Best Known Practices for Content Writers

Providing information about a product and creating content around it forms the crux of content writing. It is one of those effective marketing strategies, which is the cornerstone of digital marketing. Although spreading the message through words has been in use as far as one can think about advertising. It has turned a corner with the advent of the internet and online business. Companies are conscious of the importance of the web and are investing substantial resources to stay ahead in the game. Much of the action in terms of word-based content is centered around securing a good page rank on search engines.   

Search engines have become the all-powerful reason that can make or break a brand. And writing content in order to attain a good page rank is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. The idea behind SEO is to optimize the content with words having high search volume. However, writers can get carried away by SEO and start writing only for search engines. This can be counter-productive as the resulting content would be lacking the necessary zeal to persuade users to read and engage. The alternative is to keep SEO in mind while keeping the reader’s interest alive during the course of writing. In this article, the effort is to bring out good writing for better marketing online.

Get the Target Audience in Place: There is a reason why it is important to have the target audience in place before the start of the writing process. Once you have an audience in place, it becomes easier to shape the message. To start with you have to dwell into the background and mould the content to the preference of the audience. Writing for different sets of demographics differs with the kind of vocabulary, content formats and the platforms on which they can be engaged in. When writing content you need to be one of your demographic and look at their problems with their perspective. This process would materialize content that is authentic and compelling.   

Set the Tone: Once you have envisioned your target audience. Your content needs to have tone for it to create an impact. Tone is defined as the author's attitude towards the subject and can be inferred through the use of descriptive words. It can be formal, informal, friendly, or playful and forms the fine nuances that give the edge to the content for it to stand out amongst competition. 

Your writing can appear bland and academic if your sole purpose is to appear knowledgeable and clever. This beats the purpose in the long-term. Rather, the writing should be akin to the way you speak. Your blog post needs to be written as if you are speaking to a single reader to bring the audience closer to you. 

Stick to an informal tone when creating content. Although, there is an audience that prefers a formal tone. In the long run, it has been seen that the content struggles to find new readers. Users do not consume content in order to appear clever. They need solutions to real-world problems and you need to welcome them with informative and relevant content.  

Write for the Single Reader: You can be misguided by the fact that we keep talking about an audience. However, when it comes to reading the content, it is only a single person in front of the screen. You have to visualize and write for this person in mind to connect to the larger audience. Writing in this manner resonates better with the audience as they will feel a personal connection to it. 

Blog writing is all about integrating certain words to personalize the experience for the readers. Usage of words like ‘you’ and ‘because’ only strengthens the tone. Overall, the readers do not care about you, and what you stand for, whether you are a success or a failure. All they care about is the value you deliver. It is when you start delivering value - they would share content, link to your content and recommend your products to other people. Start this by shifting your focus to ‘them’. It is ‘your’ blog but it is not for ‘you’. It is for your readers. Reduce the usage of ‘me’ and ‘I’ and your readers will notice how important ‘they’ are. 

Though following all the rules does not guarantee success for all the content that you create. The audience makes the choice and decides which content gets the most publicity. 

Keyword Research: A lot has changed within the Google algorithm since the last time you checked. After the ‘Hummingbird’ update, it has been rephrased as Topic Research. Although, people still use both Keyword & Topic search interchangeably. The fact of the matter is that Google gives more weightage to the meaning behind the query than before. For example, if you search for ‘vacuum cleaner broken’, the search results would have links to ‘fix’ the appliance as compared to the past. Earlier, the query generated results with emphasis on words used in the query. Today, the stress is on decoding the meaning behind the words used for the query.

You could say that the Google algorithm is becoming more ‘intelligent’ by dwelling into the semantics behind the sentence. This makes it all the more important to choose the words wisely when doing analysis for keyword research. Also, particular attention should be paid to “People also searched for” at the bottom that gets generated during a search. It is a treasure trove of the right kind of words that can be included in the final list of words during keyword research.

Competitor Analysis: Rather than struggling alone to come up with innovative strategies to make your content competitive. You could always take inspiration from your competition. Look what they are doing right and what seems to be working well for them. What is getting them high SERP compared to you? 

• Analyse their SEO strategies. Avoid going for words that are working for them. Rather target words they haven’t still utilized or under-utilized.  
• Create content around their topics they haven’t touched yet and try to downplay their strengths. Effort should be to focus on topics, where they are currently weak in.
• Do not get sucked into copying your competition and trying to catch them on their own game.

Evergreen Content: The life-span of written content is limited. Content that remains relevant with the passage of time makes for evergreen content. It does not need updating with time and receives a consistent amount of traffic by beating news cycles. These factors make it the holy-grail among writers since it reduces the need to constantly churn out new ideas and content. Here’s how you go about

• Use a keyword tool to understand the search volume for a specific topic. Also, look at top-ranking pages in Google to check on the amount of traffic the topic receives.
• Tools like Google trends can help you gauge the popularity of the topic over time. Stay clear of topics that have seasonal upsurge and downturns.
• Search intent for the keyword needs to remain constant. If it changes over time or can be replaced by some other keyword, there is likely to be great volatility in rankings.
• Avoid usage of words that signify time in the content such as last year, yesterday & 201X. Usage of dates & year only serves to work for a while after which it stands to lose relevance.     

Go Long: It has been a known fact that Google prefers long-form content. This does not mean you start getting hung up on words and start filling pages that's going nowhere. Always return to the purpose and the solution to stay the course. Be confident about the value the content provides to convince a potential buyer through long-form copy. Some known facts include:

• 1,890 words are the average needed to rank number one on SERP
• 2,500 words are the average required to receive maximum links
• Most socially shared content is in long-form

The effort need to be on taking the reader on a journey through storytelling and not sticking words together. Through storytelling, the human angle emerges and even boring data can be made attractive when executed with finesse.  Overall, the reader needs to be entertained and informed through in-depth and engaging content that guarantees credibility.

Final Thoughts: There are many parameters such as punctuation & grammar, statistics, formatting, images and compelling headline that can add to the merit of the article. Our effort has been to bring forth elements that amount to enhanced marketability of the written content. Creating content is just the beginning and a lot goes into making it available to masses out there. Understanding the market, putting out content on a regularly with consistency and going all out to promote it makes for a successful writer in the crowded marketplace.

-------Sujit Susheelan