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How To Write Cornerstone Content

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How To Write Cornerstone Content

I’m here with another installment of our ongoing #howtowrite series, sharing a guide to cornerstone content. When you started your first blog, did you know about cornerstone content? I didn’t. As a more informed SEO blogger, I’m now transitioning my digital property to include cornerstone content strategy. When I started my blog in 2013, I grew it naturally: I wrote about the niche I liked, interacted and promoted in my niche, and enlisted other writers to grow the site. In 2015, I started to clean up and improve my SEO; I also began using the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin. This plugin told me all about cornerstone content and how to more effectively structure my site. What is Cornerstone Content? Cornerstone content is strong, informative content on a keyword or key phrase relating to your site’s niche. This is the page you want to carefully, naturally, and deliberately rank in SERPs (search engine results pages), and most other content points to it (via links) and relies on it for sustainability. According to Marieke van de Rakt, Partner & CSO at Yoast: “Cornerstone content should be the content that is closest to the mission of your website. I think you should take some time to think about what it is you are doing and which posts or pages on your website are the most important. If you are to point three or four texts on your website, which texts would that be? I think you should extend and improve upon those pages and posts and really make the most out of these pages. Your text and the ideas in your text should be totally unique. Of course, keyword research is essential. You just have to make sure you are using the words that your audience are using.” I couldn’t run an effective WordPress blog without the Yoast SEO plugin. When I blog and schedule posts on my site, Yoast frequently suggests choosing a different focus keyword because the one I have selected is already being used as a focus keyword, often for a post that ranks well. Yoast advises me to check out their piece on cornerstone content for more information. This has caused me to rethink my content strategy – but it’s raised more questions than answers. If I’m going for a comparatively low-competition keyword like “LARP,” should I really diversify my focus keyword selection? I’ve since started paying more attention, and although I haven’t mapped out a detailed strategy, I’m going for long tail keywords like “LARP tips,” “LARP interviews,” and “LARP costumes” as they apply. I created my website about women in geek culture before I got serious about my SEO game. I wrote SEO copy well – and naturally – but was using a free WordPress theme with lots of bugs and limited tools. Every week, I spend time writing and revising titles and meta descriptions that the Yoast SEO plugin identifies as nonexistent, weak, or duplicate. Little by little, I improve my SEO. However, there’s another SEO problem: I didn’t build my site from the ground up with cornerstone content in mind. Yoast SEO encourages me to think about this whenever I use an existing strong keyword on my site. Van de Rakt offers some advice about this situation, since many looking to improve their sites are in a similar situation: “Cornerstone content is the content you would like to rank the highest with. The content you’re the most proud of. But in order to make sure that it’ll rank the highest you should make sure that the internal linking structure of your site is awesome. We are working really hard to get more features in Yoast SEO which will help people to improve their site structure. In our Yoast SEO 4.0 update, we’ll start with adding such features and we’re planning to do much more. I hope these features will really help people to get their most precious content to rank highest!” Example of Cornerstone Content and Related Topics 1. Resource Libraries Keep your keyword strategy in mind as you build out resource libraries. Your on-site resource libraries are excellent inbound marketing strategies, so your on and off-site blog posts on related topics should direct readers to them. 2. Article Series If you’re like me, you may think that building out a huge content strategy is a little intimidating when you don’t have many resources. However, even a solo act can focus on cornerstone content via an article series. This #HowtoWrite content series, for example, is written and created by a small team. In the future, we’ll point back to this useful content, hopefully helping the #HowToWrite series pages rank as cornerstone content. 3. Evergreen content While it’s always best practice to update your content as things change, evergreen cornerstone content is a solid strategy. If you’re going to invest time in pointing search engines towards specific content, you want it to hold value in the long run. Should You Compete With Your Own Content for a Keyword? What if your niche is pretty specific? What if you already dominate it? I rank pretty well for specific niche keywords, and the Yoast SEO plugin always tells me to rethink my focus keyword because one of my existing pages already has that focus keyword. I kind of want to be greedy. Why settle for the top search result if I could get more than one on that first SERP? I asked Van de Rakt if it’s better to rank multiple pages in a long tail niche keyword, or expand into ranking a more competitive keyword using cornerstone content. “I think you should do both. If you are dominating, you could aim to rank for more ‘head terms.’ Long tail niche keywords remain important though,” advises Van de Rakt. Long Tail or Short Tail for Cornerstone Content? This depends on your business goal, your content spend, and the amount of competition in your niche. A careful analysis can help, but ultimately, you know your business and field better than anyone. … Read more

How to Write a Business Case Study

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How to Write a Business Case Study

