Finding a good SEO copywriting service is no joke.
In addition to being professional, the service you hire must also be knowledgeable, experienced, and able to turn on a dime to accommodate your needs.
Sound like a tall order? It is! We hear new clients tell us all the time horror stories about their past experiences.
Writers that didn’t pan up to the promises, didn’t even have experience in the industry they swore up and down they did, and deadlines that were left in the dust.
My team, founded on high principles, has been around for six years now. We know a thing or two about values, and what it takes to create content that fulfills every need for clients. We’re here to share today the key elements to look for in an SEO copywriting service that will put the “wheat,” not the chaff, in black and white for you. Keep reading!
Defining SEO Copywriting
SEO copywriting is the marriage of two essential skills: SEO, and copywriting.
While each of these things has existed separately for many years, the focus on bringing them both together has arisen in response to increasingly intelligent search engines and increasingly discerning consumers.
SEO used to be aimed at optimizing content so search engines could find it. This often entailed keyword stuffing, black-hat link building tactics, and spammy content pasted across every page of the site.
Copywriting, on the other hand, used to be aimed only at sales. The copywriters of old were the great salespersons of the web – pitching ideas, pushing products, and doing anything they could to get an early, interested, underwhelmed audience to bite (ah, for those low-volume internet days to return to us again!).
Today, though, both of those things have shifted.
Within the last several years, search engines have gotten smarter, and major names like Google have begun to penalize sites that use the SEO tactics of yesteryear. Today, spammy links, crappy content, and over-stuffed keywords simply don’t fly.
That’s not where it ends, though – Google has also begun to push for better-quality, more user-focused content, and customers have followed suit. Today, readers want quality, informative, relevant content that helps them solve their problems, and Google wants SEO that optimizes for readers just as much as it does for people.
Because of this, SEO copywriting has become an essential service for successful companies near and far. Today, SEO copywriting is critical for businesses that want to target their customers and help to solve problems and relieve pain points with the aid of unique, relevant, and high-quality online content.
Why Hire an SEO Copywriting Service?
Every business needs online content, and that online content needs to be optimized for reader experience and search engine visibility.
With few exceptions, most marketers don’t have the time, expertise, or resources in-house to create this type of content or to optimize the content they’ve already created. Without a centralized plan for improving SEO and crafting great content, things begin to go to pieces. Content comes out disorganized or irrelevant, and SEO falls by the wayside.
This is why it’s so critical for companies who are serious about their success to hire an SEO copywriting service. In addition to helping make SEO and content creation a more cohesive, cooperative process, a good online copywriting service has dozens of additional benefits, as well.
Some of the largest are as follows:
Increased traffic: Right now, 61% of internet users around the world search for products online. Unless you’ve crafted enough targeted, custom content to catch their attention, you’re going to miss out on significant amounts of attention for your site. A good SEO copywriting service can help you identify your customers, and then develop material that speaks directly to them, contributing to increase your site views and help your brand become a household name.
Boosted leads: According to HubSpot, companies with websites ranging between 401-1000 pages earn 6x as many leads as businesses that only have between 51-1000 pages. When you hire an SEO copywriting service, one of the top priorities will likely be to create blog and web page content. As you create blogs, for example, each new blog is an additional page for Google to index. This helps boost your site’s visibility and increases the number of leads your site will draw through organic traffic.
Increased relevance to customers: Today, customers use web content to answer questions and gain new information. When your company creates custom content meant to cater to these purposes, you become more relevant to your consumers, which is good for brand recognition and customer loyalty.
Decreased costs: While inbound marketing is drastically more efficient than traditional, outbound marketing, it’s also significantly less expensive. In fact, HubSpot reports that companies save an average of $20,000 each year by migrating to inbound marketing tactics.
14 Traits of a Worthwhile SEO Copywriting Service
1. Clearly defined boundaries
SEO copywriting services are not SEO-only services, and it’s important to understand that from the get-go.
While a good SEO copywriting service has an extensive understanding of everything that has to do with search algorithms, and likely conducts Google-specific duties like keyword research and on-page optimization, it’s unlikely that an SEO copywriting service will do anything like updating your link profile, for example.
With this in mind, an SEO copywriting service should neither define itself as an SEO company nor should it attempt to tackle the most convoluted aspects of technical algorithms. These jobs are best left for other, more technical firms.
When an SEO copywriting service clearly defines what it is and isn’t, you can bet that the content delivered will be high-quality and that the scope of focus will be narrow enough to provide you with targeted, quality service.
2. A willingness to work with your company’s brand
A professional SEO copywriting service will morph to adapt to your brand. Everything from the company’s voice to their approach should shift depending on your unique target audience and preferred tone.
While this may sound like a tall order, copywriters are chameleons by nature, and altering these things to provide you with a good experience should be natural for the firm you hire.
