And we’re not the only one bringing in the bacon through our blogging. Michelle at makingsenseofcents.com is a blogger I follow who travels the world and makes six-figures monthly through affiliate blogging. And Jon Morrow at SmartBlogger is a smart marketer who uses his blog to earn over $100k/month.
So, whether you’re attempting to start your own blog or looking to create content for other businesses, the opportunities are there.
And while there’s quite a bit of competition in this space, becoming an expert blogger is something that can set you apart from the field.
If you’re able to nail the strategies outlined below, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an expert in the blogging world. Let’s get started.
[bctt tweet=”Learn how to become an expert #blogger in our 10-step guide. ” username=”ExpWriters”]
10 Strategies to Becoming an Expert Blogger
Ready? Let’s get into them!
1. Learn How to Write Well-Structured Blogs
Arguably, writing is 80-95% of the weight of a highly-successful blog.
Just look a few examples of top-ranking, top-shared, conversation-driving blog posts:
The structure and readability of these blogs are critical examples. This is the style you need to follow when you write a blog. For example, look at the readability and short, impactful-sentence structure of Morrow’s blog, linked to above:
Learning how to write a great blog is definitely an art and a science.
As you can see in the image above, content-centric blogs are those where the writers create content and then try to find an audience that will read and appreciate it.
Writers of audience-centric blogs, on the other hand, establish the audience they’re writing for and work to create content that’s designed specifically for them.
The more important point to take away from the image above, however, is that audience-centric content enables you to reach your maximum audience.
By identifying who you’re writing for, and what they want to hear, you’re giving your content the best opportunity to earn the interest of readers and be successful.
And isn’t that your goal?
Takeaway: Identify your audience and create content based on what they want to hear.
3. Stay Up-to-Date With Your Industry
Ten years ago, not many people were familiar with content marketing.
“Research is the first and most vital step when developing and executing a content strategy. Without complete research, the steps of Ideation/Planning, Creation, Connection, and Measurement will be based on insufficient data.”
So, you know that research is important. But how do you actually do it effectively?
What’s the Best Way to Research Effectively?
This is where things can get a little tricky.
Because, while there are many ways to go about researching, you’re going to have to take the time to determine the strategy that works best for you.
Researching and creating an outline can be time consuming. But by writing down ideas and researching them as they come to you, you can significantly reduce this part of the creation process.
References are essential to creating useful content. Be sure to gather any references you can that will help you make your point when writing.
Takeaway: Work to develop an approach to research that works for you and ensures you’re able to consistently create useful and relevant content for your audience.
5. Develop a Content Differentiation Factor (CDF)
While it’s true that becoming an expert blogger has a lot to do with gaining knowledge from others, that doesn’t mean you should just follow in their footsteps.
The ability to carve your own path, and differentiate yourself from the pack, is equally important on your quest to becoming an expert in your field.
But to truly separate yourself, you have to provide a compelling reason for someone to read and devour YOUR content instead of a competitor.
If a potential reader or customer were to ask,
“Why should I read your content over your competitor(s)?”
What would your answer be?
Creating a Competitive Advantage by Developing Your Content Differentiation Factor (CDF)
If your goal is to develop a competitive advantage, and give potential readers a reason to choose your content, then it’s essential that you develop a Content Differentiation Factor.
While establishing your CDF can be a complex and time-consuming process, it’s absolutely necessary if you want to succeed in the world of content marketing.
To create your CDF, you need to clearly answer the question of:
“What is your unique, standout perspective in your content niche that makes you an expert that needs to be heard?”
Takeaway: Take the time to develop your Content Differentiation Factor so you can provide potential readers with a compelling reason to view your content over your competitors.
6. Make the Readability and Usefulness of Your Content a Focal Point
As you begin to study other expert bloggers, you’ll find that almost all of them talk heavily about the short attention span of today’s internet users.
And it’s true. Modern day attention spans are undoubtedly shorter than they’ve ever been.
But that doesn’t mean you CAN’T capture their attention.
Legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a different take on this topic than most. As he says:
In a lot of ways, Seinfeld is right. If you’re producing high quality content that captures the attention of your audience, people will read it.
To make sure they read it, however, you have to focus readability and usefulness.
Honing in On Readability
Making your content readable isn’t difficult, even if you aren’t a great writer.