Business case studies can have a massive impact on your marketing, done right. While they cost time and effort to create, they can be a stellar tactic to draw new customers to your business and help you earn new clients. Unfortunately, many people aren’t sure how to start when it’s time to write copy for them. If you’re one of the many individuals who wants to learn how to write a business case study, but just aren’t sure where to get started, my simple guide is here to help you step-by-step – another installment of our #howtowrite series! What is a Case Study? A case study is a piece of content, published by a company, that outlines their success or effectiveness in dealing with a client. It’s commonly used as a piece of marketing content and can be incredibly useful since it helps would-be clients understand how the agency or professional has excelled in the past. Virtually every successful online company uses case studies, and Express Writers is no different! Earlier this year, in fact, we published a case study that showcases how we helped a client boost their revenue by 77% after creating some product descriptions for them. Case studies are more than just a piece of self-congratulating marketing material (this is an incorrect assumption that many people hold about these unique content types), though. In fact, they’re meant less to stroke the company in question’s ego than they are to help would-be clients understand how a given company can assist them. The Top 4 Benefits of Why You Should Learn How to Write a Business Case Study So, why go to all the time to create your own case study? (It IS a ton of time and effort!) If the “what is” didn’t argue in favor already, here are key reasons to spend your time finding out how to write a business case study, and putting one of your own together. Business case studies have many advantages. The top four are as follows: 1. Case studies allow a company to use storytelling to bring their product to life Whether it’s a service or a hard-and-fast consumer product, a case study is an excellent way to illustrate it and help bring it to life for new customers. Just like any great novel, a good case study has a beginning, a middle, and an end, with a conflict and a resolution. It’s a wildly effective way to make somewhat complex products real and can go a long way toward improving the way your clients perceive your offerings, especially for new businesses. 2. Case studies provide peer-to-peer influence Peer-to-peer influence is a massively important thing, and case studies are wonderful at fulfilling it because they offer the view of a customer rather than a company. While it’s a company that publishes a case study, the entire thing is dedicated to recounting a customer’s experience. Direct quotes, statistics, and more are standard, and these things are fantastic for helping would-be clients to see the value in a company. 3. Case studies offer real-life examples We’ve all heard about how critical customer reviews are for conversion rates, and case studies take this one step further. By providing real-life examples of your product at work, paired with glowing customer reviews, they can help new customers feel more confident in your company and take the leap to convert. For an example, check out this case study excerpt (from our own clientele based case study): 4. Case studies are powerful word-of-mouth advertising Because a company must ask permission from a client to use his or her data in a case study, the inclusion of a customer in a case study often leads to some brand evangelism that can help boost your company’s visibility and improve your conversion rates. How to Write a Business Case Study: Your Complete Guide in 5 Steps So, you want to write a case study, but you’re not sure where to begin! This guide will help you get started. 1. Identify your best possible avenue for data When it comes time to write a case study, you might have multiple cases to choose from. The first part of being successful, though, is narrowing these things down. For your case study to succeed, it must contain just the right information, and it’s critical to ensure this from the get-go. To determine which of your various cases would be the best fit for a study, look at them and evaluate whether or not they contain the following elements: A significant challenge. This could be a tight timeline, a complicated issue, low sales numbers, or even a need for entirely new software integration. A satisfying solution. For your case study to fall into the realm of storytelling, it needs a solution that customers can relate to. A series of substantial benefits. The final component in a case study is the benefit. An excellent case study should feature several benefits that your customers can relate to deeply. The benefits will be even more compelling if they’re solid statistics like we used when we say we boosted the client’s sales by 77% year-over-year. The more granular, the better in this case. 2. Write your case study (5 key tips) Now comes the tough part – the writing! While it’s true that writing a case study requires a different set of skills and a different voice than everyday writing, it’s far from impossible. To ace your DIY case study, follow these tips: Choose your voice carefully Depending on your brand and the content of the case study, you can write it in either the first or third person. Either approach will work, and most case studies use a mixture of both. EXAMPLE: Our client-based case study at Express Writers does this, and it flows quite nicely. If you’re going to use a combination of both the first and the third person, though, be sure that you’re enhancing the third-person parts with direct quotes from the client, as straight third-person voice can sound overly narrated after a while. Make … Read more

