Tag Archives: Organic SEO

Factor in machine learning when content writing

How important is searcher intent for content writing effectiveness?

The term “searcher intent” was introduced in the wake of the BERT update from Google. It stands for “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. It is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. It not only helps the machines to understand what the words in a sentence stand for, but also the context and the nuance.

Neil Patel on his blog gives very good “Before” and “After” examples of how the BERT update affects the search results.

The point is, the search intent of the search engine user is carefully analysed by the background AI to show appropriate results.

After all, people should be able to find information they are looking for instead of what search engines like Google and Bing think people are trying to find.

Therefore, Fabrice Canal says that the ranking algorithms at the search engines are constantly evolving and the machines learn on their own what people are searching and what search results they need.

What is search intent?

I have explained it multiple times on my website, but I will quickly recap.

Knowing the searcher intent means knowing exactly what your target audience is looking for. The search terms need to be interpreted according to their need and not according to just the words being used.

Thanks to BERT when you search for “the benefits of apple” the search engine completely ignores the Apple company which, previously, it did not. All the top results are about the benefits of eating apples.

On the other hand, if you search for “I have an apple” Google gets confused and starts showing results from various “Apple” products and reviews. It is not taking an inference from my previous search and then sticking to the fruit instead of the tech company.

Anyway, knowing the searcher intent during content writing keeps you focused and helps you write content your target customers and clients are looking for.

Again, I will come back to my own example.

Suppose someone searches for “need a content writer”.

This becomes confusing for the search engine. Is the search about the qualities that are needed in a content writer? Does it mean “I need a content writer”? Does it mean “do you need a content writer?”

Big difference. When someone looks for “I need a content writer” it is a person who needs a content writer.

When someone looks for “do you need a content writer?” question is being asked whether someone needs a content writer.

These are very subtle things, but they can have a big impact on your search engine rankings. Even if the rankings of your core content pieces don’t fluctuate much, the sort of traffic that you get may not generate you much business.

What do I do to solve this problem?

I solve this problem by writing highly targeted pages. For example, instead of trying to target something like “need a content writer” or “I need a content writer” I try to write about “content writer needed for a web design agency” or, “looking for content writer for the real estate company”.

This brings us to the discussion of using longtail keywords. These keywords or search terms may appear long, and you may think that very few people may use them, but at least these people will be clearheaded and precise.

For example, when someone searches for “looking for a content writer for email marketing” and then comes to my website, I know that the person is actually looking for someone who can write email marketing campaigns.

You will get higher conversion rate.

The topic of this post was content writing for machine learning.

Search engine engineers at Google and Bing suggest that don’t worry much about keywords. With every new update, keywords begin to matter less. What matters more is the essence of your message.

Hence, focus on quality. Focus on relevance. Focus on searcher intent.

TOFU MOFU BOFU way to higher organic search engine rankings

Why simply publishing a blog doesn’t improve your organic search engine rankings much?

Blogging is great.

In fact, recently I wrote a blog post titled How does blogging help you grow your business?

The problem is not with blogging.

You need your business blog to increase awareness and to engage your visitors.

Having a business blog and maintaining it diligently is indisputable.

But what the above Readwrite blog post says is, don’t just focus on publishing blog posts.

They may give you a sense of achievement and you may think that you’re doing something important for your business, but when it comes to improving your organic search engine rankings for your SEO, your progress is quite slow.

The progresses certainly there – after all, there is a reason publishing a business blog is highly recommended – but not as good as it should be.

Blogging belongs to the TOFU part of your content marketing strategy – it raises awareness about your business. About your brand.

For example, I regularly publish my content writing blog.

Through the blog, I share lots of important information about the benefits of blogging, content writing, content marketing, email marketing and social media marketing.

I also share tips on how to write content better to improve your SEO and other aspects of writing and publishing content.

This is fine. But am I able to attract hardcore clients who would give me bigger projects?

This is where the role of other funnels comes in.

People come to your website for different reasons.

I don’t want to attract just those people who want to write better content and want to blog better or those who want to improve their SEO with quality content writing.

I want to attract people who are looking for a reliable content writing service for their business.

They want to be reassured.

They want to know if I can write high-caliber content.

For this they need case studies, white papers and other authoritative materials.

They also need an analysis of how I can actually help them improve their engagement rate and organic search engine rankings.

More importantly, how cost-effective and efficient is my content writing service?

To achieve this, I need to target all the categories of the funnel.

Hence, if you want to improve your organic search engine rankings in the sense that you can generate more business, you must write and publish content targeting different funnels.

Organic search engine optimization with content writing

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Organic SEO through quality content writing

Organic search engine optimization means improving your rankings on Google and other search engines through the strength and relevance of your content.

The ideal way of improving your search engine rankings is through quality content writing.

The entire Helpful Content algorithm update by Google rests on the premise that your content must solve problems for your visitors.

It must be of high quality. It must be authoritative. It must be relevant.

Content writing can be the most sustainable way to search engine optimizations because it organically improves your search engine rankings rather than artificially pushing them upward just to plummet due to smallest ranking algorithm changes.

The primary purpose of all mainstream search engines is to find the best content for their users and in order to achieve that they are constantly improving their indexing and ranking criteria.

A good example of increasing search engine rankings by constantly publishing highly useful content is Steve’s website TripInsuranceStore.com. I have been working with him since 2002 and ironically, I don’t write content for him – I manage the back-end of the website.

When most of the websites were reeling under the impact of the Google Penguin update Steve was feeling quite smug. The update hadn’t just left him unscathed, it had benefited him.