Let’s take a look at a few tips that can help you with this:
Write short, to-the-point sentences
Include no more than 2-4 sentences within each paragraph
Break up your content with images, subheadings, and bullet lists
If you’re looking for a tool that can help you discover the readability of your content, Readable.io is a great free option.
Let’s take a look at the results when we plug in the article you’re currently reading:
As you can see, it gives us an overall grade while also providing more detailed statistics about things like keyword density, syllable use, reading level, and more.
Yoast SEO, which is a WordPress SEO plugin, is another great readability tool if you’re looking for something even more advanced.
Making Your Content Useful
Making your content useful is simple if you’ve already committed to creating audience-centric content.
So long as you focus on what your audience wants, and ensure your content serves as a useful and actionable resource, you shouldn’t have a problem with this.
Takeaway: Attention spans are only short when your content isn’t readable or useful.
7. Stay Consistent
Consistency and persistence is important in just about every part of life.
But it’s really, really important in the world of blogging.
And there are many reasons for this.
For one, as Forbes tell us:
“Without consistency, it’s difficult to build brand loyalty.”
If you aren’t able to develop a core audience that regularly reads your content, you’re going to have a very difficult time succeeding in the blogging world.
And, unless you’re consistently publishing content, it’s going to be impossible to develop that core audience and brand loyalty.
Consistency is also important for SEO reasons.
As HubSpot has found, blogs that publish 16+ blog posts per month generate about 3.5x more traffic than those that publish between 0-4 posts.
While there are other factors, such as content quality and promotion, that will have a positive impact on SEO and traffic, creating and posting consistently offers a clear opportunity to get ahead.
But if you don’t currently have the time or resources to publish 4x per week, that doesn’t mean you can’t succeed as a blogger.
Blogging, after all, is a long term game.
As DeMers also tells us:
“Posting at least once a week is usually sufficient to establish a regular core of readers, and these readers are typically the ones who will form the core of your brand community.”
Once the core of your brand community is developed, you can start focusing on developing more content in an effort to boost traffic and build a stronger SEO profile.
And, as your resources expand, you can begin to hire freelancers or content creation agencies to write some of your content for you.
Takeaway: Know that blogging is a long term game and that your ability to stay consistent will have a major impact on your success.
8. Make Promotion a Priority
Of all the ways that blogging and content marketing have evolved over the years, possibly the biggest change has been with the incredible increase in the amount of content being created.
In 2015, Marketing Profs reported that there over 2 million blog posts are written and published every day.
Not surprisingly, however, most of that content goes unnoticed.
Because while content creators are writing and publishing plenty of blog posts, many of them are failing to realize the importance of actually promoting that content.
How to Promote Your Content
This is a topic that’s FAR too in-depth to cover within this post. But, as we’ve mentioned, understanding how to do it will be incredibly important to your success.
So instead of giving you a brief summary, here’s a few great resources that can help:
Find the Right Groups. Find the social networks and groups where your target audience is active. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer great opportunities for this.
Keep Your Image Consistent. While it’s important to cater your content to the social media platform it’s being posted on, it’s also crucial to control your audience’s perception by maintaining consistency with how you represent yourself across the web.
Engage as Often as Possible. Create a consistent posting schedule and be sure that you’re communication with your audience as often as possible.
Give, Give, and Give Some More. Make personal connections with your audience and ask them what you can do for them. And, above all, avoid being salesy and promotional.
Become Involved in Discussions. Show that you’re human and connect with others by getting involved in discussions. Not only is this great for visibility, but it’s an opportunity to offer your unique insights on a topic.
Takeaway: Social media and content marketing form a powerful team. Leverage this combination to build authority in your industry.
10. Don’t Forget About SEO
While it’s true that creating audience-centric content plays a crucial role in becoming an expert blogger, you still need to understand how to write content for SEO.
By doing so, you enable your content to be found via search engines and therefore reach its maximum viewership potential.
And while there are some technical aspects of SEO that can contribute to success with SERPs, most of the strategies necessary to succeed are fairly basic.
Here are five rules of thumb for great SEO content:
Focus on 1-2 Long-Tail Keywords. Don’t overdo it with keywords. Focus on 1-2 that have the least competition and include them in your title, headers, meta description, and body copy.
