important because a greater number of people are using voice search and when people use voice search, they normally use a conversational tone.

Write shorter sentences. Avoid writing very complicated paragraphs. Try to capture just one thought in a single paragraph.

All in all, the more human friendly content you write, the better it is suitable for Google RankBrain.

10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

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10-SEO-content-writing-rules-you-cannot-ignore

SEO content writing has evolved since the days when the only way to get good search engine rankings was to use your keywords and key phrases indiscriminately. People were becoming experts in “website optimization techniques” and “web page optimization tactics”.

Read 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Although you still have to use your primary and secondary keywords for SEO content writing, the exercise has been superseded by many other SEO factors that impact your search engine rankings. Getting your website on search engines, especially among the top 10 results, has become an integral part of content writing and content marketing.

How SEO content writing rules have changed

As I have mentioned above, improving your search engine rankings takes a lot more than simply using your primary and secondary keywords. Social validation is a must. It matters a lot to Google ranking algorithms how people react to your content.

Of course, keywords and how you use them still matter but along with that, what also matters is the quality of your content. All professional SEO consultants admit that the only way you can get better search engine rankings for your website is through content writing.

Contemporary web page optimization best practices

In order to know how to optimize your website or blog, you have to find the “why”, “what” and “how” of the content that you are writing.

You need to give people what they are looking for. If your content is simply misguiding people into visiting your website, your content begins to lose relevance.

The true value of your content can be gauged better through emotional intelligence which machines cannot have. This is why Google seeks social validation to rank your links.

When people find your content valuable and useful, they begin to interact with your content. They respond to it from their own blogs and website (linking to it). They Share it on social networking platforms in order to endorse it, agree with it, or even to disagree with it.

Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account people’s reaction towards your content. Whether they agree or disagree, how do they react to your content? Do they like it? Do they share it on social media and social networking websites? Do they recommend it?

The web, being web, is interconnected. Google and other major search engines these days have access to data from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn (only to name a few social platforms available at this moment, in 2017). If your link is creating buzz, they know it, and then they use this buzz to determine your SEO. Content writing rules take into consideration, along with your keywords, social validations that pour in from various sources.

Read: 10 tips on how to write SEO content for your website

Why do you need to follow content writing rules to improve SEO?

You don’t need to. In fact, they are not even rules. I just needed a catchy title so I used the term “rules”, you can call them guidelines, benchmarks, or pointers or commandments, or whatever you feel like.

You don’t even have to follow these content writing rules to improve your SEO if you don’t feel like. They are there just for your reference. Sometimes you can use them, and sometimes you don’t need to.

But why use them?

They give you a template. This template doesn’t ensure higher rankings in itself, because your rankings depend on thousands of things in the universe, but they will make sure that if Google wants to rank your content, at least it has the information it needs.

It’s like using an SEO plug-in. Have you used the Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress? Seopressor? These plug-ins make recommendations like how long your webpage or blog post title should be, what should be your content-keywords ratio, what sort of information you should have in your description, and so on. Provided you stick to these guidelines, there is a great chance that your link will be ranked higher compared to the links that don’t follow these guidelines.

The same holds true for the content writing rules that I’m listing below. If you stick to them, they may not suddenly improve your SEO, but you will 100% have content that will be optimized for better rankings.