How to Write Content for Affiliate Marketing

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How to Write Content for Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing content is a cornerstone of online marketing monetization, and it’s one of the biggest ways that many bloggers make their money online. To do this, though, you’ve got to master the art of great affiliate marketing copy. The key to this, it turns out, is fun, relevant content that your audience can really attach to and dig their toes into. Learn how to write content for affiliate marketing, and have fun in the process, in my next installment of our #howtowrite series on the blog. 6 Smart Ways to Write Content for Affiliate Marketing If you’re interested in learning how to write content for affiliate marketing, or just improving the content you already create, follow these six tips: 1. Write your own personal truth. The biggest sin in the world of affiliate marketing is to write about a product that you haven’t tried, don’t love, or have no personal experience with. Instead of making this mistake, aim to write your truth, your whole truth, and nothing but your truth. Here’s why: your readers trust you and they want to know that you’re recommending a product to them because you’ve tried it and loved it, not because you’re making a few bucks off of it. With this in mind, don’t ever pitch products you haven’t used or don’t like. Your audience will be able to see right through it and you’ll lose credibility and readers. To take it a step further, tell your readers exactly what you loved about a given product, and go the extra step to point out how it benefited your life, improved your outlook, or provided you with something special they’ll take interest in. 2. Make your affiliate marketing content reader-centric. With affiliate marketing content, the reader is at the center of the entire thing, and it should stay this way forever. To make your affiliate marketing content as successful as possible, keep your reader at the center of it. As you write, you should be thinking about what your readers want and how much they’re willing to invest in it. What’s more, you should also be thinking about why they want it and what’ they’ll gain from using it. These things can have a longstanding impact on the value of your affiliate marketing content, and can also prove that you care about your readers and are willing to step into their shoes. 3. Be honest. Just like nobody wants to try products you haven’t tried or didn’t like, nobody wants to purchase products you weren’t honest about. While it may seem smart to play up a product when it’s actually disappointing or sub-par, this will cost you trust and readers in the long run, and can have a massive detrimental impact on your readership. With this in mind, always be honest about the products you’re pitching. While you don’t have to be mean about a product’s flaws or shortcomings, your readers aren’t going to buy the fact that every product you’ve ever tried is your new favorite item in the entire world. What’s more, being honest makes the five-star reviews that you do give carry that much more weight. 4. Incorporate your affiliate products into stories…naturally. When it’s done well, affiliate marketing shouldn’t feel like affiliate marketing. Instead, it should feel like a natural recommendation issued by a friend to a friend. With this in mind, seek to incorporate mentions or anecdotes about a product, good, or service into your other content. This will help you keep your content fresh and will also go a long way toward building reader trust and making the products you mention more appealing and exciting to your readers. Finally, when people can see something in action, it’s a great way for them to build a relationship with it, which means that showcasing how you’ve used or enjoyed a product and building those mentions into your everyday content is a very compelling tactic. 5. Vary your approaches. Affiliate marketing content shouldn’t feel formulaic, and it’s important to keep it as fresh as possible for your readers. In light of this, consider varying your approaches to affiliate marketing. In addition to saving you from becoming a stiff, boring blogger people don’t want to read, this approach will also help you locate new audiences and showcase your best experiences with a given product, good, or service. With this in mind, focus on what your audience loves and seek to share your affiliate experiences on all of your various platforms. This will keep things fresh and make your recommendations as authentic and unique as possible. 6. Focus on products customers love. Again, your customer should be the center of affiliate marketing. If you’re not focusing on products, goods, and services they’ll love, you’re missing the mark. While we’ve already covered the fact that it’s critical to feature only the products that you like, it’s also important to remember that your preferences and your readers’ won’t always line up seamlessly. When this happens, it’s essential that you put your customers’ preferences first, since they’re the ones who ultimately benefit from affiliate marketing. With this in mind, work hard to provide rundowns on things that will actually benefit your reader’s lives. They’ll thank you for it and you’ll be a much more successful affiliate as a result. Want more on the subject of “how to write” online copy? I wrote a book all about it! Check out So You Think You Can Write, The Definitive Guide to Successful Writing, on Amazon. How to Write Content for Affiliate Marketing, Made Simple While many people dread affiliate marketing, it’s actually quite simple with these smart tips. By keeping you readers in mind, touting only the products you’ve used and loved, being honest about flaws, incorporating product stories into everyday content, and varying your approaches, it’s easy to learn how to write content for affiliate marketing and build a solid affiliate marketing strategy that benefits you and your customers, both now and in the long run. If … Read more

How to Write Content for a Landing Page

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How to Write Content for a Landing Page

Landing pages are some of the most important pages on the web. In addition to giving people a place to “land,” they offer information, relevance, and style that can drive people to engage and convert in ways you never thought possible. (In one post I wrote earlier this year, I showed how geo-targeted local landing pages can significantly boost your online rankings.) So, learning how to write content for a landing page is essential. My blog post today in our new #howtowrite series is here to help shed light on the subject! What’s the Purpose of a Landing Page? Landing pages drive sales. Designed to sit out there on the web and provide a place brands can display facts and provide value for readers, landing pages are by far some of the most important sales tools in existence. When they’re written well, landing pages produce conversions and drive a revenue stream. When they’re not written well, they collect a high bounce rate and harm your Google rankings. Because of this, it’s clear that learning to write a great landing page is a skill worth chasing. Fortunately, it’s one you can start developing today. 6 Tips for Effective Landing Page Content To make your landing pages more effective, follow these tips: 1. Include customer testimonials. Customer testimonials are essential to a good landing page because they make your claims more accessible, while also adding social proof. Additionally, they make it easier for readers to connect with your material. Think about it: if you were a customer, wouldn’t you want to know that a service had been satisfactory for other people before you chose to convert? If so, how would you want to see that satisfactory evidence? Testimonials prove that a service has worked for other people and that it can work for the customer in question, as well. As such, they have the potential to dramatically increase the effectiveness of your landing pages across the web. With this in mind, be sure to add customer testimonials to your landing page. They’ll help boost your conversion rate starting now. 2. Showcase the lifestyle rather than the features of a product. While people eventually need to learn about the specifics of your product and service, a landing page is the place to pull at their heartstrings by showcasing the lifestyle associated with the product, good, or service you’re offering. With this in mind, tell your customers how the product will overhaul their existence, how it will provide an exciting new experience, or how it will offer them something they’ve always wanted. These are simple yet effective ways to invoke an emotional response, and they can go a long way toward overhauling your landing pages from the inside out. 3. Write compelling headlines targeted at your users. With a landing page, the headline is essential. Because it grabs attention, showcases value, and tells readers what they’ll find on the page, it’s a critical part of the page itself. Because of this, it’s smart to spend some time working on your headlines as if they are the most critical component of your page – because they just might be. Remember that people scan landing pages, and that your headline should prove to them that there’s something within it worthy of paying attention to. To hit this nail on the head, include things like the personal “you,” action words, and compelling verbs. Headlines should be positioned in the page in a way that allows them to stand out, and should feature strong copy, and a compelling CTA embedded in the headline itself. 4. Keep it simple. Landing pages that are too complex will drive readers away. With this in mind, here are some do’s and don’ts for your landing pages: Do: Keep it simple Focus on the benefits of your product, the value it offers to the reader, and the way it will overhaul his or her life Keep graphics and images complimentary Make your opt-in box streamlined and easy to fill out Don’t: Write in jargon or overly-complex language Include complex graphics users have to navigate around Stuff your landing page with flashy elements Be too long-winded While you don’t want to get so bare-bones that your landing page is dry and boring, it is essential to remember that landing pages are about driving conversions, not demonstrating showmanship. Keeping this in mind will go a long way toward helping your landing pages drive conversions on a regular basis 5. Make it relatable. Again, landing pages are a place to capitalize on a reader’s emotions, and making them as relatable as possible is a great way to prove that you’re human! When you relate to your readers, you make them want to interact with your band, which is by far the most effective marketing tactic out there. Remember: people want to know why they should choose your product, good, or service from the wealth of offerings available to them, and writing like a real human is one of the best ways to answer this question for them. While you don’t want to cross the line and become unprofessional, it is smart to be as relatable and accessible as possible in your landing pages. With this in mind, write the way you speak in the landing page. What’s more, keep your sentences short and feel free to break a few grammar rules here and there if it helps make your writing funny, accessible, or friendly. 6. Include stats, figures, and facts to support your claims. Landing pages that drive a hard bargain use hard data. With this in mind, include relevant facts, figures, and statistics in your landing pages. They will help compel your readers to action and demonstrate the value of your product, good, or service more effectively. Want more on the subject of “how to write?” I wrote a book all about it! Check out So You Think You Can Write, The Definitive Guide to Successful Writing, on Amazon. Landing Pages: Your Primary Sales … Read more

