Tag Archives: seo content writing

Should you put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket when writing content?

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When content writing to not put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket

When content writing to not put all your SEO eggs in the Google basket.

After very long time I have read this highly intriguing blog post on what direction Google is taking and how content marketing (in my case, content writing) must take a proactive stand.

Right now, when you write content, there is a more than 99% chance that you want to improve your search engine rankings on Google. The search engine has a 92.17% global market share, after all. The search engine that comes second is Bing at a measly 2.78%.

So, understandably, when you are investing in SEO, you would rather focus on 92.17% than 2.78%.

Google is unpredictable, though. Years of investments in terms of man-hours/woman-hours and money go down the drain with a single update.

Google is a private enterprise. It is capitalism machine. It is not a social service. It wants maximum number of people using its search engine so that it can monetize them.

Eventually, in near future, Google wants to give you information even before you realize that you need to look it up.

People use Google because they find useful information, fast and conveniently. “Useful information” is the keyword here.

Search engineers and hundreds of PhD’s in mathematics are working round-the-clock to make sure that the users get the most relevant information they need.

To achieve that, sometimes they need to change their algorithm according to new observations.

The point is, they are going to change their algorithm at their convenience, whether the new change wipes off all your listings from the search engine or suddenly catapults you to the top position for you every keyword.

SEO content writing while not getting influenced by Google’s whims

Frankly, there is no foolproof solution. The above Content Marketing Institute blog post concludes with

SEO becomes a long-term experiential development strategy, not a game of matching semantics. As content marketers we are ultimately NOT trying to simply understand how people search for content – and are served it via Google – but rather how people are finding and experiencing the solutions to challenges they may not even know they have.

What does it mean?

Provide value instead of writing content according to Google guidelines. Focus on people instead of SEO. Make it easier for people to access your content and it will be automatically accessed by Google and other search engines.

Remember that content is all about experience. You already know that every instance of purchase is an emotional decision. Hence, your content, whether you write that content or publish a video or audio recording, must invoke an emotional response.

Your content must be a part of a journey. A bigger customer journey that does not begin and stop at your search engine rankings.

Rankings matter, yes. Keywords also matter.

But, your content is more than that. Keywords are just a guideline. For example, when you read a book, let’s say “Jude the Obscure” by Thomas Hardy, you know that the theme centers around a character called “Jude” who is always making “obscure” decisions about his life and people around him.

So, when I create a web page about “best content writing services”, instead of repeating the phrase multiple times in my content, I must focus on explaining to you why my content writing services may be the best for your need.

Create the context. Weave a narrative. Deliver value. Touch people emotionally. Then you don’t need to constantly worry about your Google rankings. You content attracts people due to its own, inherent quality.

Content quality versus content quantity – the debate still goes on

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Content writing-quality versus quantity

Content writing-quality versus quantity.

Frankly, I don’t believe there should even be a debate. When it comes to content writing and content publishing (for content marketing) quality always triumphs over quantity.

Ideally, if you have the money, and if you want to improve your organic search engine rankings quickly, quantity and quality go hand-in-hand. When I talk about quantity, I don’t mean blog posts having 4000-5000 words. I mean you publish multiple blog posts in a day, to the tune of 90 blog posts every month.

Publish three blog posts every day and within a couple of months Google begins to crawl and index your website multiple times a day. Your content begins to appear on the SERPs within a few hours, and sometimes, within a few minutes. I have seen this happening on one of my blogs.

The ideal number is, according to a HubSpot study, 11 blog posts every month. B2B and B2C companies that publish good quality blog posts 11 times every month, experience a spike in their targeted traffic.

Relationship between the number of blog posts and search engine traffic

Relationship between the number of blog posts and search engine traffic.

Also, publishing multiple blog posts daily shouldn’t bring your quality down. Your quality is of utmost importance.

But, if you don’t have the budget and the bandwidth, the next best option is completely focusing on quality. I would suggest one blog post every week of around 2500 words.

Make sure that you work with the quality content writer or blog writer. Don’t go for those cheap content writers because you will end up spending more money that way. You will pay them, and then you will pay them in the form of not getting any results.

Why quality and quantity both matter when writing content for your blog?

Google is hungry for new content. Its crawlers are continuously crawling the web to find new and updated content. Its ranking algorithm is designed in such a manner that it gives preference to the latest content.

Regular publishing also gets your content indexed very fast. As I have written above, when I was publishing more than three blog posts every day, my content would get indexed (another blog) multiple times in a day. Sometimes, my blog posts would appear in search results within minutes.

Just as Google is constantly looking for new content, it also expects you to publish quality content. This is because if the search engine does not find quality content for its users, the users will lose interest and may explore other search engines that are better at finding good, well-written content.

Google has developed its search algorithm in such a manner that if people don’t spend much time on your blog or website after finding your link on search results, it negatively affects your rankings.

Also, if someone uses a search query, finds your link, goes to your link and then within a few seconds comes back to Google and carries on with the same search query, Google assumes that the link that the user found does not contain the appropriate information for the related keyword and hence, again, this negatively affect your rankings.

Hence, both quality and quantity have a positive impact (or vice versa) on your search engine rankings. But, if you must make a choice between quality and quantity, always go for quality.

Use SEO tools along with content writing to improve your search engine rankings

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Using SEO tools along with content writing

Using SEO tools along with content writing.

I have personally experienced that content writing in itself can improve your search engine rankings. But with so many people competing for limited space on the SERPs, you need to take extra measures to highlight your content and make it easier for the search engine crawlers to make sense of it.