So here they are…

10 SEO content writing rules you cannot ignore

  1. Clearly define the “why” of your business: Why would people do business with you? What need do you solve? How do you enrich people’s lives? How do you make it easier for people to work, to celebrate, to entertain themselves or to increase their self-worth? All these bits of information must manifest in your content writing.
  2. Clearly define personas: Whom are you going to target with your content? Who are these people? Where do they come from? What are their aspirations? What problems are they having that they need solved? What are their backgrounds? The more you know about your audience, the better will be your content.
  3. Compile a list of keywords and search terms: Once you have defined the “why” of your business and have also defined the personas of your target audience, it will be easier for you to compile a list of keywords and search terms that you are going to incorporate into your SEO content writing. Remember that you don’t compile the list of keywords and search terms for your own happiness; you need to know the keywords and search terms people actually use to search for your business. You need to look at your business from their perspective. Only then you will be able to compile the right list of keywords and search terms. Having a list of keywords and search terms will also keep you focused and give you a clear idea of what content you should be publishing.
  4. Prepare a list of topics containing your target keywords and search terms: When you talk of SEO we need to take care of these things. Your topics are very important. Your topics are generally the titles of your blog posts and webpages. The titles of your blog posts and webpages are so important that the Google ranking algorithm takes the words appearing within your titles very seriously. This is why it’s very important for your SEO that when you are writing content, your keywords and search terms are present in your blog post and webpage titles.
  5. Start writing engaging content: Once you have created keyword-rich titles, when you are writing content for these titles, initially don’t worry much about their SEO quality. Remember that it’s very important to publish engaging content. Eventually it is the quality of your content that decides your long-term search engine rankings. You will also need quality content to accumulate social validation. Social validation is so important that even if you don’t bother about your keywords and you are able to accumulate enough social validation, your SEO is going to improve considerably.
  6. Whenever possible, write longer blog posts and webpages: To counter “thin content” Google these days has started preferring longer blog posts and webpages. People were publishing lots of “thin content” – meaningless content of 300-400 words mostly to target keywords – and the search results were being filled with lots of junk information. Writing longer blog posts and webpages takes effort and considerable knowledge of the subject. I’m not saying do it always, but whenever you have enough to say, don’t hold yourself back.
  7. Incorporate your keywords once you have completed a blog post or a webpage: Once you are sure that you have created a good quality, engaging blog post or webpage, insert the keywords that you have included in the title of that particular blog post or webpage. Strategically incorporate the keywords and search terms in such a manner that you don’t overuse them.
  8. Format your blog post or webpage in an SEO friendly manner: Your web content should be easily scannable. Use headlines (tags like <h1>, <h2>, etc.) to organize your text under different sections and once or twice use your keywords and search terms within these headlines. If some bits of information can be presented with bullet points, use them. At least once bold your keywords. You can also use your keywords in the anchor text when you link to other blog posts and webpages either on your own website or other websites.
  9. Publish content at regular intervals: SEO content writing doesn’t just mean publishing a few blog posts and webpages and then resting on your laurels. For rare businesses, this works, but not for businesses that need to compete with other businesses. It is because lots of businesses like your business are publishing content with great speed. Even if you rank well for certain keywords and search terms, soon you’re going to be overtaken by your competition with better and more content. This is why you need to constantly supply Google with fresh content. At least to experience the initial SEO boost, you need to continuously post blog posts and webpages for 3-4 months. Holding yourself back would be like getting into a boxing ring and constantly pulling your punches without giving all you have got. If you are not regular, you lose even the slight advantage you have gained by publishing some content initially.
  10. Update your existing content: All the blog posts and webpages that you create are your business assets. You should nurture them and take care of them just as you take care of your other business assets. Constantly update your older blog posts and webpages and resubmit them to search engines to let them know that you have updated them. Add new information. Modify the data that might had been correct two years ago but not now.

Whether you realize it now or five years later, SEO content writing is an ongoing process. As Yoda says, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

yoda quote on SEO content writing

5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

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5-reasons-why-content-writing-is-important-for-SEO

Do you know that your SEO begins and ends with quality content writing?

It is so important that every major search engine optimization agency these days doesn’t implement your optimization strategy without a solid content strategy.

SEO benefits of content writing have been copiously documented by now.

What is SEO content writing?

It means writing content in such a manner that it begins to rank higher for the related keyword searches. You use the keywords in the title of the web page or the blog post and then strategically use them at various places. Ideally, your content should be optimized for search engines as well as humans.

Read How to evaluate your SEO content writing.

Before you comprehend and decide to use content writing to improve your search engine rankings you need to learn

  1. What is SEO content writing?
  2. What type of content you can publish on your blog or website?
  3. What is going to be your long-term content strategy?

For this section, I’m going to explore the various aspects of writing content specifically for higher rankings.

Although, merely pushing content doesn’t have a great impact on your SEO, it is the most important aspect of your ranking strategy. If there is no content, there is nothing to rank.

As explained above, in order to write content for SEO, you need to follow certain steps including

  1. Make sure that the main keyword phrase appears in the title of your web page or blog post.
  2. The main keyword phrase and its various parts should be scattered all over the content of your web page or blog post.
  3. You should also use the alternative phrases, what they call LSI keywords. LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing and these are the related keywords to your main keywords. If you feel that you are over-using your main keywords you should replace them with LSI keywords.
  4. Use your keywords (including LSI keywords) within the <h1>, <h2> and <h3> tags to put more emphasis on them.
  5. Use your keywords (including LSI keywords) as anchor text when linking to other web pages and blog posts on your website.

These are all a part of on-site SEO. These are the technical side of SEO. These alone don’t decide how Google is going to rank your content, but they are a part of the building blocks that you need in order to write SEO content.

