Tag Archives: seo content writing

Can your SEO content writer improve your search engine rankings

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Your search engine rankings definitely depend on the sort of content you have on your website/blog and also the quantity if you face tough competition. Your content conveys to the search engine algorithms exactly what information your website contains. Than the search engine algorithms use their own logic to rank your content according to the keywords and search terms used by their respective users. On a basic level a search engine like Google.com ranks your pages according to

  • The quality of your content
  • The quantity of quality content
  • The occurrence of keywords and relevant phrases
  • The usability of your website
  • The number of “trusted” websites linking to your website

The importance of an SEO content writer

As far as an SEO content writer goes, his or her job is not only producing great content for your website but also arranging the text in such a manner that it is easier for search engine crawlers to crawl it, index it and then supply that information back to the search engine servers. There is a thin line that divides quality/qualified content and spammy content. Even when you think that you have got great content going for your website (most of us don’t intentionally want to publish spammy content) you might end up having suspicious content just because your SEO content writer doesn’t actually know how to create SEO content.

That is why it is very important to work with a content writer who exactly knows what he or she is doing and also has a performance record to prove that. Merely having an ability to use keywords again and again doesn’t make one an SEO content writer. He or she should know that search engine algorithms can also read between the lines.

Can your SEO content writer improve your search engine rankings?

Of course your SEO content writer can improve your search engine rankings because after all your search engine rankings are all about the content you have. Frankly content can exist in many forms and textual content (where a content writer gets involved) is just one of them. Content on your website can exist in the form of video, audio, presentation slides and images and almost all major search engines have separate engines dealing with them. But if you want to be found for written/textual content then your SEO content writer can make a big difference.

An SEO expert is totally different from a content writer. An SEO expert can help you improve your search engine rankings but he or she cannot help you improve your conversion rate. Your conversion rate can only be improved by compelling content: content that informs as well as convinces.

SEO experts have their own importance and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t hire SEO experts to improve your search engine rankings, but given a choice between hiring an SEO expert and hiring an SEO content writer I will always suggest you to go for an SEO content writer. This is not because I myself am a content writer and hence I’m biased towards them, it’s just that if you are hiring an SEO expert at the cost of an SEO content writer then you aren’t achieving much (it’s another matter if you already have high-quality compelling content but it’s not faring well on search engines – that again indirectly means that it is not high-quality content, but anyway, I digress).

With an SEO content writer – provided he or she really knows his or her stuff – you kill two birds with one stone (I’m not in favor of killing birds, by the way). You get a content writer that produces high-quality content and consequently improves your conversion rate, and additionally, he or she also gets the right people to your website from search engines and other online sources.

What impact will Google Instant have on your organic search engine results

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If you keep a tab on the latest Internet trends you must have noticed the hoopla surrounding the new feature Google introduced a couple of days ago. It is called Google Instant. Now when you search on Google the search results are updated as you type in your query. You no longer need to click the search button (although eventually you can click). Even as you type in individual alphabets the search results are updated according to the search string you have entered so far.

Google instant search results

Many website owners are apprehensive about this new feature and they fear that it is going to disturb their search engine rankings. Is it really going to happen?

According to Google the latest feature does not affect your search engine rankings, it simply makes it easier for its users to find the information they are looking for by instantly showing the results. This will save people lots of time because they won’t have to enter the entire string and then click the search button.

Search engines after all are more concern for the convenience of their users rather than worrying about the nightmares they unleash upon web masters, bloggers and search engine marketers.

Since Google Instant has no effect on your search engine rankings you shouldn’t worry about that. It may change though, the way people process the information they obtain out of the search. Since they no longer have to type in the complete query they may never end up searching the keywords you might be aiming for. Suppose you have optimized a particular web page for “sizzling seekh kebabs instantly delivered”. You rank at the top for this expression and lap up most of the traffic due to this. But through Google Instant your prospective customers may get distracted while they are typing “sizzling see” or even something shorter.

Similarly if you rank well for “freelance writer in L.A.” you may lose some of your visitors if they find something useful while typing just “freelance writer”. What does this mean?