3. An insistence on perfection
SEO copywriting can be a huge boon for your company, so it’s essential that the SEO copywriting service you hire insists on quality, professionalism, and perfection in everything they do.
The company in question should have a good network of writers, editors, and reviewers in place and should run everything through plagiarism-checking software before submitting it to you. These systems help ensure quality work and will help your business gain online visibility, over time. Want to see what a few faces from a team of 60+ looks like? Check out our About page!
4. Demonstrable SEO copywriting experience
A good SEO copywriting service should be able to point to extensive examples of what it has done in the past. These examples should be high-quality and wide-ranging – running from blog content to white papers and beyond. (We have over 40 content services in our Content Shop!)
Demonstrable experience helps you ascertain the skills of the SEO copywriting service and get an idea for their style and methods before you commit.
5. A wide selection of expert-level knowledge
Expert content is critical for any company that wants to build a sustainable online presence, and a good SEO copywriting service should be able to cater to a variety of expertise and industries. Most professional firms have several professional writers on staff. These writers specialize in industries like marketing, law, and finance. By finding a business that offers writers who specialize in your unique industry, you can ensure expert content for your site and high-quality material for years to come.
6. Outstanding research skills
A great SEO copywriting service will go above and beyond regarding research. Whether the firm is researching one of your products or searching for quality statistics to include in a blog post, excellent research skills are critical.
Look for a documented research method and standards for what separates a good source from a bad one before you hire an SEO copywriting service.
7. Ability to appeal to reader emotions
Great SEO copywriting services know how to use reader emotions to make your content convert. Whether the copywriter is crafting a sense of urgency through limited time offers or inspiring customers to click by warning them about common pitfalls or easy-to-avoid mistakes, a professional SEO copywriting service should be able to use your readers’ emotions to make your content more compelling and actionable.
For best results, look for examples of how they’ve done this in the past. Previous marketing copy is a good source, as is on-page copy created for other companies.
8. An ongoing use of the positive voice
Most marketers don’t realize how much positive voice affects their customers’ mindsets. When a writer says “Don’t make this mistake…” it leaves the reader with a negative feeling. When the author says, “Avoid pitfalls by doing this instead,” the reader’s emotions shift to a positive outlook. Writing in the positive voice makes content more actionable.
Instead of giving the reader a list of what not to do, it provides solid action points that help the reader make positive change. This, in turn, creates more valuable content that can benefit your company. With this in mind, look for an SEO copywriting service that knows how to write in the positive voice.
9. A focus on simplicity in online writing
The best SEO copywriting services take complex concepts and make them easy for your readers to understand. In addition to making your content more accessible, this approach also ensures that you’re not alienating readers through jargon or overly-muddled online material.
Look for an SEO copywriting service that uses short sentences and simple words and pays attention to reading levels when crafting online content.
10. A dedication to specificity
Specificity transforms online content. Instead of saying, “Many customers use search engines,” a good SEO copywriting service will provide statistics that offer information on just how many readers. This, in turn, creates a better experience for the customer and makes content more valuable by making it more informative. Specificity is essential in online content, and it’s critical to find an SEO copywriting service that agrees.
11. A commitment to white-hat strategies
While black-hat SEO firms aren’t the law of the land anymore, they used to be. Today, it’s harder to get away with spammy, black-hat SEO copywriting, but some firms still do it. Unfortunately, this will harm your Google rankings and alienate your customers over time. For best results, find an SEO copywriting service that uses white-hat SEO techniques like guest blogging, consistent posting, keyword research, and quality link building to improve rankings and draw traffic. In addition to being more sustainable, these tactics are better for your site and your readers.
12. Willing, open communication with clients
SEO copywriting is a difficult task, and it’s essential for a good SEO copywriting service to maintain clear and open communication with its customers. If you want a change, an edit, or a different approach, the SEO copywriting service should be willing to oblige, and should help explain any aspects of the process you don’t understand. This builds a positive relationship between your brand and the copywriting service and contributes to high-quality, unique content that benefits both of you.
13. Ability to craft quality CTAs
A good call-to-action (CTA) is essential for actionable content, and a good SEO copywriting service will understand how to write CTAs that don’t alienate your customers. Look for brands that have increased the conversion rates of other companies in the past, and feel free to ask questions about what a good CTA entails. A good SEO copywriting service will have a profound understanding of the topic.
14. Current SEO knowledge
The best practices for SEO change often, and a good SEO copywriting service must have a good grasp on them. This means using the newest tools, understanding Google’s most recent algorithm updates, and being able to adjust their tactics according to new information. Without this knowledge, it’s impossible for an SEO copywriting service to provide to-the-minute offerings.
