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Writing seems like a tough job. And it becomes even tougher when it demands integration of keywords smartly without disrupting the flow and ensuring that it is not spamming as per Google’s updates. Yes, we’re talking about SEO content writing here.
SEO write-ups have different word limits. From 90 words to over 5000 words, you can easily find descriptions, articles, blogs, whitepapers, case studies, WebPages, etc., over the web. Out of all the aforementioned types of SEO content, the most difficult one to create is the big content. Content that extends the threshold of 5000 words. But such in-depth articles, when written smartly can help in dominating the SERPs.
In this article, we are going to talk about how to write such articles with sheer proficiency.
First of all, why?
You must be thinking that in this age where everything is short and swift, who goes for long and boring? Well, agreed. The people of this generation might be the fans of flash, but they are hungry for knowledge. So when the TG (Target Group) is ready to read the info, majority of the business goals become sorted by default. A few more reasons are enlisted below:
· Better Ranking: The longer, the better. This has been proved times and often by multiple studies. A study by serpIQ conducted in the year 2012 showed that the search engines displayed content crossing 2000 words in the top. Another recent study from Backlinko and HubSpot showed that the shorter content pieces were outranked by the longer ones. If we leave aside the studies and take your personal experiences into account, you would have also found that for any keyword that is in high competition, the search engines always returned with a lengthy and highly informative article.
Tip: Don’t limit. Just provide complete information regardless of the word count.
· Better Sharing: Longer content pieces tend to get more shares and this fact is proved by data gathered by BuzzSumo.
Tip: You also know the importance of sharing. So just don’t shy away from long articles.
· High Relevance: When it comes to factors that Google considers while ranking a website, the list include content quality, on-page engagement, backlinks, etc. But only few people know that the relevance of a topic also plays a major role in impressing Google. After the Hummingbird update, Google has got a clearer picture of whether a search is a question or a topic. For e.g. “Thor actor real name” is a question and need not return with detailed information about Chris Hemsworth. But on the other hand, a question like “tips on website content writing” demands a piece of lengthy information as it is a topic. According to a research by MarketMuse, it was concluded that in-depth content is regarded as relevant to the topic and hence is ranked higher in comparison to the shorter content for multiple keywords.
Tip: Choose a topic and it’s keywords smartly.
· Easier conversion: Conversion in this case implies to capturing the leads. One of the best tricks that attract the leads is content upgrades which are video walkthroughs or downloadable PDFs. Such upgrades can only be offered with long posts as short posts will not have enough info.
Tip: It is quite simple; BIG CONTENT is the key to one’s content marketing strategy.
Secondly, how?
Since you now know that the bigger, the better, let us take you through how to come up with a big content.
Other than a lot of research, here are certain things that can help without fail.
· Step 1: Choose the best keywords: As big content demands time and money, you would want to target keywords only where your ROI is max. Hence, your focus should be on mid-tail and broad keywords or those that strike the balance between competition, traffic, and business goals. To do that, you will have to consider these 3 things:
o Search volume: It is important because it has a direct effect on the number of actual customers that you may get. Besides, it is also helpful in establishing a standard traffic volume which will yield high ROI within a specified timeline. AdWords Keyword Planner can be of great help when you want to find the search volume.
o Strength of the competition: The success of your big content also largely depends on the content quality of your competitors. The reason why it is easy to rank some keywords is simply because the content of your competitors is not up to the mark or the domain is not strong enough. In such a scenario, you need to begin with analyzing the first 10 results for your targeted keywords. You can take help of any SEO tool to get the stats. It is quite tough to beat the top 3 rankings but it can be done if your content is right. Other than this objective analysis, you can collect a few samples of the articles written by your competitors and compare it with yours. You need to ensure that your content is well-formatted, in-depth, image-oriented, headlined strongly and SEO-optimized.
o Business Goals: At the end, it becomes extremely essential to ensure that the content leads to fulfillment of business goals. This can happen if you figure out the journey of your prospects and the keywords that they put in. Accordingly, you will be able to set the business goals of your selected keywords. Shown below are the different kinds of keywords used by the customers in different levels of their journey:
o Decision level: If you are looking for conversion, try targeting keywords with buy, shop, purchase, discount, coupon code, deal, etc. When a customer is using such keywords, it implies that they are at the decision level and are looking for discounts before purchasing. Another set of decision level keywords have review, comparison, v/s, etc. Such customers have knowledge about the solutions and just want to confirm that they are going for the right option. They can be easily converted if the ad copy is persuading. The problem with these types of keywords is that their search volume is quite low and it becomes difficult to create lengthy content using them.
o Consideration level: Keywords used at such level have the desired balance between search volume and business goals. These include words like affordable, cheap, best, top, etc. These customers have high conversion chances when these words are used with a specific product, service or category.
o Awareness level: Keywords at this level are high in search volume but are low in meeting the business goals. These will include words like what, how, why, etc. For businesses that have strong sales funnel, these keywords are great targets for creating big content. If you are planning to capture leads or are selling something big, you should target such keywords as they have lower completion and ranking them becomes easier.
By following this step, you can get the cream of keywords which will be best for creating a lengthy piece of content. The second step is selecting the right format to make content creation easy.
· Step 2: Choose the best format: Once you have zeroed-in on the keyword, you will then have to choose correct format in which you want the content. You can either have it in a form of listicle, infographic, guide, tips & tricks or a thought piece. Listicles are easier to write and are also recommended because these allow you to integrate multiple keywords and also focus on them. In a listicle, you can use different keyword as a sub-title. Another advantage of choosing the listicle form is that the flow and structure of the article is maintained.
· Step 3: Choose an outline: After selecting the format, the next step is to create an outline which ensures quality. Here’s how you can do it.
o Define the broad sections
o Divide into sub-sections
o Expand the sub-section
o Hyperlink to the sources of data/research, if any
o Add examples
The last two points are rather important as they elevate the value of the content.
Step 4: Hire professional writers: The last step would be to hire professional SEO content writers. Let’s face it, no matter how much matter you go over the web to learn tips and tricks, you cannot match the experience that the writers have. It is in your best interest to leave the job to the professionals to get the best result.
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Source by Kundan Kumar