Design Your Post to be Mobile-Friendly. More and more people are viewing content from mobile devices. And, as Google is beginning to emphasize mobile-friendly design as a part of their algorithms, you’re significantly reducing your potential reach if your content isn’t mobile optimized.
Optimize Your Meta Description. While the meta description doesn’t have a direct impact on search rankings, the words within it help searchers decide whether to click on your content or a competitor.
Optimize Images. Search engines crawl for images based on their alt text. For this reason, you’ll want to be sure that you’re optimizing images (especially custom images) for search.
Link Internally When Appropriate. By linking to other posts on your site, you’ll help keep visitors on your website while also sending signals to search engines about the relevancy of your content.
Takeaway: Be sure to optimize your content for search engines to maximize your potential reach.
Bonus #11. Develop Your Own Unique Voice and Style
I couldn’t end without tossing in an extra bonus point.
Question: Do you know of any cover bands that are more popular than the actual band that they cover?
Be honest. Don’t you wish creating fresh, hot new content every week was easier than it is?
I know I do.
No matter how many cool copywriting tricks you’ve got up your sleeve, when deadlines start breathing down your neck, no one is 100% immune from the dreaded blank page blues.
Looking for a way ease the pressure of having to constantly produce stellar content, in early 2012 a bunch of smart Internet folks came up with the idea of content curation. The basic idea of content curation is that, no matter who your audience is, there is already so much good, relevant content being produced daily.
These days, content curation is common practice now, and forms part of any professional content marketing plan. The problem is, there is most definitely a right way and a wrong way to do content creation.
The wrong way can end up making you look like a spambot, scraping random junk from the Internet and slapping it up for your audience. Not only is this a no-no according to Google, but you’ll trash the hard-earned trust you’ve built up with your readers.
So what should you do instead? Glad you asked…
How to Do Content Creation the Right Way
In the grand scheme of marketing, content curation is vital to any content campaign because it can help you get incredible content pieces to share with your audience, as well as helping you figure out new topic ideas.
Remember, when you curate content, you are only looking for content to gain inspiration from, not to copy. Use content curation as a way to inspire yourself and enhance your own individual content strategy for your clients.
Content Creation vs Curation: The Ideal Mix
A few years ago, the accepted wisdom was that the ideal ratio between created and curated content was 80/20, that is, 80% created content, and 20% curated content.
According to more up-to-date research, and depending on the industry, a mix of 65/35 (with original, created content still forming the larger proportion) seems to be a more acceptable ratio in 2017.
Convince&Convert even go further to show what it looks like to be a “curator,” “balanced” on social media, or the danger line of a “self-promoter,” very useful information for the content curator:
Keep in mind that, within this balance, your curation should be focused more on your social platforms than on your own blog, which is where only your original content should be featured. Your blog is your online real estate – why put someone else’s content there?
To produce that ideal mix, though, you’ll need some smart tools to help you.
The Top 17 Content Curation Tools for Smart Marketers
Here are some of the top content curation tools you can use to help boost your content starting today.
1. Trap.It
Trap.it pulls in relevant third-party content from all over the web, including industry research, insights and trends, which can be organized into topic-specific libraries for instant reference.
Trap.It is also an “intelligent” curation tool, which means the more content you curate the smarter it gets, so you’re never lost for inspiration. Best of all, you can distribute the curated content you’ve “trapped” across all social platforms to engage your audience without spending hours on the web.
2. Feedly
Feedly helps you to curate blog content that can be used as resources for future posts or give you great ideas for upcoming content. Feedly is also great for following authorities and influencers in your industry, so you can stay on top of the hottest conversations and create content based on the latest trending topics. It doesn’t pull images, but the lack of visuals doesn’t diminish the importance of this tool.
3. Pinterest
Like Feedly, Pinterest is great for keeping up with celebrities, pop culture icons and leaders in your industry. Depending on your niche, Pinterest is also fantastic for collecting useful “hacks”, tricks and tips you can build your content around. Save these ideas to boards on your account, and work with them to curate excellent content for you and your clients.