Finding a Good SEO Copywriting Service Made Simple
While finding a great SEO copywriting service may seem difficult, it’s well worth the time and effort to find a firm that you click with.
In addition to streamlining your content creation and ensuring high-quality material for your site, building a partnership with an SEO copywriting service is a wonderful way to help your brand become more visible online.
There’s no way around it, if you want to publish content that truly works for your online presence. Long-form content is more valuable, more exciting, and more relevant to readers than shorter-form content. It’s also less common.
While it might sound insane to start creating long-form content while we’re living in a world of increasingly short attention spans, swimming upstream is sometimes the only way to the goal.
Here’s some real inspiration for you on the subject. Joe Pulizzi, founder of Content Marketing Institute, and a leader in content marketing, wrote this in an exclusive CMI subscriber email this month (read the actual email here via PDF):
“…Nearly every marketer we talk to has run to shorter posts, shorter social media updates, shorter videos, shorter podcasts … thinking that audiences don’t have the desire to invest themselves in content for a longer period of time. But they absolutely do … if the content is worthwhile. Those marketers who take a longer form approach can immediately position themselves and their stories as differentiated simply because of the length. When all your competition is going small, maybe it’s your time to go big.”
In the same email, Pulizzi points out that:
Huffington Post has recently doubled down on its efforts to create long-form content.
All-star Youtubers are creating videos that are 10 or 12 minutes long.
Tim Ferriss’s recent bestselling book, Tools of Titans, is a whopping 671 pages.
Today, long-form content is the best way to stand out online.
But why, truly, long-form content–why does it work?–and how can you create it for your brand?
Let’s discuss this timely topic.
[bctt tweet=”Why, truly, are we pro long-form content for a strong online presence? Why does it work? And how can you create it for your brand? Read @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide ? ” username=”ExpWriters”]
Long-Form Content, by the Numbers
Long-form content isn’t just important because it’s different – it’s important because it works.
By providing more space to include relevant information, and giving audiences a chance to settle in and get comfortable with your brand, voice, and content, long-form material manages to convert at higher rates, provide a higher ROI, and earn more engagement. Here are a few fast stats to prove it:
The average length of posts in the top 10 spots of Google is 2,000 words. While it’s possible for short-form content to rank well, long-form content is the winner when it comes to front-page results.
Long-form content gets people to stay on pages 40% longer.Kissmetrics reports that, in addition to staying on their long-form pages longer, people exposed to long-form content also viewed 25% more pages than other visitors.
Long-form content earns more social shares. When it comes to social media, long-form content earns more shares and engagement than standard blog posts.
Longer content helps position you as a leader in your industry. It’s tough to bluff your way through 10,000 words, and readers know that. When you create quality, long-form content, you position yourself as a leader in your industry, standing out even further from your lazy counterparts who would rather get by with 300-word blurbs.
The Long-Form Guide Revolution
One great place to see the power of long-form content is in guides. Today, long-form guides are doing incredibly well. While it’s tough to earn great results if you’re not writing specific, targeted, honed guides, ultimate guides are another thing.
Instead of rambling and losing readers, these guides target in on one topic and dominate all facets of it. Covering things like InDesign and landing page lead generation, these guides are killing it in the online world right now.
Because they’re extensive and in-depth, these long-form guides have longer lifespans than other forms of content. This is because they can be reused again and again. After they’re researched and published online, it’s easy to make a large book from them, for example, or break them down into a long-form SlideShare presentation.
Need a real-life example?
Consider Joanna Wiebe, who wrote a guide to copywriting formulas. It’s called “The Ultimate Guide to No-Pain Copywriting (or, Every Copywriting Formula Ever).” The piece sits at 5,000 words and takes more than an hour to read! It also includes a table of contents to follow:
Useful, extensive, and helpful to readers, this piece has earned more than 6,000 shares and 151 comments. It also ranks well at the top for “copywriting formulas” in Google.
5 Examples of Bloggers Rising Above with Long-Form Content
Now that you know why long-form content is so critical, let’s take a close look at a few prominent bloggers who are putting out excellent long-form content today.
1. Tor Refsland
Tor Refsland, the face behind TimeManagementChef.com, has been featured on top sites like Lifehack, JeffBullas.com, Ahrefs, Post Planner, and Blogging Wizard.
On his own blog, he’s famous for consistently publishing 10,000-30,000-word monster blogs. Thanks to the time, energy, and effort these blogs take, he’s been recognized as an award-winning, top blogger who was first invited to speak at key events just 18 months into blogging.
For an example of what Tor Refsland is capable of with a blog, check out this piece, titled “Business Coaching, 20x My Revenue and Being Slapped by Frank Kern.” It clocks in right around 13,000 words and features so many segments and sections you’d think you were reading a novel!
