Fully understanding best practices when it comes to staple strategies like digital marketing and content marketing is a must. While digital marketing and content marketing definitely complement one another, they’re not the same concept, nor is one more important than the other. To get ahead in today’s fast-paced digital landscape and stay there, brands must master and combine both strategies.

In this comprehensive guide to digital marketing vs. content marketing, we’ll cover everything you need to know to do exactly that. We’ll touch on the differences between the two, the importance of each, and how you can leverage both to benefit your brand and ongoing marketing strategy.

What Are the Fundamental Differences Between Digital Marketing and Content Marketing?

Content marketing and digital marketing are both key approaches to marketing in the internet age. But they differ in their overall goals and the strategies a marketing pro might use to meet those goals. 

It’s also important to understand that content marketing is a type of digital marketing. So, while all content marketing is digital marketing, digital marketing covers much more potential ground. For that reason, you can have a digital marketing strategy without incorporating content marketing, but the reverse can’t be true.

Here’s an overview of some additional differences between the two:

• Goals: Content marketing is about reaching a target audience via the creation and distribution of helpful, value-rich content. However, digital marketing collectively leverages many different marketing channels and techniques.
• Strategies: Content marketing is largely focused on playing the long game by winning consumer trust, fostering strong brand-customer relationships, and empowering buyers to make better decisions. Digital marketing also leverages long-term strategies and approaches but incorporates short-term solutions into the mix to bolster sales.
• Methodologies: Although both disciplines are ultimately about advertising, content marketing typically adopts a more subtle approach to reach consumers without making them feel like marketing targets. (Think blogs, podcasts, how-to guides, etc.) Digital marketing, on the other hand, can be more direct via solutions like pay-per-click (PPC) or social media advertising. 

Content marketing benefits

The benefits of including a solid approach to content marketing in your overall digital marketing strategy are numerous and include examples like the following:

• It offers audiences a better overall user experience with your brand.
• It helps you reach target audiences without alienating them via hard-sell tactics.
• It’s cost-effective, as even professional solutions are often affordable and easy to scale.
• It encourages existing and potential customers to engage with and advocate for your brand.
• It helps foster brand loyalty and cultivate a sense of community associated with your brand.

Digital marketing benefits

And, of course, no modern approach to marketing can be considered complete without an essential ongoing digital marketing strategy in place. Here are the benefits digital marketing brings to the table for brands like yours:

• The versatility of a marketer’s collective digital toolbox is near limitless, leaving room for plenty of creativity and possibility. 
• It’s flexible, as go-to tactics and approaches are easy to adapt to a brand’s evolving needs over time.
• It facilitates connection with a much larger audience and broader reach than you’d have without it.
• It’s a solid way to boost lead generation and qualify those leads for further processing.
• Results are trackable, measurable, and easy to analyze in real-time.

Why Incorporate Content Marketing into Your Strategy

Content marketing isn’t a mandatory part of your digital marketing strategy, but it is one that could be highly beneficial, especially in today’s marketing landscape. Modern audiences don’t like feeling blatantly sold to. They like buying from helpful brands that care about building customer relationships and providing exceptional value. 

Content marketing can help you achieve your marketing goals by:

• Aligning your branding and business goals with audience needs and expectations
• Boosting SEO efforts by providing search engine users with the helpful, in-depth content they’re looking for
• Elevating conversion rates by earning and keeping the trust of your audience and customers
• Providing structure and substance to support your branding efforts 
• Complementing your social media efforts and encouraging a sense of community around your brand

Build a winning content marketing strategy that turns heads when you explore tailored strategy services from Crowd Content today! We’ve got the expertise and resources to make audiences sit up and take notice of your brand.

How Can Digital Marketing Enhance Content Marketing Efforts?

Even the most incredible content won’t make a winner out of your brand simply by existing. Dedicated digital marketing strategies and efforts help amplify the reach of your carefully crafted content and ensure it finds its intended audience. Here are some key examples of how:

• Properly optimizing your content for search engines helps improve visibility and expand your website’s overall scope.
• Using social media to help your content and brand message get around boosts engagement, generates sales leads, and helps prep curious consumers to one day become paying customers.
• Advertising tactics like PPC and social media ads help get even more potential eyes on your content.
• Email marketing and ongoing newsletter efforts can be effective outlets for fantastic content that gets results.
• Digital marketing plays a role in setting your brand up as an industry authority.
• Keeping track of digital marketing metrics as they relate to your marketing content helps you brainstorm increasingly more effective campaigns in the future.

Content optimization for SEO

Many modern purchase decisions start with a simple Google search. That search might be the consumer’s way of exploring what a specific type of product has to offer, but it could just as easily start with a simple question or two related to a problem they don’t even realize they have yet. 

Now, imagine that your content is what ultimately answers those questions. Those eager consumers will come to trust your brand as an authority on that topic and see your products or services as the solutions they’ve been looking for. But that will happen only if search engine users can find your content in the first place.

Content marketing and SEO go hand in hand in that they support one another beautifully. SEO ensures that users looking for content like yours can find and consume it, thanks to factors like high SERP rankings, readable formatting, and smart keyword use. Essential SEO practices that help optimize content and set it up for success include:

• Keyword research: Smart keyword use helps your content align with both consumer pain points and search engine standards.
• Metadata: Strong, fully optimized metadata, such as SEO titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text, improve visibility and overall user experience.
• Relevant backlinks: Helpful internal and external links help users find answers to even more of their questions by providing easy access to supporting content on a given topic.
• SEO-friendly formatting: Formatting is crucial to SEO success for your marketing content. Think keyword-optimized titles and headings, natural language, visual aids, and structuring that makes content easy to read and skim.
• Regular updates: Google loves content that’s well curated and maintained, so adding regular content updates to your ongoing content strategy is a great way to ensure successful pieces continue to perform.
• Professional services: Hiring trusted content marketing experts like the ones you’ll meet at Crowd Content can help take a given strategy from good to spectacular. Such services bring expertise and know-how to your campaigns that are affordable and scalable and can set your brand up for lasting success.

Integrating SEO with content marketing strategies is more than just a good idea. It’s a tried and true recipe for significantly improving the organic reach of your content, especially with seasoned professionals in your corner. 

For example, Crowd Content leveraged best SEO practices to help a leading commerce agency elevate its content marketing strategy and achieve page-one rankings for 57 target keywords. We accomplished this via a combination of optimization-focused methods, including assembling a team of ultra-qualified content writers to help produce content and aligning the agency’s content needs with top keywords and best SEO practices.

Leverage digital tools for content distribution

Digital marketing’s ability to influence the success of your marketing content doesn’t start and stop at search engine optimization. Digital tools like paid advertising interfaces, social media platforms, and additional content distribution channels are effective, convenient ways to take your content marketing efforts to the next level. 

For example, the right digital marketing platforms can help you distribute your content more effectively. Here are some key examples of how:

• Like search engines, social media platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok are in the business of serving up helpful, entertaining content their users want to consume. This makes them solid channels for helping your content find a larger audience.
• Partnering with industry thought leaders and social media influencers to help audiences connect with your content is another way to achieve wider distribution. Be sure to choose partners whose audiences overlap neatly with yours. Also, consider whether you want to join forces with bloggers, Instagram experts, TikTokers, etc.
• Engaging with your audience across distribution platforms like your blog, newsletter, or favorite social media platforms helps inspire consumers to share your content with others and advocate for your brand.
• You can maximize your reach by studying user metrics, assessing when your audience is most active, and scheduling your content distribution efforts accordingly. You can also use that data to understand your audience better and more accurately predict which content ideas resonate best with them.
• Digital ads and PPC options are good for more than directly selling your products or services to appropriate consumers. They’re also excellent ways to gain more distribution for your best content offerings. 

Advanced Digital and Content Marketing Strategies

Fully understanding that both digital marketing and content marketing are key parts of any successful brand’s ongoing growth strategy is one thing. Successfully implementing a thorough system for maximizing both is another. Let’s go over a few advanced strategies for doing exactly that.

Master search engine optimization (SEO)

Crafting fantastic content no one can find isn’t going to do you much good when it comes to your marketing efforts, so mastering SEO should be a top priority. Conduct thorough keyword research and carefully choose competitive examples to target across your campaigns. 

Do supplementary research periodically to ensure the key phrases you’re targeting are still the right options for your brand. When it makes sense, target timelier keywords related to hot topics. Keep in mind that social media platforms have search functions and best SEO practices of their own. Research hashtags, trending topics, etc., and use them accordingly to make your content more visible.

Best for: Content marketing and digital marketing

Automate where it makes sense

Numerous tasks go into any digital marketing campaign, but only some truly require hands-on attention from a human team member. Many tasks are necessary but repetitive, making them an excellent fit for automation software. Possible examples include:

• Email segmentation and content distribution
• Lead nurturing via targeted content delivery
• Lead scoring and qualification
• Email personalization 
• Landing page optimization
• Data collection and pattern analysis

Best for: Digital marketing

Personalize, personalize, personalize

At this point, it’s pretty safe to say that hyper-relevant, personalized content experiences are no longer simply nice to have. They’re the new gold standard, and modern audiences expect the brands they do business with to measure up. 

When delivering content directly to a customer (as with newsletter marketing or trigger emails), make sure it’s as personalized as possible. Use the recipient’s name in your messaging, and ensure the content shown overlaps with their interests, preferences, or previous behavior. Regularly analyze customer data to develop a better understanding of what your audience wants and expects.

Be sure your content marketing efforts also cater to consumers at every stage of their buying journey. For example, consider which concerns people might have when first discovering a pain-point solution versus when they’re evaluating product options or almost ready to complete a sale. 

Best for: Digital marketing and content marketing

Supplement your efforts with paid advertising

If SEO is about playing the long game by building authority, earning top SERP rankings, and cultivating an audience in the first place, then paid advertising is about driving traffic in short but powerful boosts. Turn to solutions like pay-per-click Google Ads, Facebook advertising, and similar solutions to launch new products, promote special events, or help important content pieces gain more traction.

Additional solutions like sponsored posts can also be helpful additions to your marketing approach. Maximize your potential results by choosing partners carefully and ensuring their audience is the right fit for the content you plan to create. 

Best for: Content marketing and digital marketing

Maintain a comprehensive content calendar

Between your company blog, newsletter, email marketing blasts, social media feeds, etc., you have your work cut out for you as far as your ongoing content output is concerned. Keeping everything straight is no easy feat, but a thorough content calendar can help take the guesswork out of the process and keep things on track.

Use your calendar to organize and coordinate everything on your content to-do list, including which tasks are assigned to which team members. Plan production and deadlines as far in advance as possible to ensure you’re covered in case of scheduling snags or unforeseen emergencies.

Best for: Content marketing

Integrate AI into your marketing strategies

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere these days, including digital marketing, and it can be an incredibly helpful resource. However, to keep quality and efficiency levels high, it’s crucial to know which tasks are a good fit for AI and which aren’t.

Try leveraging AI for digital or content marketing tasks like keyword research, customer behavior analysis, pattern identification, ad targeting, social listening, and customer segmentation. Leave tasks like creating important pillar content, thought leadership pieces, etc., to skilled human team members. Any AI-generated content you do use should be thoroughly edited, fact-checked, and polished by an experienced human editor before publication.

Best for: Content marketing and digital marketing

Deep Dive into Tools and Technologies

Having the right tools and tech applications in your corner can help you manage customer relationships, keep your website functional, and make short work of user data analysis. Let’s explore some of the most helpful, ubiquitous options that brands just like yours are using today.

CRM systems

Customer-brand relationships are everything when it comes to branding success these days, so it pays to take care of yours. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems help businesses boost customer retention rates, facilitate smoother communications, and make customer segmentation efforts significantly easier and more efficient. Examples include but are not limited to HubSpot, Zoho, and Salesforce.

Best for: Digital marketing 

Content management systems

Content management systems (CMS) provide effective, user-friendly ways to assist with content creation and organization. However, they also make it possible to deliver the right content to the right person at precisely the right time, enabling higher conversion rates and stronger brand-customer relationships. A good CMS also supports cost-effective scalability, smooth collaborations, and timely updates for existing content. Popular examples include WordPress, Wix, Drupal, and Joomla.

Best for: Content marketing and digital marketing

SEO tools

Comprehensive SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and others help modern marketers make sense of adequately optimizing for Google and the rest of the search engines. Along with other benefits they bring to the table, they can assist with key concerns like brand awareness, user experience, organic traffic growth, authority-building, economic lead generation, and PPC success. The world of SEO tools is expansive and includes options to suit many different purposes, including additional popular examples like Google Analytics, Moz, SpyFu, Screaming Frog, and others.

Best for: Digital marketing and content marketing

Programmatic advertising platforms

Solutions like programmatic advertising platforms simplify the process of managing your collective catalog of digital ads via software and automation technology. The benefits of incorporating one into your ongoing marketing strategies include the ability to easily create data-driven ads. Top options can also support fraud detection, brand safety, ideal ad placement, format alignment, and overall campaign optimization. Examples include Adobe Advertising Cloud, AdRoll, MediaMath, and SmartyAds.

Best for: Digital marketing 

Evaluating the Integrated Impact of Digital and Content Marketing

Anytime you decide to change things up when it comes to your ongoing digital and content marketing strategies, it’s crucial to track and measure the success of each effort. This lets you know in real-time what’s working versus what’s not, making it possible to pivot and change tactics quickly and efficiently. Here are some factors to consider when assessing your various campaigns:

• User data analysis gives you a window straight into the heads of your target audience. It lends insight into what people like, what they’re ignoring, what’s helping to convert leads,  when you should post new content, etc.
• Competitive analysis lets you know where you stand in comparison to your competitors. Use what you learn to fill content gaps, address unmet audience needs, elevate your approach, and pull ahead of the pack.
• Direct engagement with your audience is a reliable way to learn what your customers do and don’t like, straight from the source. You can leverage social media to do this by starting and facilitating ongoing conversations, as well as sending out surveys, requesting interviews, etc.

Numerous tools simplify the process of tracking and analyzing your marketing efforts, ranging from completely comprehensive to simple and niched. Popular examples include Google Analytics, HubSpot, SEMRush, and Facebook Insights.

Detailed metrics and KPIs for measuring success

Key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, bounce rates, and click-through rates are essential for assessing the success of any marketing strategy. However, which KPIs make the most sense for a campaign depends entirely on your goals. 

Here are a few to keep track of for digital marketing:

• Website traffic: This metric is fundamental for any digital marketing effort. Be sure to not only assess overall traffic rates but also compare the sources of that traffic.
• Click-through rate: Click-through rates help assess the effectiveness of your written copy and the relevancy of your targeting.
• Conversion rate: This is one of the most important metrics for digital marketers, as it shines a light on how successful a campaign has been at turning leads into paying customers.
• Bounce rate: High bounce rates can be a sign that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for when they hit your landing pages and suggest some tweaking might be in order.
• Return on investment (ROI): This shows whether you’re getting back what you put into your campaigns as far as resources and to what degree. The higher the ROI, the more successful the campaign.

Most of the examples above also apply to content marketing. However, the following  KPIs are  used for tracking efficient content campaigns:

• Backlinks: A link back to your content is like a vote of confidence for its quality. The more successful your efforts are, the more high-quality backlinks you will accumulate.
• Social media engagement: Likes, comments, and shares are all signs that your content resonates as it should be with your target audience.
• Subscriptions: Good content inspires people to follow you on social media, sign up for your newsletter, or take action to ensure they don’t miss future posts.

Sector-Specific Marketing Insights

Keep in mind that customization is the order of the day when it comes to successful digital and content marketing. Tailor your efforts according to your industry and target audience to ensure the ultimate success of your campaigns. Here are some examples.

• Retail: Retail brands benefit from people-forward strategies that tap into various social trends, making tactics like influencer marketing, social media contests, and special events highly effective. Coordinated omnichannel marketing and trend-specific keyword research can also be helpful.
• Healthcare: Audiences searching for healthcare services or information want fact-based solutions they can trust with the integrity of their health. Think top-tier content written by certified industry experts, in-depth research, relevant data or studies, etc. 
• Technology: As with healthcare, tech-based services and products call for meaty content supported by data analysis, case studies, and detailed specs. Highly targeted, personalized digital marketing efforts and social proof can also be helpful here.

Case Studies: Successful Digital and Content Marketing Integrations

Want a closer look at how digital marketing and content marketing look in action when they’re well-integrated? Here are a couple of case studies from Crowd Content to help show you what’s possible. 

SEOPlus+

When award-winning marketing company SEOPlus+ first came to Crowd Content, they were looking to raise the bar when it came to EEAT-compliant niche content creation and increase conversion rates in the process. Thanks to a combination of authority content written by top-tier professional writers, full alignment with a robust SEO strategy, and easy scalability, SEOPlus+ was able to achieve an incredible average dwell time of six minutes.

FHEHealth

FHEHealth is a substance abuse and recovery institute that came to Crowd Content for help with SEO optimization and high-volume authority content production. By leveraging a combination of our platform’s content options, including managed content services, access to expert in-house writers, and infographic-related services, FHEHealth established a pattern of steady month-to-month organic traffic growth.

Build a Future-Proof Strategy Combining Digital and Content Marketing

Staying relevant and competitive in an ever-evolving digital world is about more than simply knowing what to do right now. It’s also about successfully future-proofing your strategy so you can stay ahead of the pack for years to come. Try the following tips and strategies:

• User experience is a huge factor affecting the outcome of your branding, SEO, and customer retention efforts, and it will continue to be. Make it a top priority.
• Save time and ensure resources go as far as possible by using automation to streamline content production and make short work of repetitive tasks.
• Use digital analytics and market data to help predict future digital and content marketing trends. Be the first to the party when possible to ensure ongoing relevancy.
• Keep your finger on the pulse of changing consumer expectations and use what you learn to inform ongoing marketing decisions.
• Embrace tactics like social media engagement and user-generated content to make your customers part of your ongoing brand story and help them feel involved.

The Power of Combining Digital and Content Marketing

As you can see, the future of successful branding, customer connection, and conversion is about more than deciding whether digital marketing or content marketing is a better fit for you. It’s about mastering both, integrating the two, and customizing your approaches to suit your unique business goals and changing audience expectations.

Whether you’re looking to breathe fresh life into an existing marketing strategy or establish a new one that’s virtually guaranteed to succeed, Crowd Content has you covered with access to top writers, SEO resources, project management services, etc. Take your digital marketing efforts to the next level today with our expert SEO content services!

The post The Complete Guide to Digital Marketing vs. Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Using editorial calendar templates is the only way to make it happen. It creates structure, enabling you to publish consistent, quality content and keep your brand at the top of customers’ minds. 

Consumers’ thirst for content is limitless. If you deliver value and know your audience, you can reach them. But if you don’t publish enough to keep them hydrated, they quench their curiosity elsewhere. Here’s our guide to creating, implementing, and maintaining an editorial calendar. 

Components of an Editorial Calendar Template

From evergreen articles to seasonal campaigns, you can tailor an editorial calendar template to back your brand’s goals. Let’s look at the essential components:

• Content type: From blog posts to social media updates and email newsletters, editorial calendars accommodate various content types. This versatility ensures you attract a broad audience.
• Publication dates: Stay on track with scheduled publication dates to maintain engagement and visibility for all team members. Flexibility is key here, allowing you to adapt to shifting priorities and seasonal trends. 
• Channels: Specify where each piece of content should be published to ensure a cohesive schedule across all platforms.
• Viral opportunities: Anticipate and capitalize on viral moments by aligning your content with industry events and trending topics. Forward planning prevents last-minute scrambles.
• Responsible team members: For complex projects, incorporate a simple RACI chart detailing roles and responsibilities. This streamlines collaboration and creates accountability within your team.
• Status: For straightforward projects where designated roles are established, use status columns to indicate the production stage of each order. As the statuses shift, collaborating team members are notified it’s their turn to step in. 
• Content brief: While the project brief’s instructions apply to the content type as a whole, each piece typically pairs with a content brief. Content calendars simplify the review process, so why not provide all the resources in one spot? 
  

Why every content team needs a template 

Proactivity delivers better results than reactivity. Planning content a week ahead of time doesn’t leave wiggle room for shifts in your marketing strategy, which is likely to change occasionally. But there’s more to it than punctuality. Here are more benefits of using an editorial calendar:

• Improved organization: Centralizing content planning and scheduling helps your team stay on track with content goals.
• Enhanced collaboration: Clear assignment of roles and responsibilities fosters better collaboration among team members, reducing confusion and doubling-up of efforts.
• Consistency: A structured editorial calendar ensures a consistent publishing schedule, which is essential for maintaining audience engagement and brand credibility and surfing the elusive algorithms.
• Strategic alignment: Editorial calendars enable teams to align content with marketing objectives by providing high-level overviews of how each piece of content contributes to business goals.

An editorial calendar brings order to chaos. If you’re always chasing your tail, going from ideation to strategy to publication, you need a template. Download our editorial calendar template, and breathe a sigh of relief.

How to Craft an Editorial Calendar Template

If only content creation were as easy as hiring a skilled writer and asking them to create an article for you. Your brand strategy, business goals, ideation, and content strategy must be watertight long before pen meets paper. This requires relentless attention to detail and a deep knowledge of your audience’s pain points. 

Brand strategy comes first 

Your brand must have a clear identity, including unique personality, tone, values, and objectives. Next, craft a brand story that speaks to your audience’s desires, fears, and aspirations. With a brand strategy firmly in place, you never run out of content ideas or post articles that misalign with business goals. 

Step-by-step guide to crafting an editorial calendar

Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating an editorial calendar:

1. Define goals and objectives. Nail down your goals and objectives, whether they’re boosting brand awareness or driving leads. Your editorial calendar should be laser-focused on your targets.
2. Research your audience. Get to know your audience inside and out. Dive deep into demographics, preferences, and pain points to tailor your content accordingly.
3. Ideate and plan the content. Brainstorm content ideas for the upcoming year that hit the mark with your audience and brand messaging and nod to potential viral moments. 
4. Map ideas onto your content calendar. Once you have a pool of content ideas, map them out on your editorial calendar. Consider seasonal relevancy, industry trends, and key events that may impact your audience’s interests.
5. Be specific. Allocate dates for each piece of content, ensuring a balanced mix of topics and formats each month. This helps you maintain engagement and motivates your audience to return for more.
6. Initiate content creation and collaboration. Assign tasks to your team and ensure everyone knows their role and deadlines. Collaboration is key here — writers, designers, and stakeholders should all be on the same page.
7. Start to publish and distribute the finished product. It’s time to get your content out there. Determine the best channels and timing for publication, maximizing your reach and engagement.
8. Maintain flexibility. Allow space for spontaneous content opportunities and last-minute adjustments to accommodate changes in your marketing strategy or the industry landscape.
9. Monitor your content’s success and optimize early on. Keep a close eye on your content’s performance using tools like Google Analytics. Track metrics such as impressions and organic traffic to fine-tune your editorial calendar.