4. Quora
Quora is fast becoming the go-to platform for finding out what people want to know. You get expert, authoritative opinions and answers to questions ranging from what it feels like to be a CEO to how to apply to the best colleges, and almost everything in between. Quora is a gold mine for insightful perspectives on hot topics you can use as the basis for a wide range of content. Just set up an account, and then search your keywords to find excellent content to store away for future use. You can also set up your account to be notified about articles relevant to your field, so you can get more articles and interesting ideas in your inbox.
5. Scoop.it
Used by more than 2.5 million marketers, Scoop.it just might be a content marketer’s dream come true. This powerful curation platform allows you to search for content according to keyword, share curated content directly to your social channels, and embed everything you find on your page. What’s more, the platform also offers predictive insights and an accurate ROI measuring tool that helps you get the most from your curated content. At Express Writers, we love the CEO of Scoop.it, Guillaume Decugis! I’ve recorded a podcast on the Write Podcast with him talking how to fit curation into your content marketing strategy, and we even had him as a guest on our Twitter Chat #ContentWritingChat talking content curation principles.
6. BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a smart marketer’s “pro tool” when it comes to content curation. BuzzSumo keeps you up to date with the latest trending topics in your industry by sending automated alerts every time new content in your industry is published. Use BuzzSumo to search for content by topic, and share it directly from a simple dashboard.
I absolutely love the “Content Research” tab, to research and interact with the people sharing our content, and to hunt down hot topics.
Ideal for the marketer who wants to streamline content curation and share better material, BuzzSumo is a simple, no-headache tool.
7. MyCurator for WordPress
This tool is perfect for those who use WordPress for their website and blog. MyCurator allows you to quickly and easily curate content, fetching relevant articles, videos, and other content from all over the web, with an option for automated posting to your site. There are also bulk curation tools for collecting multiple pieces of content for large or serial projects.
8. Twitter List
Using Twitter Lists can help you monitor content from influencers, news websites, and other relevant companies which can be resources for real-time marketing. Set up lists for different categories so you can check the conversations under a topic in an instant.
9. Learnist
Learnist lends an authoritative twist to content curation because it helps people learn from industry leaders and experts. You will be able to curate authority content, and even learn new information about your industry from the people who are driving it forward and making things happen. Learn how to manage your time from productivity experts, or how to make the perfect cappuccino from a top barista, all while collecting stellar content ideas!
10. Slideshare
While this tool doesn’t act like most of the other content curation tools I’ve mentioned, SlideShare does provide you with the chance to learn from others and share your knowledge. You can look through various Slideshares of those in your industry to gain new information and curate content, and you can share the best ideas with your audience.
11. Storify
Storify is an awesome visual tool that can help users create storyboards for their content campaigns by utilizing content curation. You can either be the one doing the creating, offering people content to curate, or you can look through the storyboards and curate content from others. In addition, you can also get a WordPress plugin for Storify.
12. List.ly
Whether it is a blog list post, a grocery list, or a simple to-do list, everyone has some sort of love for lists. They are great at helping you keep track of things, organizing information, and they are perfect when it comes to content curation.
List.ly helps you can gather your information together in useful lists, and which readers can then up-vote or down-vote each part. This can help you find content that will be more impactful, and which content you might want to stay away from. Again, just like with Storify, there is a handy WordPress plugin for List.ly.
13. ContentGems
This program gives you access to over 200,000 RSS feeds, which makes it easy to find and curate virtually any type of content you need. All you have to do is search your chosen keywords, and you can skim through several different resources, cherry-picking juicy content along the way.
14. Pocket
Pocket is a handy little app when you’re just getting started with your curation efforts. Pocket installs a button on your browser, so when you come across an interesting article, video, or image, you just hit the button and put it in your “pocket” for later. You can also access your content offline, so you can build your library while you browse and access it whenever you want later. A very welcome added bonus is that when you sign up to Pocket, you get daily emails showcasing the most “pocketed” content from around the web.
15. Triberr
Triberr is a great way to help connect with industry leaders and curate their content. The most valuable feature of this app is that you get access to groups based around a specific area of interest. In addition to engaging topic-specific content, you also get exposed to insider lingo, up-to-date info on what’s hot and what’s not in your niche, and interesting angles and opinions on your topic. You can find your area(s) and join the tribe to begin curating great content, and you can share that content when you find something useful.
I’ve actually had content clients walk in from my interactions on Triberr. There is real value in the audiences here!