While the piece is long, though, it manages not to be overwhelming. This is because Refsland does a few things beautifully. For one, the entire article is broken into highly digestible segments and short paragraphs, so you’re never faced with a brick wall of text. Example:
He’s also funny, and his humor feels like a trail of bread crumbs, leading you through the story step by step. He’s a pro at using punctuation, formatting, and headlines to help usher people through these monster blogs, so you never get bored or discouraged.
Try this post: How To Attract the Right Clients By Doing Business Nude.
It’s seriously funny.
Tor’s incredible copy is a large reason he was on my podcast last year!
2. Adam Connell
The founder of Blogging Wizard, a site that helps people learn to grow their sites “like magic,” Adam Connell has made a name for himself in the world of long-form content.
For an example of what he and his team create, check out this recent blog, titled “How I Got 8k Followers on Tumblr in 5 Months Without Logging in Once.”
Written by Eli Seekins, this blog is just about 3,000 words long. While this piece isn’t as massive as Refsland’s aforementioned blog, it’s no less important.
Here are a few things this blog does right: It visualizes almost every step.
If I had to guess, I’d say this post has an image every 300 words or so. In addition to the custom cover they’ve created for this post, the piece is also littered with in-depth screenshots,
overviews,
and tutorials.
Without these images, readers would be facing a dense stream of text, which would be intimidating and off-putting. With these images, the long-form content feels like a picture book, which is welcoming and informative.
It uses catchy headers and subheaders. The title itself is a great example of this. “8k followers? On Tumblr? In 5 months? Without logging in once??” You can’t help but click once you’ve gone through that mental process. Beyond the title though, his headline mastery is evident throughout the piece. Each subheader is descriptive, succinct, and compelling for readers. This helps move people through the piece and keep them interested.
It encourages reader engagement. The last subheader in the piece reads “Over to You.” The author uses this segment to ask audiences about their Tumblr blogs, follower numbers, and actions they’ve taken to drive traffic to or from the blog. With 24 comments and more than 700 shares, the approach seems to work!
3. We Live What We Preach at Express Writers
Here at Express Writers, we’ve always been dedicated to long-form content. It’s been the name of our game since I launched the site with a $75 out-of-pocket investment, back in 2011.
Throughout the six years that have elapsed since then, content has always been the #1 source of our revenue, marketing, and leads. We’ve never invested in PPC marketing (that’s right – not once) and we’ve always created our content without a thought to a sales funnel.
As a result, we outrank all of our major competitors on Google by 5%.). We claim more than 4,100 keyword rankings in Google and have organic traffic worth about $13,200. To top it all off, we also serve upwards of 1,000 clients around the globe and write more than 300 pages each week. I broke exactly how in my case study last year:
Of the more than 785 blogs we’ve published on The Write Blog since 2011, the average word count of just one of my posts is 1,500.
Some are longer, at around 3,700, while some are shorter, clocking it at more like 800 words.
Curious about how we use long-form content to drive results? Here’s a breakdown.
Each month, we post about 32 long-form pieces across the web. It takes five people, including myself, to make that happen (myself, three of our writers to assist me with editorial deadlines, our designer, and our Social Media Manager Rachel to social share everything). That doesn’t include the writers that periodically guest blog on our blog, including my staff, like Tara Clapper. These include posts on our own blog and posts on my various guest post columns. Here are the standards that allow us to maintain that level of content:
Research. I use Quora, BuzzSumo, and SEMrush for research. I’ve even created a Twitter chat (#ContentWritingChat) to find out what people on that platform are talking about and what they’d like to see in the coming content. Finally, I always pay careful attention to the comments I receive on my blog, and the conversations I have with other people in the comment threads of other blogs, as well as the conversations I have in LinkedIn and Facebook groups. Many times, these serve as the basis of my research or learning for a coming post.
Scheduled posting. In recent years, I’ve ramped up our publishing schedule to include a blog each day except for the weekends. That’s five blogs a week. I schedule each to post on WordPress at midnight the day of, and I tend to stay one week ahead. This allows us to stay consistent and high-quality, no matter how busy things gets.
Custom images. We create custom visuals, screenshots, and GIFs for each of our pieces. As you saw in the Blogging Wizard example, lots of visuals help readers stay engaged in long-form content, so we use them to help guide people through our posts.
Content audits. Every month, I audit our content in SEMrush. If the content there is showing as low-quality or low-engagement, it gets updated and improved immediately.
While this all takes a lot of work, I’ve found that content is the single most valuable source of online traffic, and that paying careful attention to building and maintaining it is a smart way to boost your online business and earn incredible leads.
4. BuzzSumo
The BuzzSumo blog is authored by the team at BuzzSumo, including Susan and Steve Rayson, and others. What this team is great at is specificity. Unlike so many other places on the web, they consistently publish exclusive statistics, which is a fantastic way to win at blogging, as well.