SEO integration within your calendar

As Google’s algorithm grows ever more sophisticated, SEO becomes increasingly important. You’re not just optimizing content to meet a few criteria anymore — search algorithms expect high-quality, people-first content that delivers value. 

Here’s how to weave SEO into your editorial calendar:

• Keyword mapping: Make sure each piece strategically targets specific keywords to enhance its visibility in the SERPs. Use keyword research tools and allocate relevant phrases to each piece on your editorial calendar. Consider search volume, competitiveness, and how the phrases fit into the marketing funnel to pinpoint search intent. 
• Content mapping: Harmonize your editorial calendar with content mapping exercises. Identify topics and themes that resonate with your audience and integrate them into your calendar for a cohesive SEO strategy.
• Content gap analysis: Identify gaps in your content coverage using SEO tools and analytics. Schedule content ideation sessions to address gaps so you can capture untapped search opportunities.
• Topic clusters and pillar content: Consider organizing your calendar around topic clusters and pillar content. Identify core topics and supporting subtopics to create a cohesive content ecosystem that strengthens your website’s topical authority.
• Seasonal planning: Capitalize on seasonal trends and search queries when crafting your editorial calendar. Embed timely themes related to seasonal events, holidays, and industry trends to leverage spikes in search traffic.
• On-page optimization schedule: Incorporate on-page optimization directly within your editorial calendar. Assign specific time slots or deadlines for optimizing metadata, headers, and other on-page elements.

Infuse your editorial calendar with SEO best practices so your content attracts more organic traffic and solidifies brand authority online. 

Best Practices for Implementing Your Editorial Calendar

Looking for ways to level up your editorial calendar game? Follow these editorial calendar best practices to drive organic traffic and establish your brand as a force to be reckoned with. 

Collaborative excellence 

Forge strong cross-functional partnerships within your team to drive collaborative content planning. Reward experimentation and creativity whenever possible to demonstrate you embrace bold ideas and innovative approaches. 

Data-driven insights 

Regularly cast a keen eye over key performance indicators to determine areas for improvement. Use these insights to guide future content decisions, prioritizing initiatives with the highest ROI. 

Experiment with A/B testing to gauge perception and optimize engagement. Keep refining your approach based on this type of solid evidence, focusing on strategies that deliver tangible results. 

Content repurposing and amplification

Breathe new life into content through strategic repurposing. Locate the timeless gems within your content library and reshape and revitalize them to reach fresh audiences. You can even repurpose content for different social platforms to extend your content’s reach.

For amplification, play with diverse multimedia formats, such as videos, infographics, and podcasts, to cater to varied preferences and consumption habits.

Crowd Content’s Downloadable Editorial Calendar Template

Designed to streamline your planning process and maximize efficiency, our template is your ticket to organized and strategic content creation. 

How to use your downloadable template

Getting started with our editorial calendar template is a breeze. Navigate to the resources section of our website or scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find the template available for download. Once downloaded, open the file using your preferred spreadsheet software, and you’re ready to roll.

The template is intuitively designed, with clearly labeled sections for content type, publication dates, channels, viral moments, responsible team members, and more. Input content ideas, deadlines, and team assignments, and marvel as your content strategy comes to life.

Customizing Crowd Content’s editorial calendar template 

What sets Crowd Content’s template apart is its flexibility and adaptability to various content strategies. Whether you’re a solopreneur managing a blog or a marketing team overseeing multiple campaigns, you can tailor our template to suit your needs.

Customization options abound, allowing you to add or remove columns, adjust date formats, and personalize categories to align with your brand’s unique requirements. Need to incorporate SEO keywords or track content performance metrics? Our template can accommodate it all.

Say goodbye to scattered content planning and hello to a results-driven strategy.

The post Master Content Planning With Editorial Calendar Templates appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

These platforms help gather and deliver valuable insights into audience behavior, keyword performance, and overall content effectiveness. To help leverage this intelligence, we evaluated some of the top content analytics software on the market. Read on to learn about available options, features, and pricing and how these tools can help refine your marketing strategies and boost the impact of your content.

Benefits of Content Analytics Tools

Sometimes, you might feel like you’re submerged in data. You’ve got stats flowing in from your website, social networks, marketing emails, paid ads, and influencer campaigns. How do you harness this data and make informed decisions about your digital strategy?

You could manually compile bits and pieces in a spreadsheet and attempt to find patterns and trends, but it’s more effective to use software built just for this purpose. Some benefits of using content analytics tools include:

• Efficiency: Content marketing analytics tools automate the gathering and processing of data, eliminating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. This lets you focus on interpreting the numbers rather than compiling them.
• Integration: Technology can streamline the process of gathering data, instantly pulling information from various channels.
• Accuracy: Automated platforms process large volumes of data with precision, eliminating human mistakes and inconsistencies in approaches.
• Versatility: You can segment data across channels, formats, and audiences to look at interactions from different perspectives and more accurately adapt your strategies.
• Artificial intelligence: Powerful content analytics tools leverage predictive analytics, machine learning, and AI-driven insights. In other words, by analyzing historical trends and learning as new information comes in, these tools can make your business highly responsive and competitive.

Essential Features for Content Analytics Tools

To choose a tool that meets your brand’s unique needs, consider what you want to achieve with your analytics. Common functionalities include:

• Insights into audience demographics and behaviors to help tailor content
• Engagement metrics to determine which content performs the best
• SEO analysis to help boost search visibility
• Competitor analysis to ensure you’re keeping up with similar websites
• Content optimization to help fine-tune content to better engage audiences
• Conversion tracking to evaluate how well you’re driving desired actions
• AI-powered analytics to personalize user experience and capitalize on predicted trends

Not all tools have the same robust features, so use our list below to narrow down possible options. Before making a final decision, read reviews from other users, consider scalability and integrations with your existing systems, and take advantage of free trials and demos to find a platform that’s a good fit for your business.

10 Content Analytics Tools: Features, Reviews, Prices, and More

It’s hard to single out one content analytics tool as being the best on the market. They all have different approaches. Some are all-in-one tools, and others aim for simplicity. Some focus on search visibility, and others zero in on user behavior or content engagement.

We looked at each tool’s strengths, unique features, and weaknesses and added in pricing information and user reviews. Here’s what we determined:

• Google Analytics: Best Tool for Audience Insights
• Semrush: Best Overall Content Marketing Analytics Platform
• Clarity: Best Software for Behavior-Focused Analytics
• Simple Analytics: Best Analytics Tool for Beginners
• SE Ranking: Best Platform for Local Search Analytics
• DYNO Mapper: Best Software for Content Audits
• Google Search Console: Best Tool for Search Engine Insights
• Parse.ly: Best Analytics Platform for Publishers 
• ImpactHero: Best Software for Aligning Content With the Buyer Journey
• Fathom Analytics: Best Privacy-First Analytics Platform

Google Analytics

Best Tool for Audience Insights

We’ll lead off with a tool from the search engine giant. Google Analytics (GA) helps you understand who’s using your website and how they interact with the content. Simply place a tracking code on your site, and GA begins gathering data related to traffic, referral sources, and user engagement.  

One advantage of GA is that it provides demographic information for users logged into their Google accounts, including age, gender, and interests. The platform can also track whether users complete desired actions, such as filling in forms or making purchases. Its machine learning capabilities can look at historical data to predict customer actions and churn.

Pros

• Easy to set up
• Provides insight into user behaviors and interests
• Manages multiple properties, including apps
• Helps track return on investment
• Integrates with Google platforms, such as Search Console and Ads Manager

Cons

• Can be difficult to use
• Lacks robust customer support
• Data is aggregated, so you can’t track individual users

Special Features

While it’s easy to look at a graph and see sudden spikes or drops in data, GA’s Trend Change detection alerts you to subtle changes in the direction of your data over longer periods of time. It works by comparing a forecasted value to the actual value.

Pricing

• Free 

What We’ve Heard

“Google Analytics is the biggest name in website and mobile app intelligence. It has a steep learning curve, but it is an awesome business intelligence tool.” – Pam Baker, PC Magazine

Use Cases and Best Practices

Use GA to get an overall picture of your user journey. You can segment data by content distribution channel (search engine, social media, paid ad, email) and get nuanced insights about audience experience. For example, if people arrive on your landing page through a paid ad but aren’t converting, the ad might not match expectations, or you may need to make the offer more clear. 

Semrush

Best Overall Content Marketing Analytics Platform

Another leader in the SEO field is Semrush. Its comprehensive suite of digital marketing utilities ranges from keyword research tools to AI writing assistance. It’s especially powerful for tracking keyword rankings so you can identify content that needs more visibility. You can also set up alerts if your positioning changes for specific keywords or pages and use the share of voice metric to compare your visibility with other brands in your niche.

The tool also provides insight into how users engage with your content, including page views, time spent on page, click-throughs, conversions, and return on investment.

Pros

• All-in-one digital marketing platform with reports related to search engine, pay-per-click, and social media marketing
• Vast keyword research database with insight into search volume and difficulty
• Data on organic traffic, keyword rankings, backlinks, and social media engagement
• Integrates with Google products, social networks, and tools such as Monday.com and Wix to streamline workflow

Cons

• Vast amount of tools and data can make it hard to know what information is relevant
• Provides historical data only when you upgrade to Guru or Business Plan
• May be costly for some businesses

Special Features

Semrush’s On-Page SEO tracker analyzes your content and provides concrete ideas to improve organic traffic. The suggestions relate to content readability and helpfulness, as well as SEO factors, such as backlinks, technical issues, and user experience.

Pricing

• Pro: $129.95 monthly
• Guru: $249.95 monthly
• Business: $499.95 monthly
• 7-day free trial available

What We’ve Heard

“Semrush is used by both our marketing team and our editorial team. [Our] marketing team uses Semrush for paid and earned marketing research, competitive analysis, and tracking performance. Our editorial team uses multiple research and writing tools that help them make decisions about SEO.” – Melissa D. Cooper, TrustRadius review

Use Cases and Best Practices

Use Semrush for all stages of content marketing, including keyword research, competitor analysis, and content creation. You can then monitor your content’s performance in the SERPs, social media reach, and most visited pages to assess how well your content attracts audiences.

Microsoft Clarity

Best Software for Behavior-Focused Analytics

Your website metrics reflect how well you’re attracting traffic and the URLs your audiences are visiting, but what do users do when they’re actually on a page? Clarity uses advanced heat maps and session recordings to reveal how audiences interact with content on a page level. You can see where they click, how far they scroll before abandoning a page, and whether they click to another page but quickly return to the one they’re on. Best of all, Clarity is free.

Pros

• Shows which areas of a page generate the most interaction
• Identifies where users get frustrated
• Records all sessions, not just a sampling
• Filters data by location, browser, campaign, or session duration
• Integrates with Shopify, Weebly, Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, and Unbounce

Cons

• Data is only retained for 30 days
• Can’t segment audiences
• Only provides click-and-scroll heat maps, not movement heat maps

Special Features

Clarity’s session recordings let you watch anonymized recordings to see how users navigate your web pages and when they abandon them. You can also detect issues, such as rage clicks — elements they try to click that aren’t links — and page errors. In addition to individual recordings, you can view a heat map aggregation.

Use these insights to fine-tune your content for better engagement. For example, if users aren’t scrolling deep into a page, revise your content to put more relevant information at the beginning. If they drop off without converting, consider a stronger call to action or more prominent buttons.

Pricing

• Free

What We’ve Heard

“Knowing how and where your user interacts most on your page gives you another level of on-page content and call-to-action optimization. Why have your best banner ads or action buttons in areas that turned out to be dead-space?” Olaf S., review on G2

Use Cases and Best Practices

For more powerful insights, connect Clarity to Google Analytics. This lets you view data on both platforms. You can watch playback links of relevant segments right in GA or check metrics from GA while you’re in Clarity.

Simple Analytics

Best Analytics Tool for Beginners

Like its name implies, Simple Analytics gets right to the point. Its straightforward user interface presents key metrics clearly. You can quickly monitor traffic, where your visitors come from, and the content they engage with.

Simple Analytics is also a privacy-first content analytics platform that doesn’t store personal data, which means you don’t need cookie banners on your site. Its lightweight script minimizes impact on your site speed. Because the tool doesn’t collect data, it doesn’t use machine learning or predictive analytics.

Pros

• Simplifies how you access data
• Measures traffic, referrals, top pages, page views, and time on page; and monitors devices, browsers, and countries
• Allows you to segment data to get a detailed picture of site visitors
• Provides AI chat for analytics questions
• Offers responsive customer support
• Imports data from Google Analytics

Cons

• Not as robust as other tools, but new utilities continue to roll out

Special Features

The tool’s AI chat helps you access your data more easily. Instead of trying to read reports and charts, for example, you can ask analytics questions in real time. For example, you can prompt the AI tool to compare traffic for different time periods or create a pie chart breaking down referral sources. The AI chat can also answer questions about using the tool’s features, which may be easier than searching the documentation.

Pricing

• Starter: $9 monthly
• Business: $49 monthly
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing
• Free 14-day trial

What We’ve Heard

“It’s good to have raw data of the visits in the website and easy to implement the tracker/events. Also, it is really fast to adapt for those who [have] already used Google Analytics.” – Mateus A., GetApp review

Use Cases and Best Practices

Set up goals in the platform to determine if your content achieves key metrics or encourages conversions. A goal can be a certain amount of time spent on a page or an increase in free trials, for example. You can then use the Goal Tracker to monitor your progress and adjust your content if you’re falling short of your objectives.

SE Ranking

Best Platform for Local Search Analytics

SE Ranking may be a good fit if you’re looking for a straightforward tool to track search performance and optimize pages to boost visibility. Like Semrush, it provides keyword research, SEO monitoring, AI content creation, and on-page SEO tools.

Pros

• Daily ranking updates
• Website audit for technical issues and Core Web Vitals
• Recommendations to improve content for relevance and user experience
• Insight into keyword density, word count, and readability metrics
• SERP analysis of competitors
• Easy-to-use interface

Cons

• Costs extra for some tools, even if you have a subscription
• Keyword database isn’t as large as some other tools
• Doesn’t track on-site metrics, such as page views, time spent on page, or session duration

Special Features

Although it’s an add-on, SE Ranking’s Local Marketing tool is worth mentioning. This tool is ideal for finding effective keywords and tracking rankings across multiple locations. You can see what search terms customers use to determine where you need to optimize your content. You can also manage reviews and check listings in different directories to improve local visibility.

Pricing

• Essential: $44 monthly (Local Marketing add-on is $5.60 monthly)
• Pro: $87.20 monthly (Local Marketing add-on is $38.40 monthly)
• Business: $191.20 monthly (Local Marketing add-on is $144.80 monthly)

What We’ve Heard

“This all-in-one platform helps me view the bigger picture for analytics when it comes to web traffic and really understand how my clients’ sites are doing. I like that I can easily audit websites, add keywords and competitors, and then identify weak areas within their backlinking.” Hillary Glaser, TrustPilot review

Use Cases and Best Practices

SE Ranking monitors your performance on Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Ads. You can identify content that needs improvement and make data-informed decisions based on backlinks, competitor results in the SERPs, and your site’s on-page SEO.

DYNO Mapper

Best Software for Content Audits

Before you can optimize your website, you need to understand its current structure. This can be challenging if you’ve been adding to your site ad hoc over the years. DYNO Mapper crawls and maps your site and provides you with a detailed inventory of its content assets. Once you have an overview of your catalog, you can begin pinpointing areas for improvement and filling in content gaps.

Pros

• Generates an interactive visual sitemap
• Catalogs subdomains, pages, images, videos, documents, and other files
• Audits your site for broken links, errors, and duplication in metadata
• Tracks keyword position in Google, Yahoo, and Bing
• Tests for accessibility issues

Cons

• Lacks concrete recommendations for improving search rankings
• No AI-powered insights or content creation tools

Special Features

DYNO Mapper integrates with Google Analytics. This lets you view important data on each page of your site map, such as sessions, users, page views, pages per session, bounce rate, and average session duration. It also pulls in your content inventory so you can see what assets are on each page. 

Pricing

• Lite: $39 monthly, billed annually
• Pro: $49 monthly, billed annually
• Standard: $99 monthly, billed annually
• Organization: $360 monthly, billed annually

What We’ve Heard

“Being able to see the sitemap visually allows everybody to see in a much clearer way how the site manages content. Premium features are great for SEO / Content Managers. Seeing keywords and pageviews is quite useful.” – Daniel R., G2 review

Use Cases and Best Practices

DYNO Mapper helps you visualize how your content is organized for search engines and users. Analyze the sitemap to ensure your site is logically structured for indexing and navigation. Then, use the inventory list to manage your content — check which URLs are ranking, ensure pages are relevant and up to date, and search your existing content before creating new pieces. 

Google Search Console

Best Tool for Search Engine Insights

Google Search Console (GSC) ensures your pages are crawled and indexed so they appear in the SERPs. The tool measures search performance, such as rankings, impressions, and clicks. It also helps troubleshoot problems that can affect your search presence. 

Pros

• Monitors changes in keyword position
• Measures your site’s technical health through Core Web Vitals
• Alerts you to crawl errors, manual penalties, and broken links
• Integrates with Google Analytics

Cons

• Data takes a few days to appear in GSC
• Historical data is limited to 16 months

Special Features

Your content won’t appear in the SERPs if issues prevent Googlebot from crawling it. GSC’s Page Indexing Report gives you a count of your total indexed and non-indexed pages. Regularly monitor this report to check for pages that aren’t crawled and why. Once you fix the issues, you can ask Google to try crawling it again to ensure your site has visibility.  

Pricing

• Free

What We’ve Heard

“This is the only truly reliable source of data for performance in Google’s organic search, from search impressions to a breakdown of countries where search users come from. This allows a site owner to better optimize their site’s content and structure to improve organic rankings, and increase click-through rates.” – Josh Bender, TrustRadius review

Use Cases and Best Practices

While you can use GSC as a standalone tool for tracking keyword position and visibility in the SERPs, you get more data when linking Search Console to Google Analytics. This combined data gives you access to Search Console’s Insights report, which is a snapshot of your overall content performance. It shows at a glance which pages are most successful, what audiences search for before they visit your site, and which websites refer visitors to your domain. You can also track the performance of newly published content.

Parse.ly

Best Analytics Platform for Publishers 

Parse.ly analyzes website metrics from the perspective of content performance, making it an ideal tool for content marketers and media sites. The tool tracks user engagement with content in a variety of ways, including by topic, section, author, campaign, channel, and publication date. As a bonus, it also promotes itself as an analytics platform that doesn’t require a data analyst to use. The easy-to-use platform allows you to focus your energies on your content strategy. 

Pros

• Tracks page views, unique visitors, engaged time, and conversions
• Offers geo-segmentation for insight into content preferences of international audiences
• Segments users by group, such as subscribers and members
• Tags content automatically using AI
• Provides video analytics to gauge the success of embedded videos and video topics
• Intuitive and easy to use

Cons

• Historical data is available for only 13 months
• Pricing isn’t available on website

Special Features

Parse.ly leverages data aggregation, predictive analytics, and machine learning to help you identify content trends. You can determine the metrics that indicate a trend — page views or conversions, for example. You can also set the time frame for monitoring the trend, such as months, days, or even half-hour intervals. Parse.ly alerts you when it detects a trend so you can act on it.

Pricing

• Three different plans are available, but you must book a demo to learn about pricing

What We’ve Heard

“Parse.ly allows us to dive into articles categorized by tags, as well as authors, and see not only traffic but where that traffic is being referred from, e.g., Google, AMP, and social networks. All of this gives a better indication of how to respond both to the performance of singular articles and on a wider scale.” – Alice Marshall, Trust Radius review

Use Cases and Best Practices

Use Parse.ly to dig deeper into traditional metrics, such as page views and time spent on a site. The tool puts the metrics in the context of content types and audience segments. For example, you might compare content read by new visitors to content read by returning visitors. These insights can inform your content production process so you can create more relevant content.

Parse.ly’s Content Conversions tool also helps you better determine the ROI of your content. You can specify events to track, such as sign-ups, downloads, or purchases, and attribute them to your content. For example, you can track the last page a user visited before they completed an action.  

ImpactHero

Best Software for Aligning Content With the Buyer Journey

An effective content strategy provides audiences with the exact information they’re looking for at each stage of their path to purchase. ImpactHero helps you plan content according to the buyer journey. It monitors how well your content performs and uses AI to help you improve it. This tool is powered by Semrush and can be used as part of the SEO platform or a standalone. 

Pros

• Streamlines analytics for content teams
• Provides automated distribution of content according to funnel stage
• Shows where users are abandoning your site so you can refine the content
• Measures impact of content on conversion
• Provides AI-generated recommendations to improve content effectiveness at each stage

Cons

• Price may be costly for many businesses

Special Features

Using artificial intelligence, ImpactHero maps your customer journey to help you visualize how users interact with your site. It breaks down performance by content types, such as lists, tutorials, questions, and guides. You can also segment by traffic sources to see which channels provide the most engagement.

Pricing

• $200 monthly
• Free trial available

What We’ve Heard

“ImpactHero helps us measure results and pivot to ensure we’re accomplishing what we’ve set out to do — engage and convert website visitors. We can now see the complete content user journey and identify new ways to convert website visitors.” – Debra B. McCraw, ImpactHero review

Use Cases and Best Practices

One of the most useful ways to leverage the platform is to choose a funnel stage: content that attracts visitors (attraction), content that keeps visitors on the site and builds loyalty (impact), and content that inspires action (conversion). You can then analyze metrics such as traffic, engagement, bounce rate, leads, and conversions. ImpactHero’s algorithms suggest ways to optimize content for each stage to help you build a cohesive overall strategy.

Fathom Analytics

Best Privacy-First Analytics Platform

Fathom Analytics positions itself as an alternative to Google Analytics. Like Simple Analytics, it delivers key website data, such as traffic, views, referral sources, and conversions, focusing on ease of use. It also emphasizes digital privacy, tracking website usage without collecting personal data, such as IP addresses. Fathom is compliant with many privacy laws, including GDPR and CCPA.

Pros

• Blocks bots, scrapers, and spam for more accurate data
• Anonymizes data without the use of cookies
• Tracks conversions, such as sales, clicks, and sign-ups
• Imports historical Google Analytics data and saves it indefinitely
• Provides email reports so you can share information easily with colleagues

Cons

• Doesn’t provide keyword rankings or SEO analysis
• Lacks AI optimization
• May not have enough functionality for some businesses

Special Features

Fathom’s defining feature is its simplicity: a single-page dashboard that gives you an overall picture of your site performance. You can see key metrics for any time period, including visitors, views, bounce rate, event completions, average time on site, referring sources, browsers, devices, and countries. 