16. Post Planner
This tool helps you to share your curated content on Facebook at some of the best times. It promises that it can help you get viral content by just spending ten minutes each day on the program.
It looks at your Facebook page and decides what dates, times, and content pieces will work best for you, giving you the maximum reach with your content and blogs. This can help boost Facebook engagement, and get those curated pieces out to your audience.
17. Curata
Curata is another intelligent content curation tool because it makes sure to find articles and content that meets your interests. It goes throughout blogs around the Internet and tailor makes content lists for you to look through. Curata gives you the chance to look over the curated content, annotate the pieces, and curate the best content for your industry needs. This tool is especially handy if you happen to be very busy – like all good content marketers always are!
4 Simple, Key Practices to Make Sure You’re Always Doing Content Curation Right
To ensure that your content curation helps rather than hurts your brand, follow these best practices:
1. Only publish content in your area of expertise
Anything else is irrelevant and will look to your readers like you’re just pushing out any content to populate your platforms. Also, this should go without saying, but I’ll say it: only publish content you’ve thoroughly read. You should know what you’re promoting before you hit that promote button.
2. Make it your own by adding commentary
If you’re going to curate content, take it the extra mile by personalizing the content with commentary, insights, or pulling quotes from curated content to develop your own unique content (with ample citations, of course). According to our podcast with curation expert, Guillaume Decugis, this is one of the primary tenants of good content curation!
3. Focus your content curation on social media channels
Curated content will perform better on social channels than it does on blog.
4. Use curated content for inspiration and conversation-starting
If you’re relying on curated content to populate your accounts, you might be better off hiring professional writers to help you create content than you will be to simply keep curating. Ideally, you want to rely on curated content less than you appreciate. Think of curated content as a source of inspiration that you can use to improve your own custom content rather than a crutch you need to keep your accounts functioning.
The Best Content Curation Tools Result in More Effective Curated Content
Content curation tools take a great deal of the grunt work out of curating content. In doing this, they also allow you to enhance your content strategy, gain inspiration from industry leaders, and shuck (just a bit of) the burden of content creation.
While content curation is an integral part of any good content strategy, it pays to put in the time and effort needed to do it well.
In addition to keeping your content relevant and unique, this will also ensure you stay far away from Google penalties and plagiarized material, which is great for you, your readers, and the authors from whom you’re curating content.
Still overwhelmed with curating excellent content? Our Strategists know how to plan out a month of content, including how to curate topics. Check out our Content Strategy services!
Depending on how much your friends or family like to prank, we’ll be considerate and avoid all pranks away this morning with this blog
(you’re most welcome).
We’re here to talk about having great content—which isn’t a joke developed by copywriters and Google, it is actually incredibly important. We promise we aren’t fooling you, and you will be incredibly happy if you focus on having great content. However, you might be wondering just how you can get excellent content all the time, especially if you are a very busy business owner. I am going to look at different content tips as well as services to help you create or receive excellent content you will be proud to share with your clients. Let’s take a look!
11 Awesome Ideas and Services to Help You Improve Your Content
There are several ways to improve your content and make it the best, and I am going to look at a few of these.
Expert Landing Pages are a Must. When you create your website, you always want to make sure that you have expertly crafted landing pages and web content. Having great web pages means that you have a higher chance of converting visitors into leads, and building your customer base. This is something that you obviously want because more customers means more revenue, and those customers might just tell others about your company and so on. Having these great, crafted landing pages is vital, and you need to find people who can expertly create them for you if you have any trouble whatsoever.
Blogs Are Vital to Any Online Presence. When you want good content, you need to have an ongoing blog for your business. Blogs currently run the content world, and these are what will help bring people into your business’s website and convince those people to search the rest of your site. You can use your blogs as new, individual landing pages, which gives customers several places to choose and learn more about your company and services. Blogs provide a unique opportunity to help your clients out while encouraging them to choose your company for their needs. If you want to get the most out of your blogs, hire our expertly trained blog writers who will know just what to do for your blog and business.
Get a Content Audit for the Best Content. Content audits are oftentimes overlooked because they can be time consuming. However, a content audit is a great way to make sure your content is still quality and fits with any new Google algorithms. A content audit is something I regularly encourage people to get because it really does help you learn more about the behind-the-scenes aspect of your site, and lets you know what you should change. You can take a DIY approach to content auditing, but it does take quite a bit of time, so the most efficient step is to hire our trained content auditors. Trained content auditors can help find everything you need to know to improve your website, making it the best it can be.
