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Are SEO and content writing interlinked?

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With an example of the bee and the flower, the image shows how content writing and SEO are interrelated

Content writing and SEO are interrelated

What impact does your content writing have on SEO?

I know, this is an age-old question.

Most of my clients contact me for my content writing services because they want to improve their search engine rankings, which is perfectly fine.

If you are serious about getting traffic from search engines, you need to put in lots of effort getting to the top positions.

Depending on who is telling you, between 60-70% of all clicks are taken by the top 5 search results.

The only problem is that they think once they have published the “optimized” blog post or web page they are all set. They are going to rank higher and get traffic from Google and the motor of their business will start whirring.

They are right and wrong at the same time.

Yes, SEO and content writing are interlinked but content writing in itself doesn’t lead to better search engine rankings.

To get better rankings, you need to understand what search engines like Google are looking for, and what role your content plays in that.

Google doesn’t rank your content because you have “optimized” it.

The search engine could least care.

Google ranks your content based on how much valuable information it provides for the query that has been used.

Of course, it helps if you make your writing crawler-friendly and through the right use of words you give the ranking algorithm enough material to analyse your text, but other than that, it is the value, I repeat, the value that you provide that ultimately decides how your content ranks.

How are content writing and SEO interrelated?

The fundamental block of your search engine optimization is content writing.

Without written content, you can’t think of improving your search engine rankings.

So, this is settled.

How can you improve your search engine rankings with content writing?

Here are a few things you can do:

Provide answers to questions

This is a sure shot way of improving your SEO. Someone asks something from Google and Google provides the answer.

Total win-win.

This is exactly what Google wants to do.

The search engine wants people to ask questions and then it wants to give them the best answers.

If you have got the best answer, your answer will be shown at the top.

Hence, if you haven’t yet started writing content for your website (or you haven’t yet hired a content writer), the best first step would be to create a long list of questions people may have regarding your business.

These are the first most pages you want to write. This in itself can boost your SEO tremendously.

Write shorter sentences and paragraphs

The ranking algorithm after all is a machine. It gets confused if you write complicated sentences.

I’m not saying that you avoid complex sentences altogether.

Sometimes you don’t want to avoid writing longer, complex sentences, and this is fine.

You should definitely write the way you want to write and if you deliver value, people will read it anyway.

But when it comes to talking about the core issue and using the targeted search terms and keywords, use smaller sentences.

Preferably, don’t have more than one sentence for a paragraph.

It may seem odd in the beginning, but when you consider people going through your website on their mobile phones, you will realize that even a small sentence may appear like a big paragraph on the mobile phone.

Mobile-friendly content is also search engine-friendly content.

Publish new content consistently

This is something many clients don’t understand. They think that once they have covered all the keywords, they can relax.

Remember that this is Internet. Everyone can publish without spending much money.

Even if people don’t publish high-quality content, they can create enough noise to drown your voice.

By the time you say “content writing and SEO” there are scores of blog posts, webpages, press releases, news reports, case studies, podcasts and social media updates on your industry, pushing your content down.

The search engines also need new content to crawl all the time. You can call them content-hungry.

Pay for quality writing not for quantity writing

Writing and publishing 5 high-quality blog posts or web pages is far more effective than publishing 50 blog posts or web pages that are mediocre.

Improving your SEO through quality content writing works like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well-written, good content gets good feedback from readers and users and this feedback helps search engines like Google evaluate your content.

Due to positive reaction and feedback your search engine rankings improve and then more people who can give you positive feedback and reaction get to find your content.

Even if initially you can get good rankings if people don’t stay on your website, if they don’t spend much time on the link that they have found in the search results, you begin to lose your rankings.

Hence, quality content writing is of utmost importance for sustained SEO.

Google says you can forget about SEO without good content

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Google says no SEO without quality content

Google says no SEO without quality content

Well, I have been saying this for ages on my blog that you cannot think of improving your SEO without good, quality content, but now, this is straight from the horse’s mouth.

Read: 5 Reasons Why Content Writing Is Important for SEO

A question was asked recently in a Google Webmaster Central hangout to Google’s John Mueller:

There are zero issues on our website according to Search Console. We are providing fast performance in mobile and great UX. I’m not sure what to do to improve rankings.