To drill into details, click on the elements you’re interested in. For example, you can filter data to learn about visitors from Reddit on mobile devices from the United Kingdom. You can add up to 10 filters.

Pricing

• $15 monthly for up to 100,000 data points (page views and events)
• Tiered pricing based on monthly data points
• 30-day free trial

What We’ve Heard

“Simple user interface, no GDPR banners required, easy light-weight loading script, privacy-focused, and I own the data!” – Jess J. review on G2

Use Cases and Best Practices

While Fathom’s single-screen dashboard lets you see common metrics, such as traffic and top pages, at a glance, you can customize data by setting up events. These are specific actions that provide insight into how customers are interacting with your content. 

You can track form submissions, free trials, and purchases. You can even track different clicks to see what users are more drawn to. Do they use breadcrumb or sidebar navigation? Are they clicking through slideshows? Downloading PDFs?  

Content Analytics Tools Overview

Drive Your Business Forward With Content Analytics Tools

Content analytics tools are an essential part of modern content strategies, helping you gather intelligence to make informed decisions. Bolstered by AI and machine learning, these platforms are increasingly more powerful, guiding you to your audiences with precision.

Now is the time to incorporate these tools into your workflow if you want to gain a competitive edge. According to a study by Adobe, just 37% of underperforming organizations have the data they need to understand their customers, while 61% of leading organizations are already putting data to work. The sooner you can leverage analytics in your content strategy, the greater advantage you’ll have over your competitors.

Crowd Content can help you translate your data insights into finely tuned content that’s optimized for search visibility, appeals to readers, and propels your business toward its goals. Contact us today to learn more about our SEO content writing services.

The post Content Analytics Tools for Data-Driven Insights appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Brand voice is the personality of your business. It can be professional, quirky, friendly, or even inspirational. It transforms a simple message into something customers feel was written just for them.

Tone, on the other hand, builds upon your voice. Think of how a person’s personality changes subtly to reflect the environment around them. Your brand’s tone does the same. It adjusts your company’s voice to fit the medium, mood, and goal.

Voice and tone are two integral parts of your communication strategy, and you need to master both to captivate your audience.

Understanding Brand Voice and Tone

Your marketing efforts are more successful when your content resonates with customers. This is where the concepts of brand voice and tone come into play.

Your voice is your choice of language, the pacing and rhythm of your communication, how you use humor, and even the ways you tell a story. Does your business use formal words or slang? Do you inject wit into your content or just stick to the facts? What about the use of metaphors?

Major companies build their voices around both the identities they wish to forge and the audiences they target. Here are some noteworthy brand voice examples to illustrate this point:

• Apple: Apple is bold, confident, and direct, but it’s also friendly. While it usually avoids humor, the brand adds warmth to messaging by referring to itself and its audience inclusively as us. Company communications highlight Apple’s innovation by stressing how its products are unique or better.

• Nike: Nike strives to be that friend who inspires and encourages you. Beginning with the iconic “Just Do It” slogan, the brand uses motivational language and an empowering, confident tone.

• Disney: Disney wants to make its audience feel childlike wonder with innocent and whimsical messaging. It uses magical and surreal wording while focusing on universal, inclusive themes such as love and friendship.

The Importance of Brand Voice in Marketing

You need a unique brand voice in marketing because your brand’s voice helps you:

• Differentiate your business: Most markets are crowded, and new technology continues to lower entry barriers. What you say and how you say it can make your brand more memorable than others.
• Build trust and credibility: Credibility affects business performance in many ways, from convincing new customers to try your products to ranking higher on Google.
• Maintain consistency across platforms: Whether you’re speaking to your audience through your business blog or a YouTube video, the way you communicate should remain consistent. It’s challenging to do this without having a defined brand voice.

A distinct voice helps you connect with your audience. It’s also your ticket to higher engagement and smooth communication.

Enhanced audience engagement

Engaged customers are 90% more likely to buy something. Better yet, they’re five times more likely to shop exclusively from your brand in the future.

Engage your customers by adjusting your brand voice to relate to them.

More effective communication

A well-defined brand voice creates engaging messaging and helps your business convey ideas easily. That’s because your brand voice caters to your audience.

If your audience needs complex jargon broken down into simple terms, be the company that does this. Shape your voice around being informative and approachable to limit the potential for confusion.

Different Types of Tones

Tone of voice is somewhat subjective, but there are ways to use it, making branded communication more straightforward and consistent.

One method used in marketing is the Nielsen Norman Group’s Four Dimensions of Tone of Voice framework.

• Formal vs. casual: Should you use formal or laidback language?
• Respectful vs. irreverent: Should communications show respect or be more edgy and playful?
• Enthusiastic vs. matter-of-fact: Is speaking with passion and energy okay, or should messaging stick to the facts?
• Funny vs. serious: Is it okay to use humor, or should communications remain serious?

You can also approach brand voice by orienting it to common tones used in marketing that fit E-E-A-T guidelines:

• Motivational tone: Prioritizes language that inspires and encourages, driving customers to make purchases or complete other actions
• Serious tone: Avoids humor and slang to give your brand an image of authority and expertise when talking about research or world events
• Conversational tone: Speaks like a friend to help inform and guide your audience, building trust
• Professional tone: Conveys credibility and authority through straightforward and polite language

Catering tone to your goals and audience

When targeting a specific goal, consider your audience and work backward. For example, LinkedIn uses a professional tone, avoiding complex language and whimsical metaphors to appeal to its B2B audience.

In contrast, Old Spice has targeted a young audience in recent years, using humor and wit in advertisements. The brand uses bold, catchy phrases juxtaposed with quirky characters, such as Old Spice Man, to project a lighthearted image.

Think about what tone best suits your image and goals while connecting with your audience.

Challenges in Developing a Consistent Brand Voice

Maintaining a consistent brand voice can be more complex than developing proper tone, especially as your business grows. Common challenges include:

• New brand managers, writers, and social media professionals
• Expansion of product and service offerings
• Diversification across new social media channels

New contributors

How well new contributors maintain your brand’s voice depends mainly on training and resources. You can give new hires and freelancers the tools they need to succeed by providing comprehensive training and ensuring they know who to contact if questions arise.

It’s also essential to create brand voice guidelines that outline the language and tone contributors should use when writing communications for your business.

New products and services

You can’t always market all products the same way, especially if you’re targeting several demographics, which requires adjusting your brand voice accordingly.

For example, if you normally sell to consumers but release a product for the B2B market, let your content creators know how to adapt your voice to fit a B2B audience while retaining your identity.

New social media channels

It’s easy to forget how to maintain your brand’s voice when creating content for social media channels. What works for a blog post won’t necessarily feel natural in an Instagram post or TikTok video.

To overcome this challenge, give specific recommendations to match each platform and regularly review the cohesiveness of blogs, social media posts, advertisements, and videos using a formal process.

Crafting the Right Tone for Different Marketing Situations

Brand voice needs to be consistent, but you should adjust aspects such as tone to suit specific marketing scenarios and improve the effectiveness of your copy. As you enhance engagement, your audience is more likely to follow through with intended actions, such as clicking links or subscribing to your email newsletter.

You can adapt your tone to any situation by following these simple steps:

1. Analyze your audience.
2. Adjust to the content type.
3. Review and optimize.

If you market to several demographics, you may need to use various tones of voice.

For example, Old Spice transforms its image from that of an old-fashioned brand by using an energetic and irreverent tone when marketing its newer product lines. This change in tone played a crucial role in “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign, where fast-paced and surreal scenarios appealed to younger adults accustomed to internet humor.

A change in tone also helped Airbnb weather the COVID pandemic. The brand used language with a community focus, stressing safety, to help comfort customers and put their minds at ease.

To achieve similar success to these major brands, consider how the following factors apply to your audience:

• Cultural perspectives
• Values and desires
• Demographics and psychographics

Record everything you know about your audience to construct a detailed customer persona. Initially, you should base your brand’s tone of voice on this persona,, customizing it slightly for each communication channel.

For example, TikTok audiences resonate with humor, slang, and memes, while people on LinkedIn prefer a more professional tone. The motives for using specific social media platforms flow through to audience expectations.

Lastly, always track engagement metrics such as view time, click-through rates, likes, and shares. Whenever you tweak your brand’s voice or tone, use this data to gauge the effect.

Integrating Brand Voice and Tone Into Content Strategy

Your brand’s voice intertwines with your content strategy, and you should integrate guidelines for voice and tone into all aspects of content planning.

So, how do you do this? Ensure you have the following essentials:

Brand style guide

Make your style guide the definitive source of information for anyone who plans, writes, edits, or reviews your content. Your guide should contain detailed information about the voice and tone expectations for various types of content.

Content creators will find it easier to understand your brand voice when you give clear examples rather than simply use descriptive language. List specific words and phrases you like, and link to examples of completed blogs or social media posts matching your requirements.

You can also refer to specific public figures or fictional characters to provide examples of the messages and tones you want to convey to help writers understand your voice requirements.

Brand voice chart

A brand voice chart is another effective tool that aids content strategy. It lists the qualities of your voice alongside columns that provide descriptions, things to do, and things to avoid.

You can use separate charts for each communication channel for more detailed guidance.

SEO considerations that affect voice and tone

Your brand’s voice and tone should match your audience and goals, but you should also consider SEO strategy. 

One key consideration is Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines, which stress the need for content that displays experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Consider how you can match these guidelines through your voice and the information you provide.

You should also consider how to integrate keywords and other metadata into content. Match keywords to your brand voice where possible so the audience these keywords attract is closer to your target customer. Assess the user intent — transactional, commercial, navigational, or informational — and adapt your voice to ensure you deliver what your audience wants.

Tools for maintaining consistency

Other tools you can use to maintain consistency include:

• Content management systems 
• Voice and tone-tracking software, such as Grammarly Business
• Social media management platforms, such as Hootsuite
• Collaboration tools, such as Asana
• Generative AI, such as ChatGPT

Step-by-Step Guide to Developing Your Brand Voice

Developing the perfect brand voice doesn’t mean you need to reinvent the wheel. Just follow these steps:

1. Define your brand’s core values and personality

What does your brand stand for? What’s its mission? Summarize this information into one sentence and use that sentence to define your business’ personality.

For example, LEGO’s mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. Its personality, stemming from that mission, is playful, creative, and educational.

2. Analyze your audience

Get to know your audience. Create a profile with basic information, such as their age range, location, and interests, alongside the needs you can target and pain points to avoid.

For example, Tesla’s audience is tech-savvy and cares about the environment, so the brand’s communication highlights innovation and eco-friendliness.

3. Create a brand voice chart

Create a basic voice chart based on five adjectives that describe your brand while matching your mission and audience. For example: friendly, authoritative, informative, whimsical, and energetic.

Provide descriptions and examples that illustrate how to translate each adjective into the voice and make a list of things writers should or shouldn’t do, to offer further guidance.

4. Develop content guidelines

Construct a detailed style guide. Ensure you include instructions for various platforms and contexts so content creators know how to match voice, tone, and style to any situation.

5. Implement training procedures

Put training and workshops in place to help your team learn how to use your brand voice effectively.

You also need a review process to check adherence to voice guidelines. For smaller companies, one editor may handle this task.

Larger companies or those that target multiple communication channels may need to simplify these reviews through a dedicated QA team and a standardized review process.

6. Optimize

Your voice should be consistent but never completely set in stone. Always be open to optimization. Use tools such as Google Analytics to track engagement metrics and run occasional A/B tests to assess how subtle changes in brand voice versus brand tone affect engagement.

Using Technology and Tools for Brand Voice Consistency

Technology drives innovation while making many tasks easier, and this is particularly true for communication. You can leverage several tools to match the tones of voice you’d like to target or ensure content maintains a consistent brand voice. Here are some of the best tools:

• ChatGPT: ChatGPT and other large language models can generate content matching tone and voice examples or guidelines. It can also scan content to assess if the voice and tone match a brand’s target audience, but the power of these AI tools extends much further. When training a GPT model to your brand’s style, you can assess large volumes of content to ensure it matches voice requirements, automating part of your review process.
• Grammarly Business: Most people know Grammarly for its spelling and grammar checks, but the platform also lets you select various tone and style settings. Doing so helps ensure content matches your brand voice and remains consistent.

• Acrolinx: Acrolinx provides similar capabilities to Grammarly but also includes a more extensive generative AI tool to help match style guidelines while scaling up content creation.
• Hootsuite: Hootsuite lets you manage most social media accounts from one platform, ensuring consistent communications. The platform includes engagement tools that optimize your brand voice to match specific social media platforms, and you can also use the OwlyWriter AI feature to discover new content ideas or create posts

• Asana: Asana is a project management tool. While it doesn’t assess or improve brand voice directly, it makes these processes (as well as content creation and publishing) easier for everyone involved by implementing a collaborative workflow.
• SurveyMonkey: Direct insights from your audience are invaluable for optimizing your brand voice. SurveyMonkey is one of the tools you can use to determine whether your communications resonate with customers. You can also survey your audience for future content ideas or website-user-experience improvements.

Future Trends in Brand Voice and Tone

Brand voice reflects your business’ personality, but it’s also a product of the marketing environment. Shifts in the environment readily change how brands communicate. Here are some trends we’ve noticed:

• Desire for personalization and humanization: People increasingly favor brands with conversational, empathetic tones. They also seek personalized customer service — a shift partly driven by the uptick of AI chatbots.
• Emphasis on authenticity and transparency: People prefer open and honest businesses, and many brands now follow this trend. For example, Patagonia now discusses its manufacturing processes and environmental impact through “The Footprint Chronicles” to improve transparency.

New technologies

Shifts in consumer sentiment aren’t the only thing affecting the marketing landscape. Businesses are also adapting their brand voice through the power of new technologies. The most noteworthy include:

• Augmented and virtual reality: AR and VR enable more vibrant communication between businesses and customers. For example, Patrón Tequila uses VR to give distillery tours. The immersive visuals breathe life into the brand’s storytelling, reinforcing its voice.

• AI and machine learning: Advances in AI and machine learning help businesses adapt their voice and tone to specific situations. These technologies also enable personalized real-time communications. For example, Amazon’s Alexa provides targeted information and shopping recommendations through the brand’s helpful, friendly voice.

Don’t miss out on opportunities to communicate with your customers in newer and more personalized ways than your competitors have done. Invest in emerging technology now, and always keep an eye on the horizon, because things can change in an instant.

Discover Expertise to Elevate Your Voice

Mastering brand voice and tone sets you on the right path to establishing strong relationships with your audience and becoming a household name like Coca-Cola or Microsoft. However, consistency is essential.

Integrating your voice into your content strategy is essential to ensure communication matches your brand’s personality, whether you’re reaching out to customers through an email or a Facebook post. It is also important  to follow SEO best practices.

If you don’t have the time to create detailed style guides and project briefs or refine the nuances of your brand messaging, we’ve got you covered. Look into our content strategy services. We can refine your brand’s personality, creating impactful messaging that resonates with your audience and grows your online presence. Our comprehensive services include everything from planning to streamlined production to help you dominate content marketing in every area. 

The post Mastering Brand Voice and Tone for Dynamic Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Regarding  market share and competitive edge, PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel once said, “Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way.” It’s a SaaS copywriter’s responsibility to explain to readers the solution that’s available and why that solution is paramount in every way that matters.

As business trends continue to grow, so will the weighty roles of SaaS copywriters. Here’s what you need to know about this writing subspeciality, including how you can hire a SaaS copywriter or succeed in the niche as a freelancer yourself.

SaaS Copywriter vs. B2B SaaS Copywriter

SaaS copywriting takes a broader approach to content creation, reaching out to individual users and corporations. A single piece of content will have multiple applications — using universal language and focusing on how the software at hand can solve common pain points that exist across user segments.

A B2B SaaS copywriter jettisons more general terminology and messaging in favor of a narrowed scope. Pieces created with B2B in mind tend to speak to a specific audience or even a well-developed buyer persona. The writer has an intimate understanding of the client’s business challenge and can speak on a detailed level regarding how a particular SaaS solution addresses that specific problem.

Value propositions in general and SaaS copywriting

A general SaaS copywriter appeals to the masses, emphasizing how a product can help the typical user. It’s common to highlight core benefits, such as ease of use, affordability, and how well it integrates with popular apps and software.

For B2B copywriting, the value proposition is more metric-based. Business owners want to know how the SaaS solution will influence outcomes, such as ROI and customer conversion rates, as well as internal processes, such as cross-departmental collaboration and productivity.

Language and tone

General SaaS copywriting tends to be more conversational, making it easier for the average person to understand tech concepts and software specs. B2B SaaS copywriters speak to a more analytical audience — start-up founders and marketing managers are often more receptive to a professional pitch that’s less casual.

Understanding the Need for a SaaS Copywriter

SaaS products are often technically complex, with a laundry list of features that must be conveyed accurately without overwhelming readers. Software may be updated frequently, and  the tech sector is always changing. Thus a strong SaaS copywriter must be agile and dedicate non-writing time to staying current and getting to know recent innovations.

Businesses must consider the following when looking for a talented SaaS copywriter:

• Differentiation: It’s not enough for a copywriter to rattle off a feature list. Conveying how features stack up in a saturated market is vital, and this requires a writer who’s adept at researching competitors, thinking critically, and building messaging that makes the client stand out.
• Onboarding: New writers need to be educated on the client’s standards and product portfolio. Doing this over and over is a major drain on resources.
• Strategic value: SaaS copywriters tend to charge more than general ghostwriters because they do more. They’re writers, but they’re also experts in conversion optimization, user experience, branding, sales techniques, and the overall intricacies of the software industry.

Identifying Your Copywriting Needs

Before you can connect with and onboard your own SaaS copywriter, you must figure out what you need from a freelancer to meet your internal goals. Consider the following questions:

• What’s your objective? Are you looking to acquire new users, boost your SERPs, introduce consumers to a new product, or something else entirely?
• Who’s your audience? Do you need a copywriter who can speak in general terms or one who knows how to dig deep into the pain points, motivations, and preferences of a select audience and shape messaging accordingly?
• What’s your USP? Your unique selling proposition sets you apart from the competition. The more specialized and nuanced your USP is, the more savvy your copywriter should be.
• What assets do you have, and what do you need to create? Businesses that are just beginning to construct a content marketing strategy probably need everything from basic website content to blog posts. More developed companies might be ready for assets that require a deeper mastery of the topics at hand — think highly persuasive content, high-converting landing pages, and in-depth user manuals.

Finding the Right SaaS Copywriter

Finding a skilled SaaS copywriter can be difficult — and finding one who suits your business’ needs can be even more challenging. In most cases, you have three options: Partner with a content marketing agency, hire an in-house writer, or contract a freelance writer directly.

Contracting directly with a freelance writer gives you a ton of freedom and skips over some of the drawbacks of onboarding a full-time hire, such as paying for benefits and providing physical office space. But an in-house writer is in a prime position to know your product, audience, and quirks inside and out.

For many companies, content agencies and content marketing platforms offer the best of both worlds. You can go fishing in an existing talent pool, using project and content briefs to educate writers and editors on your product and campaign. You can even create your own satellite team that doesn’t work directly under your corporate umbrella but is committed to creating content for you long-term.

Vetting freelance SaaS copywriters

Vet every candidate you want to seriously consider for your project. You’re looking for overall talent, industry-relevant experience, and other characteristics (e.g., a sense of humor, reliability, and a proven track record with high-converting campaigns) that align with your goals and branding.

The vetting process will be your sole responsibility unless you partner with an agency or content marketing platform. That means you’ll be interviewing prospects, checking references, looking at portfolios, assigning sample tasks, reviewing submissions, and sending out offers. That takes a lot of time, but vetting is important — this is how you avoid paying for subpar content or accidentally hiring a writer that isn’t right for B2B or SaaS content.

The Hiring Process

Once you’ve found a writer that checks all your boxes, it’s time to bring them on board. How this process unfolds depends on whether you’re contracting a freelance SaaS copywriter or partnering with an agency that already has writers on staff.

Freelancer hiring process

With each new professional relationship you have with a freelance copywriter, you’re starting from scratch. There’s a fair amount of negotiation to be done, and you’ll be discussing the following terms and conditions of your agreement.

• Project details: Now’s the time to lay out exactly what’s expected from the project. This includes the assets to be created, deadlines for each milestone, communication methods, and revision instructions.
• Payment: Freelance writers can charge whatever they want. That can include a flat fee, hourly rate, or a monthly retainer fee. You’ll need to decide when payment will take place and how it will be made (direct deposit vs. company check, for example).
• General guidelines: All clients should give their new SaaS copywriters the information they need to represent the company properly. Branding information, style guides, approved content samples, customer testimonials, case studies, and product specs are just a few of the items writers can use to get up to speed and shape custom content.
• Contracts: Sign a contract that covers availability, pricing, when content ownership transfers from the writer to the client, nondisclosure clauses, and anything else needed to protect all parties.

Agency collaboration dynamics

Collaborating with a content marketing agency or platform provides a less-personalized experience compared to working with an individual writer, but what you lose in direct access you more than make up for in scalability and streamlined operations.

Overall, you’ll follow most of the same steps listed above, but the contract involves an agency — working with the writer and you as the client. Pricing is typically standardized, according to content type, writer specialty, and/or quality level, and you’ll likely need only one contract for the length of your relationship, with addendums as needed for short-term campaigns or certain sub-clients.

The biggest difference you’ll encounter working with an agency versus working directly with a writer is a huge reduction in the effort required to scale your content program — and this applies to talent as well as clients. Crowd Content uses existing project briefs and onboarding materials to expand our clients’ writing teams in just hours. Everyone on our team is already vetted, and general agreements are already in place. Our clients can also tap into additional services such as SEO research and graphic design without starting from square one.

Content Creation Process for SaaS Content

A strong and effective content creation process is tailored to each client and project, yet it’s as templated as possible. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to use the same process for every project, but the more standardized each element is, the easier it will be to go from concept to finished content over time.  

Crafting an effective brief for SaaS projects

Project-specific briefs are the lifeblood of quality content. Without this key document, writers are left adrift, trying to understand what the client really wants. Sometimes, the output is on target, but often, this approach leads to time-consuming revisions and shared frustration.

Content briefs replace ambiguity with step-by-step or section-by-section instructions. Your brief may include:

• A description of the project
• Project objectives
• Target audience
• Style preferences
• Milestones and deadlines
• SEO guidelines, such as primary keywords and linking opportunities
• A full outline or suggested H2 and H3 headers
• Requests for associated metadata
• Key resources

Starting actual content creation

Once the writer has a brief on hand, it’s time to kick off content creation.

