Content writing is writing for the web for marketing a product or service. It should not only rank in search engines but on the first page of the search page. It should have visibility, be readable, engaging, grammatically correct, and free of plagiarism. SEO tools make the content visible in the search results. These tools help SEO content writers in writing content that is rich in information, precise to the point, and able to deliver the idea to the reader. Bloggers, website content writers, copywriters, social media marketers, advertisement professionals, digital marketing professionals, and social media managers need these writing and analysis tools.
How do content writing and content analysis differ from each other?
Content writing is about writing for the digital medium. It is basically writing and publishing content on the web. The content writing is primarily written for marketing purposes. Content can be in any of the forms like the following:
- Website copy.
- Press Release.
- Advertising copy.
- Script for videos.
- Blog posts.
- Email newsletters.
- Social media posts.
- Landing pages.
- White papers.
- Keynote speech.
- Audio podcast.
Content Analysis, on the other hand, is a research tool. With this, digital marketers can evaluate their content and how it compares with the success of their digital marketing campaigns. Content Analysis follows Content Writing, and it is used to measure the content and its various features. The analysis of the content gives a result of how the content can be improved.
In Content Analysis, content is put through a process, where qualitative data is collected and analyzed to produce quantitative data. Such content may be in the form of words, pictures, videos, web journals, social media feedback, books, podcasts, etc.
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Best practices for writing content for SEO
There are some guidelines and practices that should be followed when writing content for the web. In this sense, content writing is SEO-optimized content writing, where the writing and analysis tools are to be used to make it fully optimized for the internet search. Content should feed the ‘spiders’ that are looking for content and its structure. Let’s have a closer look at the best practices for writing SEO-optimized content.
1. Remember the audience
Unless you don’t give proper thought to your target audience, your content will just be another webpage that will be skipped by the viewer. What is your audience? Who will eventually read your content? Content should be persuasive so that your target audience gets full information about the value of a product or service. Content that goes haywire, or veers off from the topic, hardly makes any impact on the reader.
2. Impactful headlines
Headlines are the first thing that a viewer reads before the actual content. Headlines are a challenge to frame, as the text is minimal and the impact too great. In short words, you will have to summarize what the content is all about. Rich words make a headline powerful and relevant. The same importance goes for meta descriptions, as it is the meta description that will show up in the search results. With keywords, the meta description will be optimized.
3. Sharing on social media
Make sure you share every blog post you write on social media. Social media platforms are all about sharing content. Using appropriate descriptions and a call-to-action button will prompt better engagement. Make sure to have that ‘Share’ button in every single article. Sharing on social media also ensures more readability and better content based on feedback and responses.
4. Adding images
Images are more than a visual element of content writing. Plain content without images makes it boring. Visuals or images add focus to your content and drive the viewer to that content without being too wayward. Make a Pinterest account and pin your images. People like to read posts with visuals, and it makes them the most appealing. Images can be also in the form of infographics or graphs. It also adds more visual character to your blog and says more than text.
5. Natural links
Links have assumed so much importance in content creation. Linking to other sites will make the content more readable. It will also make it a feature on search results. Natural links add credibility to websites and your content. Linking to high authority sites will give more reading material to readers. Optimizing links will also optimize content. Inserting internal and external links improves the shareability of content.
6. Right keywords
Keyword research is where content writing begins. Understanding what are the keywords that your target audience is searching for on the search engines is the starting point from where the content writers begin to shape their content with the right keywords. When the blog post is optimized with these keywords, it becomes more relevant. In addition to the main keywords, content writers can put additional keywords in their articles.
Can Olken, an expert SEO writer and passionate content creator, recently published an article on SEO blog planning. As he mentioned in his article, “Rather than settling for generic keywords with enormous search volume (ex: content marketing – 11,000), the top priority here is to find hidden gems with a bigger character count and relatively smaller interest around them (ex: content marketing ideas for use in a campaign – 30).” Can is the senior SEO executive at Bubblegum Search, the digital marketing agency.
7. Explore ways to show content
Content does not have to be just textual information. It can be in the form of videos, or podcasts. It can be an audio or video script. Such content types make it easy for viewers to follow them. Videos and audio make the content interesting and captivating. It is more engaging and is sharable on social media.
8. Search intent
Search intent is often overlooked when writing content but can be so much effective in the overall result. When writing content, or making a content strategy, content writers need to write content visualizing the search intent of the viewer. The viewer or reader may be interested in informative content, making a transaction, or buying a product. Including specific keywords in the content will make it easy for the user to navigate and make a transaction.