What does he do?

I have observed that instead of focusing on keywords, he focuses on the questions that his prospective customers may have.

He represents various travel insurance companies so most of the questions concern travel insurance.

His website and his blog are literally the treasure trove of travel insurance related information.

This is what Google and other search engines love. They love information. They rank high webpages and blog posts containing useful and relevant information.

Organically improving search engine rankings with quality content writing

Quality content writing improves your SEO organically

Through your content writing you must provide solutions to your visitors rather than simply creating junk content.

Whether they purchase from you or not is another issue but when they come to your website they shouldn’t feel as if they have wasted their time.

They must take back something valuable.

This is the sort of content that gets higher rankings on Google and other search engines.

Organic search engine rankings are not fickle.

You don’t lose these rankings when their algorithms change because they change their algorithms in order to find more quality content and if you have quality content, you are going to benefit rather than get into trouble.

Here are a few things you can do to improve your search engine rankings organically with content writing

Focus on your readers

For organic SEO write content to deliver value

This is not a holistic thought, it actually benefits you.

When you focus on your readers you create content that is useful to them.

Help them, instead of pushing your offers and forcing them to buy your products or services.

Provide them useful information convincingly and then let them decide.

Of course you should use call to action phrases and words but they should be used as extra promptings.

Focus on the language your readers use

Organic SEO-write in the language your readers use

This can also be covered in the above point.

Use the language that is used by your readers and this way you will use the keywords people actually use rather than the ones you think they are using.

Organic SEO is all about reaching out and making people stay longer on your blog posts and web pages.

You may be writing and publishing valuable information but if people don’t read what you are writing, it doesn’t benefit your organic search engine rankings.

One of the most important attributes of quality content writing is that it is easier to read.

Writing in the language of your readers not only increases your search engine rankings for the actual, working keywords, it also improves your conversion rate.

Make your content problem-centric rather than keyword centric

Organic SEO-solve problems with your content writing

This is what Steve does on his website.

He creates articles and blog posts that provide answers to people’s concerns.

He uses queries left by his visitors as well as his own common sense to create questions and then create webpages and blog posts to answer.

This automatically takes care of the phrases his prospective customers use in order to find such information.

Focus more on quality and less on SEO

The search engine optimizations problem begins to manifest when people get bogged down by too much SEO-oriented activities.

Just focus on creating quality content and the rest of the pieces fall in place on their own.

This is not to say that content writing is the panacea for all your search engine optimization concerns.

Your rankings depend on lots of internal as well as external factors and that’s why such engine marketing and optimization services charge a premium.

But valuable content is the most essential part of a viable SEO strategy.

What is organic search engine optimization?

SEO marketing can be done in two ways:

Through paid advertising on Google and other search engines.
By naturally increasing your visibility through publishing lots of high-quality content.

You can read more on What is organic SEO.

Organic SEO is when you don’t use advertising to improve your search visibility but your rankings naturally improve over the time.

You routinely publish content using your specific keywords or phrases.

The goal of organic SEO is to attain higher search engine rankings “naturally” in the search engine results pages (SERPS).

What are the advantages of improving your search engine rankings organically?

Organic search engine rankings don’t lose their spots when Google changes its algorithm.

Remember that the sole reason why Google exists is that it finds information for you.

For example, if you’re looking for a reliable content writer who can help you improve your search engine rankings, and if you search for a “content writer to improve my SEO”, you should be able to find content writers who can actually help you rather than those who have spammed their way into top rankings.

Despite all the algorithm updates, can people still trick Google?

Google is after all an algorithm (I’m talking about the ranking mechanism and not the company).

Your organic search engine rankings through quality content writing are sustainable

Organic search engine rankings are sustainable

Algorithm, no matter how advanced it gets, can always be tricked, or there is always scope for confusion and exceptions.

Even now, after more than two decades, you find search results that are of no use.

But Google is constantly trying to downgrade content that does not deliver value and highlight content that does.

It means, if you are writing valuable content, Google wants your content highlighted in front of its users.

Quality content leads to organic search engine optimization which is sustainable over a long period of time.

Of course, your rankings are going to go up and down because of your competitors constantly publishing content.

Even if you improve your search engine rankings through high quality content, sooner or later, other people who are publishing similar content on the same topics, and provided they can match your quality, are going to overtake you.

This is bound to happen if you have people competing with you.

Hence, it goes without saying that you need to continuously publish relevant content on your website or blog.

Other than this, the best advantage of improving your search engine rankings organically is that the respective search engine algorithms are not going to upstage your links.

Even when your rankings go down for certain keywords, they will immediately improve when you update your website.

The best thing about improving your search engine rankings organically is that you are never going to be penalized by Google.

Even if your rankings go down – this is bound to happen if you cannot keep up with your competitors (and there are going to be many competitors) – you can quickly bounce back by adding more content to your website.

When you organically improve your search engine rankings through quality content writing you don’t pay for every click (as it happens with paid advertising).

The problem with paid advertising (for example Google AdWords) is that as you get more traffic, you spend more money.

For example, if you are paying $0.10 per click, for 100 clicks you will pay $10 and for 1000 clicks you will pay $100.

Clicks for some keywords cost more than $10 per click.

When you organically improve your search engine rankings, the only money that you spend is on content writing.

Once your content is written and published, whether you get 10 visitors or 100,000 visitors, you don’t pay anything to Google.

Looking for insightful blog posts on content writing, and SEO copywriting? You will find them on Credible Content Blog. Updated almost daily. Fresh, unique perspective.