John Mueller responded that sometimes people get so engrossed in the technical details (improving SEO of the source code) that they forget the fundamental purpose of having a website – providing useful information to your customers and clients.

Just because you have created a technically sound website it doesn’t mean it is going to enjoy good SEO, he said.

Ultimately what matters is how relevant the content of your website is.

Of course, it is important that your website is technically sound and it is easier for search engine crawlers to access your content as soon as possible, but, it is like having a well-equipped office or shop.

Simply having a plush office doesn’t give you business. People should be able to understand what your business is and whom to approach if they need to do business with you. This job of communication is done by your content.

The real business happens when people find answers to their questions and when they can have all the information they need to be able to do business with you.

Google is in the business of providing information. It is not in the business of finding your website.

Google’s primary concern is to find the best possible content to its users.

To improve your search engine rankings, you have to convince Google that you have the content people are looking for and your content can solve problems.

Read: Do You Know How Google Actually Ranks Your Content?

To create quality content that ranks well on Google, John Mueller suggests that you prepare a list of all the possible questions that your customers and clients may have about your business and then provide answers to those questions.

Your rankings also depend on the competing content – the content that is already ranking well from other websites directly or indirectly related to your field of expertise.

You can’t do much about this. The only thing you can do is, be persistent with quality content. Offer something unique that your competitors don’t offer.

Source: Search Engine Journal

How to create your best SEO content in 2019

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Creating best SEO content in 2019

Creating best SEO content in 2019

In this blog post you are going to learn how to create or write your best SEO content in 2019.

Why focus on 2019?

I think by now you clearly understood the indisputable importance of content when it comes to marketing your business online.

When it comes to the Internet, there is no marketing without content.

A big part of content marketing, although, I always suggest that you shouldn’t mix up content marketing and SEO, is search engine optimization.

This is a reality as a content writer I have accepted long time back: most of the businesses want to use content marketing to improve their SEO.

Search Engine Journal has just published 9 tips for creating your best SEO content in 2019.

Nothing is new in the post. No offence to the author, but there is nothing you can do in 2019 that you couldn’t have or shouldn’t have done in 2018. But yes, it is always better to keep revisiting these concepts.

The above-linked post lists the following tips if you want to create your best SEO content in 2019:

Use your targeted keywords when writing content but write for the right people

The blog post suggests that before writing your content you must first understand:

  1. Who your audience segments are.
  2. What kind of information they need.
  3. Why they need that information.
  4. Which keywords they are using to find it.

Why is it important?

Because your content marketing must be relevant.

Segmentation can help you.

Some people are just looking for information and they may do business with you later on. You need different type of content for them.

Some are interested in doing business with you but can’t make up their minds. You need different content for them.

You also need to know what keywords they are using to find your business (or your business category).

For better SEO it’s very important that you know what search terms people are using. Once you have found that out, use those search terms and keywords to create high-quality relevant content.

Keep your content writing readable

Remember that artificial intelligence is after all, machine-based analysis.

Rumor has it that there are at least 10,000 human evaluators working at Google to manually review websites.

But millions and millions of web pages and websites are being evaluated by some search engine ranking algorithm every second.

These algorithms cannot make sense of very complicated language structures and expressions.

Use simple words as much as possible.

Keep your sentences very short.

Avoid having more than two sentences per paragraph.

Use every opportunity to use headings, sub-headlines and bullet points to organize your thoughts and format your text for better readability.

Create in-depth content, longform content

Google these days loves lengthy pieces of content, preferably 2500-4000 words, and even more.

A good thing about in-depth content is that it provides all the information a person is looking for right in a single web page or blog post.

If someone has found everything what he or she is looking for, he or she doesn’t have to carry on the search again.

This tells Google that you have relevant content, and this further improves your SEO.

In fact, if you want to create your best SEO content in 2019, I think this is an advice you should follow.

Improve your page speed

Though, this has got nothing to do with writing content to improve your SEO, but the success of your content depends a lot on how fast your website loads and how individual web pages and blog posts load.

Search engines like Google take page speed seriously because people mostly use mobile phones to access websites these days and on mobile phones they are very impatient.