When you are regularly publishing content on your website or blog, I am assuming that you have a CMS or a blogging platform. Most probably you are using WordPress.

You may also be using something like Drupal or Joomla! but the basic thing is, when you are regularly publishing content, you need a publishing software. You can’t be creating and uploading independent HTML pages.

Every CMS gives you a GUI to write and publish content. Within your content you can have HTML elements such as <h1> and <h2> tags, images, hyperlinks and bulleted lists. You can also have page title and description meta tags.

In most of the cases, these are more than enough to improve your search engine rankings and there shouldn’t be a need to use an extra SEO tool.

Nonetheless, as I have mentioned above, to make sure that your quality content is crawled, indexed and ranked by Google and other search engines, you use SEO tools to analyze your content and incorporate keywords.

Do I use SEO tools along with content writing to improve my own search engine rankings?

Yes I do.

What SEO tools do I use along with optimized content writing?

In the very beginning I used the All-In-One WordPress SEO plug-in. Oh yes, I have been using WordPress since time immemorial.

Although WordPress allows you to create the title of your blog post or web page, per se, there are no or little provisions for adding meta tags. Besides, sometimes, you want your blog title and the actual HTML title to be different.

The blog title is the main headline that you see atop every blog post. Normally, it comes between the <h1></h1> tag.

The title of a post is the meta tag <title></title> and so is the description <description />.

WordPress by itself does not have provisions to add these bits of information. There are important for your SEO. To add them, you need an SEO tool.

As I have mentioned above, in the very beginning I was using the All-In-One WordPress SEO plug-in but later, I don’t know when, I started using the Yoast SEO plug-in. Both these plug-ins allow you to enter title and description information. The advanced version of Yoast SEO also analyzes your text for keywords.

For a few years I have been using SEOPressor. This is also a WordPress SEO plug-in. Along with giving the usual stuff like deciding separate title and description for your posts and also for Facebook and Twitter postings, you can enter three keywords and it analyzes your text.

Sometimes, when you are using your keywords, you may end up overusing them. SEOPressor warns you if you are overusing or under using your keywords and then makes suggestions. It also makes LSI keywords suggestions – alternative keywords that you can use to improve your SEO.

If your text-image ratio is low, it advises you to add more images.

I don’t use SEOPressor often (although I pay for it every month) because I find it constraining. To mark your blog post “optimized” you need to score beyond “75”. Since lots of effort is involved to reach the mark of “75” and beyond, instead of focusing on the quality of the content, you may end up trying to reach that mark.

Besides, reaching that mark isn’t a guarantee. Many times, I have been able to feature my blog posts among the top three results on the SERPs despite scoring below “60” by the SEOPressor analyzer. Conversely, even after crossing “90” the posts appear on fourth or fifth page.

But, anyway, whenever I want to make an extra effort at creating an optimized post, I use it.

Do I use another SEO tool along with content writing?

Not necessarily. Being a content writer, I am more obsessed with creating quality content rather than worrying about the SEO features recommended by the SEO tools.

I believe, or rather, I have experienced, when basic SEO needs are taken care of, such as having your keywords in the title and description, having your keywords in the first 100 words of the blog post or web page and then scattering them with different alternatives throughout the text, you begin to get higher search engine rankings.

I also use the Google Search Console regularly to submit the newly created blog posts or the old blog posts that I have just updated. You don’t need to wait for Google to come and crawl your content. You can submit your link and ask Google to crawl it. This way, your link is crawled, indexed and ranked comparatively quickly.

Factor in machine learning when content writing

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Content writing for machine learning and AI

Content writing for machine learning and AI.

The search engines are increasingly being powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, according to this interview of Fabrice Canal, Principal Program Manager at Bing, Microsoft.

So, keywords are not important?

For a few years, keywords are going to be important because to be able to ignore the keywords completely and just focus on what your message intends to deliver, the AI will need to be much smarter.

Nonetheless, even at this nascent stage, your SEO depends more on factoring in machine learning and searcher intent and less on the keywords and the search terms.

When you genuinely want to improve your search engine rankings – mostly customers come to your website and not random searchers – you need to know the intent of your average visitor.

I will give you my own example: I publish content for two reasons:

  1. Attract people who will pay me for my content writing services.
  2. Attract people who would like to link to my content, share it on their social media profiles, and in general, help me spread my content as far as possible.

I keep it 60:40 – 60% of my content is for spreading information and 40% is to tell people what I can do with my content writing services.

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.

You may like to read: Why searcher intent is most important when writing content for your website.

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

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Improving organic search engine rankings

Improving organic search engine rankings

Image source

I know, the title seems funny, but I will come to that later.

We all want to improve our organic search engine rankings.

“Organic” means natural. Instead of having to pay Google for search engine visibility, you want your links to appear naturally in the search results.

In fact, the entire concept of SEO revolves around improving your organic search engine rankings.

Do you feel that despite publishing blog posts and webpages on your website, your search engine rankings don’t improve much?

Now and then they show some spikes but overall, your rankings and consequently, your organic search engine traffic, remains somewhat less than desired.

Why do you think this happens?

This Readwrite blog post says that it happens because you are not writing and publishing your content according to TOFU, MOFU and BOFU.

No, these are not names for three brothers living in a Mogadishu village. They stand for “Top of the Funnel”, “Middle of the Funnel” and “Bottom of the Funnel”, respectively.

These are the three stages for which you have to separately write and publish content on your website and if you’re not publishing content targeting these funnels, there is little chance that you are going to improve your 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.