• Brainstorming and research: Leverage keyword research and review SERPs to see what’s ranking and why. Use that information to begin shaping content that addresses user intent, shared pain points, existing content gaps, and potential client-related solutions.
• Drafting: Create content that includes a compelling introduction, engaging copy, and concepts that make key points as clear and impactful as possible. Note where visual elements such as images and infographics might go and use the client’s value proposition as your lodestone.
• Incorporating SEO: Include all required keywords, optimize metadata, and add backlinks to authoritative, high-value sites.
• Revising SaaS-specific content: Work should be proofed for structure and flow, as well as tone/language and SEO optimization. A/B testing can show how new content is being perceived, allowing content teams to make adjustments based on user behavior and other performance metrics.

Cost of Hiring a B2B SaaS Copywriter

The cost of hiring a B2B SaaS copywriter hinges on several factors, including the writer’s level of experience, the scope of the project, the complexity of the content, and even payment structure.

• Hourly rates: Copywriters might charge anywhere from $50 to $200-plus per hour, but don’t get too stuck on the numbers — a writer who’s new to SaaS may charge less but take far longer to create content that’s up to par, leaving you with an unexpectedly large bill compared to an experienced writer who may charge more but can finish a blog in a couple of hours.
• Word count rates: It’s common to pay by the word, but rates for specialty content, such as SaaS, are typically higher — think $.20/word at a bare minimum.
• All-in-one rates: If you collaborate with a content marketing agency, you may be able to save money by bundling services. 

Collaborate With Crowd Content for Exceptional SaaS Content

There’s more than one way to hire a B2B SaaS copywriter, but only one option helps you reach your goals faster and with less challenges. Partnering with Crowd Content gives you access to a talented team of SaaS copywriters who are pre-vetted, experienced, and ready to get to work ASAP. Whether you work directly with writers via our Marketplace or use Managed Services to take advantage of our three-step quality control process, we can help you create publish-ready content that speaks to prospects in a language they’ll understand.

For more information on hiring SaaS copywriters, become an enterprise client today.

The post How to Hire and Work With a SaaS Copywriter appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

As audience and Google standards increase, so does the need for relevant, quality, high-volume content production. Outsourcing your content can help you meet your targets, exponentially expanding your revenue and your foothold in the industry.

Understanding White Label Content Writing

White label content is created by a third party but sold by the primary entity — your agency, for example — as a firsthand product. For example, you tell your end clients you can produce 1,000 product descriptions a week, but really, you’re outsourcing those batches to another agency perhaps, and then passing them on as your own product.

The concept of white labeling isn’t limited to the content world, and it might be easier to understand how it all works if we look at a noncontent example. A handful of manufacturers produce much of the essential oil products currently on the market. All those bottles of patchouli, peppermint, and “immune-boosting blend” come off the same assembly lines and boast the same contents, but they get different labels and marketing campaigns based on which brand is buying the primary product from wholesalers.

It’s a brilliant way for small businesses to expand their catalog with products they can’t produce on their own, and bigger brands can test new niches without switching up their assembly lines or investing in ground-up R&D.

White labeled content works the same way; you’re just swapping out tinctures of sage and chamomile for bespoke articles and blog posts.

Benefits of white label content for agencies

You’re known for having fingers in every pie in your agency’s service buffet, but you can’t be everywhere at once. If you’re looking to build a better, smarter business, investing in white label content can help you:

• Save time: Partnering with a content creation team plugs you into a talent pool that’s pre-vetted, talented, and ready to write. Skip time-consuming recruitment, onboarding, and writer testing and head straight to steady, reliable output.
• Maintain quality: Those pre-vetted writers you tap into with a white label content partner have already showcased their skill sets. You get the quality content you need without training anyone yourself. And if you already have an in-house team, white labeling allows you to scale up without stretching your resources and sacrificing quality.
• Offer more of your product: White label content helps you increase your service offerings to include not only strategy but also execution of that strategy. Already have your own writers? You can white label niche content by taking advantage of contracted subject matter experts who specialize in fields such as fintech, health care, travel, real estate, and law — many of whom have the lettered credentials beside their name to go with a proven track record.  

Common Uses of White Label Content

Some of the most common use cases for outsourced writing include:

Digital marketing agencies

Digital marketing agencies are first in line to help clients understand the value of email campaigns, social media posts and thought leadership bylined by the client’s highest-profile personas. But what happens when you recommend a strategy but can’t help execute it?

Agencies can use white label content services to offer packages encompassing everything from a basic consultation to a turnkey strategy, all but guaranteed to generate long-term success. No more sending clients to spend their money elsewhere when you can serve up quality content on a silver platter.

Ecommerce platforms

Ecommerce platforms that serve makers, retailers, and resellers have a prime opportunity to upsell members by offering add-on services, such as copywriting. While a basic package might include web hosting, payment services, and on-site promotional opportunities, platforms can generate multiple revenue streams by white labeling product descriptions, how-to blogs, and other content. Every asset added could help appeal to the end customer and increase conversion rates.

Software as a Service providers

SaaS companies can help shave a few degrees off a learning curve that might otherwise make products seem insurmountable. When backed by white label content services, you can offer educational resources for clients, such as tutorials and explainer video scripts, customizing each offering and infusing assets with authority and value.

Small and medium-sized businesses

SMBs are the most likely candidates to have plenty of vision but not enough resources to turn everything on their entrepreneurial wish lists into reality. The ability to execute on your content strategy without having to hire and train a full writing and editing staff can be invaluable.

Types of Content for White Label Agencies

White label copywriting and content services cover a huge breadth of collateral. You’re not limited to About Us web blurbs and the occasional blog — although both of those are on the table. You have access to all types of content that can help you achieve those KPI milestones essential to success. Some of the content provided by white label agencies includes:

• Blog content: Sell blog content to your end clients and help them improve both search rankings and conversion rates in one fell swoop. Blogs written by research-savvy writers or reviewed by subject matter experts can also help brands establish authority and position company heads as thought leaders.
• Social media content: Hand over responsibility for a thriving X and Facebook feed to an army of writers. Maintaining a steady flow of content on social media can boost visibility and keep consumers engaged, generating much-needed likes and clicks.
• SEO and web content: A copywriter versed in the latest SEO tactics can cater to Google’s standards. Let white label writing squads populate your site with content and landing pages with the long-tail keywords and metadata necessary to hit the top of the SERPs. 
• Case studies: Partner with a white label writing service to produce case studies of your best success stories to show prospects that what you have to offer is more than just a proposal.
• White papers and ebooks: You can offer these assets to end clients or use them yourself as gated content, generating leads and establishing authority at the same time.
• Article writing: Hire writers to craft articles for industry publications, showcase company achievements, highlight events to promote a new product, or underscore company values.

Selecting a White Label Content Writing Service

Like so many services, a white label content writing service partnership is only as effective as the partner you choose. Before you sign on the dotted line, consider what you’re looking for in a writing platform and what you need to scale your offerings.

Build the right team

One of the biggest challenges when dealing with white label content writing is figuring out how you’ll maintain content quality without having direct involvement with every member of the team. One of the easiest ways to do that is to have a project or content manager act in your stead. They serve as a single point of contact and intermediary between you and the team creating your content. They gather and train the best-suited writers, answer basic questions, review content for quality, and handle revisions as needed.

Create content guidelines

Your brand voice is extremely important and you want to maintain it regardless of who is writing your content. This is where your content brief comes in handy. The more information and guidelines you give your writers, the easier it is for them to give you exactly what you need the first time around. Remember, freelancers are experienced in words, not mind reading — provide detailed instructions once, and you’ll save yourself a lot of effort down the road.

Assess content quality

The term “good writer” has so many meanings. Most writing services will lob terms such as “quality writing team” and “experienced talent” in your direction without a second thought. But the proof really is in the pudding, and that means you need to see samples before you consider a contract.

You can also ask for case studies. Crowd Content is thrilled to show off past work, including how we helped one client increase their page views to a staggering 6 minutes. Or how we helped an agency get their client to page one of Google for 57 of their target keywords.

Consider customization options

Your agency isn’t a dime a dozen, and your content shouldn’t be generic or bland either. Ask potential white label partners how in-depth their customization options go. Can you use your own style guide? Can they match brand voice and specific requirements, such as comma and bullet point usage? How often can you change parameters to meet a particular client or project’s needs?

Understand pricing models

Content marketing partners differ in how they charge clients for content production. Some require a membership or subscription fee, with content available on a discounted basis thereafter. Crowd Content’s Managed Services extend a helping hand from content managers who post tasks and manage writers on your behalf in exchange for meeting a monthly minimum, or with our Marketplace, you can pay for content as you go and control the job posts, reviews, and final approval. 

Consider how much content you’ll need and how involved you want to be as you evaluate pricing. The best platforms can talk you through the process and recommend the right approach so you get the most bang for your buck and have room to scale your account alongside your business.

Integrating White Label Content Into Your Business Strategy

The right partner should be able to deliver content that’s ready to be integrated into your existing strategy — a strategy you’ve had time to prep and roll out, since you haven’t been spending time recruiting writers and going over first drafts with a fine-tooth comb.

To make the most of the product you’re paying for, it’s important to go in with a clear game plan:

• Know what you’re asking for. Give your white label service partner a list of expectations, including information on your preferred style, brand voice, and target audience. Using a content brief template removes questions and helps ensure consistency.
• Provide samples. Include content that demonstrates what you like — and what you don’t like — so writers know what’s a hit and what’s considered a major miss.
• Calibrate each project. If you’re ordering big blocks of content that include hundreds or even thousands of pieces that all fit a similar brief, use a calibration round to test the writing team and dial-in requirements before you go into full production.
• Have a plan for promotion and distribution. The last thing you want is to order a ton of content and then realize you have no idea what to do with it all. Part of your prewriting strategy should be putting together a content calendar that illustrates the when, where (which channels), how (content types), and who (the person in charge of pushing the content live).

View analytics and feedback. After content is live, check analytics to see which content assets are getting traction and which aren’t quite on target. Use that information to fine-tune your brief and work with the writing team to bring the next batch of content even closer to perfection.

White Label Content Writing: The Next Step in Scaling Your Business

White label content creation is the perfect storm of productivity and efficiency.. It’s like bringing on a second string of talented employees, but without the overhead and long hiring processes that goes along with investing in a  full-time team. Whether you’re looking to augment the writers already churning out quality content or you want to add content to your growing slate of services, white labeling could be your ticket to growing your business.

To see how Crowd Content’s talented pool of writers can help you stay competitive and scale on demand, check out our managed services, and create quality content without the in-house hassle.

The post White Label Content Writing for Agencies appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

To help you along, we’ve compiled a comprehensive guide to the AI tools we love to use all through the content-creation process.

Use Cases for AI Content Creation Tools

AI content creation tools leverage the many intricacies of natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to create content that looks and sounds human but originates deep within the inner workings of the World Wide Web.

Over the past couple of years, the majority of public focus has been on AI’s increasing role in content generation. With the help of a human operator, artificial intelligence tools draw on existing content, data, and other inputs across the internet to create new copy used for everything from blog posts and news articles to product descriptions and About Us pages. But the written word is far from the only way to utilize AI.

AI tools are also invaluable for:

• SEO: AI can help with search engine optimization, by identifying quality keywords and generating metadata that appeals to Google’s algorithm.
• Social media management: Platforms such as Hootsuite and FeedHive tackle vital social media tasks, such as identifying the best time to post a meme and using social listening to track and analyze consumer conversations.
• Email marketing: Creating content for emails can be especially tricky because you have to pack a lot into a relatively small space. AI can draft personalized email content, improving your marketing campaigns without taxing your brain power.
• Translation: Looking to break into a new market? Use AI to translate existing content into another language without losing context and tone.
• Chatbots: Providing 24/7 customer service can be expensive, which is why so many companies are training chatbots to interact with customers and answer their questions when human agents are unavailable.
• Graphics: AI image generators can create images based on prompts, reducing reliance on those generic stock images people love to hate.

And those use cases are just the tip of the iceberg. AI can also help with editing content, analyzing data, scripting, creating quizzes, crafting how-to guides and tutorials, drafting legal documents such as contracts, aiding developers in generating code snippets, scheduling appointments, and hundreds of other useful things.

Top 10 Content Creation Tools

Using AI content creation tools to improve your business practices or to lighten your personal workload is a clever play. But the even more brilliant move is learning which tools are the best overall for the task at hand.

1. ChatGPT

Classification: Broad-spectrum content generation

Overview: Large language models (LLMS) are used to power platforms such as ChatGPT, creating a methodology that generates blogs, social media updates, content summaries, and just about every other content imaginable based on text data originally used to train the LLM’s neural network. In other words, ChatGPT has learned how to create content just like a human would (or pretty close, anyway).

You can use ChatGPT in multiple ways, depending on your role and your goals. Are you a writer who needs help brainstorming? A content strategist building a content map with pillar pages and spokes? A content manager tasked with generating briefs and outlines? You can do all this, plus tons of other jobs, from one chat interface — you just need to tweak the copy before sending it down the pipeline to the next person.

Features: ChatGPT has the ability to answer questions, summarize text, translate content, generate code, etc.

Pros: ChatGPT’s prompt and response format is easy to use and works for everything from writing blogs to figuring out how to fix your washing machine.

Cons: If in the hands of a novice user, long-form writing can easily come off as formulaic (or, dare we say robotic?). Also, because these models train on potentially outdated data, you still need to fact-check everything the platform generates.

Pricing: The basic model is free, but a $20/month subscription provides faster responses and more consistent access when the site is overloaded with users. 

2. ClickUp

Classification: Project management and AI writing assistant

Overview: This productivity-boosting tool empowers teams that can benefit from having multiple utilities all under one umbrella. Functionality is the name of the game, and the completely reconfigurable setup means each user or organization can find a way to make ClickUp fit their needs — even if those needs continuously change.

ClickUp’s tagline is “One app to replace them all,” and it makes sense. Instead of flipping back and forth between apps used to monitor tasks, write content, track goals, and chat with team members, ClickUp puts it all in one place and creates new connections powered by all-knowing AI. It’s like having a personal assistant who knows what you need before you do.

Features: ClickUp has hundreds of features on tap, including tools for task management, marketing campaign management, visual collaboration, real-time reporting, content ideation and creation, editing, and checklist generation.

Pros: The platform is customizable and built to integrate with over 1,000 other tools. It also has a library of customizable templates for work-ready shortcuts.

Cons: AI features are available only through higher subscription tiers.

Pricing: Subscriptions range from free (best for personal use) to business accounts for $12/month. Larger enterprise-level accounts are priced by request.

3. Narrato Workspace

Classification: End-to-end AI content creation and planning

Overview: Narrato Workspace isn’t a single tool — it’s an entire workspace that puts research, planning, and content creation all in one applause-worthy box. It doesn’t matter if your to-do list includes automating publishing for a couple dozen blogs, coming up with ideas for video scripts, or writing a press release for that upcoming product launch. Narrato can do it all — and add some custom AI images for good measure.

Features: Narrato’s SEO content brief generator is a total powerhouse. Other features, such as workflow automation that streamlines repetitive tasks, AI image generation, and built-in content planning and organization tools, are equally indispensable.

Pros: The all-in-one workspace saves time, and the template generator helps users keep dialing in their own processes.

Cons: Users report few cons, but the content editor can lag a bit when processing larger docs.

Pricing: Plans start at $36/month for a base Pro subscription and increase to $76/month for a larger business account.

4. Lately

Classification: AI social media post generator

Overview: Turning long-form content into easily digestible nuggets suitable for social media can feel like a slog. Lately generates social posts in a jiffy, which serves several purposes: You can reuse existing content, populate your social feeds, and generate more engagement all at once. And you don’t have to strain your bandwidth to do it. With Lately, you can create dozens of social posts with a simple click of a button, and that’s not limited to text. The platform also distills audio and visual content.

Features: Lately’s solutions list includes tools that generate content and transcripts, create clips of videos and podcasts, and build social posts with all the necessary elements (copy, images, tracking links, etc.) intact and ready to go.

Pros: As easy to use as it is focused, Lately gives small businesses and busy marketers a way to power up social media without getting distracted by other functionalities.

Cons: The platform’s narrow focus means you’ll need other tools for other tasks.

Pricing: Pricing depends on the number of social channels linked; subscriptions start at $49/month for four channels.

5. Jasper

Classification: AI content generator for blogs

Overview: Jasper is kind of like ChatGPT’s lesser-known cousin, but don’t let marketing make your decision for you. Jasper is adept at understanding tone, something that’s often missing in AI-generated content. Cross-app integrations make it easier to transfer content between Google Docs and the Jasper platform, and you can even use the built-in API to create new integrations that aren’t automatically supported.

Features: Use Jasper’s Boss Mode to create more detailed long-form content. SurferSEO integration helps finished content rank, and with 30-plus languages available for translation purposes, that content is poised to reach an even bigger audience.

Pros: Jasper’s ability to understand and replicate tone is ideal for branded content, and Boss Mode helps avoid some of the pitfalls that usually come with content built off AI-driven templates.

Cons: Like other AI content generators, Jasper isn’t built for nuance. Have specialty and sensitive content reviewed by human subject matter experts for the best results.

Pricing: Creator-level subscriptions start at $39/month and go up from there. Enterprise pricing is available on request. 

6. Copy.ai

Classification: Freestyle AI writing tool

Overview: Copy.ai is another content generator, but this one responds well to additional guidance. Instead of entering a general prompt, such as “zoo animals,” you can provide more context, such as “zoo animals most prevalent in the United States, written from 2nd person POV, geared toward kids, with a humorous undertone.” Similar to ChatGPT, Copy.ai has a chatbot interface that assists with research by answering questions and hunting down data in response to prompts.

Features: Unlike other AI content generators that require you to copy output and paste it into a third-party word processor for further work, Copy.ai has an in-line doc editor so you can polish as you go. You can also build email sequences, translate copy, and use the AI prompt library to help cut to the chase.

Pros: Real-time data collection helps improve factual accuracy and prevent copy from being out of date, and the in-line editor streamlines workflow.

Cons: Copy.ai doesn’t check generated content for plagiarism, and pricing is relatively high once you bypass max inputs for a free account.

Pricing: Basic accounts are free; Pro accounts start at $36/month.

7. Synthesia

Classification: AI video generation

Overview: Video production can be a pricey endeavor. Between equipment, casting, post-production editing, and time off from all the other tasks on your plate, you can easily rack up five-figure costs. Synthesia makes video creation more accessible by using AI to generate videos based on plain-text prompts. Instead of human leads, videos are led by an AI-generated avatar that also handles narration. This tool puts the power of video creation in the hands of small businesses and solopreneurs who might not otherwise be able to share pro-level explainer videos or support their blogs with advanced visual aids.

Features: There are over 140 stock avatars and 120-plus languages available to help you speak to your core audience. Use customization options to dial in your branding and the 60-plus video templates to jump-start “filming” if you feel stuck.

Pros: All the plug-in-play type features make it easy for total newbies to get up and running quickly.

Cons: The editing process takes some time and practice to master, and some features (such as the number of scenes you can include) are limited, depending on your subscription level.

Pricing: Start accounts are $22/month, with an annual billing discount; Enterprise account pricing is available on request. 

8. Murf

Classification: AI voice generation platform

Overview: Murf helps you create AI voiceovers in record time, using the scripts you provide to bring life and an almost-human touch to everything from new client introduction videos to how-to guides. You can choose what type of voice you want and even which accent you prefer, matching your finished voiceover to your business or target demographic.

Murf has also solved the once-universal issue with computer-generated voiceovers: stilted, robotic speech. Use the built-in editing feature to eliminate strange pauses, and switch up vocal emphasis so your end product is less William Shatner and more relatable for the average customer.

Features: Text-to-speech input creates voiceovers from written content; multilingual support increases diversity; and AI cloning can even mimic inflections that indicate emotions.

Pros: If you can write something (or have someone write it for you), you can create a voiceover using Murf.

Cons: Editing is possible but requires oversight by someone who understands speech patterns and knows how to achieve a more natural result.

Pricing: Basic accounts are free; paid accounts with additional features and support start at $19/month.

9. Canva

Classification: AI image generation and graphic design

Overview: What-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editors changed how the average person created, organized, and published blogs, and now the same tech is revolutionizing image and graphic generation. You don’t have to be a graphic designer to use Canva — the knowledge and taste level are already there. No-code editors offer multiple menus of design elements, along with templates that act as a foundation for almost any type of imaging possible. Create business cards, presentations, posters, videos, social media posts, whiteboards, and animations — as soon as you catch up, Canva will have something new to announce.

Features: Canva has stacked the deck with features such as a huge library of free stock photos, graphics, design elements, fonts, and templates galore. You can export in a variety of formats, and there’s a built-in sharing mode to get finished designs up ASAP.

Pros: It’s useful for everyone from complete newbies to design pros, as templates can stand alone or be tweaked down to the tiniest details.

Cons: Many of the best graphics, fonts, etc., are only available via a paid subscription.

Pricing: Basic accounts are free. Canva Pro is $14.99/month, and Canva for Teams of five people costs $29.99/month. 

10. Podcastle

Classification: Blog-to-podcast conversion

Overview: Approximately 42% of Americans age 12 and up say they’ve listened to at least one podcast in the past month. Podcast formatting is increasingly popular, and Podcastle is helping content creators and businesses step up to the plate, thanks to software that turns blogs into podcast-ready scripts. The technology also works to create audiobooks and other audio-based content. You can also do the creation process in reverse and turn your existing podcasts into blogs. It’s a win-win situation that multiplies functionality.

Features: The platform provides studio-level sound without studio equipment, plus there’s an audio editor you can use to enhance tone, edit recordings, and remove background noise.  The AI tech makes it possible to create digital copies of your voice.

Pros: You can go from text to voice and back again using one utility, and there are a lot of customization options up for grabs.

Cons: The platform is still a bit clunky. But updates keep coming, and the interface should be more user-friendly soon.

Pricing: Basic membership is free for a single creator; multi-creator subscriptions start at $11.99/month per creator; and Pro-level subscriptions cost $23.99/month per creator. 

Top 4 AI Content Creation Tools – Bonus SEO List

AI is also storming the SEO castle, and these tools can help you conquer the SERPs without scouring content for keyword placement manually — and really, who wants to do that?

1. Semrush

Overview: Semrush is all about SEO, with a slate of 55-plus tools on hand so you can optimize content from every possible angle. While basic keyword tools just look at phrases you need to include, Semrush takes a much wider view. Content marketing, PPC, competitor research, and social media marketing — you can do it all with Semrush.