Content Curation is the Way of the Content Future. Are you looking for excellent resources to share with your clients or to generate blog topics and titles? Then you should be actively engaging in our (recently launched service), content curation. This is a perfect way to find high quality resources that will help you create consistently great content. In addition, content curation will help you stand out as a leader in your field, and if you curate top quality material, you are more likely to be trusted by your customers. Trust is a great way to bring in more customers and keep your existing ones.
Optimization is Still Important. While I have discussed all the different methods you need to use when creating content, optimization isn’t over just yet. It is still vital to content because those keywords can help with the big picture. Optimization implements your chosen or needed keywords into your blogs and web pages to help them rank on the search engine results page. Your website, with its multiple landing pages gives you many opportunities for optimization, which will greatly benefit your business.
Keyword Research Helps You Find the Right Keywords to Use. When you use the above optimization, you will need to make sure you’ve researched the best, most impactful keywords for your site to get the best results. You can do this on your own through Google Analytics to see which words are bringing in more clients. One of the best ways, however, is to have our SEO experts do keyword research for you in your industry to find the ones that will have low competition while also being able to drive a lot of traffic and engagement. Depending on your business, there are a variety of keyword types that can work for you. There are the basic keywords that incorporate your services, but another form of excellent keywords is the long tail or local keyword for local based companies. This will help you come up on local searches easily, helping people in your area find your business.
Hiring Niche Copywriters Helps Significantly. When it comes to your business, it is one of a kind and might have a very specific audience. Because of this, you are considered a niche industry, and you need writers who can write specifically for it. This oftentimes holds niche companies back from developing blogs because the owners and workers don’t have the time to dedicate to writing blogs every week, but they don’t want just a generic copywriter. This is where a niche, industry copywriter comes in. You can find one that can write for your industry to help make the biggest impact and bring in more clicks and leads.
Have an Epic Social Media Presence. One of the best ways to have great content is to make sure you have an epic social media presence. This can help you convert new customers from people simply visiting your profiles. In fact, many of your customers are already on social media, which makes it a great way to stay in touch with them. However, even if you find that your current customers might not have social media right now, it is still important for you to use it. Social media helps you generate more organic traffic, and you have the ability to control your online reputation. There are many benefits to being on social media.
Press Releases Are Here to Stay. Another way to make sure you have excellent content is to hire someone that can craft an excellent and professional press release to send out. Yes, you heard me correctly; you need to send out press releases. They are still relevant, and are more commonly released in email or digital form. However, they can still have a major impact on your business and help drive more people to your website to purchase your products and services. Modern press releases can be written as a news story to tell people more about your company and what to expect in the coming year, making it more engaging for customers and those in your industry.
Have a Bundle of Topic Ideas. In order to make sure you have great content all the time, you need to make sure you have a plethora of topics at the ready. This will help you when it comes time to write your blogs and give your clients something interesting and engaging. You can research topics for your industry and see what your clients will be interested in to brainstorm some great ideas. However, if you hit a wall when it comes to topic generation, you can always find people who can help you craft excellent topics and headlines to create perfect content for your blogs and website.
Spend Some Time with Creative Writing. Creative content writing is another great way to create and have excellent content. While this might not work with every industry, it can be helpful if you are aiming to tell stories with your content or if you are working on a book for your company. Creative content doesn’t just have to be fairytales and epic battle scenes; it can simply be a blog with a creative voice on an awesome topic. Hiring expert copywriters who have strong, imaginative minds is a great way to get amazing creative writing and make a powerful punch in your industry. Having a creatively written blog will help you stand out from your competitors, as well.
Start Getting and Creating Excellent Content!
Simply by following the above points and implementing some, or all, of them into your content strategy means you will get excellent content. These points are all incredibly beneficial for all websites and businesses and can help you drive great, organic traffic and broaden your client base. If you are having a difficult time doing these yourself or finding someone to help, Express Writers is here for you! Just take a look at our products, services, and our rates page to see which service will benefit you. Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have.