They’re also great at ultimate guides.
In fact, their guides are frequently my go-to sources of research for material I publish on The Write Blog, and virtually any piece you click on has dozens of comments, and hundreds of shares. Take this piece, for example: “Ask the expert: Mari Smith Answers 56 Questions About Facebook Marketing,”where author Susan Moeller asks the so-called “Queen of Facebook” about how to increase Facebook reach and improve presence. Exhaustive, exciting, and interesting, this piece hits it home on many levels. Or, one of my frequently quoted pieces, “The Future is More Content.”
BuzzSumo levels up continually and gets hundreds to thousands of shares per post, because they’re able to add exclusive research to their content performed using their insightful software.
5. Neil Patel
Ask virtually any expert content marketer for an example of a long-form king or queen, and they’ll mention Neil Patel. His company, QuickSprout, is the online leader for super in-depth guides and his blog on this topic, why long-form content matters, is a go-to for content in general.
Within this blog, Patel breaks down why he thinks long-form content is valuable. He quotes this powerful serpIQ study:
He also breaks down how his about page is 2,000 words long, and how values like substance, style, frequency, purpose, and format all help inform his company’s long-form content strategy.
When you visit QuickSprout, here’s what you can expect from their long-form blogs:
Organization. His posts make any Type A personality happy. They’re organized, well laid out, meticulously formatted, and incredibly easy to navigate. Between his relevant headers and subheaders, and his use of bolding, italics, and bullets, you never have to worry about getting lost in one of his posts.
Information. Like BuzzSumo, Neil Patel is a great source for original information. He publishes his own research, his own statistics, and his own findings. All this contributes to a truly unique content experience readers can’t expect to find anywhere else.
Personal voice. Neil Patel is great at making people want to work through these long blogs with him because he’s so conversational and approachable. He addresses the reader as “you” and calls out their personal struggles and difficulties. He also shares many of his own!
Visuals. Patel’s blogs are highly visual-dense, featuring screenshots, overviews, and charts and graphs to help readers grasp his points and synthesize the information he’s offering.
Because of these things, Patel has consistently stood out as a leader of long-form content, and he continues to dominate the web. A great person to look toward for an example of why long-form works, or how much it matters, Neil Patel promises to continue his charge as a leader in long-form.
How to Create Long-Form Content
So, long-form content matters.
It converts better, differentiates you from the competition, and puts you in the ranks of some of the best bloggers out there. But how do you create it for your site? While the task may seem daunting, long-form content isn’t as tough as it might seem. You simply need to have a plan of attack.
Here’s a detailed outline to help you create your own long-form content in the coming year.
Step 1: Define your mission
Think of long-form content like a long, long sailboat trip. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to wind up somewhere you don’t want to be. More specifically, you’re going to wind up wasting time, money, and lots of effort, without anything to show for it. With this in mind, you must define your purpose first.
To do that, answer this simple question: Why are you writing the long-form content?
Got an answer? Good – now get more granular. Who is it for? What will “success” look like? What goal does this material need to achieve?
Once you’ve hammered these things out, you’ll have a functional roadmap with which to begin the long-form journey.
Step 2: To gate or not to gate? That is the question.
Long-form content basically comes in two varieties: gated and ungated. Gated content requires readers to give you something in return for the content, like an email address. Ungated content comes for free, on your website or in the form of a download.
Gated content helps you learn about your readers by collecting relevant information, like their names, ages, job positions, and email addresses. It also helps you build your email list and introduce people into your sales funnel.
Ungated content, on the other hand, may encourage more engagement since it comes with less commitment. Both approaches have their benefits and drawbacks, and the next step in deciding whether to gate your content is simply evaluating rather its smart for you.
Different influencers have different opinions about this. CrazyEgg, for example, advocates for un-gated guides, since they can help you build relationships without a “catch.” The final decision, however, depends on your business, goals, and outlook.
Step 3: Create a topic and reinforce it with keywords
The biggest battle in the process of creating long-form content (aside from the actual writing) is deciding on a topic and keyword strategy. Remember that long-form guides can be 5,000, 8,000, or 10,000 words, so it’s critical to pick a topic that leaves you plenty of room to run.
Having trouble with this step? Here are a few tips:
Pick a topic that allows for simple keyword optimization. You want to be able to align your long-form content with keywords people are searching for. Bear this in mind as you research and develop your topic.
Check out your Q & A section. If there’s a certain question customers ask repeatedly, consider expanding it into a long-form guide or post. This can kill two birds with one stone: providing an in-depth answer to the question and giving readers a place to turn before they ask it.