How to Write Content for Twitter

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How to Write Content for Twitter

Twitter has emerged as a tour de force in the world of social media. Short, succinct, and to the point, Twitter is a great place to share thoughts and build your brand, but how do you craft tweets that get attention? My guide today is for people who want to learn how to write content for Twitter and use the social platform to build their brand and enjoy a wider reach (part of our new #howtowrite series!). Why Use Twitter? Today, Twitter is the platform that intersects with all of the various directions of technology and content. Designed to offer rapid-fire updates and live streaming news and videos, Twitter is a social platform designed to cater to mobile users (an estimated 80% of Twitter’s users are mobile), and enjoy the maximum level of reach. Today, there are 500 million tweets sent each day, and Twitter is doing things each day to adjust its upward mobility and cater even more effectively to changing markets. Changes to the 140 Character Limit While some Twitter users have always loved the 140-character limit, others view it as impossibly restrictive and frustrating, Fortunately, Twitter took the bull by the horns and make a large step earlier this year to make the 140-character limit a little more flexible for its users. Under the new Twitter limit increases, things like the @name that’s commonly used in replying to a tweet, all media attachments, and the retweet button on your own Tweets will no longer count toward the character limit. What’s more, users will no longer have to implement the @name to reach a specific followers. Instead, all Tweets that begin with the @name convention will reach all followers. Want more on the topic of “how to write?” I wrote a book all about it: So You Think You Can Write, the Definitive Guide to Successful Online Writing! How to Write Content for Twitter: Follow These 7 Rules To write content for Twitter that your readers actually want to engage with, follow these simple rules: 1. Be engaging. Twitter doesn’t allow a bunch of room for chatter, so it’s important to be engaging and let your content rest on that. Since tweets are only 140 characters (not counting the recent updates to that limit), you’ll need to pack all of your efforts into a small space. The best bet to be engaging in this type of climate is to speak directly to your target audience. When your Tweets are highly customized and personalized, they’ll have an easier time capturing your readers’ attention and will survive Twitter’s inherently short content lifespan (which is only 18 minutes) a bit more effectively. 2. Add a shortened URL. While a typical URL will eat up all of your Tweet space, a shortened URL is a great way to drive twitter followers back to your site. With this in mind, use a site like Bitly or Buffer to shorten URLs and add them to your tweets. This will allow you to enjoy a traffic boost without sacrificing much room in your tweet in the process. 3. Use trending hashtags. Hashtags are the skeletal structure of Twitter. To be sure your tweet performs as well as possible add a hashtag. Bonus points if it is a trending hashtag. In addition to branding your tweet, hashtags can dramatically enhance your visibility on the network and can easily make it so that other Twitter users can find you and interact with your posted material. 4. Add an image. There are not many places in the world wide web that images don’t help content, and Twitter is no exception. In fact, Buffer reports that simply adding an image to a Tweet boosts retweets by 35% To help your tweet perform well, add an image, video, or GIF to the content you post. In addition to grabbing reader attention, this simple addition will also go a long way toward boosting your post’s engagement and helping it make its way around the web more efficiently. 5. Talk to people rather than at them. Twitter is a highly personal platform, and your tone will go a long way toward defining whether your Tweets welcome your readers or alienate them. To keep your tone helpful and friendly, be sure to talk with people rather than talking at them. While it’s easy to feel like the people on Twitter are some distant crowd you’ll never meet, thinking of them as your friends and relatives can help you craft a voice that’s welcoming and exciting. Struggling with how, exactly to do this? Don’t fear. Think about conducting your Twitter engagement just like you would a conversation with a friend. Focus on fostering a back-and-froth and developing topics, ideas, and conversational directions that are interesting to your readers. While this is a tiny step, making your Tweets more conversational and personal can truly have a massive impact on how effective your Twitter presence is at generating leads and promoting engagement. 6. Add your sense of humor to Tweets. Humor is a powerful tool on Twitter, and it’s great for drawing people in from various parts of the web. As a general rule, though, you’ll just need to be sure that your humor is appropriate and professional enough that it can be passed along the web without harming your company or your brand. For an example of a company that does this well, and always has, consider Innocent Drinks. The UK-based juice brand has virtually built its identity on a sly sense of humor, and Tweets like this one abound on the company’s Twitter profile: ATTENTION EVERYONE: it’s cold. Best to wear everything you own and, if possible, find a bear to hold close to you for the next 5 months. — innocent drinks (@innocent) November 8, 2016 7. Incorporate viral words. Twitter relies heavily on viral words and phrases that tell people what to do and when to do it. To use these in your Tweets, check out a list of the most-used viral … Read more

