Forge Search Marketing
6 Tips for Improving Your Content
The following is a guest post by Corry Cummings from the good people over at Content Customs. At Forge Search Marketing, we often emphasize how important unique, valuable content is to an SEO campaign and many of our clients have found utilizing a writer such as Corry to be invaluable. Enjoy the article!
Improving your content may be very easy, depending on your current writing skills. There are many things you can do to insure you content writing is good, and you don’t necessarily need to be the greatest writer. It all starts with making sure that you are writing something that has value. There is no point to publishing anything on the Internet that does add value. With that said, the following will help to prevent bad content, and help you improve. Additionally, this will lead to more traffic.
1. Leave Out the Filler
There is no reason to include useless words in your content. Why would you want to put something on your site that was worthless? Every word should have a purpose, and there should not be any waffle or filler content. An example of filler, would be as follows.
“That was a really good page of content, it had lots of good stuff. You will get a lot of traffic from that content.”
Those two sentences add absolutely no value to the page. They are really just opinion. Instead, you want to give the facts. Tell the reader why the page of content is really good.
2. Have Good Scan Ability
As you read this article, you will notice that it is very easy to scan. There are sub headings, and the content is broken up. That is how you should write all of your pages. The reason for this, is so the reader can quickly and easily scan through the content. When you are writing, keep in mind that you are writing for the Web. Most users do not want to spend a lot of time reading. They want to find what they are looking for and move on.
3. Make your Writing Informative
There is a time and a place to write creatively. The Internet, is rarely the place to do so. People are looking for information. If you give them what they are looking for, they will come back again for more. Of course, if you are running a celebrity blog, then your writing should probably also be creative. For the most part though, creative writing gets in the way of writing a solid informative article.
4. Link to Other Relevant Pages
When it makes sense, you should link to other sources. Especially, if it is another page within your site. It is not only good user navigation, but also very good for SEO. As you write each page, get in the habit of keeping your other pages in mind. If you have another page that is more thoroughly written about a topic mentioned, then link to it. Also, do not be afraid to link out to good relevant sources. That will add credibility to your site, and could potentially lead to those sites linking back to you.
5. Go Back to Old Content
You would be amazed at the results you will get from going back and reading through old content on your site(s). By reading through the pages you wrote a few months ago, you will be able to look at it with a fresh perspective. A quick rewrite and some additions could drastically improve your content. Also, take the time to consider your keyword placement and your on page SEO. Go back and do a little keyword research based on that page, and make sure you are aiming to rank for the right keywords. Having indexed old content and making some small changes can lead to some huge increases in search engine rankings.
6. Consider Hiring a Content Company
If you are no good at writing, and you just do not get it, then you may want to consider a content company. Hiring someone that offers article writing services is a good option if you are struggling with content. Additionally, if you are too busy to write content yourself, this is also a good option. A good content company will be able to increase your search rankings solely by developing good content. They can also help with other forms of writing as well.