Do your research. As I mentioned before, I use sites like Quora and BuzzSumo to do the research for The Write Blog, and these are great resources to tap into. Look for trending content, questions your readers are asking on Quora, or any unmet needs your target audience may have.
Step 4: Write it out
Next comes the biggest part of the entire process: writing. Writing a long-form guide can take weeks or even months, depending on your purpose and channel, so it’s essential to leave yourself enough time to execute this properly. If you rush it, you’re going to wind up with unsatisfactory material that doesn’t fulfill its purpose.
If you don’t feel up to the task of writing the guide yourself, consider hiring someone to do it for you. A freelancer or content agency like our own here at Express Writers can manage the entire process, taking your material from outline to final draft in a reasonable timeframe.
Once you’ve gotten the guide written, you’ll also want to invest in design services to make it visually appealing, no matter how you intend to distribute it.
Long-Form Content: The Most Important Type of Content to Create in 2017
As 2017 wears on, long-form content becomes more and more critical. In addition to helping brands stand out from the content sea, long-form ranks better, earns higher ROIs, and gives you a chance to solidly position yourself as an authority in your niche.
While it may seem counterintuitive to create long-form content in a time when attention spans are shorter than ever and mobile is king, readers are hungry for something that provides them with real value, real passion, and real effort.
Long-form content is one of the only things on the web that provides all of this, all at once.
Do yourself and your readers a favor, and commit to long-form content in 2017.
Check out the resolutions a lot of us made way back in early 2016:
According to Money, the top goal for Americans was to “enjoy life to the fullest”, and a close second was “live a healthier lifestyle”. Far down at the bottom was “pay off debt.” As a country, most of us are fairly realistic and stick to one goal.
It’s good to make goals, even if we don’t always achieve them.
Setting goals gives us a vision for the future and puts something in our sights that we can reach for. Personally, we aim for better health, more time with people we love, and a more financially stable lifestyle.
On the content development and marketing side of things, setting goals and looking to the most useful SEO content tactics for the next year also gives us something to look toward. Quality content comes from using SEO as an effective tool, drawn from your supply of strategies and experience. Ready to dive into our most useful SEO content tactics to share for the New Year? Grab a latte and join me!
SEO Roots: A Look Back at the Beginning Before We Look at the Future
I was born in 1991, when the launch of the world’s first website happened. (I like to say it was fate bringing the internet and I together – since eight, I’ve had a natural affinity and love for our world wide web.) As the ‘net grew to include Google (1997) and Yahoo (1994), marketers took advantage of keyword stuffing and spammy backlinks in order to rank high on search results.
The art of SEO, or search engine optimization, came along in the early 2000’s to help connect users with the information they needed to find local results. Since that time, user-focused SEO and changes to Google meant rankings had to be earned through relevant, quality content rather than an overuse of keywords.
Today, relevant content and mobile optimization are required to rank at all, and must be backed by authority and expert links.
Content no longer ranks high simply due to a large amount of spam or repetitive keywords throughout a piece of content: it ranks high based on a lot of factors, many of which are now human-based more than bot or algorithm based. (Check out my post all about how semantic search is the way of the future.)
6 SEO Content Tactics to Use in 2017
Search Engine Journal recently gathered the wisdom of 44 SEO experts to ask their views of what trends will define 2017. We gathered about 15-16 for our roundup in the last week of December 2016. While everyone has a different view of what the year will look like, there is one thing they all agree on: as we move forward, it becomes even more important to stay aware of the latest technology and how our strategies need to adapt, no matter what year it may be.
Here are the SEO tactics we need to watch as we go into a new year, one still unwritten, yet full of possibility and growth.
1. AMP
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) was integrated by Google early in 2016. The open initiative encourages publishers to create mobile-optimized content—pages load quickly on mobile devices for more efficient use.
The goal with AMP is to deliver the best mobile experience to the average user, lessening the wait time for things like videos and graphics. Experts across the board believe that this new year will be the deciding factor in whether AMP stays or gets shelved.
2. Mobile experience
Apps will continue to be a part of the user experience, which means indexing them will be important going forward. As the introduction of RankBrain has made its impact in the world of algorithms, so too has the continued focus on mobile.
Google has already talked about making their index mobile-first and restructuring algorithms to first use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages. This will continue to be important in 2017, especially as 3 out of 4 Americans own a smartphone, up from 2015.
Mobile activity will intersect with search engine optimization and ranking going into this next year. As Duane Forrester reminds us at SEJ, “the shift has already happened…if you’re still ‘thinking about mobile’, consumers won’t be thinking about you.”
3. Content optimization
As industry experts point out, our focus needs to be on content optimization rather than keyword optimization. And while it remains important to a content marketer’s SEO strategy, there is the temptation to get trapped in the “content is king” cycle.