9. Meta title
The meta title is a key to SEO-optimized content. The meta title need not be similar to the page title. It, however, should contain the primary keyword. It is the meta title that will show on the search page while the page title is there on the page itself. The meta title should be unique for different pages and should be a maximum of 40 characters.
10. Content structure
Long content needs to be structured as readability becomes that much easier. Content should have the best utilization of H1, H2, and H3 tags, and short paragraphs. If the content is long, it needs to have sub-headings, bullets, and numbering lists. It adds more focus to the content. The tone and voice of the content should be consistent on the whole content. Ensure that content has no plagiarism and is free of grammatical errors.
11. Proofread
Proofreading your content will show errors and mistakes that you may have overlooked. Proofreading content is as essential as writing content. Every article and blog post every write-up needs to be proofread once before it is published.
Best practices for analyzing content for SEO
Analyzing content can improve its organic performance. It is a way to identify the factors that are hampering a website to get ranked even when it is crawled. These happen to be some practices to adopt for analyzing content for SEO purposes.
1. Understand the clicks
“The key to unlocking the potential of SEO lies in understanding how web users interact with content – it’s essential to take the time to analyze clicks and understand user behavior.” – as quoted by Pepper Moran from Backlinkers.
The number of clicks that content can generate is a measure of its engagement. When a blog post or the link on a webpage generates clicks, it also leaves behind data that can be analyzed. Clicks are also those elements that make social media more interactive. If your data shows a particular blog post is not generating enough clicks, you can remove the content or rewrite it with SEO perspectives. It will ensure better visibility in social media and search engines. If it is a social media post, you can divert the content to different channels.
2. Locate duplicate content
It is only through content analysis that you can locate duplicate content. Duplicate content becomes more and more visible, once the content requirement increases. On a website, an increase in the number of web pages also generates a greater chance of duplicate content. Sometimes it is the templates or snippets that may provide duplicate content. It may also happen that you may have inadvertently copied content from other websites, and unknowingly, also copied a code that may arise in duplicate content appearing. This problem is common in online e-commerce websites, where there are many product categories, and product descriptions might show some duplicate content.
3. Keyword cannibalization
As the number of digital assets grows, keywords also grow. As a result, it leads to targeting the same keywords on several pages. It is not intentional, but it also results in the keywords not having the desired effect on search engine rankings. It may even result in the wrong pages being ranked, and it is only through a detailed content audit that such a problem can be solved.
4. Dropping organic CTR
Content analysis also shows when organic click-through rates have dropped. This may happen despite web content getting ranked. It may be a result of shifting interests of the target audience or other websites getting more rankings. This can be solved by a content analysis procedure.
5. Similarities in metadata
Metadata in top-ranking pages is also getting similar. Understanding the results of such a situation becomes possible due to content analysis. Once it gets clear that metadata is being repeated, content writers can make changes in the manner they write meta descriptions, meta titles, and meta tags.
6. Repetitive patterns in headings
Once content gets top ranking in search engine results, over some time, the headings also get duplicates. It may also be in the pattern of subheadings, and the language of its content. This problem also gets clear in a content analysis routine.
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Essential content writing tools for SEO blog writers
In our opinion, these are the 5 outstanding content writing tools that every SEO blog writer should use. Let’s find out.
1. Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a great tool for discovering keywords. Digital marketers regularly use this tool for coming across different keywords which they can include in their content. Keyword Research is an important step in finding new keywords. By targeting customers with the right keywords, Google Keyword Planner can improve traffic, engagement, and earnings. Google Keyword Planner can:
- Discover new keywords.
- Find out the costs of keywords.
- Making ad campaigns.
- Improve monthly searches.
- They are refreshed daily.
2. Answer the Public
When we search for something on Google, it automatically comes up with predictions that will complete our search query. All these predictions are what we might search for on Google. However, this is limited to just 10. Answer the Public gets over this limitation and gives us all the suggestions in separate categories. Answer the Public is a visual tool that gives us all the suggestions in the form of Questions, Prepositions, Comparisons, Alphabetical, and Related. It lays out all these in the form of a Search Cloud. Content Writers can find out what their target audience is searching for with this powerful keyword tool. Answer the Public can:
- Optimize Long-tail keywords.
- Improve keyword research.
- Understand your target audience.
- More organic traffic.
3. HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator
Writers often find it difficult to come up with blog post ideas. This writer’s block is a common problem that HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator aims to solve. This tool is great for bloggers who want to find out about trending blogging topics. This tool is simple and easy to use; all it takes is for you to key in the topic that you are interested in. It will give you a blog idea that you can write for an entire week. HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator can:
- Find long-tail keywords.
