Quick tips to improve your content writing
Content is king. We hear this phrase so often that it starts to lose its meaning, but it is also true. Google recognises and prioritises valuable content that is not only searchable, but also shareable. This means that the content you write must be written to either inform, entertain, challenge or convert your target audience.
Obviously, content can refer to a number of things, including written copy for your website, blog posts, press releases and media presentations, social media accounts, marketing emails and more. Your company may not have a marketing copywriter or in-house copywriter, but there are still ways to ensure your copy is at the top of the game. Today, Brand SEO will teach you 5 quick ways to improve your copywriting.
Avoid overusing keywords
In the quest for higher rankings, companies will unfortunately practice the art of keyword stuffing or overusing keywords in the content of their websites. People do this in order to manipulate the algorithm of Google, Bing and other search engines so that they rank higher for a particular word or phrase.
You’ve probably been on a website that displays a string of keywords that have very little relevance to the written content. Repeating the same words over and over again in an unusual way is another method of keyword stuffing. If this doesn’t work, the website may try to “hide” the keywords by using white text on a white background or by hiding certain words in metadata and alt tags in images. Not only does this create a poor user experience for your audience, but search engines will also penalise such a site, allowing it to rank lower or even remove it from search engine results.
Instead, improve your writing by using keywords within the text where they belong and add value to the content.
Create a style sheet
A tagline system is a great way to make your brand voice consistent, no matter which platform you’re writing for. If you haven’t used it before, a style system is a set of standards or rules that you should always follow when writing content for your brand or business. While grammatical rules, such as the use of capitalization and abbreviations, are generally used, style guides also keep the tone of your brand in check.
Is your company formal, classical, lively or warm? Do you want your brand to feel more simple and straightforward? A simple style guide can improve your writing by strengthening your ability to communicate from a particular perspective.
Use CTA buttons
Businesses that don’t want to be “salesy” don’t usually use a Call To Action (CTA). And yes, it’s true that you don’t want to sell products and services in every paragraph. But if your target audience does not know in a very clear and obvious way what the next step should be after reading your text, then your customer journey is not doing the job. Some calls to action include:
Use a different set of eyes
Lecturing is a very powerful tool, but it cannot always be done by the same person. A second look at your work before publication is a great way to catch style guide errors, organisational mistakes and common grammatical errors. The other person editing your work should be well aware of all these points.
Don’t try so hard
Many songwriters will feel the need to impress their audience with big words or unfamiliar language. This type of writing is very alienating. By using a common language, people search for what they need online. For example, a user searching for flights might search for ‘cheap flights’, ‘cheap flights’ or ‘low fares’. They are much less likely to search for “moderately priced flights”.
To read or scan a copy should not take much effort. Writing short paragraphs and numbered lists is a great way to keep a person’s attention. Avoid unnecessary words and ‘jargon’ that not everyone will understand. Now that you have a sense of what content should look like, we recommend you take a look at the guide on how to design a proper content strategy in How to get started with content marketing.