If a web page doesn’t load within 10-20 seconds, people leave.

When people leave, it sends all sorts of wrong signals to Google and in the ensuing confusion, Google ends up lowering your search engine rankings.

Keep your pages light.

Use attractive graphics for better SEO content

This might sound like a contradiction to the above point (keeping your pages light), but you can create very light graphics these days.

Images are easier to note, especially on social media and social networking websites.

If you simply post your title and link to your blog or web page, people are going to miss it. But, if you also post an attention-grabbing image, people will be drawn to your update and then they will click your link.

The above Search Engine Journal blog post refers to a Skyword study that reveals that articles and blog posts with relevant images draw 94% more views compared to articles and blog posts with no images.

So, if you want to create better SEO content in 2019, include images in your budget.

Provide facts and statistics

Numbers are always impressive. In the above point, you read that articles and blog posts with relevant images get 94% more views compared to those that don’t. This figure is reassuring.

Whenever you’re making a claim, use numbers.

If you say, “These many businesses use content marketing,” don’t just say it, show the numbers. If you don’t have your own numbers, quote an authoritative link.

Format your content for featured snippets

People have different views on pros and cons of featured snippets but it always gives you an ego boost when you see one of your snippets appearing at the top of the search results.

Some say they are also very good for your SEO.

A snippet is the featured listing at the top of the search results page. You don’t pay Google for this position. The algorithm figures out that your link contains the most important bits of information for the question being asked, and then features it at the top.

Read this for more information on featured snippets: Google’s Featured Snippets: How to rank at #1 with strategic content writing.

Become an expert or an authority figure in your field

People easily trust authoritative figures.

If I tell you content marketing is good for your business and if Joe Pulizzi tells you that content marketing is good for your business, whom are you going to believe? Of course, Joe, because he is an authority figure in content marketing.

Becoming an authority figure in your business doesn’t mean having written books or conducted seminars or attended workshops.

In terms of having a website, list your capabilities. Have an about us page. Display the capabilities of your team, individual team members. Let people know what all you can do.

Do original research

Find some data about your profession that the others haven’t found yet.

Original research is not easy, but this is also its strength: not everyone goes for it.

For bigger businesses it’s easier to do original research because they have the needed traffic, they have a bigger audience, and they also have the manpower needed to carry out surveys, polls and research.

For a small business, it might be difficult but not insurmountable.

Suppose you are a fast food restaurant serving a local clientele.

You can carry out a study and find out which food item is purchased the most.

You can further go deep and make it gender-based.

You can also research on which food item is favorite in particular months.

Although it may not have an impact on people’s decision on what food they buy (it may, actually), but it will be an interesting bit of research information that people will like to share on their social networking profiles.

How to optimize your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO

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Optimize content writing for DuckDuckGo

Optimize content writing for DuckDuckGo

In this blog post you will learn how to optimize your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO.

According to this MediaPost update in 2018 the DuckDuckGo search engine served more than 9 billion searches.

Here is what DuckDuckGo recently tweeted:

I keep writing on my blog that Google is very competitive about its ranking algorithm and it doesn’t rest on its laurels. Just because there isn’t a significant search engine in sight doesn’t mean the search engine giant start serving lousy search results.

Google knows that before it, there were many “search engine giants” including Yahoo!, Lycos and AltaVista. They can easily be one to take its place at the helm.

Microsoft has half-heartedly tried to capture some portion of the market with Bing, but very few people take it seriously although, as a search engine, you should definitely make sure that your links feature in its search results.

A search engine that can pose a threat to Google’s dominance is the DuckDuckGo search engine.

Why are more people using DuckDuckGo, bypassing Google?

Privacy concerns.

DuckDuckGo does not track your information

DuckDuckGo does not track your information

When you use the DuckDuckGo search engine, it does not store your personal information.

It does not store your search history. It has no intention of using your search pattern for retargeting and for advertising.

With data breaches happening almost on every platform including even Facebook and Google, many people who are cautious about their privacy, have started using DuckDuckGo because they openly claim that they don’t store your private information and your search history.

And even the search results aren’t bad too. It finds the information you are looking for. In fact, off late I have observed that its results are better than Google.