You will definitely need to appear faster and preferably among the first 5 search results for your important keywords and search phrases. You will need lots of content not only on your own website but also on other websites so that you have enough presence to cover most keyword combinations and consequently appear faster on the search engine result pages.

This new development may also work to your advantage without taking extra steps. Due to immediate processing lots of results will be highlighted that were not previously been shown due to longer queries.

Should you do something? Ideally you should always be doing something in order to remain ahead of the competition: there is so much to be done in terms of staying connected through social media and networking websites, publishing your blog regularly and continuously trying to improve your search engine rankings, irrespective of what features Google or some other search engines introduce. Other than that, if you are not doing much it means you are anyway not proactively promoting your business and hence you should wait and watch. Carefully observe the traffic you are getting and how it is impacting your business. If you are getting more business, well and good. If it hasn’t made much of a difference then too it is good. If it is having an adverse effect then you must take some steps, for instance:

  • Evaluate your website for SEO problems
  • Analyze your present conversion rate
  • Mmake note of what sort of content you have on your website and how it can be improved
  • Start exploring other sources of traffic such as submitting your articles to article directories, websites and blogs
  • Enhance your presence on social media and social networking websites
  • Generate more content on your area of interest and business
  • Try to improve your current rankings
  • Make a list of alternative keywords that can fetch you traffic
  • Stay in touch with your existing customers and clients

Now, I’m not saying that you should follow these steps just because Google has changed the way it displays search results; they should anyway be followed. They will certainly help if Google Instant has affected your search engine traffic, at least from Google.

Does SEO content writing really matter or is it just a fad?

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You must have noticed that I provide SEO content writing as a separate service, as in, I provide business content writing services and I also provide SEO content writing services beside other such services. But on many websites and blogs you must have come across people saying that there is no such thing as “SEO content writing” and the term is used to sound more esoteric, confuse the clients, and ultimately, charge more for basically nothing.

More or less I do agree with this notion. I believe there is just good content and bad content and good content always improves your search engine rankings. So why provide SEO content writing as a separate service?

After everything is said and done it takes extra effort to write keeping both search engines and humans in mind. Whether you agree or not search engines are constantly looking for content for the appropriate keywords and such terms. It doesn’t matter much if you’re selling something uncommon. But if you are promoting a service or a commodity that faces lots of competition, and if it matters to your business how much search engine traffic your website gets you have to organize your text in such a manner that all major search engine crawlers can crawl you are website, index your content and rank your links according to the keywords and search phrases you have used.

Since the competition is fierce you have to be very particular about the way you write and arrange your content and to an untrained person this might be quite difficult. Writing is an interactive activity and you cannot quickly train yourself to write in a certain manner. You can easily write a story or product or service descriptions but it takes training and experience to create text that is received well by the search engines as well as your prospective customers and clients. the skill has to be ingrained into your subconscious.

This is why it is better to hire someone who is comfortable at SEO content writing rather than you throwing darts in the darkness just to find out where they hit. Of course you can do that if you want to learn how to do it but if this is not your business it is simply a waste of time. In order to save a few hundred dollars you might end up spending time worth thousands of dollars.

Again, many people confuse SEO content writing with simply inserting keywords and key phrases into the text being written. Sometimes they overdo it (inviting penalty, unknowingly, from search engines) and sometimes the under do it, getting no relevance at all. Even while using your keywords and search expressions you need to sound as natural as possible. You need to have a compelling voice. Your writing should be able to convince your visitors because simply getting traffic doesn’t really do you much good if people leave your website within a few seconds because you’re writing cannot engage them.

There is another aspect of SEO content writing: it forces you to focus on a specific topic. For instance if you’re writing a page on “small-business web designing services” you need to mention this particular phrase in order to make sure the visitors understand what you’re trying to convey. It needn’t appear in every paragraph but it should appear wherever it is necessary. This will keep you focused on this particular topic. You may be providing web designing services for different types of businesses but you will write this specific page only for those people who are looking for small business web designing services. The same goes for any other field, let us say for instance, SEO content writing. If you are talking about your SEO content writing services you will be explaining what sort of SEO content writing services you provide and what are the advantages of hiring you for such services. Ultimately, this focus increases your keyword relevance.