With Semrush, you have a market research tool that also does SEO, making you more competitive and eliminating lag time between seeing a content problem and finding a solution.

Features: Use the AI-driven site auditor to pinpoint gaps in your SEO strategy, then act on the bot’s recommendations. The keyword magic tool rates short- and long-tail keywords by search volume and difficulty.

Pros: So many utilities, so little time! Semrush does a lot, and much of it is available for free.

Cons: Higher plans can get pricey, and with many functions on tap, those new to SEO could get confused.

Pricing: Basic searches are free; paid plans start at $129.95/month and go up to $499.95/month for large agency and enterprise accounts. 

2. SurferSEO

Overview: SurferSEO’s main strength is in content optimization. It uses data-driven insights to create suggestions users rely on to improve their on-page SEO. The goal is to improve visibility and SERP rankings based on the targeted keywords, current search engine algorithms, and lengthy competitor analysis. AI can see patterns the average human won’t notice, increasing the likelihood that SurferSEO’s recommendations can give you a competitive edge and improve your ranking more than you’d be able to achieve on your own.

Features: SurferSEO has its own on-platform content editor, plus analytics tools that track performance and generate reports. It also has a robust resource library, including tutorials, to help you get the most out of your subscription.

Pros: Multiple integrations increase utility, and it has a user-friendly interface that minimizes the scare factor for newbies.

Cons: SurferSEO’s basic plans have limited functionality, and higher plans are expensive. There’s also a learning curve, and those new to SEO may have to dedicate time to reading guides and familiarizing themselves with the platform.

Pricing: Essential AI plans start at $119/month; Advanced AI costs $239/month; and full Surfer AI power requires a Max AI account for $419/month.

3. Diib

Overview: Diib is like a scaled-down version of SurferSEO and Semrush, but smaller doesn’t mean less than. In fact, Diib’s focus is one of the platform’s biggest benefits. Small businesses looking to scale can jettison the noise that comes with too many features and concentrate solely on SEO and traffic insights designed to automate SEO and promote growth.

With Diib, you get a clear growth objective you can work toward, along with alerts that let you know how you’re doing with SEO, social media, mobile conversions, and overall UX. Instead of checking up on your website 800 times a day and neglecting other tasks, Diib does it for you.

Features: Daily health scores keep your finger on the pulse of your website’s well-being. Diib’s 12-metric system ensures a holistic view of your progress, and AI-powered SEO gap checks and competitor monitoring buoy your success even further.

Pros: Diib is affordable, focused, and easy to understand, and the mostly hands-off daily operations are perfect for bootstrapped startups.

Cons: If you need a lot of extras, such as a built-in content editor or lots of templates, you’ll have to supplement Diib with another platform or tool.

Pricing: Self-service plans are free. Pro plans with unlimited access to Diib tools cost $7.99/month.

4. RankIQ

Overview: RankIQ is another specific SEO tool. This one only cares about blogs. The utility’s sole goal is to help businesses and enterprising individuals write blogs that rank on the first page of the SERPs. It does that by handpicking low-competition, high-traffic keywords niche by niche and generating content briefs and outlines that put those keywords to work.

Features: The software uses a call-and-response formula — you enter a keyword, and RankIQ comes back with everything you need to know. It also prepares detailed AI-generated SEO reports and checks rank regularly.

Pros: The interface is remarkably straightforward, and all you need to know going in is your original target keyword.

Cons: There are no advanced features or customization options here. It’s bare bones, and if you want help with website content or social stuff, you won’t get it from RankIQ.

Pricing: Plans start at $49/month.

Is It OK to Use AI Content Creation Tools?

AI content tools are pretty darn useful. From fueling ideation and assisting in research to creating briefs and publish-ready prose, AI plug-ins and platforms are indelibly woven into the future of writing. But, an over-reliance on these tools can lead to lower-quality content, something that can negatively impact your brand and your SERP ranking. That’s why it’s so crucial that you learn how to balance the potential of AI with frequent reminders of the importance of human oversight.

There are legal and ethical considerations, too. It’s your responsibility to ensure everything you publish and put your name on complies with copyright laws and ethical standards. Saying “AI did it” won’t fly.

The Future of AI Tools and Revolutionary Content

From increasing efficiency and offering new insights to giving professional assists that would otherwise cost companies tens of thousands of dollars a year, these platforms are stepping up to make life easier and content better. In many ways, AI content-creation tools are the wingmen we need at a price we can (usually) afford. It enhances our creativity, improves our outcomes, and puts voice and image creation in the hands of people who have never held a microphone or video camera. It’s magical — but even an enchanted bunny needs a person around to pull it out of the hat.

As you scale your business, keep experimenting. But always think of and treat AI as an enhancement, not a totally hands-off alternative to people-first processes.

The post Top 10 AI Content Creation Tools appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

When ChatGPT burst into public consciousness in late November 2022, the tech seemed to draw a line in the virtual sand, separating the earlier times of content from the robot age. But in reality, the rise of AI content has been a slow burn, and those within the content marketing industry have seen both the potential and the pitfalls on the horizon for years. The big question now isn’t just how AI text generators can be used but whether they should be used at all by anyone hoping to get (and stay) in Google’s good graces. 

One of the reasons Google has been so successful is its commitment to total world dominance. Just kidding (mostly). But really, Google dominates because it’s willing to constantly reevaluate its position on hot-button topics and what constitutes the general standard of excellence. However, changing standards can lead to an overload of confusion.

The doubt and uncertainty are real, but the key takeaway is just as potent: Combining AI with practical SEO strategies (and a heaping helping of human insight and oversight) is a recipe for success, and even Google agrees.

Does AI Content Rank in Google?

Google doesn’t penalize AI content simply for being produced by artificial intelligence. But to truly understand whether AI-generated text could affect your ranking, we have to dig a little deeper. It isn’t a yes or no answer but an analysis of how AI-generated content actually performs, what role human editorial oversight plays, and what Google’s official stance is. Because, at the end of the day, that almighty Google algorithm remains king.

The importance of EEATing

Google has confirmed (several times now) that AI-generated content gets a big, fat A-OK as long as it follows the same E-E-A-T guidelines used to evaluate content overall. In September 2023, Google updated the wording of its philosophy on valuable content, changing “helpful content written by people, for people” to “helpful content created for people.” That short edit made it clear Google was more interested in whether content delivered value — according to E-E-A-T — than in who created the content in the first place.

So, if you can use ChatGPT to generate a blog that meets Google’s standards for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, your content should be in line to rank well.

But there are also other factors that influence how content, AI-generated or not, ultimately lands on Google’s results pages.

SEO: Perception vs. reality and what works when you want to rank

How content is produced is only one piece of the SERP-y pie. Even if your content is strong, your SEO game has to be just as impressive, and that includes knowing the truth about search engine optimization.

Timeframes

• Perception: SEO is a one-time-only production.
• Reality: There’s no end to search engine optimization. Even if your AI-generated content ranks well now, you may need to tweak it in the future to answer Google algorithm updates.

Keyword stuffing

• Perception: The more keywords you include, the better your ranking.
• Reality: Google looks down on and penalizes articles with obvious keyword stuffing — even if it’s AI’s fault.

Links are links

• Perception: All links feed into the algorithm and boost your content’s rank.
• Reality: Quality is paramount. Google likes high-quality, highly relevant links from sources with proven authority.

Your content determines your ranking

• Perception: All you need is a solid blog and decent meta tags, and your SEO is done and dusted.
• Reality: AI content won’t get your site to rank if you aren’t paying attention to other factors, including social media, linking, and online reputation.

AI + human editorial oversight = magic

By this point, you’re hopefully convinced that AI text generators can be useful, but they can’t be left to operate completely independently. After all, the robot overlords don’t need to get it in their heads that we humans are totally superfluous, right? But how does that human oversight manifest?

In most cases, you’ll use yourself or other members of your human team in three ways:

• Editorial assistance: Use human editors to refine AI-generated content briefs, edit content drafts, and otherwise provide insight and polish that isn’t possible with 100% reliance on technology.
• Subject matter experts (SMEs): AI content-generating programs rely on existing data points and can only respond depending on what they know and when that data was input. This could lead to inaccurate or outdated content, which is less than ideal since Google looks for signals of reliability to help weed out content that propagates misinformation or contradicts popular consensus on certain topics. As of November 2023, many ChatGPT responses lead with, “As of my last knowledge update in January 2022…” Human SMEs can go through content with a fine-toothed comb, ensuring accuracy — something that’s especially important for companies in sensitive industries, such as healthcare and fintech, that can’t afford to disseminate erroneous content. 

• Off–page SEO: You need all the off-page SEO in place to support your content. Even if you use technology as part of your SEO strategy, you need a human to review the checklist and help knit everything together.

And if you need any more convincing that AI isn’t ready to go it alone, listen to the wise words of John Mueller, Google’s search advocate. When tagged on X (formerly Twitter) in a post asking, “Should we use ChatGPT from now onwards for publishing content on our website??? It giving 80% unique content.” [sic], Mueller’s response was epic: “It’s like food with only 20% toxic chemicals? Sounds tasty.”

Content Generated With AI

Digital guru and NP Digital Co-Founder Neil Patel put AI-generated content to the test following Google’s fall 2022 spam update, analyzing data from 100 experiment sites populated exclusively with AI-written content. His findings are more than worthy of a gasp and well-timed clutching of pearls:

• Sites that used AI-generated content with zero human oversight dropped eight positions in the SERPs and lost an average of 17% in traffic.
• Sites that paired AI-written content with some type of human oversight dropped just three positions in the SERPs and lost only 6% of their traffic.

It’s confirmed that problems arise when content creators expect AI to meet E-E-A-T standards independently. The human element may not be sacrosanct any longer, but it also isn’t extinct.

Boosting traffic thanks to artificial intelligence

Content Growth Founder Jake Ward is no stranger to building and scaling businesses. So, when Ward ran an experiment with sites brimming with AI-generated content, people took notice — especially when he published the results.

Ward’s barrage of AI content — paired with human oversight and revisions — helped take a website with zero traffic to 750,000 hits per month. The experiment involved 7,000 pages (all created using Byword.ai), and the growth took about a year to realize. At the end of the year-long study, that same site had 4,000 keywords in positions 1-3 and 13,000 keywords in positions 4-10.

Why Is High-Quality Content Important?

Most of us remember our elementary school teachers drilling grammar rules into our rapidly growing brains. I before E, except after C, right? But even as objective or mechanical writing quality remains integral to producing content of value, the definition of quality content has expanded.

• Does the content satisfy intent?
• Does it provide actionable insights?
• Are there unique perspectives?

It goes back to Google’s E-E-A-T principles. When you’re sharing experience, showcasing expertise, stating facts with authoritativeness, and proving your trustworthiness, you can’t help but churn out quality content that gives people what they want. This is true whether you’re prioritizing AI-generated content or writing everything yourself.

If you’re blending human and AI input, you have the best opportunity to produce content you and Google will love:

• Relevancy: AI ensures content is relevant to search intent, while humans ensure the emotion is intact.
• Credibility: AI uses existing data points to generate strong, quality content, and humans review that content for accuracy. This builds authority, too.
• User engagement: AI can dig up tidbits that might take humans days to unearth and put together an outline that reduces knowledge gaps and increases coverage of the given topic. Humans add entertaining language and emotion that keeps text from being robotic and helps forge connections.

It’s almost a matter of left brain vs. right brain, but you have to let the creativity and uniqueness run free without trampling on the information and complexity the topic is due. And if you do all that while avoiding comma splices, all the better. Otherwise, Google’s SpamBrain will notice, seeing the patterns that indicate poor-quality content created to influence rankings rather than to please people.

Tactics to Integrate AI Into Your Content Creation Process

Adding AI to your existing content creation process takes planning and a deft hand. You should proceed with the following tips with one overarching thought in mind: AI is only successful in content when you use it to improve your processes, never when your sole goal is to make content generation cheaper.

• Prioritize AI on the front end of content creation. AI is a research powerhouse, and ignoring that is almost criminal. Ask AI tools about trends and then use them to conduct research and generate outlines that can spark ideation and guide your writing teams.
• Optimize existing content. What better way to go toe-to-toe with Google than to use AI to optimize existing content, looking at ways to improve keyword usage and metadata? You can even use AI to analyze the behavior and preferences of your target audience and rework old blog posts to speak to a new demographic.
• Proofread and polish. Grammarly and ProWritingAid are just two of the AI-driven editing tools that can help you find errors and improve the style and quality of your content. These tools aren’t perfect (please don’t accept every suggestion), but they’re worthy grammatical wingmen.
• Infuse content with your brand voice. You can actually train AI models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4, to understand and utilize your brand voice so it can replicate what it sees.
• Create custom images and videos. AI-powered visual content platforms haven’t made as big of a splash as text-generating platforms, but they should. Plug a request into Deep AI or Hotpot, and you can have a picture of a unicorn dressed as a cowboy sitting in a pile of spaghetti in mere minutes.

Evaluating the Impact of AI on SEO Trends

As AI grows and continually fine-tunes itself, it has a parallel increasing impact on SEO. Artificial intelligence was woven throughout Semrush’s predictions for SEO trends in 2023, including:

• Generative AI creates new content based on data it was fed during training, such as formulating summaries that answer search queries. Think of it as Google’s featured snippets on steroids.
• Accelerated content creation, thanks to AI’s ability to produce words at record speed. The more content there is, the more competitive SEO can be, and the harder it may become for startups with limited bandwidth to gain traction.
• Google continues to remind us of the importance of people-first content that meets search intent. AI-generated content is included and must meet the same standards — and yes, Google is watching.
• Microsoft Bing has integrated ChatGPT into its search engine, making it a serious contender for the title of the World’s Top Search Engine. Eventually. It’s worth watching because how we use AI may one day no longer completely depend on Google’s input and guidelines.

But the SEO industry isn’t a monolith, and expert opinions on AI and SEO vary.

• “AI is one of the most profound things we’re working on as humanity. It’s more profound than fire or electricity.” – Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, via an interview with Verge
• “The future of SEO will be heavily influenced by two key factors: the continued rise of mobile search and the increased use of artificial intelligence in the search industry.” — Neil Patel

And then there’s ChatGPT’s say-so. When asked, “Will AI kill SEO?” the platform first hedged its bets (“As an AI language model, I cannot predict the future . . .”) before underscoring the need for adaptable SEO strategies. It then stated, “SEO will not be killed by AI . . .  it will evolve to become more sophisticated and data-driven, with a greater emphasis on quality content, user experience, and technical optimization.” Mic drop.

Future Outlook: AI in Content Marketing and SEO

AI hasn’t reached its peak — not in terms of efficacy or accuracy or in the ways in which it can affect content production. There will be more applications joining the ranks in the years to come. Some may help with strategy and ideation, while others might pave the way for more efficient brief and content creation. We will, one day, be able to rely even more on artificial intelligence as a standalone tool to generate, evaluate, and refine content.

Now, imagine these tools connected to existing workflows, perhaps via a single, umbrella-like chat environment — increased visibility, a user-friendly format, and a gradually declining need for your team to stand over the apps like helicopter parents. Is your spine tingling yet?

The idea that AI could spearhead trend forecasting, conduct in-depth data analysis, deliver hyperlocal content, automatically analyze backlink profiles, and identify opportunities to improve all of the above isn’t just exciting. It promises an age in which anyone can use content to build their business without being a whiz with grammar or spending years learning the ins and outs of SEO.

AI: Writing and Ranking, With a Little Help From Your Friends

AI-generated content has the potential to rank as well (or even better) than content written entirely by human hands. But favoring artificial intelligence over human expertise, or vice versa, is like trying to sail across the Atlantic with only half a boat. You can keep doggy paddling, but why do yourself such a disservice? By combining AI with editorial oversight and SMEs, you can serve up high-quality text with a distinctly human touch.Step up your content efforts with an assist from Crowd Content’s managed services. We help businesses, agencies, and publishers across a wide variety of industries generate quality content at scale. Whether you want to explore the possibilities of AI-generated content or desire a fully human experience, our content managers can help you understand your options and build a process that expertly serves your needs.

The post Does AI Content Rank in Google? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

In this article, we look at how high-quality, SEO-driven content fits into your overall search visibility efforts. We also show you how to build an effective SEO campaign in 2024, taking into account Google’s helpful content update, the growing popularity of AI, voice search, and search generative experience.

4 Elements of an Effective SEO Strategy

Before we dive in, let’s look at the big picture. It’s said that more than 200 Google ranking factors impact where pages fall in the SERPs. SEO content writing is an important part of it — but it’s only one component. 

A comprehensive SEO strategy has four parts:

• On-page SEO helps search engines understand the meaning of a page so it can be matched to relevant search queries. These tasks include writing meta titles and descriptions, using headers, optimizing images, creating descriptive URLs, and adding internal links. 
• Off-page SEO involves building backlinks from external sites to demonstrate your content is trustworthy and valuable. A link-building strategy can involve creating guest posts, partnering with influencers, and requesting links in resource directories.
• Technical SEO helps search bots crawl your site easily and addresses elements such as site speed, loading times, mobile responsiveness, security, and site errors.
• Content SEO, the focus of our article, is the creation of content that readers want to consume. The content should answer the search query and be easy to read and insightful.

If your business caters to audiences in a specific region or has multiple locations, you should also complement your strategy with a local SEO component to reach customers in those areas.

How does search engine ranking work?

When your site is optimized using the above tactics, search engines can more effectively crawl, index, and rank your pages. 

• Crawling: Google uses software called crawlers to gather and store information from every web page it can access. 
• Indexing: The information gathered by search bots is organized and indexed according to SEO elements, such as keywords and metadata. When a user performs a query, search engines pull the relevant page. 
• Ranking: Search engines weigh factors such as relevance, quality, and user experience to determine how useful the page is and where it should surface in the SERPs.

Google’s Emphasis on Content Quality

Google’s objective is to provide users with the best, most reliable information for their searches. Pages that say the same thing as a dozen other sites? They’re not nabbing that top spot in the SERPs. Blog posts written to hit certain keyword densities with little value? They’re not on Google’s wish list, either.

Instead, create original content for human readers that inspires them to say, “I learned something new!” Google consistently refines search algorithms to find and prominently display these in-depth pages. 

E-E-A-T

Google introduced E-A-T principles in 2014 to ensure the content it promotes is expert, authoritative, and trustworthy. A couple of years ago, an extra “E” was added to these guidelines to emphasize experience or first-hand knowledge.

Search algorithms look for signs of E-E-A-T on your website through backlinks from other sites, traffic and engagement metrics, and topical authority. Consider establishing your credentials in online bios or on an “About” page and leveraging the knowledge of subject matter experts to show your content is credible. 

Helpful content system

Designed to distinguish between high-quality and low-value content, Google’s helpful content system rolled out in 2022. Soon after a 2023 update, pages that didn’t meet the criteria for useful content tumbled in the SERPs.

Google has a checklist to assess the helpfulness of your content. Essentially, you should offer in-depth analyses and comprehensively answer a reader’s questions on a topic. Aim to produce a piece that’s so original and perceptive that a reader would recommend or bookmark it.

These standards also apply if you’re experimenting with AI content creation. Search engines don’t care who (or what) wrote the content as long as it’s meaningful. But you’ll likely find AI-generated content needs some human involvement to deliver the firsthand experience and personalization Google prioritizes.

Building the Foundation of Your SEO Content Strategy

For your content to rank well, it should meet or surpass reader expectations and outdo the pages already occupying the top spots in the search results. Build your strategy around the following components to tailor content to user queries and drive traffic to your site.

Target audience

The first step of SEO content writing is to know who you’re writing for. What are their pain points? Where do they look for information? Do they prefer short-form videos or in-depth articles? Align your content to your customers, and deliver your message in a tone that resonates. 

Industry niche

SEO content strategies vary depending on the industry. Research the keywords customers use when searching for products and services, along with the keywords your competitors target. Landscapers, event planners, plumbers, realtors, and automobile mechanics need to focus on local SEO. Businesses in the health and finance sectors that publish YMYL, or “your money, your life,” topics need to be attentive to quality and subject matter expertise, due to the impact their advice can have.  

Search intent

A good SEO content strategy focuses on keywords and the meaning behind them. Understanding search intent ensures you shape content to answer a user’s questions. For example, a cosmetics company targeting the keyword “moisturizer with retinol” should determine if someone using this phrase wants general information about the product’s benefits or already knows they want the product and are evaluating brands. A look at top-ranking pages or assistance from keyword research tools can help you determine search intent.

SEO specialist Lily Ray notes that search intent can shift, using the example of Barbie. Recently, movie reviews replaced general information about the toy at the top of the SERPs. 

“A key strategy for handling intense shifts in search intent is to build content that serves every possible intent for your important keywords,” Ray says. “This may require different site sections, articles, videos, images, etc., that each serve a unique purpose for searchers.” 

Content clusters

Sites Google considers reliable sources of content tend to rank better. Build your site’s topical authority to establish expertise. Instead of targeting random keywords, build purposeful content clusters and explore topics in-depth. 

Image Source: Semrush 

These content clusters serve as your website’s core and help you grow an inventory of content that continually demonstrates knowledge about a specific topic. 

Exceptional content

We’ve talked a lot about optimizing your website for Google, but it’s just as important to remember your content will be read by potential customers, business partners, and stakeholders. As mentioned earlier, focus your SEO content writing on original pieces that provide value to readers. Align your content with E-E-A-T guidelines and the objectives of the helpful content system.

Semrush’s 2024 Ranking Factors Study looked at the content of top-performing pages and found relevancy and quality correlated most strongly with higher rankings. On average, the top 10 ranked pages have 90.6% text relevance and a 76.9% content quality score. Keyword coverage came third at 67.8%. “Don’t waste your time obsessing over keyword count or updating content dates for the sake of making your content appear fresher,” the report advises. “Focus on the things that matter, which is creating content that covers its topic in a way that meets readers’ needs.”

Key performance indicators

Set goals so you can track the impact of your SEO content strategy and refine your tactics to improve performance. Choose KPIs that reflect what you want to achieve — for example, the number of impressions can be a measure of brand awareness. Common metrics include traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, session duration, and conversions. Determine your benchmarks, and measure progress regularly. 

10 Steps to Create a Top SEO Content Strategy

Now that you know the ingredients of an impactful strategy, you’re ready to put the pieces together. Here’s how to create an effective SEO content strategy to land higher in search engine rankings and hit your business goals.

1. Understand your customers

The more precisely you know your target audience, the better you can tailor your campaign to meet their needs. This means understanding their needs, concerns, and motivations at each stage of the buyer’s journey. 

Image Source: Ahrefs

For example, if you sell baked goods, determine if your audience is most interested in quality (organic), cost (affordability), or a solution to a problem (gluten-free). Create content to capture them at the awareness, consideration, and decision stages. 

