When it comes to writing content for your website or blog, it can be tough to know where to start, especially if you have no previous content writing experience. Although it may initially sound like a daunting task, we have devised some top tips to get you started. After a recent visit to BrightonSEO, we picked up some key insights into the world of content writing.
Plan Your Content Guidelines
Before you begin writing out any content, you should ensure that you have some guidelines in place. Whether it’s the tone of voice that you wish to convey or the main USP’s you wish to emphasise. One of the main factors that will influence your guidelines is your target audience and your primary demographic. Your content should be written in a style that appeals to them. If you are a brand with a team of content writers, anyone within your company should be able to read the guidelines and write content that matches the brands writing style. A set of well-thought-out guidelines can prove to be vital.
Write For User Intent
There was actually a time when content would be written with no regards for the reader. The content would make little to no sense and would just be crammed with keywords. Google has since wised up. User intent is now the primary focus for Google, content that is written should be solely for the customer, so if a customer is searching to find the answer to a question, your content should answer that question.
Focus On Your Niche
If you are an expert in your field, everything you write should come naturally and feel authentic. Use this to your advantage. If you work within a customer-facing environment, make a note of the questions that customers are regularly asking, you can then turn this into a unique piece of content that answers these questions. Not to mention, it’s much easier to write about something you genuinely understand as opposed to having to research the topic before writing the content.
Unique and Long-Form Content Is Key
Over the past 10 years, Google has made significant changes to the way it reads content. As mentioned above, user intent is their main priority. Therefore, unique and long-form pieces of content are essential for your keyword rankings. In short, your content should be long enough to answer the customers’ query, but not too long that it seems as if you are just rambling.
Don’t Steal Someone Else’s Content
I can’t stress this point enough. Stealing content is one of the worst things you can do when it comes to content writing. it can have huge repercussions on your website and can have a negative effect on your keyword rankings on Google. However, there are some exceptions, if you are using a quote from someone or perhaps you make take inspiration from somewhere, just as long as you ensure that the necessary person/website is credited. Canonicalisation is another way of preventing negative repercussions, this essentially tells Google that you’re crediting another website as the original authors of a piece of a content, this helps if you are sharing an infographic from another website etc.
How Many Words Does My Content Need To Be?
This question is often disputed within the content writing and SEO world. There is no definitive answer as it will vary depending on a variety of factors. We’d recommend a minimum of 300 words when writing a blog and a minimum of 1000 words when writing an informative article according to Yoast. It’s all about answering the query, as well as enough content to fully showcase your range of knowledge in the industry that you are writing about.
Extend Your Vocabulary
If you are concerned that perhaps your content writing skills could be improved, there’s no need to work yourself up about it. Although it may sound obvious, make effective use of a thesaurus and dictionary. There is also a brilliant online tool called Grammarly that you can upload your content onto. This tool can check your punctuation and spelling for you but remember to set your language to English (UK).
Summary
To summarise, the fundamental details that you should take away from this article are that you should always write with user intent in mind. Ensure that you are writing about something purposeful and unique to your niche. Long-form content is becoming increasingly important, your content should be long enough to cover every aspect of the topic you are writing about.
Posted in Advice