- Blogging ideas.
- Unique results.
4. Google Docs
Google Docs lets users create, edit, share, and store documents through a web browser. Using Google Docs, anyone can create a spreadsheet, word, or presentation document and share it with friends. Files can be stored on the internet, and users can also collaborate and work on the files together. Google Docs can benefit content writers and content marketing teams by:
- Creating documents in real-time on the internet.
- Access them anywhere.
- Free tool.
- Free Google Chrome functionalities.
- Ease of collaboration.
- Automatic saving.
5. Canva
Users do not need any design skills to use Canva. It is a boon to content creators and digital marketing professionals. It gives the benefits of making social media banners, ads, website headers, invitations, posters, presentations, and documents in a matter of minutes. Users will find many pre-designed templates that are ready to use. Drag and drop features make it easy to operate. Users can share their work with others. Canva is a useful tool that can give tons of benefits like:
- Free designing templates.
- Free software tool.
- Library of stock photos, icons, graphics, shapes, and fonts.
- User-friendly design.
- Free to alter templates.
Essential content analysis tools for SEO blog writers
In our opinion, these are the 5 exceptionally good content analysis tools that every SEO blog writer should use. Let’s find out.
6. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO adds more functionality to WordPress as it improves website rank on search engines. It is a WordPress plugin that optimizes content and keywords, to make the website SEO-friendly and optimized for the web. Once installed, Yoast SEO analyses the content on each page and makes suggestions to improve its readability. Yoast SEO provides the following benefits:
- Provides preview of search results.
- Suggests main keywords.
- Makes content readable.
- Analyses the content.
- Makes content unique.
7. Copyscape
Content creators can use Copyscape to detect duplicate content and make their content free of plagiarism. What Copyscape does is that it scans the web for content that may be taken from other websites. It makes the content original and unique. It is both free and paid version makes it function better. Copyscape matches words and how much content matches with other sites. Using Copyscape users can:
- Can scan 10000 pages at a time.
- Check the content in real time with Copyscape API.
- Exclude search from specific sites.
- Checks plagiarized content online and notify about it.
- Track content and responses.
8. Grammarly
Content makers, digital marketing agencies, and freelancers, all can use the powerful AI tool Grammarly to check the grammar and tone of their content. Grammarly uses its power-packed Artificial Intelligence algorithms to scan content for spelling and grammar mistakes, and linguistic errors, and suggest changes. It makes Grammarly an indispensable content analysis tool. Grammarly is free and its paid version is even more powerful.
- Improves vocabulary.
- Makes content plagiarism-free.
- Can be used through Mobile App, web browser, or integrate with API.
- Free and paid versions are available.
- Real-time editing and proofreading.
- Customizable.
9. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer is all about finding the headline you need to make your content impactful. This free content analysis tool lets users come up with a headline that will convert the content into more engaging content. Users will find CoSchedule Headline Analyzer very easy to use. It searches through an entire volume of data to suggest you the right choice of words and phrases for a headline. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer can provide:
- Headline score.
- free tool.
- Keeps a history of headlines.
10. Hemingway Editor
Making content more authentic is the aim of every content writer. Hemingway Editor will help content writers develop their writing to become impactful in a way that is easy to use. Hemingway Editor is available in the form of a desktop app. You can also use it online for free. It detects errors in grammar, sentence construction, use of passive voice, and weak sentences, and makes suggestions to improve the prose. The editing feature lets users edit it. It benefits by:
- Developing writing style.
- Detect errors in sentence construction.
- Free and paid versions.
- Writing and Editing tool.
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To wrap it up…
Content Writing and Content Analysis are not separate exercises but are correlative to each other. Content Analysis will begin once the content has been written. It is after Content Analysis that content will become SEO optimized. These two have practices that a content writer needs to follow to make their content feature in the SERP results. It takes consistent efforts and practices for content writers to include SEO concepts in their writing. These errors can come up with detailed Content Analysis practices.
But content writing in itself is an activity that can be perfected to make the content fully optimized for the web. It is, after all, content writing that will eventually decide how the website or blog post will rank on top of the Google search results. All the content writing and content analysis tools that we have discussed above will make it easier for the content to have its desired effect – that of achieving top search engine ranks.
Web developer and SEO specialist with 20+ years of experience in open-source web development, digital marketing, and search engine optimization. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions (RSWEBSOLS)".