2. Research keywords 

Once you identify who you’re writing for, perform keyword research to find the search terms they’re most likely to use. Sort the keywords into topic clusters and begin building an SEO content strategy.  

You’ll want a mix of head and long-tail keywords. For example, “artificial grass” is a head keyword that generates a high search volume, but it’s tough to rank for. You can aim for more precise long-tail keywords with lower search volumes. These keywords make it easier to gain visibility, such as “What are the benefits of artificial grass?”

Long-tail keywords also help you optimize for voice searches. People tend to be conversational when speaking to a voice assistant, saying, “What trees are native to Maryland?” instead of typing “Maryland trees” into a search engine. Similarly, while SGE is still at an early stage, the preciseness of long-tail keywords may improve your chances of surfacing in AI-driven searches.

3. Plan your content

Look at your chosen keywords and choose the best format for each piece of content. 

• Blog posts are simple to publish and can be outsourced to an SEO content writing service to help you scale output.
• Videos are helpful for product demonstrations, how-to guides, tutorials, presentations, and fun behind-the-scenes content.
• Podcasts give your brand a personal touch and enable you to bring in experts and leverage their audiences.
• Infographics are a visual way to deliver information and are easily shareable.
• E-books share valuable expertise and can be used to generate marketing leads when gated.
• Case studies show customers how your product or service makes a difference.
• Interactive content, such as mortgage calculators, quizzes, games, polls, and interactive maps, encourages user engagement. 

4. Create a content calendar

Use an editorial calendar to plan the content rollout. This helps manage workflow and ensures everyone on the team works toward the same goals. It also ensures you don’t miss out on seasonal marketing opportunities in your industry. 

Build deadlines into your calendar for writing, editing, and publishing, assigning each task to a team member. Prioritize pieces that focus on important core keywords first, and grow your content clusters later. 

If you don’t have the in-house resources to devote to content writing, consider a blog writing service to implement your strategy. Freelance writers can support your team when you need extra hands on deck or ensure a continuous output of content to steadily grow your blog.   

5. Ensure content can be crawled and indexed

Optimize each piece of content according to SEO best practices before you publish. Format content with headers, use metadata, add internal links, and ensure pages load quickly for desktop and mobile devices.

Remember, search engines can’t crawl webinars, videos, images, infographics, and other visual content. You can provide transcripts or written summaries to convey the meaning of content and help with indexing.

6. Develop an off-page SEO strategy

Complement your SEO content strategy by building backlinks from third-party sites that are respected in your niche. There are a few ways to create these links:

• Share your expertise by publishing guest posts that link back to your site.
• Partner with influencers or businesses that may have the same target audience.
• Add your site to directories with local chambers of commerce or business associations.
• Make new content shareable on social media.

7. Engage users

As your pages climb the search rankings, you should see an increase in organic traffic. Make sure those who land on your site have a great user experience. The site should be easy to navigate, visually appealing, and filled with relevant, interesting information. The more you engage users and the longer they stick around, the more likely you are to establish trust and brand awareness.

8. Track performance

Set goals for your SEO content strategy and track your progress toward achieving them. You can monitor the impact of specific campaigns and compare quarterly or annual performances. Use the data to build on successes or refine your approach if performance falls short. 

For example, if a page ranks well but isn’t generating click-throughs, you might need to rewrite your meta title and description to be more compelling to readers. If a page has a high bounce rate, the content might fall short of reader expectations. 

9. Understand the search landscape

Search engines are continuously updating algorithms and ranking factors to better serve users. Read up on SEO with Crowd Content’s blog, and ensure you’re following best practices. This helps you respond to changes in the search landscape as they occur and stay ahead of your competition.

10. Update content regularly

As the bar rises on quality SEO content, readers expect timely and accurate information when clicking through to sites. Regularly review your posts to ensure you’re providing the best information possible. Remove outdated information, use current statistics, and fix broken links.

Put Your SEO Content Strategy to Work

Whether your SEO content strategy involves blog posts, e-books, case studies, or landing pages, harness the power of Crowd Content’s skilled freelance writers. Our SEO content writing services deliver high-quality, publish-ready content to help you drive traffic and conversions. Ask us about our writing and editing services, and put your SEO content strategy into action today. 

The post How to Create a SEO Content Strategy for 2024 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What Is Blog Writing?

In a professional context, blog writing is the process of creating informative articles related to your business. Each blog post supports one or more operational or strategic goals. If you’re positioning the company as an industry authority, for example, you might write thought-leadership posts related to current developments and trends. Other articles might be designed to build brand recognition, educate readers about your products and services or drive customers to an online ordering system.

What Are the Benefits of Blog Writing?

A strategic, well-written blog can have a profound effect on your company, whether you’re running a start-up or growing a small business. Some of the most important benefits include:

• Boost search engine ranking. Google loves fresh content; when you publish regularly, it’s easier to rank your website higher in the search results.
• Build credibility. Whether you work in the B2C or B2B sector, a well-written blog showcases your institutional knowledge and establishes your company as a credible, authoritative resource.
• Increase website traffic. The more pages you have on your website, the more traffic you receive. A blog also creates more chances for potential customers to find your company.
• Foster customer relationships. Every blog post is a chance to provide more value to customers and create loyalty that sustains your business over the long term.
• Expand content marketing strategy. A blog opens up a world of opportunities to grow your company’s content marketing strategies and reach a larger audience.

Google E-A-T — What Is It?

E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Google uses this concept to evaluate its search algorithm and ensure that the rankings are showing the best possible results for users. In late December 2022, Google released a new version: E-E-A-T, or experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

• Experience: The creator demonstrates first-hand experience in the topic they’re writing about.
• Expertise: The creator has the appropriate skills, certifications or knowledge for the topic at hand. This is particularly true for topics that affect the reader’s money or life.
• Authoritativeness: The creator is known as a reliable, authoritative and trusted source for the topic area
• Trust: The content is safe, accurate and honest.

To stay on Google’s good side — and rank high in the search results — your website must have a high level of E-A-T (or E-E-A-T). Writing a blog can go a long way toward improving your standing.

Why Hire a Professional Blog-Writing Service?

On the surface, blogging seems simple. That might be true of a personal project, but professional blogs are held to a higher standard. In addition to content creation, professional blog-writing services deliver the strategy, optimization and technical know-how you need to build a successful business blog.

1. Adapt to Algorithm Changes

Search engines adjust their algorithms regularly; in fact, Google made more than 4,000 updates in 2021 alone. A single change to the algorithm can affect your search engine rankings overnight, so it’s important to keep track.

Blog-writing services monitor algorithm updates closely, so you don’t have to. They can help you adjust your content strategy and edit older blog posts to align with new guidelines. This constant vigilance makes it easier to maintain your rankings, web traffic and sales funnel.

2. Access Professional Writers and Verified Subject Matter Experts

Blog content writing services make it easy to source professional writers with expertise across a range of fields. Most companies also provide editing services to ensure that your content is polished, free of mistakes and easy to read.

Why does that matter? Start-up and small blogs are often written in-house, usually by people without a writing background. Chances are, many of your competitors fall into that category. When your blog is written to a professional standard, your company automatically looks more credible and authoritative by comparison.

As your blog grows, you may want to expand beyond your core competencies or tackle topics that demand accuracy. Some content services can provide verified subject matter experts to evaluate the blog posts and provide a “reviewed by” line. This extra step builds E-E-A-T, which is essential when you’re publishing about sensitive topics such as health care or personal finance.

3. Target the Right Audience

Successful blogs are written for a specific group of readers. Your target audience should inform everything about each post, from the way the article is structured to the tone and vocabulary you use. A blog post for college-aged YouTubers will be considerably different from a technical blog written for senior engineers.

That’s harder than it sounds, especially if you’re new to writing. For professional blog writers, it’s second nature — they know exactly how to identify your audience and adjust their writing accordingly. The result? Blog posts that resonate with your ideal customers.

4. Free Up Your Time for High-Value Tasks

As a business owner, there are certain tasks that only you can do. By handing off your blog to a professional service, you free up time to build client relationships and pursue new contracts. Outsourcing blog posts can be helpful even if you have an experienced writer on staff — it gives them more time to spend on high-value, conversion-focused B2B copywriting.

5. Enable a Consistent Publishing Schedule

When you’re juggling projects and deadlines, it can be a challenge to stick to a regular publishing schedule. If you can manage it, you can please both Google and the customers who find value in your content. If you can’t, it might be time to seek help.

B2C or B2B content writing services can deliver a steady flow of blog posts according to your needs. You can order them all at once or schedule them to align with your content calendar. Most services can even accommodate last-minute assignments to help your brand keep up with current news stories and emerging trends.

6. Help With Keyword Research and Topic Selection

Solid keyword research — finding the phrases your ideal customers are searching for online — is the foundation of every successful blog. Once you find the right terms, you can turn them into blog posts that attract traffic and bring in more leads.

Aside from writing, keyword research is one of the most important services that content agencies provide. They’re experts at identifying the keywords that will have the biggest ROI for your business. These highly targeted phrases and blog post ideas can give you a significant advantage over competitors in the industry. 

7. Provide SEO-Friendly Content

Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for business websites. Strong SEO increases your chances of ranking well in the search results, making it easier for customers to find your company.

The thing is, effective SEO takes time — and when you’re running a business, you may not have the capacity to manage it in-house. A blog-writing service can take SEO off your plate entirely. Your content will come back ready to publish, complete with optimized headers and metadata.

8. Develop a Brand Voice

Have you ever noticed that many of the most successful global brands have distinct personalities? That’s mostly due to brand voice, which is the way a company expresses its personality in writing. A solid brand voice can help distinguish your business from competitors; it also helps customers make personal connections that inspire both sales and loyalty.

A blog can go a long way toward building your brand voice — but only if you’re intentional. Reputable writing services will work with you to develop a voice that aligns with your style and attracts the right audience.

9. Establish Brand Guidelines

When you put out marketing materials for your business, you probably use similar colors, fonts and image styles for each document. There’s a reason: Consistency breeds familiarity. It’s the same for a blog — when key elements remain the same across all posts, it creates a unified experience that helps customers recognize your brand.

Blog-writing services can help you establish and maintain guidelines. That way, every writer knows exactly how to capture your company’s style and voice. Some of the elements you can include are:

• Default tone
• Stylistic preferences
• Grammatical rules
• Words to avoid
• Brand-name formatting

10. Scale Quickly

The bigger your blog becomes, the more opportunities you have to bring in new customers, boost traffic and improve search-engine rankings. That’s why many start-ups try to grow their blogs quickly to help carve out a place in the industry.

If you’ve ever written a blog post, you know that producing content at scale is a gargantuan task. Publishing 25, 50 or 100 blog posts can involve hundreds of hours of writing, editing, formatting and publishing — something that’s not feasible for most business owners.

When you’re ready to go all in on your content strategy, blog-writing services are a worthwhile investment. You’ll have access to hundreds of writers who can complete your entire order, often in a matter of days.

Whether you’re planning to scale or you’re just dipping your toes into the world of business blogging, a blog-writing service can ease the transition. Contact Crowd Content today to find out how our expert writing, SEO and keyword research teams can help build your blog into a revenue-generating asset for your company.

The post Supercharge Your Content Marketing Strategy With a Blog-Writing Service appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Developing B2B content marketing goals is critical to attract new customers and grow your revenue.

But strategizing a content plan can seem daunting for a B2B content marketer. Content yields high returns, but without a roadmap, your efforts will be for naught.

Say your boss wants to scale your company’s content and see more results. But your blog does nothing, nobody downloads your ebooks and your conversion rates are underwhelming.

So how can you achieve results for your B2B brand? You can’t exactly assume that doing much of the same will improve the situation.

You need to set content marketing objectives with direction and purpose.

This is why it’s important to define content marketing goals. You connect content marketing to company growth goals to build revenue.

B2B content marketing goals clarify business goals focused on lead generation to help you produce that extra revenue and hit targets.

And content marketing is a perfect fit! Content marketing delivers 3x more leads than outbound sales and B2B companies increase lead volume by 67% when they blog regularly.

When you define content marketing goals, you generate brand awareness, improve SEO, educate leads, foster customer retention and drive revenue.

This guide outlines B2B content marketing goals, explains what makes great content and lists example goals to help you win at content.

Now you can create a content marketing plan that actually works, so let’s dive in!

Developing a Strategy for Your Content Marketing Goals

What makes great content marketing strategy goals? A strong content marketing strategy relies upon quality content designed with purpose.

Defining content goals for quality and relevance is the best way to align content marketing with company revenue goals.

But let’s be honest. It’s almost impossible to determine revenue produced by content marketing with precision.

Bottom-of-funnel content about buyer concerns or product fit might work for last-touch attribution.

Though most content delivers organic traffic and introduces your brand to potential leads. At this stage, people are still learning.

Your content needs to educate and nurture. Along with a strong brand story and a great user experience, your content functions as part of a holistic whole to move leads down the funnel.

An optimal B2B content strategy thus emphasizes quality and relevance.

About 47% of potential B2B buyers engage with 3–5 pieces of your content before purchasing—and a sizable chunk with more than five!.

Focusing on quality, value-driven content makes your content discoverable and engaging for leads. This is how to align content goals with revenue goals (and make your bosses happy!).

So, how to define, produce and leverage high-quality content?

What Makes Great B2B Content?

Great B2B content provides relevant value to your audience, answers questions, and forms part of a strategy that scales your business.

There are four steps for how to grow your business using content marketing and make B2B content work for you:

1. Planning content. The days of designing blog posts one at a time based on generic keywords are gone. Cluster content around relevant topics for your audience to signal your expertise in certain fields.
2. Developing content. Set brand standards to ensure content is well-researched, succinct yet still comprehensive, simple to digest and connects with your target audience. Play around with different formats to see what moves the needle.
3. Distributing and amplifying content. Never “set it and forget it” after publishing. B2B content is only great with an audience, and a relevant one too. Create a marketing flywheel for content around a distribution and amplification plan.
4. Restrategize content. Customer expectations will develop over time and your competitors will adapt. Don’t be afraid to regularly revisit content clusters, guidelines and influencers to keep things fresh.

With a holistic strategy in place, you can then hone in on crafting content quality itself during the production stage.

How to Create Quality B2B Content

The goals of content marketing rely on relevant blog posts and touchpoints for leads to find you, gain interest and become customers.

Focus on Storytelling

Just because you sell to businesses doesn’t mean your content should be boring and esoteric.

Guide readers through a journey connected to the heart of your company; narratives humanize brands and are key for conversions.

Develop Smart Buyer Personas

Create content that speaks to your buyer personas. A buyer persona is a fictional character who represents part of your audience.

But avoid defining personas around generic characteristics. A common trap is that buyer personas are often based on stereotypes, thus deflating their value.

Instead, focus on needs, not useless demographic information. Two people with similar backgrounds, equal amounts of wealth and of the same age could differ a lot.

For example, Kazoo designs content around buyer types and needs. They focus on categories like challenges, industries and solutions.

Format Content Like a Pro

Giant walls of text put off most readers.

Before you publish a piece of B2B content, make sure it’s easy to read. Bolded headings, bulleted lists and other formatting elements make it easy to digest content.

For example, concentrate on brevity. Short headers generate 36% more organic traffic than longer ones.

Map the Buyer’s Journey

The buyer’s journey is the path a potential customer follows when evaluating your products or services.

If you publish content only relevant to leads in one stage of the journey, you can’t connect with them as their intents change at different stages.

Map out the journey stages to different pieces of content, inclusive of destination pages with targeted conversion points.

Goals of Content Marketing

We’ve overviewed the importance of devising a content strategy aligned with revenue goals that focuses on quality and relevance to target leads based on their needs.

Part of this process involves understanding the steps needed to develop great content that actually works and what goes into creating & leveraging quality content.

Content marketing goals guide these principles that enable you to succeed and provide a roadmap towards that success.

If this seems overwhelming, start with the end in mind. Once you know where you’re going, you can determine the best way to get there.

Let’s take a look at content marketing goals to consider—and why.

5 Example B2B Content Marketing Goals

1. Drive Brand Awareness
2. Improve SEO
3. Educate Prospective Buyers
4. Impact Revenue Metrics
5. Foster Customer Loyalty & Revenue Retention

1. Drive Brand Awareness

Before your content can help qualify leads or convert qualified leads into customers, it has to generate leads.

Content is especially valuable in driving brand awareness. Since increasing brand awareness is the top priority of half of all B2B marketers, it should be a go-to content marketing goal.

Design top-of-funnel content that speaks to buyers’ aspirations and pain points. This will make you discoverable as they look for ideas before they even know what solutions they need.

Gong executes a great example of this content marketing goal.

They created the content category “Revenue Intelligence” for information about improving company revenue and to establish themselves as experts in their field.

And as an added bonus, they doubled-down on this brand-awareness campaign by highlighting the category in their metadata!

2. Improve SEO

One of the most vital content marketing goals is to improve SEO and deliver more organic traffic to your website.

This goal should drive your content marketing because of how effectively content contributes to SEO.

Engage in best practices for article writing SEO by targeting keywords and search queries your audience might find interesting with researched and well-written posts.

And go after interactive elements on SERPs (search-engine results pages) to augment this approach.

For example, HubSpot are masters at capturing featured snippets with their content marketing.

They execute a structured system within their content to answer queries their target audience would search on Google.

HubSpot leverages typical questions their potential customers might ask for more organic traffic.

Then they implement SEO tactics, such as in the below HTML, to signal to search engines that this type of content is worthy for exposure. Genius!

3. Educate Prospective Buyers

Leveraging content to educate people about the possibilities of how they can improve at their jobs and hit their metrics is one of the most impactful content marketing goals to strive for.

When possible buyers have pain points, they’ll seek out information to fix their problems.

By educating them on solutions, you’ll build trust and cement your expertise to encourage them to buy.

Let’s say you struggle to optimize your productivity because of an insufficient tech stack. None of your tools integrate with each other and it eats up hours each week.

Enter Zapier. They produce B2B content about “productivity tips” complemented on their blog with a dedicated CTA for a newsletter signup.

Makes sense. Increased productivity for B2B buyers is at the heart of their messaging since it’s a core benefit of their offerings.

In the above example, they don’t merely point out the integration they offer with Google Calendar; they lead with the educational message about how to better manage your day.

This content reinforces their reputation as leaders in the productivity space as they educate potential buyers about solutions they didn’t even know existed.

4. Impact Revenue Metrics

Earlier we mentioned how it’s almost impossible to attribute revenue to your content marketing. This is especially true with top-of-funnel content like blog posts.

But it’s simpler with middle- or bottom-funnel marketing content for specific, short-tail queries that address immediate pains.

Besides, the overarching purpose of B2B content marketing goals is to align with wider revenue goals. Well-executed content serves this purpose.

If you’re doing well and ready to start scaling, hone in on content that leads to shorter turnaround times for converting leads to paying customers.

Again, Zapier provides an exemplary case study here.

Their “insane SEO strategy” involves content pieces spread out across many webpages and elements targeting prospective leads looking for specific solutions.

Think about it. You’re a prospective lead who encounters a gap in one of your daily workflows. Your stack is insufficient and your tech team feels capped—they can’t help you.

So you search for potential ways to solve the problem yourself. You need to send emails as Slack messages.

Behold Zapier, with three webpages, one about Gmail, one about Slack and one about the solution.

It’s dedicated content designed to spur direct revenue—and it works!

5. Foster Customer Loyalty and Revenue Retention

Nurturing customer loyalty for better retention rates is an underrated goal of content marketing.

How can you achieve this goal?

Create content marketing campaigns around information that helps both new and existing customers.

When you provide curated and expert content for your base, they’ll value your services more and stick around.

One B2B organization that does well at this goal with their content marketing is the accounting company Bench.

They produce content every tax season on a dedicated website hub about advice and resources for filing business tax returns.

They reinforce their expertise and reward clients with content full of tangible benefits. This tactic also provides upsell opportunities and delights website visitors with great content.

This is a winning formula for B2B content marketing. It inspires loyalty and spurs business growth!

Get Amazing Content to Hit Your B2B Content Goals

Setting B2B content marketing goals provides a roadmap to develop and put your content strategy in place.

When you know what to achieve with content goals, you’ll attract & educate leads, create brand awareness, drive organic traffic and increase retention rates.

But none of this matters without quality and relevance for your target audience. To achieve results, you need quality content you can produce at scale.

Crowd Content’s content writing services save you time and deliver expertly written B2B content so you never have to write again.

No matter what stage of the buyer journey you’re targeting, you can tackle your B2B content marketing goals with confidence.

The post How to Create B2B Content Marketing Goals With 5 Examples appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The Benefits of Hiring Freelance Writers to Create Content

When you’re contemplating whether to rely on your in-house team or work with freelance writers to create content, there are plenty of reasons to choose freelancers. Some of the biggest benefits of hiring freelance writers for content creation include:

Cost Savings

Keeping a full-time writer on staff can put a big dent in your budget, especially if your content needs are inconsistent or change with the seasons. Hiring freelancers means you only pay for professional writing when you need it, and you don’t have to deal with the overhead costs of adding a new employee.

Professional Quality

Bad grammar and poor word choice can turn off potential customers, costing you sales and hampering your ability to make a profit. According to CXL, poor grammar can affect your site’s credibility, particularly if typos and nonstandard phrasing occur on static business pages or product pages. Professional freelance writers have the experience necessary to create error-free content so your business makes a great first impression. Freelance writers also know how to craft content that captures attention. With expertise in marketing, search engine optimization and best practices for web writing, a freelancer helps ensure your content achieves your goals. 

Writer expertise isn’t just about grammar and keywording, though. It also involves building your brand identity. Freelance writers are experts at adding the right style and tone to your content so readers remain interested and engaged.

Specialized Knowledge

Freelancers bring specialized knowledge to your project that you might not otherwise be able to find. Some have niche expertise in specific fields, such as medical degrees or prior industry experience. Others might offer specializations in particular types of writing, such as product descriptions, social media posts or long-form content. Because freelancers come from diverse backgrounds and have expertise in a variety of fields, you can easily find a writer or team of writers perfect for your project.

Offsite Project Completion

With an in-house writer, you need to provide office space and equipment. Freelancers work remotely, and they’re used to working independently and meeting deadlines, so you can rest assured the content you need gets done on the timeline you require. Using freelancers typically doesn’t require you to restructure your existing teams, either. So there’s no downtime involved when you add a freelancer to your existing project structure. 

Fast Turnaround

Outsourcing your content writing to freelancers can speed up your overall timeline. Freelance writers deliver high-quality content quickly, and you can specify the deadline to make planning easier. Writing projects assigned to your in-house team could get sidelined as other tasks come up, but a professional freelance writer can prioritize your content and keep your editorial content calendar on track. Freelancers also work all through the day, so you might be able to get a quicker turnaround from a freelance team than you could from employees who are limited to working a 9-to-5 shift in the office. If you need content within an extremely short time frame, such as less than 24 hours, a freelancer may be your best option.