So yes, SEO content writing does matter if you are really concerned about getting targeted search engine traffic without affecting your conversion rate.

SEO Content writing actually improves your search engine rankings

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Does SEO content writing improve your rankings

Does SEO content writing improve your rankings

Does SEO content writing actually improve your search engine rankings?

You may like to read 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

Although, whenever my clients ask me this question, I tell them that SEO content writing alone doesn’t improve search engine rankings but it is the underpinning of every SEO strategy.

Unless you have good content, you’re not going to enjoy better search rankings. There is a reason.

Over the years, an increasing number of organizations and content creators have realized that merely using keywords here and there doesn’t help much in improving one’s search engine rankings.

You need to provide useful information. You must write content that is relevant to what your target audience is looking for. Only then you can improve your SEO.

What do millions of Internet users access everyday while surfing the Internet?

They access the content present on various websites.

What do people promote day in and day out on various social media and networking websites?

They promote content links.

So it’s clear that everything is about content, whether it exists in the form of text, video or images.

Since everybody is seeking content, how do you create content that’s actually being sought?

And if you create content that is highly sought after, how do you let people know of its existence?

This is where SEO content writing can help you.

What does content actually mean?

Whatever exists digitally on the Internet is content

Whatever exists digitally on the Internet is content

As I have explained elsewhere on this blog, whatever information exists, it is content. It can be text, it can be video, it can be images, it can be PDFs, it can be social media updates – anything that can be read, heard or viewed, is content.

This TopRank blog post has compiled responses from 40 content marketers and content writers to get a perspective on what is content. For example, according to Heidi Cohen,

Content is high quality, useful information that conveys a story presented in a contextually relevant manner with the goal of soliciting an emotion or engagement. Delivered live or asynchronously content can be expressed using a variety of formats including text, images, video, audio and/or presentations. When used for marketing purposes, content should incorporate the organization’s branding, be void of any form of promotion, and use a call-to-action to be trackable.

According to data analyst Avinash Kaushik

Content is anything that adds value to the reader’s life. It can add value by making them smarter, making them laugh, making them do their job better, rush to their child to share the video, make a contribution to a charity.

How important are the keywords for SEO content writing?

Whether people are using search engines, online directories or social networking websites to dig out relevant information, one thing is common that they use: the keywords, the search terms.

There are many Internet “gurus” that say SEO is fast becoming irrelevant. They say that the keywords are losing their meaning.

There are many reasons for such opinions. One of the reasons is that these days more stress is put on the relevance of your content.

The artificial intelligence used by the search engine algorithms can understand your content even when you don’t use your keywords. It can make sense of the words by combining multiple words and multiple sentences and then deriving the meaning on its own.

Consequently, you should just focus on the quality and the relevance of your content.

Although I completely agree with the quality and the relevance thing, I think the keywords still matter. They’re going to matter for a long time.

Another reason for discounting SEO is that people these days are using social media and social networking websites to search for information.

This can be true for website like LinkedIn but finding business-related information on Facebook and Twitter or Instagram can be really daunting.

People are still using search engines when they want to find business-related information or when they are looking for products and services.

On social media and social networking websites they may stumble upon a bit of useful information, but they don’t actively use their search functions.

Search still means search engines like Google and Bing.

Does only SEO content writing help you improve your search engine rankings?

While SEO writing is the most important ingredient (it’s like the pasta in your pasta dish) what sort of rankings your content enjoys depends on many factors. Some of these include

  • The authority your website or blog currently wields.
  • The age of your domain.
  • The number of authority incoming links.
  • Your existing content quality.
  • Your existing content density.
  • The optimization of your source code.
  • Your engagement level on social media and social networking websites.
  • The frequency with which you publish fresh content and update existing content.
  • The way content is organized on your website or blog.
  • The level and the quality of competition your content faces on search engines.

SEO content writing is not just about outsmarting the search engines.

It’s about talking in the right language and using the right words; words people actually use.