Google is always updating, with an algorithm change at least every few weeks. Now, in a move to help people find great, accurate content, Google is working on a content accuracy algorithm that will help direct people to accurate sites quickly and easily.
We recently wrote a guest blog on SiteProNews about this very topic, which had a lot of traction inside just 24 hours. Because of this, we wanted to look into the topic further and provide even more data about this hot topic.
Accurate Content: Does Google Care and Why?
Social media has been abuzz lately with the latest Google news to come down the line. It is big enough that it didn’t just spark interest for businesses and SEO experts, but it also got your clients’ attention. People readily assume that content is always accurate because, if it is on the Internet, it has to be true! Or, at least, that is what many people believe. This, however, makes many people fall victim to false news from satire news sources without any verification about the particular topic. Very few people will double check by searching Google for the topic and won’t go to Snopes to see if anything has been written. Because of this, Search Engine Journal says that Google is deeming it necessary for websites to have accurate content.
One of the main reasons Google cares about people getting truthful content is that they have a strong desire to provide people with excellent, expert content and accuracy plays a big part in that. If you don’t believe me when it comes to Google wanting to give readers the best content possible through search results, just take a look at all of the various algorithms they have introduced over the last few months and years.
How Will Google Determine Accurate Content?
According to the Search Engine Journal article I shared above, Google has an interesting plan to check for accuracy. It seems complicated, but Google is planning to build an algorithm that cross checks your content against a number of verified, reputable sources. They haven’t said exactly what these places will be, but a few that come to mind could be places such as Huffington Post, or industry related websites. For the copywriting industry, this could be Moz or HubSpot. This way, Google can tell for sure if you are writing something that is truthful or if it is misleading. This doesn’t seem like it will be too much of a detriment to too many businesses, but it is wise to make sure you know what is going on and ensuring all of your existing and future content is accurate.
How Could This Impact Your Website?
If you are readily publishing accurate content already, you will not have too much to fear from this change. However, if your content has the chance to be somewhat inaccurate or completely so, this could have a huge, negative impact on your site. I don’t have any statistics at the moment as this algorithm is still in works by the Google team, but if it is anything like other algorithms, you can expect to see a few things. Some of the repercussions could be loss of rank on the search engine results page and being slapped with a not-so-fun penalty. Depending on the severity, it could take you a bit to recover. Don’t be too alarmed though! I plan on giving you some concrete ways to check your content’s accuracy before this algorithm is put in place.
What are the Perks of Accurate Content?
There are several great perks when it comes to having accurate content. First of all, it will set you up as a leading voice in your industry. If you write accurate content, you will not only look good to your clients, but also to others in the industry. Secondly, it will help you generate great, fresh content all the time. Another perk I see to accurate content is that it is significantly easier to write naturally when you are telling the truth. Writing naturally is a big part of content writing, and writing truthfully will help with that.
The Top Two Ways to Ensure Your Content is Accurate
Now that I’ve looked at this new algorithm some, I am going to give you something to take away. Here are the top two things I suggest to help you write accurate content, as well as making sure your current content is accurate.
Do Research on Reputable Websites. When you write your content, a great way to get accurate content is to do your research on reputable websites such as Huffington Post, or leading websites in your industry. You should also always make sure to fact check your own content by comparing the research to multiple reputable sites just to be careful.
Get a Content Audit. One of the best ways to make sure you have accurate content is to get a content audit. This will look over your web pages to show you what is working, what should be changed, and giving you an idea on how to tweak your future pages. You can also use a content audit to make sure that your content is accurate before the Google algorithm hits.
Don’t hesitate to check out our article on SiteProNews linked in the intro for more ways you can write accurate content.
Authenticity is the New Sexy
Creating authentic content is the best way to convince readers and clients that your business is the one to be trusted. It has always been an important element in content creating, but now with Google’s impending algorithm, the importance has skyrocketed. Take this opportunity to check and see if your content is currently accurate, and always make sure you write accurate content in the future. If you want to ensure every piece of your content is accurate, you can trust Express Writers. We provide content audits to look over content, which will help you prepare for the new algorithm. In addition, our expert team of copywriters always writes excellent, accurate content. Don’t hesitate to ask us questions about how we can help you with great content!