Agility and Trend Spotting

Freelancers tend to stay abreast of what’s happening in the world of content creation and SEO. While full-time employees might have too much on their plates to track the latest Google search engine algorithm adjustment or trending keywords, freelancers know the latest best practices to get your page to rise in the rankings and capture reader attention. According to Quick Sprout, 42% of companies lack the skills in-house for effective content marketing, which makes hiring a freelancer with that expertise the wise choice.

Providing Relief to Your In-House Team

Overburdening your in-house employees can lead to unwanted turnover and missed deadlines. Hiring a freelance writer frees up employees to do what they’re best at instead of concentrating on trying to produce the next blog post or product description for your site. Alleviating the workload of your internal employees also helps build morale and reduces burnout. 

Leveraging Freelancers to Support Your In-House Team

Hiring freelancers to supplement the work your in-house team is already doing can help speed up production and ease the burden on busy employees. Leveraging the talents of freelance writers is different from managing your regular team of full-time employees, though, and you need to determine where each fits into your overall business structure. Some things to consider when using freelance writers to support a team of in-house employees include:

Establishing the Parameters of the Job

While hiring new employees typically means bringing them through an onboarding process, freelancers don’t require onboarding. Instead, working with freelancers involves defining the parameters of what you need them to do for you. Before hiring freelance workers to take on your long-form content creation or social media posts, establish the scope of the job. Determine the budget, timeline and specific requirements of each piece of content you intend to outsource. Have an end goal in mind, including what you want the written content to accomplish. For example, if you’re outsourcing blog post creation, do you want that content to bring new visitors to your site, convert casual readers to buyers or establish your company as an authority in the industry? The goals of your content help determine the type of content you need.

Assign a Dedicated Project Lead to Deal with Freelancers

Talk to your existing team to determine where freelancer-produced content fits into your existing structure, and assign someone to take charge of scheduling and posting the content once it’s in your hands. Having a single person as the point of contact for freelancers ensures you aren’t providing conflicting information to your writers and keeps everyone accountable. Your project lead can also communicate with in-house teams to make sure the content is adhering to overall company guidelines and meeting the needs of different internal departments.

Automate Content Distribution

Hiring a freelance writer to create great content is only part of the process. You also need to get it onto your site and post links on social media. Automated tools can help you move content from your inbox to your live webpage. You can also create content calendars that give your internal team and site visitors an idea of when new content goes live. Automation can help you maintain consistency so a blog post always goes up on the same day of the week or social media posts appear within a certain time frame after an article is posted. The project lead in charge of content can handle setting up when and how to post the content your freelancers provide. 

Use Freelancers Strategically

While it can be tempting to assign all your writing tasks to a freelancer, you and your team may be better served by taking a more strategic approach. Decide what content is essential for your current business needs and establish specific, measurable goals for that content before hiring a freelancer.

If you need to completely revamp your website or create one from scratch, decide what pages are necessary for your initial launch or rebranding and which can wait for a later update. You might want to start with the front-facing landing page and some pages describing your services and company history, or you might need 10 blog posts to start establishing a regular blog posting schedule right away. Established companies with an existing web presence may want to bolster their social media or update product category pages, which could necessitate a different type of content strategy. Planning out your content needs and timeline makes it easier to figure out when in the process to hire a freelance writer. 

Some types of projects work better with freelancers, so part of your company strategy should involve assessing projects and finding the right ones to turn over to a writing team. Things to consider when deciding whether to use a freelance writer include:

• Whether the project has a measurable, well-defined objective
• Whether the timeline and scope are appropriate for a freelance contract
• Whether any regulatory guidelines or privacy concerns prohibit the use of freelance talent for the project
• Whether you have the skills in-house and whether your employees with applicable skills have the time to complete the project on their own

How to Work With Freelance Writers to Optimize Your Success

Working with freelancers can maximize the effectiveness of your entire team, and there are ways to set up the freelance job to simplify the process. For a successful long-term relationship with a freelance writing team, check out these tips:

Make Your Content Guidelines Crystal Clear

The more detail you can include in your content guidelines, the more easily a freelancer can create the content you need. You may want to establish separate written documents as brand guidelines and specific guidelines for each writing task. Your brand guidelines include details such as your overall brand tone, information about your target audience and examples of content you want to emulate.  Content guidelines for a specific project lay out the details of that particular piece of content, such as a blog post or social media update. Here are some specifics you may need to include in your content guidelines:

• Specific keywords you want to use and keyword placement
• Linking requirements to internal pages or external expert content
• Any metadata you want included
• Whether you want a call to action and how you want it framed

Establish Routine Check-Ins

If you’re hiring freelancers to provide content on a specific schedule, set up regular check-ins to assess how well the content is working and whether you need to make changes to your content plans. For example, a company that needs weekly blog content might reevaluate its content needs after a few months once it becomes clear which posts are doing best in terms of reader engagement and conversions. Writers producing social media posts may want frequent updates of new products and services you offer so they can include those things in the posts they write. 

Consider Offering Bylines

While some types of content need to remain anonymous or give the impression it was created in-house, other content might be better served by having a writer’s name attached. Offering to attach the freelance writer’s name to the content can be a way to establish a relationship with that writer and keep them producing the kind of content you need. Hiring the same writer or a small team of writers every time helps establish a consistent tone for your website, press releases or blog.

Provide the Necessary Information for Freelancers to Get the Job Done

In addition to a well-defined content brief that outlines the details you need included in your project, you may also have to provide other information that helps your writer accomplish your objectives. Including links to similar ranked content by competitors can help your freelancer create content that outperforms others in your industry. Freelancers also need to know what you want out of your content. If you want specific links included, you should provide those. Sometimes content creation also involves knowing more about your company, so you may want to send details about your mission statement or how you’re positioned within the industry. 

Start with a Calibration Round or Test Project

If you plan to establish a long-term relationship with your freelance writing team, consider running a paid test project or calibration round before turning over the entire project for rapid content creation. During a test project, you provide the basic guidelines for your project and the freelancers create sample content for you to peruse. Together, you and the freelance team can make changes to the guidelines or format of the project before anything goes live. You might discover that your word count or keyword guidelines need some minor adjustments, or you may decide that an SEO suggestion by the freelance writing team would work well for your project. Test projects are typically paid and may involve a few rounds back and forth before you settle on the content requirements for your job. 

Trust Your Freelancers’ Expertise

When it comes down to it, you’re hiring freelance writers because they provide expertise, speed and flexibility your in-house team can’t currently match. Micromanaging your writers can hamper your long-term content goals, so aim for a working relationship that lets you turn over the task to your writers and get stellar content on or before your stated deadline. If the freelancer or manager of a team of freelancers makes suggestions about SEO best practices, you may want to consider incorporating those suggestions into your job to get better results. 

Learn About the Writing and Editing Process

If you’re working with a content agency, ask about the writing and editing process. Decide whether your freelance job should be sourced to a specific writer or given to a larger team that can produce content more quickly. Find out whether the work goes through a round of editing before being sent back to you. When you’re working with a team of freelancers, you may be able to request the same writers or specify writers of a particular quality level before you assign the job. 

Connect With Freelance Writers Using Crowd Content

Working with freelance writers can be an easy way to increase your work capacity and save money. The first step to outsourcing your company’s freelance writing is to find freelancers who can meet your needs. Visit Crowd Content to connect with over 5,000 professional freelance writers who can help craft content that draws attention, establishes authority and converts browsers to buyers.

The post How Freelancers Support In-house Teams appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Getting Started

It takes more than a keyboard and the ability to type to be a commercial writer. If you want to succeed in the online content creation industry, you must:

• Understand the basics of writing, including sentence structure and composition
• Have a better-than-average grasp of basic grammar, spelling and punctuation (or take the time to learn it before you start – Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips is a great resource for newbies)
• Be able to follow instructions to the letter and ask questions when there’s something you don’t understand

In the digital content world, things move rapidly. Successful writers and editors are able to absorb information quickly, communicate professionally and, above all, hit their deadlines. It’s as simple as that.

Types of Content Companies

Some companies work with freelancers they find on job boards, while others have full-time writers on staff. Most medium and large businesses, however, outsource at least some (if not all) of their content to companies like Crowd Content.

There are many types of content creation companies, but they all fall into one of three basic models:

• Marketplace: In a content marketplace, you work directly with clients and communicate with them as questions arise. Most clients edit or review the work you deliver, but sometimes there’s a freelance editor in the mix.

• Enterprise: With an enterprise model, you deal with an in-house Content Manager or Project Manager rather than directly with the client. Project managers assemble teams, create instructions and place orders; they also review submissions and manage deadlines. Freelance editors are always involved in these types of orders, and some companies use a third layer of review called QA.

• Agency: Content agencies often offer clients services that go above and beyond content creation (SEO, strategy, etc.). Those that hire freelancers usually require a higher level of expertise, though they typically pay a bit more. 

Why is this important? If you’re new to this industry, there’s a lot for you to learn. If you have some basic skills or expertise, you’re much more likely to get the mentoring you need from an Enterprise operation, where Project Managers are tasked with creating and training teams of workers. Marketplace clients expect writers and editors to already be “experts” before they pick up orders.

Crowd Content is one of the few content creation companies that successfully run both a Marketplace and an Enterprise operation. When you’re accepted as a writer or editor on our platform, you can apply to work for either (or both) sides of the business. 

What You’ll Need

Most content creation companies have proprietary platforms where you write and submit your work, and they’ll usually require a PC or Mac laptop or desktop computer. If you have a tablet, you may be able to make it work, but that’s dependent on the platform you’ll be working on.

You’ll also need:

• Internet access

• An internet browser

• Word processing software (optional)

• A valid PayPal account

Internet Browser

There are a lot of browsers to choose from, but Chrome seems to be the one that most writing platforms get along with best. You do have the option of trying out others, including Firefox, Opera and Edge, but don’t be surprised if you run into compatibility issues here and there.

Word Processing Software

You don’t absolutely need a word processor to get going, but it can help. The platforms among different companies vary wildly in their capabilities – some don’t even have built-in spellcheckers – so you may find it helpful to write in a word processor and then copy/ paste your work into the platform’s text editor. If you don’t have access to word processing software, you can download something like Focus Writer for free or pay a minimal monthly fee for a subscription to Microsoft Word and the rest of the Microsoft

Office programs. Using Google docs is another option.

PayPal

You’ll want to get paid for the work you do, and you’ll find that most content companies pay via PayPal. Once the funds are in your PayPal account, you can transfer them directly to your bank, or you can request a PayPal debit card, which works exactly like your bank debit card.

How It All Works

Let’s walk through what you’ll experience when writing commercially for Crowd Content. Note that most other writing platforms are similar but have their own rulesets and ways of doing things.

• After you create an account, complete an application for one or more of the various Marketplace or Managed (Enterprise) teams. Once approved, you’ll be given a quality rating based on the work you did on your application. At Crowd Content, there are four tiers: one, two, three and four stars.
• When you log into the platform, you’ll have a personal dashboard that shows any work that’s available to you on the Marketplace or Managed Content sides of the platform. What you see here depends on your application approvals and the quality rating you were given. You see all open work at your star rating and below as well as any work for teams that you’ve been placed on or any direct order work.
• A four-star writer sees all open orders, for example, while a two-star writer only sees open orders placed at one- and two-star orders.
• When you view an order on Crowd Content, you’ll see a title or topic, instructions on how to write the piece, when the order is due, how much it pays and any other information the project manager or client included.
• You can choose to pick up orders based on all this information. You’re a freelancer, so you always have a choice about whether to accept work or not. That’s even true if you get direct orders (orders placed solely to you) that you don’t want to write for any reason. You can pass on those orders and even let the client know why via the system chat — for example, you might want to let them know you’ll be out of town and can’t complete orders next week but would be happy to write content for them when you get back.
• After you’ve completed the order, submit it — and this is where things differ depending on whether your order was in the Marketplace or Managed Content.
  • Marketplace: The client may have added editing to the order. If they have, the order will be picked up by an editor before going to the client. But the client is still responsible for ultimately approving or rejecting the order. The client or the editor may send it back to you with notes to make revisions. Once the client has accepted the order, you’ll be paid for it on the next payday. In our Marketplace, it can take anywhere from a couple days to a few weeks for the client to review and approve orders.
  • Managed Content: Once you submit a written order, an editor will review the piece. The order may be edited and submitted, sent back to you for revisions or rejected if it significantly fails to meet the minimum requirements for the task. Once the editor submits the order, it goes to QA. That’s where a member of our team reviews the order to be sure it meets the client requirements. QA will either accept, reject or send it back for revisions. Once QA has accepted the order, you’ll get paid. When working on Managed Content, completed work is typically reviewed within a few days.

• Even if your order is accepted by the client, editor or QA, they may opt to leave you notes. It’s important to go back and read these notes and view the changes made to your order using the tracked changes tab. In the world of commercial writing feedback is gold. Learn to accept feedback and put it into practice, and you’ll do well.

How Much Does It Pay?

Private clients, like those found on job boards and places like Upwork, often pay by the hour or by the piece, but most content companies pay writers and editors a set per-word rate. The rate of pay varies widely among different companies. At Crowd Content, pay rates for writers range from a few cents up to 10 cents per word and sometimes even more. Editors are paid between 1.5 and 3 cents per word.

The per-word pay doesn’t always give an accurate picture of how profitable a writing job might be. The figure you should look at is how much money you can make per hour. Short product descriptions that require minimal research but only pay four or five cents per word might work out to be more profitable on a per-hour basis than a 2,000-word feature article that requires heavy research and multiple rounds of revisions — even if that feature article pays more per word.

When Do I Get Paid?

Some content companies pay once or twice per month, but others pay more frequently. Crowd Content pays its writers twice per week — Tuesday and Friday — for all work that’s been accepted by the client or Project Manager by the evening prior.

Next Steps

Ready to start? Here’s what you need to do next:

• Read this guide in its entirety
• Brush up on your grammar and punctuation skills
• Open a worker account with us
• Apply for work

Keep in mind that other companies may have different requirements. You may be asked to complete an English grammar test before you’re able to apply for work, or you may have to create a portfolio. Before you do any of this, make sure that the company’s pay rates are within the range of what you’re looking to make.

Want more information? Grab our free ebook, Intro to Commercial Content Writing here.

Best Practices: General

No matter what companies you choose to write for, Enterprise or Managed Content projects tend to have lots of information around them, including style guides, project briefs and in-task instructions. When working in a Marketplace environment like ours, the amount and type of information you get from clients will be all over the map. When in doubt and unless the client states otherwise, follow these simple rules: 

Style 

• Defer to AP style. 
• Use American English spelling. 
• Use title case for all titles, headers and subheads. 
• Format titles, headers and subheads appropriately using H1, H2 and H3 tags or via the formatting functions of the platform in question. 
• For blog posts and marketing copy (product descriptions, etc.), use second person (you). For landing pages and other website copy, use first and third person. 
• Vary your sentence structure. Use some simple and some compound sentences. 
• Avoid rhetorical questions. If you do use them, limit to one per article.
• Avoid exclamation marks. They do have their place, but they should be used only rarely.
• Avoid cliches and overused jargon (with ease, is a snap, is a breeze, etc.). 
• If you cite a fact, study or statistic, link to it. Always try to link to the primary source — not a site talking about the source — and avoid using data that’s more than a few years old. The exception here is that something like Census data is perfectly fine to use, as it’s only updated once every ten years.
• Never use Wikipedia or random blogs as sources unless a particular blogger is an influencer in the industry you’re writing about. 
• Stay evergreen — unless you’re writing something that’s absolutely seasonal or a client has asked for content about current events or news. 
• Avoid negativity at all times, particularly in marketing copy. Better to say, “This cleaner keeps your floors looking like new” than “This cleaner gets rid of all the icky goo off your dirty floors.” 
• Use common contractions (it’s, you’e, etc.). 
• Defer to Merriam-Webster for spelling and hyphenation. 
• Watch out for repetition in words and phrases. Don’t start back-to-back sentences or paragraphs with the same word. 
• Stay concise and avoid fluff and filler. 

Structure 

• Use bulleted and numbered lists and subheads to break up the text. 
• For blog posts and general articles, start with an intro paragraph and end with a conclusion. 

SEO 

• Before you start writing, Google the primary keyword to be sure you understand the intent of the search – what information the reader is really looking for. 
• Unless the client tells you not to change keywords in any way, always correct them for grammar, spelling and punctuation. 
• Use the primary keyword in the title, first 100 words of the intro, one subhead and at least once or twice in the text, depending on how long the piece is. When you’re writing something like a 50-word product description, you might only use the primary keyword once, for example. 
• Try to use all secondary keywords at least once. 
• Cover the topic comprehensively, and work in as many semantic keywords as possible. If you haven’t been given any semantic keywords, you can generate some for free using LSIGraph.com. Don’t, however, shove in a semantic keyword that’s clearly not related to the search intent of the primary keyword or the topic at hand. 
• Do not ever keyword stuff. 
• Remember that readability always trumps the keywords.

Best Practices: Metadata 

The most common types of metadata you’ll be asked to create are meta titles and meta descriptions. These are the pieces of information someone will see on a search engine results page (SERP) when they make a search query. You can see an example below.

Meta Titles 

You may be tempted to use an article’s title as your meta title, but that could be a mistake. Google will only display up to around 70 characters (including spaces) of your meta title in the SERPs. How much of the title is displayed depends on a variety of factors, including what type of device the searcher is using. If your title gets cut off, the reader may not know what to expect. 

Many companies also want to get their company or website name in the meta title, and they usually do it like this: 

• Title | Company Name 

Note that the pipe symbol and company name should also be counted as part of that 50- to 60-character allotment, and you should work your primary keyword in the title if possible. 

Meta Descriptions 

The purpose of meta descriptions is to get readers to take an action — in this case, to click a link to go to a page listed in the search results. Meta descriptions should:

• Be engaging and enticing 
• Contain the primary keyword 
• Be up to 160 characters in length, including spaces 
• Start with an action verb, if possible

Best Practices: Blog Posts

Companies use blogs for many reasons. These articles can inform or educate an audience or help position a company as a thought leader in an industry. Behind it all, though, search engine ranking is always a high priority, which makes blog posts one of the most asked-for types of content. 

When writing blog posts, follow the style, structure and SEO guidelines set forth earlier in this document — unless the client’s instructions differ. Before you begin writing, determine the purpose of the content (to inform, educate, convert, etc.) and who the target audience is. How you broach the subject of buying a Bluetooth speaker would probably be very different if you’re writing for Boomers instead of Millennials, for example. 

Also note that depending on the purpose of the blog post, it may (or may not) require a call to action — typically called a CTA. If that’s the case, you’ll want to encourage the reader to take action: call, click, schedule service, etc. Unless told otherwise, you should always hyperlink to the page on the client’s website where the reader can take that step.

Blog Post Lengths 

Most of the blog posts that we produce at Crowd Content are somewhere in the 500- to 750-word range. Clients who are after backlinks or creating pillar pages will often create long-form blog posts of 1,000 to 2,500 words or more.

Keep in mind that to really get any decent SEO value out of a blog post, the lowest word count should be roughly 300 to 350 words.

Types of Blog Posts 

You may think of blog posts as just being articles, but there’s a science behind them and there are many variations you can use to drive the information home in different ways. Here are some of the more popular types of blog posts: 

• Listicles: 10 Places for Fun Summer Travel, 3 Recipes for Date Night 
• How-To and Tutorials: Learn Spanish in 3 Easy Steps, How to Host a Holiday Party 
• Link and Resource Lists: 10 Best Instagram Stories, SEO Tools the Pros Use 
• Checklists: Things to Pack When Traveling with Kids, Off to College Checklist
• Reviews: ASUS vs Dell Laptops, Why SEO Pros Choose SEMRush 

For examples, and more content types, download the ebook here.

ALSO – How to Find and Succeed With Freelance Copywriting Jobs

The post How to Become a Content Writer – The Complete Guide appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The same sentiment holds true when it comes to content marketing. Yes, Google and everyone else loves unique, creative and relevant content. But if you’re reinventing the wheel with every word by starting with a from-scratch editorial calendar, then you’re probably wasting time, burning out creative resources and falling behind the competition when it comes to publishing content.

Because here’s the not-at-all-secret tip that successful content marketers use to capture audience attention and drive SEO: You can reuse your old content to support new wins in SERPs and new traffic to your site or social profiles.

The Benefits of Content Repurposing

Regardless of the type of content you plan on reusing, this tactic has some benefits for SEO and your bottom line. Some reasons to repurpose your blog posts and other content include:

• Saving time and money. It’s often faster and easier to repurpose what you already have than it is to come up with something completely original. Plus, chances are if you’re reusing a landing page or article, you won’t have to rewrite the entire thing. That can save you money if you’re paying someone by the word.
• Expand your reach. You can take a blog post and split it up into dozens of different social posts, create an infographic or slide decks from it, use it to fill out content for email subscribers, or turn it into a short script for video content. The same idea now lets you engage target audiences across numerous channels.
• Get more ROI out of high-quality content. It takes a lot of effort to create high-value marketing collateral in the first place, and repurposing content lets you get more out of each piece.
• Keep up with a robust publishing schedule. Whether you’re trying to get out six Tweets a day or want content on your company blog three times a week, keeping up with the demands of an editorial calendar isn’t easy. Sliding your old content into the mix — albeit with a slight facelift — can help you keep content churning consistently without diminishing quality.

ALSO – 6 Content Marketing Tips That Ensure You’re Following Best Practices for 2019

How to Repurpose Content

When it comes to reusing content, you can do so in a number of ways. Here are some of the most popular methods for turning existing content into something new.

• Refresh an old post. This is akin to a minor renovation on a room. You’re not taking anything down to the studs, and a lot of the writing is going to remain intact. Instead, you replace all the stats and facts with the most updated information and add anything that’s relevant to today. You then republish the post with a more current date. This is a good method when you have content from years past that’s simply a bit out-of-date.
• Rewrite an old post. This is a bring-it-down-to-the-studs effort. Plumbing is getting ripped out, bathtubs replaced. Or, in the case of a post or article, you’re scrapping all the words and starting from fresh with only the topic and some of the talking points. Choose this method when you’re sure the concept of the content was on point, but it failed to drive SEO for some reason.
• Reuse existing content in different formats. You can take content you created in the past or today and expand its reach by converting it into different formats. Pull out quotes for social media, turn data into visuals or simply publish a shorter form of the content on a site like Medium to get more viewers. Use this method when you have strong content but your site isn’t yet getting the traffic you need on its own or you want to delve into multichannel marketing.