Should you seriously optimize your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO?

Although 9 billion searches in a year don’t match with Google’s 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide (source), sooner or later DuckDuckGo is going to become a force to reckoned with.

There are many reasons why this search engine is going to become the search engine of choice for many.

In Google Chrome you can set it as your default search engine.

In iOS 8 browser options, you can set DuckDuckGo as your default search engine. This means a big number of iPhone users may start using DuckDuckGo increasingly.

Just see below its growth trajectory even for January 2015.

Searches on DuckDuckGo just on January 2015

Searches on DuckDuckGo just on January 2015

You can imagine how fast it is growing.

If you start optimizing your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO, right now you can get a headway because there aren’t many people focusing on it.

Optimizing your content for DuckDuckGo SEO

When I was doing research for writing this blog post, predictably, every good suggestion revolves around the standard advice for every major search engine these days – quality and relevance.

In this Search Engine Land blog post, Neil Patel has made the following suggestions for optimizing your content for the DuckDuckGo search engine:

Create a great website

Great website in terms of usability, quality of information and ease of use. The website must be accessible on all devices, especially mobile phones. It should be a fast loading website.

Focus on your users

Every search engine aims to provide the best possible answers to the questions people pose them. When writing content for your website or blog focus on providing the best value to your users.

Write valuable content so that people naturally link to you

Just like backlinks are important in Google, they are also important for DuckDuckGo SEO.

So, high-quality content isn’t just good for your conversion rate, it also earns you backlinks from authority websites and this in turn helps you improve your DuckDuckGo SEO.

Optimize using semantic keywords

Semantic keywords are the related keywords. Suppose I’m trying to optimize a web page for “content writer”.

Google also does that – DuckDuckGo, when analyzing my web page, don’t just look for “content writer”; it may also look for “web writer”, “web content writer”, “website writer”, and so on.

Similarly, when optimizing a web page for “phone reviews” it may also decide to rank the web page for “phone comparisons” and “phone recommendations”

Concluding remarks on optimizing your content writing for DuckDuckGo SEO

A good thing about DuckDuckGo is that it does not use people’s search behavior to filter results or customize results. It indexes and ranks different links according to its own unique method or algorithm.

Relevance and quality rules the roost. Create very topical content. Although longer blog posts are good, try to focus on the subject without stuffing too much information that might be unrelated.

Personally, I wouldn’t suggest that you do something extra for DuckDuckGo. Just follow the best practices for all the mainstream search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo and your rankings will improve even in this latest search engine.

Why quality content writing improves your SEO

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Quality content writing improves your SEO

Quality content writing improves your SEO

In this blog post you will learn how quality content writing improves your SEO.

Text is everywhere. All the home automation devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home, although powered by voice commands, in the background, work on text.

Search engine rankings are based on the textual content on your website or blog.

Even cryptic information residing in the deep artificial intelligence lives and breathes in the form of text.

What I’m saying is, content writing isn’t going anywhere despite big push towards video and imagery.

Read this detailed article from The Atlantic on how many major publications were pushed to the brink of collapse (including Facebook) when they fired their writers in favor of videographers.

Yes, every form of content has its importance but ultimately, everything boils down to writing.

Try publishing just videos or just images on your website and blog, and see what happens to your SEO.

Quality content writing and SEO are interlinked.

Vis-à-vis SEO, what does quality content writing mean?

What does quality content writing mean in terms of SEO?

What does quality content writing mean in terms of SEO?

The quality attribute is multifaceted when it comes to writing for the web, especially to improve your SEO.

I’m using the example of search engine optimization because this is the focal issue of this particular blog post, otherwise, I never advise you to solely aim for SEO. Aim for quality content and SEO is automatically taken care of.

Quality here means it solves your purpose. What is your purpose?

Get more business, of course.

But, there are many stages in between – from someone realizing that he or she needs what you have and then that someone not just finding you, but deciding to do business with you. Many stages.

These are the stages when most of the business is lost.

The job of quality content is to convince people into believing you and then deciding to pay you for what you are offering.

For that, you need to improve your conversion rate.

Your conversion rate can only be improved when you are able to convince people.