The number one money sinkhole for many website owners comes from outdated content. Outdated content is any content that you have that is no longer relevant, or doesn’t help the website either financially or content-wise.
The problem with outdated copy is that it can be so easy to become inundated by it. The quality of your content is directly related to the quality of your site as a whole. This means that the more outdated content that you have clogging up your website is the less efficiently it performs.
[Tweet “Monitoring the #quality of your #content is an ongoing job, one that doesn’t have a clear end point.”]
What Qualifies as Outdated Content?
Depending on what sort of site it is that you run, outdated content can vary. Websites that hold searchable listings might have a database that is flooded with dead links or links to old contact sites for certain clients. In the case of a retailer or wholesaler, it could come down to stating that a product is stocked when in reality it isn’t. Professional company websites can also suffer from this malady by having members of staff up on their company listing who no longer work with them. The impact of this content varies from site to site as well. In the case of the professional company website, it simply makes them look inept at maintaining their website. In the case of the retail store or the search database it can lead to loss of income.
5 Ways Outdated Content Makes You Look Bad
You might think that just because a piece of content isn’t current, it doesn’t generate a whole lot of traffic. This is a huge misconception. Many times, it’s the existing content that causes the majority of your incoming traffic. Lots of people use search engines that direct them to pages that have been existing for a long time and have slowly climbed up the rankings for a particular keyword. When that “old” page gives the user misleading or outdated information the user is left to assume the worst.
In fact, outdated content almost always leads to the reader jumping to one or more of these conclusions:
That your website is going out of business
That your customer service must be terrible
That your company is lackadaisical and just aren’t “with it”
That your website managers are technologically incompetent
They’re not good enough for my money
All of these things work towards causing you to lose revenue through lost conversions. This is definitely not where you want your site to be going. There are ways to get around outdated copy and to revamp content and keep it fresh to avoid these generalizations being applied to your website. The most effective method of dealing with outdated content is auditing.
What is Content Auditing?
Before you can properly fix your outdated content, you are going to need to figure out where that content is and how badly it affects your current website. In order to do this, you can utilize a methodology called “content auditing”. In a nutshell, content auditing is a means by which the pages of your website are examined for things like broken links and outdated information. After the offending pages are identified, we can move on to making those content pages more viable by updating the information, removing dead links and generally cleaning up the copy.
The end result is a website that looks professional and features well on search rankings. Keeping your content current is as important as having a page that exists for a long time. The longer your page in in existence, the more trustworthy Google tends to find it. By refreshing the content on the page you make it a little bit more popular in the search rankings, which can translate into increased traffic and possible increased income through conversions and advertising.
How Can Content Auditing Help You? 5 Ways
Content auditing can help any website to become better and more efficient. When you content audit, you remove spurious information and revamp the copy in pages that need it. You check your current information and edit pages where the information needs to be updated. All of these can lead to a lot of different positive benefits for the entire site, including:
Avoiding Panda penalties: Google’s Panda algorithm is very picky when it comes to certain things such as outdated content. An audit helps you to keep your information up to date to get away from this pitfall
Fix Pages for Copywriting: Some of your pages may be in dire need of an overhaul. An audit helps you to pinpoint these and allow you to fix individual pages without having to rewrite entire swathes of your site
Consolidation: Some pages would be better if they were combined into one page. Information that is very closely linked can be placed on the same page, eliminating the need for a redundant page and making your site architecture more pleasing.
Determine Keyword Specifics: Each page has a set of keywords that they are ranking for. By doing an audit you can figure out what those keywords are and if they suit you. You might be surprised at what keywords your site ranks for!
Remove Bad Pages: Some pages just cannot be salvaged and your best option would be to remove them completely instead of getting visitors that end up with a bad impression of your site. Content auditing makes this easy by giving you an overview of which pages tend to shunt users off-page and which ones send users to other pages within your site.
Outdated Content is Slowly Killing your Site
Just like a bad investment, outdated content takes away a little more of your possible income every month. It’s like an invisible lurker that steals away your customers and leaves them hating your site. You can fight back against it by doing regular content audits. These ensure that you are always at the top of your game regarding your content needs and that no outdated information exists on your site. Auditing can be a time consuming process, so you might be best served by finding a copywriting company to aid you in salvaging your site. The sooner you get down to it, the better it’ll be for both you and your website.