How to Write Content for a Blog

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How to Write Content for a Blog

Blogs are synonymous with online content. They stand out as some of the most popular and widely used formats for content today. But, here’s a million dollar question: how do you write them? If you’ve ever wondered how to write content for a blog, you’re not alone. While it’s true that writing blog content can be challenging, it doesn’t need to be, and my simple guide is here to help you learn the steps. Read on for tips on how to write content for a blog, another short how-to post in my #howtowrite series! [bctt tweet=”Need some pointers on creating good blog posts? Here’s a nutshell guide on our own Write Blog, covering #howtowrite a blog. ” username=”ExpWriters”] Why Blogs Matter In addition to communicating valuable information to readers, blogs also serve important SEO purposes. When they’re well-written, they relate to Google and other search engines that a website is authoritative and relevant and that the writer well-versed on a given topic or in a given industry. Additionally, blogs are a critical platform for any company that wants to build a well-rounded content strategy and are essential to companies striving to bond with their clients and showcase their brand voice. Without a blog, it’s difficult to build up a consistent brand voice, and companies are finding that blog content consistently stands out as one of the most relevant and trustworthy sources of online content out there. To be exact, they’re the fifth most trusted source of online content among readers. What’s more, blogging has the potential to have a massive impact on a company’s leads and engagement rates. The more blogs you publish, especially if they are SEO optimized with the right keywords, the more people will find their way to your site and its content. And if you’re writing your blogs well, they’ll want to stay, share, and download. How to Write Content for a Blog: 6 Simple Tips to Start Using Now If you want to learn how to write content for a blog, you’re in luck. These simple tips will help you get started. 1. First Things First: Know Your Audience Knowing your audience is essential to writing good blogs. If you’ve never built a target persona before, now is the time to do it. In addition to giving you an idea of who you’re speaking to and what they care about, a target persona will also serve the critical purpose of helping you get inside your readers’ heads and solve their most pressing problems for them. When you understand your blog’s audience, everything else can flow naturally. It’s critical to remember who your audience is throughout the writing process, and keep them in mind as you work to craft content your readers can depend on. 2. Spend The Time to Craft Great Topics Topics are the lifeblood of your blog, so it pays to come up with great ones. If you’re having a difficult time harvesting blog topics, turn to trusty sources like your website FAQ and Quora. These are often untapped gold mines of great ideas and outstanding information, so it pays to pay attention to them. As you craft the topics for your blog, pay attention to which perform well and which don’t. This will give you a good idea of what you should be crafting going forward. 3. Make Your Hook Captivating The hook, or the opening part of your article, is one of the most important components of all of your content. With this in mind, spend some time making sure the beginnings of your article are as good as possible. They should be constructed to grab your reader’s attention and keep it. This means including relevant facts, stats, and information. It also means addressing the reader directly and ensuring that you know your audience well enough to know what will appeal to them. 4. Organize Your Blogs to Make Them More Readable While many people bypass this detail, organizing and optimizing your blogs is essential. To make your blog content as readable as possible, organize them into small, digestible chunks and ensure that you’re never presenting your readers with dense blocks of information. In addition to making your content more user-friendly, breaking it into approachable pieces will help to make it better for SEO. For an example of a blog with good formatting, check out this piece on the Write Blog about blog optimization: It’s super long-form, so we even added a visual Table of Contents to tell the reader what’s coming and keep them on the page. Here’s another piece that exhibits great formatting, on Search Engine Journal: 5. Write Evergreen Content Evergreen content will become the cornerstone of your blogging strategy, but only if you let it. Evergreen content is the type of content that users can visit at any time and count on it to be relevant. It’s also the kind of content that will earn you blog views long after the publish date of the content itself. With this in mind, publish evergreen content whenever possible on your blog. It will boost your content strategy, and your readers will thank you. 6. Keep Writing Writing a blog can be tough, but it’s critical to keep going – even (and especially) when it gets hard. If blogging were easy, everyone would do it. Because it’s not, though, it’s up to you to find ways to make the blogging strategy work for you as much as possible. When you run up on writer’s or topic blocks, talk to people in your community and look at blogs you admire. This simple strategy will help you stay on the bleeding edge of the industry, even when you face the challenges that all bloggers do. Great Blog Content Starts Here While it’s true that great blog content is hard to come by, it’s also true that you can learn to create it with a few simple steps. This guide gives you the framework you need to learn how to write content for a blog, and begin crafting your … Read more

How to Write Content for a Website

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How to Write Content for a Website

