Tag Archives: targeted content writing

Writing effective content for 7 stages of content marketing

Content writing for 7 stages of content marketing

I just came across an interesting infographic explaining the 7 stages of content marketing. They are

Setting a goal – what you want to achieve through content writing.
Creating a content writing strategy – what all factors will influence your content writing process.
Research – to create authoritative content, you need to do research to collect useful insights and data for making a convincing case.
The actual content writing process – use all the information that you have gathered, write the content and publish it based on your strategy.
Content curation – provided you can find it, you can curate highly useful content and either publish your own version of it, or share it using your social media and social networking timelines.
Content distribution and broadcasting – once you have written the content and published it, you need to broadcast it. In terms of content marketing, you need to “market” your content. You can use different channels available to you including email marketing, social media marketing and search marketing.
Engagement – this is also an important component of content marketing. Only when you engage your audience, it responds to your content.

Just as content marketing followers a 7-stage approach, so does content writing, although, content writing is a subset of content marketing – the content that you market is often obtained through high-quality content writing.

But the process is more or less the same.

When I start working on a certain piece of content, I always ask my client what he wants to achieve? What should be the end result? How must the reader feel after having read the entire piece?

Research is an expensive undertaking, because it takes time and also, access to data sources. Very few clients are ready to pay for research and they think it should be a part of writing content.

They need good content, good content needs data, data can be gathered with research, but they think, they shouldn’t have to pay for the research because it is part of content writing. It becomes a vicious circle.

Then comes the actual content writing process. Being an experienced content writer, this doesn’t take much time provided I have the needed information.

Content curation is not a part of content writing, but it plays a crucial role. For example, I didn’t have time today to work on something elaborate but then when I came across this infographic, I quickly had something to write about. This can be termed as content curation. You can directly share the content you are curating, or you can use it to write and publish content on your own website or blog.

One of the most crucial passes content distribution. This is where most of the content marketers are stumped.

For content marketing, you need to build an audience, or you need to spend money on a pre-built audience. Since people are not even ready to spend good money on content writing, spending money on content distribution is even more difficult. But, writing and publishing content is just a very small part of content marketing. What’s important is, you make sure that your content reaches the audience.

Engagement, again, is as important as marketing your content. We live and operate in a high state of distraction these days. People won’t notice your content unless you are able to engage them. Engaging means making people respond to your content. People respond through “Liking” your social media updates, sharing your content, writing about your content, recreating it on Twitter – basically, reacting to your content in a positive manner.

You may like to read What is engaging content writing?

How to improve local SEO with targeted content writing

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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.

Targeted content writing for better conversion rate

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The image shows a bull's-eye to signify targeted content writing

Targeted content writing can improve conversion rate

You publish content to improve your conversion rate.

Conversion rate isn’t always about more people buying. It is about more people doing what you want them to do.

Suppose you write a blog post explaining people why they should download your e-book. This is your conversion rate – people downloading your e-book.

Although, you may want people to download your e-book so that they do business with you, the conversion rate of that particular link is the number of people downloading the e-book divided by the number of people accessing the link, multiplied by 100.

Targeted content writing plays an important role in this. The purpose of targeted content writing is to get the right people to your link and then delivering the right message.

Through targeted content writing, you need to tackle your conversion rate from two angles:

Get traffic from search engines and social media/social networking websites.
Convincingly deliver the message so that people take the action they’re supposed to take after reading your blog post or webpage.

How to do targeted content writing to improve your conversion rate

In simple terms:

Clearly define what you want to achieve.
Make a list of keywords and search terms that will help the right people to find your link on Google and other search engines.
Write content based on these keywords but keep the message at the center.

Clearly defining what you want to achieve

Focusing on a single topic and a single objective is very important. Often, clients send me a topic and then they send me a long list of keywords to cover. It doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes they send me a list that has got nothing to do with the main topic title of the blog post or the web page they want me to write.

They simply want to generate search engine traffic without having a clear idea what the visitors are supposed to do once they find the link and come to the blog post or the web page.

Frankly, if you focus on your main topic (which generally has your main keyword or search term) you don’t need a separate list of keywords. Sure, you can use synonyms and alternative words for better SEO, but you shouldn’t move far away from your core topic.