If I’m writing about SEO content writing, and if nowhere on my page this phrase appears (let’s say all the time I’m talking about getting more search engine traffic — a good thing to do actually, but here I’m just explaining the expressions and their relevance) how can the search engines find my page when people are looking for SEO content writing?

So it’s very important that you figure out:

  • What’s your target market
  • What search terms and expressions they actually use
  • What they’re actually looking for
  • How to incorporate the data into your entire SEO content writing process

There is a concept called search task accomplishment. What does it mean?

Google these days does not rank your content based on how you have used your keywords. Though, keywords are still important, Google ranks your content based on what purpose it is solving.

To accomplish this, it takes into account the way people react to your content.

The logic is very simple. When someone finds your link on Google and clicks the link and goes to your website, does he or she find the information he or she is looking for?

If he or she comes back to Google and carries on with the same search, it tells Google that he or she didn’t find the information he or she was looking for and hence, he or she needs to look more.

On the other hand, if he or she doesn’t carry on the same search, it tells Google that your content accomplished the task for which it was created and hence, this particular link gets a ranking boost.

How does SEO content writing improve your search engine rankings

A lot of your success on the Internet depends on getting found, if you don’t have millions of dollars to spend on advertising.

You may like to read search engine optimization guidelines by Google.

According to Google guidelines, your content should be

  • Useful and informative.
  • Valuable and useful compared to other websites.
  • Credible and trustworthy.
  • High quality.
  • Engaging.

Search engine optimization is definitely a good start and when you include keyword targeting in your overall SEO content writing strategy it helps the search engine ranking algorithms compute the relevance according to the searches being conducted.

It has a circular effect:

SEO content writing

SEO content writing

As you can see in the diagram, with the right start, one thing leads to another and it goes on and on.

But is it this simple? Of course its not.

SEO content writing has to be matched with relevancy — it must provide solutions and answers.

Suppose someone wants to know what smart phone she should buy?

Simply optimizing your content for iPhone or Google Pixel or OnePlus isn’t going to be of much help and if it isn’t going to be of much help people are neither going to link to it nor going to promote it.

Unless your content really helps her decide, it’s of no relevance, and even if it appears on the first pages of various search engines (flukes do happen), it neither benefits you nor your visitors.

Create few SEO content pages, but create highly relevant pages.

This is where everything begins.

If you start focusing on every keyword under the sun and start generating tons of directionless traffic it’s not going to benefit you, and you’ll end up concluding that SEO content writing doesn’t work.

Instead, focus on a few search terms and create highly relevant content around them. Just in a couple of months you’ll notice a marked difference and you will find that SEO content writing definitely improves your search engine rankings.

Note: This blog post was updated on March 30, 2020.

Keep your SEO goals in mind while creating your content writing strategy

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It doesn’t help if you already have lots of content and then you realize that you are not targeting the right keywords. Although no situation is hopeless you can save yourself lots of time, and money, if you define your SEO goals properly. Make a list of keywords and keyword phrases you’d like to incorporate and then start generating your content around them.

There is also a business benefit of clearly defining your SEO goals — it keeps you focused. You know what sort of content you require for your website and blog and what you should avoid; yes, misplaced content is bad for SEO.

How do you keep your content SEO-focused?

  • Create titles with your keywords. Your page titles are very important. They appear in the search engine result pages as hyperlinks when people search for the relevant terms. People click more on the links that carry the search terms they’ve just used. Even when people promote your content on social networking websites or link your your pages and blog posts they normally copy/paste your title — this associates these keywords with your brand.
  • Use your keywords and key phrases when communicating your ideas. This tells the search engines that you have lots of content associated with the search term being currently used. If you provide content writing services then you should be talking about this subject a lot on your blog or website. But do it naturally; there is no need to use your relevant keywords excessively — this gets you penalized by almost all search engines.
  • Link to your other pages not just the home page. Your different pages contain different bits of information and whenever you feel a particular phrase can be linked to a page giving more information about that phrase, create a link. It makes it easier for the search engine crawlers to reach other pages and it also creases the relevancy of your less prominent pages.

The basic idea of creating SEO-focused content strategy is keeping you focused and help you focus on the right search terms.