With millions of articles published each month, there has to be something to make you stand out from all of the other voices who want the attention of your audience. Long-form content is a start in the right direction.
4. Machine learning
Innovative technology and its capabilities will reveal previously unseen patterns of searcher behavior. Advanced machines like Google’s RankBrain and the rise of artificial intelligence will make it even more important to put forth the effort in order to rank with the best.
The area of search engine optimization will move forward as a technical approach. The challenge may lie in not knowing why a piece of content ranks at a certain spot, as machine learning has an influence on the algorithm.
5. Voice search
Billions of searches are done each year via voice commands, and the number is only expected to grow. This trend will have an impact on our keyword optimization since we don’t speak in the same way we write—think asking a question versus typing a statement into a search box.
The move toward conversational search among a variety of devices will definitely have an impact on SEO, especially as we consider the “one correct answer” given by a device. This goes back to quality content and making sure you are providing the most thorough and most readable answer.
Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers 2016 Internet Trends Report
6. Quality links
Well-organized resources filled with useful content can make quite a difference in the building of trust with your audience. Links still matter and contribute to rank, and as Google reminds us, creating “unique, relevant content that can naturally gain popularity” pays off.
Experts differ on the importance of link building. Adam Audette at SEJ believes that content developers would do well to focus on link building for amplification rather than for SEO purposes. Think of it like a circle: if you create great content, and promote it well, that content willbe linked to and subsequently return value to your site.
We’ve seen it happen: a year after I published this podcast with Joanna Wiebe, CrazyEgg picked it up and linked back to our site, citing it in their post defining conversion copywriting. The link quality was almost 80 DA (domain authority) – a huge link boost!
So, remember: backlinks still matter. These links back to your webpage still need to be authoritative and relevant as it relates to SEO. Create amazing content, publish it, share it: you’ll get links from high quality sites if they think it’s good enough!
4 Key Tactics to Keep in Mind for Creating More Fantastic Content in 2017
While predictions from a host of experts can be helpful going into the new year, what exactly are we supposed to do with all of this information?
1. Optimize for mobile
Accessing the internet via the phone and tablet surpassed desktop usage in 2016. Those numbers alone should be motivation for all of us to better understand AMP and mobile-first indexing.
It isn’t enough anymore to build a site for desktop usage and then scale it back for mobile users. Not only does this drive users away, but it may prevent them from visiting at all. As Search Engine Land notes, content and links on a mobile site are key drivers in search engine visibility while ranking is still based on the desktop version of a site.
2. Focus on long-form content
Every SEO strategy should focus on the building of high-quality content that is relevant and authoritative.
Joe Pulizzi talked about the rebirth of long form in an exclusive email that went out just last Friday to the CMI audience in an exclusive email, PDF export here:
Now how, in this world of “snackable” content, multiple smartphones, and no attention span, are we seeing these longerform pillar collections of content cutting through the clutter?
The point I’m trying to make is that nearly every marketer we talk to has run to shorter posts, shorter social media updates, shorter videos, shorter podcasts … thinking that audiences don’t have the desire to invest themselves in content for a longer period of time. But they absolutely do … if the content is worthwhile. Those marketers who take a longerform approach can immediately position themselves and their stories as differentiated simply because of the length.
So, when all your competition is going small, maybe it’s your time to go big – indepth article series, hearty and detailed podcast interviews, a fullfledge custom print magazine, and possibly even a customer event. When everyone else zigs, you zag. – @JoePulizzi
[clickToTweet tweet=”When all your competition is going small, maybe it’s your time to go big in content. – @JoePulizzi” quote=”When all your competition is going small, maybe it’s your time to go big – indepth articles, hearty and detailed podcast interviews. – @JoePulizzi”]
Joe hits the nail on the head.
Long-form content also gives the writer an opportunity to share authoritative information with quality sources to back it up. Readers will return if they know they are going to receive solutions to their need.
3. Keep pace with technology
The chatter about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and voice-search innovation. Over the course of just two years, Amazon sold nearly 5 million Echo devices, which allow users to control their home through smart technology and perform voice searches.
The rise in the use of digital personal assistants will change how the average user searches, increasing the number of conversational queries during the process. Whether we are asking Siri or Google Assistant, the way we search with our voices is different than how we type in a search query.
Adapting your SEO strategy according to how the audience is using your site and developing content with a conversational tone are just two ways to stay engaged with the newest digital inventions.
4. Progressive Web Apps (PWA)
Google tells us that PWAs are engaging, reliable, and fast, bringing a new level of quality to a home screen. These apps are live and installable, eliminating the need for an app store.
SEO efforts can be boosted by utilizing PWAs while you increase the level of engagement through an app-like experience for your audience.
Moving Forward in Your SEO Journey this Year
Every content developer should know that SEO copywriting is only as good as the skills and tactics behind it.