I’m writing this blog post to explain to you how to do targeted content writing to improve your conversion rate. I don’t intend to teach you how to improve your SEO. I’m not even talking about copywriting.

To clearly define the purpose, know searcher’s intent and write accordingly.

For this blog post, I know that the searchers should be looking for a way to use content writing to improve their conversion rate. When they look for information on how they can use content writing to improve their conversion rate, I tell them that they should focus on targeted content writing instead of generic content writing.

Make a list of keywords that correspond with the information you are planning to provide

Keywords and search terms shouldn’t drive your writing effort. Nonetheless, they keep you focused and if you optimize your content writing for appropriate keywords and search terms, it helps the right people find your content on Google and elsewhere.

I say it again, don’t worry too much about using keywords everywhere. They should appear naturally. The more you focus on the topic, the better you optimize for the targeted keywords.

To write targeted content, as an experienced content writer, I can incorporate even unrelated keywords. Right now, I’m doing this for one of my clients. There is no connection with the topics they send me and the list of keywords they want me to focus on. Any other content writer would have either given up or made a mess of the entire thing. The client knows that I’m doing a great job.

Ideally, to write targeted content, make sure that the main search term appears in the title of the blog post or the web page you are writing. Various studies have shown that when people see the keyword or the search term they have just used, in the search listings, they click the link with greater frequency than those in search engine listings that don’t carry the keywords they have just used.

Remember that the most important is your message

Don’t bother about the keywords if you cannot incorporate them. There is always another blog post or webpage where you will be able to use those keywords. Most important is the information that you are providing. The value that you are delivering. Simply focus on that.

Your conversion rate depends on many factors. It also depends on the urgency the visitor has or does not have. But your targeted content writing plays a pivotal part. For that, you must know what you intend to achieve through your writing. Or your content writer.

How come targeted content improves your search engine rankings?

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If you ask me SEO content is actually targeted content, and if you are wondering what is targeted content it is content specifically generated for a particular audience using particular keywords (and that’s what makes it SEO content). Purely SEO content doesn’t do you much good because even if it generates lots of traffic it doesn’t generate much business because it doesn’t move your visitors. Targeted content on the other hand not only draws qualified traffic from various search engines it also improves your conversion rate.

A couple of weeks ago I removed a package that I had started offering from my website. I had collaborated with a writer (a content provider, actually, who hires writers to generate bulk content) to provide low-cost, average-quality content that could help clients improve their search engine rankings. I started offering this package because I was getting lots of queries from India and I also got contacted by a few writers who were ready to generate lots of content at very low rates. This worked for a while but then I felt it was counterproductive for my clients and also for my own business.

I am not a very well-known copywriter on the Internet but over the past five years I have managed to eke out a presence through providing quality content persistently. Since there are very few people who understand the difference between cost and value a majority of clients confused that package with the overall content writing services that I provide.

They somehow got themselves into believing that they could pay dirt cheap and still they should be able to use that content as primary business content.

Content purely written for SEO rarely performs well as primary business content and if you want primary business content then you must pay accordingly. Anyway, it is very difficult to explain to clients once they have seen the rates. Instead of wasting my time again and again trying to explain the difference between quality content and low-cost SEO your content I stopped offering that package altogether.

Instead, I insist — even if they have to pay a bit more — that they should aim at producing highly targeted content. They may end up with less content than what they could have gotten by paying a lower rate, performance wise this content is much better.

But how does targeted content improve your search engine rankings?

In order to produce targeted content you need to be clear about two things, in fact three things:

What exactly you want to convey
To whom you want to convey
What words you want to use

Once you have sorted out these questions you are more than halfway through producing high-quality SEO content that can also be used as your primary business content. When you write content keeping your audience in mind you are careful about what you’re writing and how you are writing. When you know what you want to convey you stick to the topic and stay away from ambivalence. The words that you want to use while creating your content are your keywords and the search terms you want to target.

Although you should arrange your content so that it is more convenient for the search engine crawlers to go through it and assess it, your primary focus must always be your visitors, your readers. Search engines are not going to do business with you but people will.