Of course, the fundamental aspect of your content writing must always be its quality, its relevance, and the value it delivers to your visitors. Without quality content writing, there is no hope of getting good search engine rankings. Quality content writing is the most important part of your SEO.

Read 20 Evergreen Characteristics of Quality Content

With quality, SEO-friendly formatting is very important because the Google algorithm looks for important words at particular places on your web page or blog post.

Now coming to the “content” part of writing search engine friendly content. Here are a few things you need to follow:

  1. Do keyword research: Before you start writing content make sure you have a comprehensive list of the right keywords and key phrases you are going to use. These must be the search terms your target customers and clients are most likely to use when trying to find you or your service or your business or your product.
  2. Start writing high-quality content: I can never understate the importance of high-quality content. If your content quality is inferior, no matter how much time you spend optimizing your content, all the SEO benefits will be lost. Remember that the only reason your content exists is to serve your prospective customers and clients. So, whatever you write, keep in mind that you have to provide some sort of solution.
  3. Incorporate your keywords: Once you have written content that you feel is going to convert well, incorporate your keywords. Insert your keywords at strategic locations. Don’t overuse them. Whenever you feel that you cannot help using them, use alternatives – as mentioned above, use LSI keywords.
  4. Promote your content: Marketing your content, making sure that your target audience is able to find your content through various social media and social networking channels, is an important aspect of SEO. Google wants social validation. Try to get social validation from as many resources as possible. Promoting content will also get you precious back links.

5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Now that we know what is SEO content and how to write it, let’s come to the main topic of the blog post: reasons why content writing is important for SEO.

SEO is actually all about content marketing. And since content writing is indispensable to any genuine content marketing effort, we can safely say that SEO is actually all about content writing. How come? I’m describing that below.

1. SEO needs strategic usage of keywords and search terms

Although big advances have been made in terms of ranking web pages and blog posts according to their true value, keywords still matter. You can judge the importance of keywords by the fact that your ranking depends on whether you have used your keywords or one of its alternatives in the title of your web page or blog post, or not.

It is only through strategic content writing that you can use the right keywords to satiate Google. If there is no content, it is very difficult for you to rank for the right keywords.

2. Social validation can only be obtained due to quality content

I have personally seen that many web pages and blog posts rank well due to the social validation they have been able to attract despite having inferior quality content. But this can only be achieved by brute force and lots of money. For a small or medium-sized business, the only way you can get social validation is by quality content writing.

When your content is great, when it delivers value, when people find what they are looking for through your content, they tend to engage with your content through social media and social networking websites. When they share your links on their timelines, Google sees these actions as social validation and then uses this validation to rank your links.

3. Quality back links can only be obtained due to quality content

Back links are also a form of social validation but you don’t necessarily have to focus on social media and social networking websites to garner back links.

Why would people link to your website or blog? Apart from the fact that sometimes you can pay websites and blogs to link back to you, in most of the cases, people link to you because they appreciate what you are publishing.

This, Google sees as validation and its algorithms use this validation to rank your webpages and blog posts.

4. In order to rank your website and individual links, Google needs content

This is a straightforward logic. If you don’t have content, what is Google going to rank? In Google Images Google ranks images, in Google Video, Google ranks videos and in the same manner, in the normal Google section, Google ranks text, your written content.

This is why content writing is important for your SEO: it is giving Google something to rank. It also tells Google for what keywords and search terms your content should be ranked.

5. Content writing contributes to the “Search Task Accomplishment” factor

This is a new trend emerging: does your content solve any purpose? Search Task Accomplishment is becoming a new buzzword on the Internet, especially in the content marketing and SEO circles.

Soon, Google is going to rank your content according to the true purpose it solves. A user should be able to find exactly what he or she is looking for when he or she uses the Google search engine. Google is working on an algorithm that will be able to find if people are able to find exactly the information they need on your link. If yes, your rankings will start improving and if no, your rankings will start deteriorating.

Additional SEO benefits of content writing

  1. People voluntarily link to your content.
  2. People have more reasons to link to your content because you give them a wide choice of topics and interest areas.
  3. There are greater opportunities for your content being shared on social media.
  4. With high quality content people spend more time on your website indicating to Google that you have quality and relevant content.
  5. Content writing boosts your content marketing efforts and this in turn improves your search engine rankings.
  6. Organic rankings achieved through quality content writing last longer and attract more traffic because people prefer to visit links that appear organically rather than promoted by advertising.

There was a time when SEO existed in isolation. No longer is the case. SEO these days is the sum total of your entire content marketing dispensation. Without great content, you can never hope to enjoy good search engine rankings. With every preceding month, content writing is becoming more and more important for SEO.