While 2017 lies open like a crisp book full of blank pages, content developers can continue to keep learning and keep connected with the latest updates on the most effective SEO tactics.
If your resolution is to create better content, connect with us over at Express Writers for some goal-worthy ideas!
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 contenttypes), 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.
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 your title specific and attention-grabbing
The title is a critical component of the case study. To make it as attention-grabbing as possible, include percentages and strong action verbs. Here are some good examples from real-life case studies:
Remember: titles perform better when they are as accurate as possible. That’s why phrases like “by 1,000%” and “doubles yearly revenue” appear in these wide-ranging case studies.
Keep your language simple
Many people think that learning how to write a business case study involves incorporating jargon and corporate-speak into the writing. Fortunately, this isn’t true. In fact, writing a business case study requires you to keep your language simple rather than making it more complicated. The more you can avoid corporate jargon in your case studies, the better.
In addition to making them more natural and approachable, this will also allow non-customers to approach your case study without being intimidated away by overly complicated case study language.
Add real numbers to your case study
When you look at the case study titles above, most people would agree that “increased webinar sign-up rates by 1,000%” is the most memorable phrase up there. In addition to the fact that this is a shocking number, it’s also so precise that it grabs reader attention.
With this in mind, follow KISSmetrics’s lead and include real numbers in your case studies. While phrases like “doubled this” or “tripled that” are powerful, they just don’t have the added oomph they need to take your case study to the top.
Write from the beginning to the end
A case study is not the place to leave out critical data. Instead, write from the beginning to the end and keep it as accurate and chronological as possible. This will help flesh out the entire circumstances surrounding your interaction with the client and allow your readers to understand your impact more effectively.
3. Finish the case study with all of your relevant contact information
Since a case study is designed, at least in part, for press distribution, it should be outfitted with your contact information and details. This will allow other companies, customers, and more to contact you regarding the case study, and will help to make the information within it more accessible to other people.
While there are different standards for which information you “should” include in a case study, most sources recommend including your phone number, website, email, and one or two social profiles, along with a short bio. This will provide enough information for interested parties to contact you and can help boost the ROI of your case study down the road.
4. Hire a designer to finish the product
Don’t forget that every good case study needs a great design, and it can be helpful to bring in a designer to add some visual interest to the piece. Simple things, like using text boxes to pull out key facts, statistics, and quotes, and inputting related graphics and charts can make all of the difference in your case study and should be used liberally to enhance its value and interest.
We can help – our lead designer is familiar with how to take copy and create custom, beautiful designs in Adobe to match! Check out our case study service here.
5. Publish the case study
Publishing your case study is the final step in creating it. To get the most success from your case study, you’ll want to post it in the places your real audience and prospective customers frequent. This may mean publishing the case study on your blog, reaching out to relevant publishing platforms, or gating the case study and using it to drive email sign-ups for your company.
Alternately, KISSmetrics recommends appealing to different types of learners by breaking your case study into unexpected formats, like a podcast, a YouTube video, or an infographic!
We published ours in a few different forms.
First, as a blog post:
Then, as a landing page.
What About Hiring a Specialist to Write the Case Study?
Writing a case study requires a very particular voice, and if you don’t have the time or confidence to do it yourself, it’s in your best interests to hire someone specifically who knows how to write case studies and has done it before. In addition to making your case studies more efficient, this will also help you create the best possible case study and not drive yourself into the ground as you do it.
No matter how good the writer you hire is, you’ll have to provide them with some specific information about your case study.
Ideally, you should give the author a very clear overview of what you’d like from the case study. This should include the following components:
Word count
The products, goods, or services you’d like the case study to promote
The benefits you provided for the client
The struggle the client faced
The specific way you went about resolving it
The result (percentages, direct quotes from the customer, and facts are helpful here)
The deadline for the case study
These things are critical for helping your writer create the best possible case study, and they’ll go a long way toward making the process more lucrative and enjoyable for you, as well.
The Case for Case Studies
Case studies are an incredibly useful tool and can have a massive positive impact on your content marketing.
While most companies don’t think they can create case studies, learning how to write a business case study is simple, as long as you’re willing to put in some time and work.
In addition to helping your customers understand the benefits of your services, case studies also provide an essential platform for new clients to see your products at work, which can be all they need to convert and become brand evangelists.
By following my tips above, you can learn how to write business case studies from scratch. Simple, effective, and critical for your company, this is one ROI-boosting move you simply will not regret.
Don’t want to D-I-Y? Trust our marketing team of experts: we’ve crafted successful case studies for businesses of all types. Talk to us today about your case study writing & creation needs!
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.
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 own outstanding blog content. Time to make your dream of becoming a successful blogger a reality!