While content has many applications, ranging from social media to marketing and beyond, website content is by far one of the most common things that people want to learn how to write. Designed to attract reader attention, provide value, and offer information, website content is the foundation of all content around the web, and it’s essential to know how to write content for a website in a fast, effective, and compelling way. To be as useful and impactful as possible, website content can’t be rushed, sloppy, or completed with only a half-hearted effort. Instead, it needs to shine with relevance and value. Here’s everything you need to do to learn how to write content for a website, and distinguish yourself from the crowd, in a nutshell guide in my #howtowrite series. Focus on Value First – Always Think, for a moment, about why people interact with website content. They’re coming to a website to find out something about a company, a product, or a service. Maybe they’re a new customer looking to learn more about what a company provides. Maybe they heard about a cool new product and wanted to learn more for themselves. Maybe they’re looking for a specific product and they want to do their research before they commit to buying. No matter what the case may be, website content is an essential vehicle for value and relevance, and it’s critical to provide this accordingly to customers. With this in mind, website content must feature a few elements that are different and more pronounced than other types of content. For example, it’s got to be more in-depth than social content, more professional than some blog content, and more personal than most marketing material out there. To put it another way, people want to learn about your company, your brand and your mission through your written material, and it’s the job of website content job to do just that. Want more on the topic of “how to write?” I wrote a best-selling book all about it! How to Write Content for a Website: 7 Steps to Compelling Material If you’re setting out to write website content, but you’re not sure where to begin, start with these tips: 1. Be original. When we say “original,” here, we mean it in both senses of the word. On one hand, the content you publish on your website should be original in that it doesn’t appear anywhere else on the web. While this may sound like a simple concept, 29% of sites currently feature duplicate meta content, so it’s wise to pay special attention to the fact that everything on your site is original, and that you’re not lifting pieces from yourself or from anyone else. Secondly, the content on your site should be original in that contains your unique brand voice, outlook, and mission. Again, people come to your site looking for relevance and information and the best way to provide them with this is to be as relevant as possible. 2. Create strong headlines. If you didn’t know it by now, strong headlines are the center of all things content, even (and especially) on your website. While the purpose of headlines is indeed to drive interest, headlines are also a good place to think about how best to provide relevance and information. Ideally, people should be able to visit your site, look at your headline, and understand what the purpose of a page is and what types of information they can expect to find there. With this in mind, creating your best headlines will go a long way toward making your content more informative, and can help boost the engagement and conversion rates of your pages. Blog topics require extra thought and care. For example, check out this list of strong headlines on SEJ – their most popular post section: Using powerful adjectives – “Ridiculously Effective” – is a great way to garner interest in your headlines. We have a list of top power words here. Looking at your competitors and using BuzzSumo to search most shared content topics in your industry is a great way to be inspired and start a list of fantastic topics. 3. Provide relevant links, prices, and information. The more information on a website, the better. If you’re writing a pricing page, for example, input links to related services and provide your users with all of the information they may need to make smart decisions. While some people believe that including things like pricing on websites isn’t a good idea, customers are often grateful to have as much information as possible, and this small step can go a long way toward boosting the functionality and relevance of your site. We have a Transparent Pricing page on our website, which clients have always said they appreciate: 4. Seek to provide answers in your website content. When you write social media or blog content, a part of the process is knowing your audience well enough to address their fears, concerns and priorities. With website content, knowing your target audience is equally important, only you have to know them well enough to anticipate their questions and answer them before the customers have a chance to ask themselves. When you do this, it helps show your readers that you understand their issues and that you’re willing to take a step into their shoes. It’s also a great way to make your pages more engaging, actionable, and targeted. 5. Be accurate. Everything featured on your website should be accurate and current. Pricing information, for example, should always be up-to-date. You shouldn’t feature outdated services or bygone facts on your website, and it’s absolutely essential to ensure that the information you do provide is as accurate and interesting as possible. In addition to helping your readers connect on a deeper level with your material, this will also provide a better user experience and a more exciting website for them. 6. Add images and video to your website pages. A picture is worth a thousand words, and visual … Read more

How to Write Content for LinkedIn

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How to Write Content for LinkedIn

Today, LinkedIn has 467 million users. If that weren’t impressive enough, there are 2 new LinkedIn members added each second. As such, LinkedIn has quickly become one of the best platforms out there for content writing, and it’s a great place to gain leads and build recognition for your company, cause, or topic. Like all things, though, learning to write content for LinkedIn is a skill, and you’ve got to develop it in order to excel at it. With that in mind, here’s a simple, one-stop shop to help you get started crafting content for LinkedIn, in my next #howtowrite blog post in our series. 10 Tips for Writing Content on LinkedIn To write great content on LinkedIn, follow these ten simple tips: 1. Tailor your voice to LinkedIn’s demographic. The audience that uses LinkedIn is geared toward the world of professionalism and business, so it’s wise to treat them accordingly. Instead of writing your LinkedIn posts like you would for Facebook or a similar platform, be sure that you’re gearing them toward the unique community LinkedIn offers. This means keeping your content on-topic, professional, and authoritative. It also means ensuring that you’re adjusting your voice wherever and whenever needed to continue meeting your reader’s requests and demands. Want more on the subject of “how to write?” I wrote a book all about it! 2. Post frequently enough to be noticed. On LinkedIn, just like any other social media platform, it’s critical to learn to post often enough to get noticed, but not often enough that you bother your colleagues or drive leads away. Keep in mind that LinkedIn uses an algorithm that determines what shows up on network updates, and that posting too frequently can damage your impression numbers. To determine how often you should post, consider LinkedIn’s top influencers. While they post several times a week, they’re not posting each day, and they have a deep understanding for their natural publishing maximums. To put this another way, you never want to post so often that you fatigue and bore your readers! 3. Add visuals to all of your LinkedIn content. The more visuals you can add to your LinkedIn content, the better. While you don’t want to turn the material you publish on the platform into a storybook, it’s smart to accent each post with a relevant visual, since this will help ensure that your post is featuring nicely in LinkedIn’s publishing algorithm, and that it’s as attention-grabbing as possible with your audience. 4. Pay attention to your headlines. Headlines, in the world of LinkedIn, are essential. To perform as well as possible, they should be attention-grabbing, short, and to-the-point, but they should also give the high-level professionals that populate the LinkedIn platform reason enough to click. If you’re confused about what makes a great LinkedIn headline and what doesn’t, take some time to consider the headlines of top LinkedIn influencers for an example. Take, for instance, this HubSpot headline, which features numbers to grab attention, a valuable promise, and an image to complete the post: 5. Keep your posts to the right length. Post length makes a big impact on LinkedIn. While it’s a platform that’s more geared toward longer content than Twitter or a similar social platform, it’s also smart to remember that the right length content makes all of the difference. With this in mind, keep your LinkedIn posts to the right length. In addition to ensuring that people will read them, this will also go a long way toward keeping you on-topic and deeply involved with the material you write about. 6. Use quality links to improve your content. Links make a massive difference in the success or failure of your LinkedIn posts. To make them as good as possible, use links to demonstrate your points, showcase key sources, and reach out to relevant sites. Keep in mind that you don’t want to “link stuff” your content, just to showcase your ability to do it, but you DO want to be liberal about your use of links, and ensure that you’re doing what you need to do to show your readers and Google that you’re capable of linking well. 7. Complete your LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile is one of the first places people will land when they’re looking for information about you and your company. With this in mind, be sure that you’ve completed and optimized your profile accordingly. This means that your profiles should feature a relevant profile picture, all your relevant contact information, and a complete list of recent accomplishments and skills. Don’t forget to update your profiles as needed to ensure that it stays current. 8. Publicize your posts. LinkedIn posts can make a splash both inside and outside of LinkedIn. To get as much traction as possible from each post you write, be sure to publicize it both on LinkedIn and outside of the platform. This will help gain as much traction as possible for your post, while also ensuring that it gets the audience it deserves. 9. Embed relevant video information. If you have a relevant video or SlideShare presentation that you can add to your LinkedIn profile, do it. In addition to helping you earn a broader audience, a step like this can go a long way toward building your authority on LinkedIn, and helping you stand out as a leader in any given field. 10. Adjust as needed. The final tip for how to write content for LinkedIn is to adjust your strategy as needed. LinkedIn, like all social platforms, changes on a regular basis and your strategy will be best off if you can adjust it whenever it isn’t working, or isn’t working properly. Keep in mind that the LinkedIn audience is unique and discerning, and the more willing you are to optimize your content for them, the better. How to Write Content for LinkedIn, The Easy Way! While writing content for LinkedIn may seem hard, these simple tips make it easy and effortless. As … Read more