Since you cannot convince 100% visitors who come to your website, you have to somehow figure out the maximum number of visitors you can convince into doing business with you.

Suppose, 5%.

This means, if 100 visitors come to your website, 5 of them become your customers or clients.

With the same conversion rate, if you want to get 50 customers or clients, you need to get 1000 visitors.

How do you get these 1000 visitors? You have 3 options:

  1. Improve your SEO for your targeted keywords
  2. Become active on social media
  3. Use paid advertising

If you want to use paid advertising, it must be in your scheme of things.

But if you don’t want to use paid advertising and you would like to go for a more sustainable mode of generating targeted traffic to your website, you will improve your SEO and you will become more active on social media, and for both these activities, you need quality content.

The quality of your content writing began to matter first on social media – nobody would care for you if you didn’t provide value – and then even Google began to change its algorithm to rank only quality content.

So, it isn’t important what you write and what you publish, what’s important is, how people react to it.

If they don’t react to it properly, even the search engines ignore it.

Quality content writing improves your SEO – explained

Your SEO these days solely depends on how valuable, purposeful and relevant your content is.

Why?

Why must people find your content when they look for a certain keyword or search term?

You may say that they must find you so that you get a chance to promote your products or services to them, once they are on your website or blog.

Fair enough. Even I want that.

But what about those people who are searching? What do you give them?

Now, if you didn’t face much competition, you could easily say that if someone is looking for a web designer, he or she should come to your website because you provide web design services.

In my case, if someone is looking for a professional content writer, he or she should come to my website because I provide professional content writing services.

There are thousands of web designers. Also there are thousands of content writers.

People who appear for “web designer” and “content writer” on the first top 10 search engine results, have definitely done something to appear there.

They must have gotten scores of quality back links.

They must be quite active on social media to elicit lots of positive response from their followers.

The must have lots of quality content on their websites so that their bounce rate is very low (a high bounce rate is bad for your SEO).

They must have been in the game for quite some time – the age of their domains must be very old.

People searching for products, services and information have no personal interest in finding your website or blog.

Even Google doesn’t have any personal stake in your website. The search engine solely depends on the algorithm and it’s the algorithm that decides the rankings of your individual links.

Now, this algorithm is constantly evolving.

For a machine, no matter how evolved artificial intelligence gets, it is very difficult to gauge the true value of a piece of content.

This is why Google heavily relies on the reaction of people.

I’m writing this blog post on “why quality content writing improves your SEO”.

Based on my existing rankings Google may rank this blog post in whichever manner.

Then it begins to gather data about how people interact with this piece of content on the Google search engine itself, and also on other websites and social media platforms.

People retweet my tweet with this link – good, Google notches up my rankings perceptibly or imperceptibly.

People like my update carrying this link on Facebook and they also leave comments and they may even share my update. Another boost to my rankings.

When people find my link in search results they come to this blog post and read it.

The more time people spend on this link, the more Google gets convinced that this link solves the purpose of the search query that was used to find this link. Hence, improve its rankings.

If most of the people no longer search for the same query after accessing my link, Google assumes that my link solves the purpose of the query and further improves its rankings.

The cycle goes on and my link keeps moving up.

Now, why would people react positively to this particular link?

They are not emotionally attached to me or my website. Most of them don’t even know me. They couldn’t care less about my SEO.

The only reason they retweet or share my link is because they like it and they like it only because I provide quality content to them. This can only be achieved through quality content writing.

Again, why would people spend more time on this link?

Because they have a reason to go on reading the matter. They find the content useful. This brings down the bounce rate of this link or blog post.

They have no personal interest in lingering on the blog post without reason. The only reason is, they are getting what they were looking for.

Best possible scenario: they don’t go back to Google with the same search query. They don’t check out other links for the same search query.

This indicates to Google that the link solves the purpose of the search query and the user no longer has to check out other links.

These things can only happen if you provide quality content, relevant content, content that is engaging, useful and solves the purpose.

If you focus on providing value to your visitors, you don’t have to worry about your search engine rankings because search engine rankings these days depend less on how you use your keywords, and more on how people react to your content.

Their reactions decide your SEO.

So, when writing content, simply focus on getting positive, constructive reaction from your visitors. The rest is taken care of on its own.