How to Write Content for Social Media

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How to Write Content for Social Media

Social media has become a massively valuable platform in recent years. With millions of active monthly users, an incredibly diverse base of users, and reach to virtually every corner of the earth, it’s clear why the various platforms in the social media family, ranging from Facebook to LinkedIn, have stood out as such valuable and relevant places to share content. But how, exactly, do you craft content that performs well on these diverse and different platforms? In one of my first #howtowrite series, I’m here to share with you! Read on. How to Write Content for Social Media: 10 Tips Since social media is such a varied and unique environment, it’s critical to ensure that you’re writing the right content at the right time. Here’s how: 1. Optimize what you write according to the platform you write it for. Twitter is different from Facebook, which is different from Google+, which is different from Twitter! To make the most of writing content for social media, it’s critical that you take the additional time and effort needed to also optimize the content you write for the various social platforms for which you write it. For example, do you know which of your readers frequent which platform? Do you know how long content should be for said platform, or how to present your content so that it performs the best it can on a given platform? If not, now is the time to learn. Optimizing content for the platform you publish it on is critical, and it’s essential to master this skill accordingly. Want more on the subject of “how to write?” I wrote a book all about it! 2. Add images. Images are as critical for social media content as they are anywhere else. To make the most of your social content, fill it up with images once you’ve written it. Beautiful stock photos, in-depth screenshots, and even personal pictures can go a long way toward improving your content and making it feel more approachable and friendly for your readers. To understand why this is so important to good social media content, think for a moment about how you regard posts with images vs. posts without images in your own social media news feeds. Which are more likely to get your clicks? If you answered “posts with images,” you’re not alone. While people only remember 10% of what they read, they remember 65% of what they see, and pairing a relevant visual with your social media content can help it stick in your readers’ heads. 3. Keep your audience in mind. Your audience is critical when it comes to social media content, and if you don’t know who they are there’s no way you’re going to be able to address them properly. With this in mind, do everything you can to build targeted personas, research your audience, and develop a solid understanding of who they are and what they care about. In addition to allowing you to tailor your content more effectively, this step will also help to ensure that the posts you publish on social media will have a wide, broad reach with the potential to extend well beyond your audience. 4. Keep it about other people. Social media can be an echo chamber for narcissism, so it’s important to keep your content focused on other people. If you’re one of the many social media users who finds it tough to contend with other users who publish self-centric posts on a regular basis, take heed. Instead, keep your posts broad and externally-focused for the best result. 5. Become a master of headlines. Social media headlines are critical to your click-through-rate, and they can make or break the success of your content. With this in mind, follow the best practices for stellar headlines. In addition to earning you more clicks, a simple tip like this can easily boost the success rate of all of your social media content and ensure that you’re as close as possible to going viral online. 6. Experiment with different content types. Social media is a great place for all sorts of content types, ranging from articles and blog posts to videos and infographics. To build a well-rounded and unique content strategy, try your hand at all of them. In addition to giving your fans something to look forward to, this approach will also help expand your content horizons and teach you what works best with your audience and what doesn’t! 7. Address your readers. Social media works best when its personal, so don’t be afraid to address your readers directly. The personal “you” makes more of a splash in the news feed than anything else, so it’s smart to include it. 8. Cover trending topics. Social media is an excellent place to tap into current events and web-wide trends. In addition to the fact that these things will generally perform well with readers, social media content has a relatively short lifespan, so using it to cover current events is a great move. With this in mind, don’t hesitate to look to trending hashtags, news sources, and industry events to come up with topics for your next batch of social media content. 9. Keep it concrete. Social media isn’t a place to get obscure and experimental with your headlines or your content. Since people skim through social media feeds so quickly, concrete, tangible, unique headlines and topics will perform the best. Don’t forget to give your readers something they can hold onto. 10. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If readers click your title expecting one thing and they get another, they’re bound to be disappointed, and rightfully so! With this in mind, make sure your headline and the content beneath it deliver what’s promised, and don’t be surprised if your CTR drops when this stops happening. Learn how to Write for Social Media & Gain Serious Brand Attention Social media continues to grow, and learning how to write content for social media is more critical today … Read more

How to Write Content for SEO: 7 Steps to Great SEO Writing

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How to Write Content for SEO: 7 Steps to Great SEO Writing

Writing content for SEO (search engine optimization) is a necessary, vital skill for online marketers. Just look at some of these stats around search… 70.6% of ALL web traffic on the entire web now originates from Google, per a Backlinko/Sparktoro study. Publishing valuable SEO content brings in 67% more leads than NOT publishing strategic SEO content, says a HubSpot study. More than 71% of B2B buyers read blogs during their buying pathway (3-5 blogs is the norm). Add in to that the fact that the ROA on an ad funnel is as low as .66x. While the purpose of content is to be helpful and useful for readers, it also needs to appear in search engines — otherwise, you’re losing out on the potential your content could have. Like all types of online writing, however, learning how to write content for SEO is a skill that you must learn. With this in mind, let’s dive into how to write content for SEO, and what proactive steps you can take to make your online content visible, relevant, and interesting. How to Write Content for SEO: 7 Steps  Here’s a sneak peek at the 7 steps we’re going to cover in today’s blog. 1. Outline and ideate the content in your head before you write it. 2. Structure your content for easy readability & long-tail keywords. 3. Format all of your content into short chunks. 4. Make your headings descriptive. 5. Nail the transition. 6. Have other people proofread your posts. 7. Have other people proofread your posts. 8. Make sure your articles are long enough to provide ample main content. [bctt tweet=” 70.6% of ALL web traffic comes from Google — a reason why SEO is critical for every business’s content marketing. No idea what SEO is? Don’t worry. @JuliaEMcCoy guides you through the basics on how you can write for SEO! ” username=”ExpWriters”] What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. By making online content easy for the crawlers of search engines like Google to understand, good SEO principals help written material rank more efficiently. They can even make it easier for readers to find your written material online! There are two different segments of SEO: technical SEO and on-page SEO. While technical SEO refers to the links, structure, and code of a website, on-page SEO is the keyword inclusion, length, outbound links, images, and style of a post – all of which help Google “read” it and rank it accordingly. Both technical and on-page SEO are methods of optimizing content and getting it to rank in a favorable manner. Common SEO tactics involve keyword research and inclusion, image optimization, link building, and content formatting. Need step-by-step guidance on how to write SEO content? After earning 20,000+ keyword rankings in Google across 8 years, I’m now teaching SEO writing! Download for FREE: The SEO Content Writer’s Cheat Sheet. How to Create Content That Supports Good SEO: 7 Formatting & Structure Tips Today, good SEO and good content go hand-in-hand. If your content is poorly formatted, improperly structured, or carelessly thrown together, it’s going to be difficult to shape it into something that supports effective SEO. With that in mind, here are some tips to help you correctly develop all of your blog posts, starting now: 1. Outline and ideate the content in your head before you write it. While nobody is saying you need to sit down and create a “brain map” of your various ideas, content that supports good SEO is the opposite of an impressionist painting. Instead of being random and sudden, it is methodical and categorical. Because of this, brainstorming content is a powerful way to ensure that you’re including all of your main points and topics, and that you can use the content to input links, keywords, and other important SEO elements. To this end, think about all of your content, with these questions, before you write it: Who are you trying to reach? Which keywords will you include? What’s the overall point of your material? What do you want the content to communicate? By thinking through the course and structure of your content clearly, it’s easier to publish great content that lends itself nicely to SEO. 2. Structure your content for easy readability & long-tail keywords. Great blog posts rely on great structure, and good SEO does, too. With this in mind, consider mapping or outlining your blog posts before you write them. In addition to giving you a structure to abide by, this simple task will also help you lay out your introduction, body, and conclusion, and ensure that your content is easy to read, which, in turn, makes it more reader- and search engine-friendly. Long-tail keywords are your best friends in terms of optimizing for keywords that won’t break the bank (take too long or too much $). Read my guide here for more on how to go after long-tail keywords, including which tools to use. 3. Format all of your content into short chunks. A large brick of text is intimidating to readers, and it will push people away. With this in mind, be sure to divide all of your content into readable chunks of text, with a beginning, middle, and end. As a general rule, paragraphs should be only 3-4 sentences in length, and you should do your best to insert subheaders at intervals of every 300 or so words. This makes your content easier for readers to approach and helps keep it from feeling intimidating on the page. It also has the potential to improve your click-through rate, which can boost your overall SEO scores. Look through some posts here to see examples of readable content: Our own Write Blog Search Engine Journal (well-formatted articles) QuickSprout (readable blogs) 4. Make your headings descriptive. Beyond just using headings, you need to know how to make them descriptive and useful. Headlines are meant to guide readers through your blog post, and headlines that are highly descriptive and include target keywords will do the best … Read more

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