5 More Tips from Content Marketers About Content Repurposing

1. Plan Seasonal Content with the Future in Mind

Although BestCompany.com Content Manager Alice Stevens typically aims for evergreen content that stands the test of time, she knows that in-the-moment blog posts also perform well. But one-and-done work can be a form of waste in the content world, which is why she plans each piece of content with the future in mind.

“I do some seasonal content to capitalize on trends or events,” says Stevens. “There are some articles that are seasonal, like articles about health insurance open enrollment. When I write these articles, I plan to update and repurpose them as necessary for the following year.”

2. Use Analytics to Choose Which Content You Repurpose

Popular posts from the past can be made fresh again, but when you’re creating content, remember that the blog content that’s performing right now can also be repurposed to drive more traffic or engage different audience sectors.

Andrew Maff, Director of Marketing and Operations for Seller’s Choice, says his company doesn’t tend to consider whether existing content will be valuable again in the future. But they do look at their past content to see if they can use it again as different things trend.

“For example, when Rakuten, the largest eCommerce site in Japan, first started gaining popularity, we wrote about it on our blog,” says Maff. “A year or so later, when Rakuten was trending more and more on Google, we optimized that blog article for current SEO trends and are now a top listing for the topic.”

Hamna Amjad, a Content Marketing Executive with Gig Worker, adds, “You should consider recycling those pieces of content that have already done well with your audience. Those pieces of content that became very popular are likely high-quality and relevant to your audience and can be repurposed. Your focus should be on adding value to the original content.”

3. Present the Content in New Forms with Added Information

Amjad provides a few tips on how to add value to your existing content when you repurpose it. Some ideas Amjad provides for content repurposing include:

• Create infographics. “It’s been proven that audiences are attracted more by visual content rather than plain textual format,” says Amjad. “This format works really well if you have a lot of data in your content.”
• Develop podcasts around the content or content around podcasts. Amjad points out that “podcasts are the only passive way to consume information, so more people are hopping onto this trend. Podcast transcripts can easily be converted into blog posts and vice versa.”
• Create videos based on content. Video is highly engaging and often favored by younger audiences. Amjad notes that you can easily convert a blog post or article into a video script.

4. Combine Blog Content into Longer-Form Content

Go through popular blog posts and turn them into an eBook, or gather customer testimonials and data to create a case study. You can also convert information from popular posts into large Slideshare presentations that position you as a leader in the niche.

5. Rescue Mediocre Content and Give it New Life

“In my experience, content can be split into two categories when it comes to repurposing,” says Reece Cambron, search specialist at Lucid Agency. “The first is content that has been live on the site for a while but has never quite achieved the results you had hoped for. The second is new content that is designed to serve a specific short-term purpose. In both cases, a strategic repurposing of the content can yield an improvement in rankings and organic traffic.”

So, how does Cambron give unsuccessful existing content new life?

“As a best practice, I try to repurpose a few unsuccessful content pieces each month,” says Cambron. “These are typically blogs with useful information (not just internal news or press releases) that didn’t have the success I expected.” Cambron provides a step-by-step approach for positioning this lackluster content for better SEO success.

• Start by conducting additional keyword research around the topic to see how search volume or intent may have changed since the piece was originally written
• Rework the content to optimize for these phrases.
• Adjust the metadata, H tags, and even the URL if necessary to ensure the blog is transformed into a new, better version of itself.

ALSO – 6 Situations Where Content Rewriting Can Help Your Marketing

Need Help Repurposing Your Content?

Whether you simply can’t keep up with the publishing schedule that works for your company or you need a fresh pair of eyes to figure out how to make your content shine, freelancer writers can be an invaluable resource. Check out all the ways Crowd Content freelance content writers can help you get more out of existing content.

The post Content Repurposing: How to Make the Old New to Drive SEO appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Need help writing killer category pages? Connect with skilled eCommerce content writers today!

If you’re looking to purchase a new shirt, you’re much more likely to plug “men’s shirts” into Google than “Ralph Lauren collared cotton button-down shirt in brown and blue.” The category phrases still have strong intent, though they’re a bit higher up in the funnel, and those long-tail searches are where your product pages come into play.

There are plenty of other reasons to create and optimize SEO eCommerce category pages:

• There’s lots of competition for those long-tail, bottom-of-the-funnel product keywords, which makes them difficult to rank highly in the search results
• Category pages with robust content help the search engines understand the site structure a bit better
• Even though category-type search phrases don’t convert as well as product-related keywords, you can use them to drive substantial traffic to product pages
• Traffic that hits your category pages is highly qualified and likely to convert if you run retargeting campaigns 
• Category pages are higher up in the hierarchy of the site than product pages, so they get better internal link equity

ALSO – Content Marketing for eCommerce: 6 Types of Copy You Need to Succeed

What should I include in my category page content?

Google is all about quality content instead of those keyword-stuffed gibberish pages of the past, and that includes eCommerce category pages. Many eCommerce companies, though, still create short paragraphs that are filled with keywords and shoved down at the bottom of the page below the products. These SEO footers aren’t usually meant to be read, so quality is often pretty poor.

If you want your category pages to do their job, they must:

• Meet the searcher’s intent
• Add value to the reader
• Educate, inform and engage

Let’s say someone searches for “kitchen blenders” and they land on your category page. The text should tell the reader about the different types of blenders, what features are available, what they can use the product for and, typically, what the most well-known brands are.

The category page for blenders on the Williams Sonoma site does a terrific job.

The content on your category pages should be useful to those in the early stages of the buying process, and it should also include a clear call to action. Mention leading or well-known brands, provide useful information about the products and for new or obscure products, don’t forget to mention usage occasions. Also, sprinkle lots of action verbs in your content, and stay in active voice whenever possible. 

Even if you’re not an eCommerce operation, your pages may benefit from category pages that are beneficial to the reader.

What should the content cover?

Part of satisfying search intent in today’s SEO landscape is ensuring that you cover the semantically related topics to your target keyword well.

Remember that Google is ranking semantically complete content highly these days, which means you should be crafting content that covers all the semantically related keywords and topics. 

For example, when searching Google for “LED televisions,” pages that cover some of the following keywords/topics as identified by SEMrush’s Content Template are more likely to rank highly.

These keywords can help you design sections and subheadings your description should cover. This is especially valuable when you need to create longer content. For reference, SEMrush recommends that a category page aimed at the keyword “LED televisions” would need to be longer than 1600 words to outperform Google’s current top 10 ranked pages. 

ALSO – Copywriting for SEO: How to Be Sure Your eCommerce Copy Converts and Ranks

Should I include internal links in my category page?

Yes, yes and yes. Ecommerce category pages are a perfect spot to include links to internal pages. Bloomingdale’s does a great job at internal linking, though you could argue that they could include even more.

Always link to subcategory or brand pages from your category pages and avoid links to product pages. Since products tend to come and go and newer, better models replace old ones over time, you could find yourself spending oodles of time fixing broken links and updating copy.

Need help writing product descriptions? Hire professional product description writers.

If you’re creating content for subcategory or brand pages (and you should be), be sure that these pages do link off to specific products. Visitors that have made it to these pages are further along their buying journey and more likely be evaluating products.

While pushing visitors closer to your product pages is an important use of hyperlinks, remember that you’re ultimately helping visitors learn more about their options at this stage of their journey. You should also consider linking off to more educational resources such as buying guides to educate consumers.

Here’s how Best Buy helps visitors to their TV category page to learn more about their options:

How long should my SEO eCommerce category pages be?

The experts are all over the map when it comes to the proper length for SEO eCommerce category pages. Ahrefs says they should be “short and sweet, but Backlinko insists that category pages should be at least 1,000 words long and contain your primary keyword three to five times. The truth is that there’s no one answer. Your category pages should be as long as needed to get the job done.

A good rule of thumb – take a look at what competitive eCommerce websites have on their category pages, and then do more – or do it better. This is true for the length of content and for the number of products that you display on the page. Don’t forget – if retail giants like Amazon and Walmart have category pages for women’s shirts that display a lot of products (50 or more) per page and your women’s shirt category only displays 10 products, your rankings (and traffic) may be impacted.

ALSO – How to Determine Optimal Content Lengths (and Why Longer Isn’t Always Better)

I mentioned the need for creating semantically complete content earlier in this post. Using tools like SEMrush to audit your top competitors helps you identify the topics that are being covered in Google’s top-ranked content so you can craft content that covers all the topics they do – and more.

In the example of the search for “LED televisions,” you can quickly build out a category page with multiple subheadings about screen quality, gaming and power use. That’s incredibly helpful when you’re trying to write a piece that’s at least 1,600 words long.

Where should I place the content on the page?

At the top of the page or at the bottom – it’s a question that’s up for a lot of debate. Most designers want category content to show below the product listings so as not to mess with design or user experience, but copy that’s shoved to the bottom of the page may or may not ever be read.

How to handle this dilemma? Consider putting your content at the top of the page with a Read More button or put a short sentence or two at the top – just enough for the search engine bots and readers – and then include the remainder of the content at the bottom.

You’ll need to assess what’s right for your site’s design as well as the consumer experience.

The best piece of advice we can offer is to make sure that your content is displayed in an appealing way. Great content hooks readers and boosts search rankings, but how both interact with that content makes a difference between a page that looks appealing and one that’s bound to drive consumers away. 

Try to break up your longer content into multiple sections, add imagery and leverage expandable fields to give your content the best chance of being read.

What about on-page SEO?

As discussed, there are two primary reasons for crafting high-quality category pages:

1.       Providing useful information to the consumer
2.       Giving the search engines something to grab onto to help rankings

SEO is extremely important for brand and category pages – in fact, it’s the first thing you should think about. That means really putting thought into the length you’ll need and the keywords you’ll use. There are lots of other things to think about as well, but digital marketing experts like Search Engine Journal and Credo have done a great job of covering everything you need to know to optimize your category pages properly.

To sum it up:

• Assess your competitors (which keywords, how much text, how many products, etc.)
• Determine which categories you should optimize 
• Research how many products you should display per category
• Do thorough keyword research
• Organize your keywords according to search intent, mapping each intent to a stage of the buyer’s journey
• Write semantically complete content
• Craft your metadata properly
• Include internal links and make the link text relevant
• Keep an eye on page load speed
• Ensure you have a simple navigation hierarchy – no more than three tiers

Category pages are some of the most important pages for any eCommerce site. Whether they’re landing pages for traffic from Google search or pages your visitors navigate to in order to move along their buying journey, make sure they’re adding value to your visitor and you’ll go a long way towards higher page rankings and increased sales. 

The post How to Create Killer SEO eCommerce Category Pages appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Running is for the weak, though, and you’re the kind of ambitious and determined go-getter that’s ready to win — you just need a few expert content marketing tips to help you back away from your exit strategy and get back to business.

These suggestions for best practice content marketing should do the trick.

ALSO: Find a professional content writer to power your content marketing 

1. Information as a Conversion Tactic

The public is tiring of blatantly self-serving content. When 71% of buyers turn their nose up at content that doubles as a sales pitch, you know there’s a problem. 

Audiences are smart, and they know when they’re being manipulated. If your Facebook feed is nothing but pats on the back and company-centric blurbs that only share your content, there aren’t many reasons for consumers to continue following. On the other hand, a feed that balances branded content with curated pieces offering tips, how-tos and other valuable tidbits offers value in each and every post.

Still, no business can afford to be completely altruistic, but neither can we give in to the pull of betterment through bragging (unintentional or otherwise). The trick is in finding balance.

“Educational content is definitely favored over promotional nowadays,” says Rachel Cottam, content manager at ZipBooks, “but that doesn’t mean you should give up on conversions. The whole point of a business blog is to acquire new customers. Strategically positioning calls-to-action (CTAs) within blog posts can help to drive sales from content.”

Focus on creating high-quality content in your editorial calendar that informs first, and try to work in CTAs for your products or services in a natural way.

2. Gain Traction by Being Different

Some 60% of marketers generate at least one new piece of content each and every day. That’s an unbelievable amount of collateral floating around the internet and flooding consumers’ bubble, and that makes it increasingly difficult to come up with something interesting and unique.

Ali Schwanke, CEO and Chief Marketing Strategist at Simple Strat, offers a solution that’s helped her company grow traffic from 300 visits per month to over 6,000 monthly visits in less than two years. “Be smart about the content gaps in your industry and how you can leverage them for potential traffic. Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to identify those gaps, along with keyword research to create the content with the right angle that matches what people are looking for online.”

It’s a smart yet efficient approach to content creation that ticks multiple boxes with one stroke. You’re addressing search engine optimization (SEO), which remains an important piece of the puzzle, and you’re going above and beyond the competition’s status-quo content to offer something above and beyond the rest of the noise cluttering everyone’s inbox.

ALSO: Expert Checklist: SEO for Blog Posts

3. Tweak Your Title Tags

While many tips focus on the big picture, sometimes it’s the seemingly small adjustments that have a major impact. For Rochelle Burnside, Content Marketing Specialist at BestCompany.com, there’s power in the humble title tag.

Title tags are bite-sized webpage descriptions that usually total roughly 70 characters (they can be shorter or longer, but Google and other search engines show around 70 characters). There’s just one per page, and it appears in the HTML looking something like this,  “<title>This is the Title Tag</title>”, but also pops up as the headline in your browser tab, in search results, as the placeholder in your bookmarks folder when you save a page and in other places like previews on social media when someone shares a link. It’s easy to see that the right tag can help with visibility and also enhance user experience.

“Experiment with your title tags,” suggests Burnside. “Use a previewer like the Moz title tag viewer to see how your title and meta description will look in the SERP. Use a tool like ClickFlow to measure changes in CTR, clicks, and ranking when you change the title tag. Writing titles in headline style with quantitative data (2019 Update, 4.3 Stars, etc.) and characters like brackets and parentheses are more likely to draw the eye.”

Focusing on your title tags offers a number of benefits:

1. Title tags are an important SEO ranking factor, so working your target keyword into the title can help boost your search rankings
2. Having more compelling titles can boost your clickthrough rate in both search results and in social posts. That means more traffic for your content
3. There’s some evidence that Google’s RankBrain is looking at behavioral metrics including your content’s organic clickthrough rate in its search results and ranking content with higher rates higher in results. 

These are just a few reasons why taking time to optimize your titles is a key part of successful content marketing in 2019. 

Also: Is SEO for Metadata Important to You?

4. Play the Long Game

Content marketing takes time. Looking for immediate results will only lead to disappointment and frustration, so be prepared to think long-term and wait with all the patience you don’t really have (I know, it’s crazy hard). Most experts agree it takes between 6 to 12 months to see a return from a new content marketing campaign. Results come in waves, too; while you may see spikes in traffic and number of backlinks early on, boosted search ranking and more sustainable increases don’t typically emerge until later on.

Use the SMART framework to set goals that are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable/Actionable
• Relevant
• Timely

Schwanke has another tip: “Publish consistently. This seems like a no-nonsense tip, but many companies give up before they see results simply because they didn’t stick with it.”

You’ve taken the time to design a solid content marketing strategy that will connect with your audience; make sure you give it enough time to succeed and continue publishing content regularly.

5. Create Content That Can Multitask

One-trick ponies are a waste of resources. It really is that simple. Pouring time and money into a white paper that’s only useful for one client or one month is akin to running in place and wondering why you’re not getting anywhere. Unless you can turn exhaustion into a currency, you’re going to lose.

Fight financial fatigue and make the most of your freelancers and your marketing budget by creating content that makes sense today, tomorrow and a year from now and that can be modified for use on more than one channel.

Ryan Turner founded The Email Funnels Agency (an agency that helps eCommerce companies get the most out of their email lists) and he knows more than a little about harnessing the power of search, email marketing and Facebook to grow sales. He’s a big believer in adaptable evergreen content as a means to “help you build out a comprehensive content calendar that covers all channels by getting the most out of every piece you create.” That’s huge.

“If the content is evergreen in nature it can also be utilized again later in the year or be placed inside automated marketing sequences which indoctrinate new leads and prospects coming into the business,” continues Turner. “The latter is particularly true in the email channel, and very effective for building strong relationships with potential customers using content pieces which performed well in previous campaigns.

It’s marketing best practices at work, really. You could potentially hire a freelance writer to create a pillar page about travel nursing, then transform that near-encyclopedic guide into a series of shorter blog posts, an infographic, an email campaign, a webinar and a whole host of other microcontent. Those pieces can then be distributed everywhere from LinkedIn to Instagram to your own branded app. 

Transforming or repurposing a pillar piece of content to give you multiple types of content is a great way to maximize your marketing spend, and also lets your naturally cross-promote between channels.

Andrew Clark, Marketing Strategist at Duckpin, uses monthly marketing calendars and a clear-cut template to keep that cornucopia of content organized. “Without some type of brand and content guidelines, a company runs the risk of taking a ‘shoot from the hip’ approach, which may drive away traffic and business opportunities.”

Good digital marketing relies on careful planning. Make sure your calendar specifies not only what pieces of content you’ll create and promote, but also what types of content and where you’ll promote them.

ALSO: Top 6 Challenges in Content Writing for Agencies

6. Use Data to Fuel Every Part of Your Best Practice Content Marketing

Building on Clark’s warning against shooting from the hip, it’s vital to understand how dangerous acts of random marketing can be. Spontaneity is great if you want to surprise your date with a trip to the drive-in or get a pixie cut instead of a blunt bob (actually, you may want to give that one some extra though too), but marketing is a strategy for a reason. Use data to create, monitor and measure your plan and you’ll be better positioned for success.

“Two things truly drive my work in content marketing,” says certified social media marketer and strategist and public relations consultant Sierra Marling of Semper Public Relations, “analytics & user personas. Whenever I utilize platform analytics, I try to align whatever I am posting with what is performing well.”

“For example, videos typically get more results with clients with a Millennial (or younger) following. However I have a specific client whose target audience prefers informational articles and simple photography… That’s why you have to concentrate not only on your post-performance, but you have to also use your analytics data to create detailed user personas that will inform your decisions online.”

There’s one content marketing tip that reigns supreme over all others, and that’s authenticity. You won’t ever win over your audience by trying to be someone else. Consumers have built-in lie detectors that wail at 150 decibels when a brand goes off the rails. If you’re a clothing company that constantly yammers on and on about sustainability and your CEO is caught racking up a couple hundred trips per year on his private jet, you’ve got a messaging problem.

So, make like Dove and “Be Real”. Take all of these tips on board and figure out how you can craft a killer marketing strategy while still honoring everything that makes your brand special. This is how you get ahead in 2019 and stay there.

Have any other content marketing tips you think we should cover? Let us know in the comments.

The post 6 Content Marketing Tips That Ensure You’re Following Best Practices for 2019 appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But that doesn’t mean SEO for blog posts is something you can ignore. Check out what the experts are doing to ensure viable SEO while also engaging target audiences and driving conversions.

ALSO – Hire Blog Post Writers to Craft SEO Friendly Content

1. Blog Content Answers User Questions

Brooks Manley, an SEO Lead for Engenius, says that comprehensive content is a key to good blog post rankings in 2019.

“This doesn’t mean just touching on the subject you write on, but answering every question a user may have on it,” says Manley. “For instance, if you write a blog on how to kill roaches, you need to cover the different kinds of roaches, what products to use, where to buy the products, etc. Google wants to see queries answered with a single click, and posts that do that will be rewarded in 2019.”

You might start with one focus keyword that you want to rank for after doing your keyword research, but that should inform you as you learn more about the search intent behind that keyword.  You’ll discover what questions and related topics are semantically linked to your targeted search queries, which will help guide you when you start writing.

2. Complete Content that Covers Numerous Subtopics

Ryan Underwood, an SEO Specialist & Digital Marketing Executive at YourParkingSpace.co.uk also points to complete content as a critical factor in landing at the top of the search engine results page.

According to Underwood, it’s not just about answering all the right questions. You also have to do the keyword research to understand the various subtopics individuals are interested in when it comes to your main subject.

“Google wants to see that your content is covering a topic in-depth,” says Underwood. “We make sure we show Google this by including subtopic terms. These are terms that are slightly different but are associated with the main topic. For example, if we were writing an article about Harry Potter, subtopic terms could include Hogwarts, Snape, Quidditch, etc. The more of these terms you include, the more Google recognizes that your content covers as many points of interest as possible, and you rise in the rankings.”

Underwood adds, “An easy way to find Subtopic Terms is to type your target keyword into Google Images. A list of words and phrases will appear between the search bar and images. Pick a few of these and scatter them throughout your content.”

Just don’t get too heavy in peppering your page with these types of terms without ensuring they fit in an organic way into content. Keyword stuffing is never a good idea, and you’ll see in some of the expert tips below that user experience is important for SEO. Keywords are still important, but you should aim at creating complete content, not aiming for specific keyword density.

3. Use of Multiple Types of Media to Tell the Story

When talking about search engine optimization, many content marketers often think solely in terms of text on page. But that’s a mistake in the modern market, where people expect to see narratives conveyed via a variety of media.

Luke Wester, Digital Marketing Analyst at eCommerce company Miva, Inc., says, “What’s working for SEO in 2019 are visuals that help tell the story of your blog post. A large portion of users are skim-readers, and visuals make the content easily digestible. In addition to understanding the point of your post quicker, users also tend to stay longer, which increases key metrics like time on site. Basically, when you’re going over your SEO checklist for your next blog, make sure you include visuals that help tell the story of your blog.”

4. Video On Pages to Rank Higher

David Sanchez of Mammoth Web Solutions also picks up on the need to encourage more time on your pages. After all, behavioral stats such as time on page, bounce rates and whether someone clicks deeper into your site can all impact your RankBrain score. Which in turn impacts your position in the SERPs — Google wants to provide links to pages consumers find helpful and engaging, and a past history of that type of behavior looks good for your site.

“Use video,” says Sanchez. “Video increases length of time on page, which in turn causes increased rankings.”

5. Authentic Content

You know what else keeps readers on the page? Authenticity they feel like they can connect with.

Sanchez says, “Be intensely honest and personal. To quote Seth Godin, this is the Connection Economy. If people feel connected to you, they’ll trust you, engage more, share your content more, and, in turn, your rankings will increase.”

6. Optimized for Mobile and User Experience

You shouldn’t need an SEO expert to create this box for you, but here it is. Sanchez points out, “Your site cannot take more than two seconds to load anymore, even on cell phones. This is no longer optional.”

The truth is that internet users have many other options, and they won’t hesitate to tap or click their way to them. And with more people accessing the internet on mobile devices than on desktop devices today, you can’t afford not to invest in responsive website design and providing a mobile-friendly experience. Plus, Google’s mobile-first initiative that launched in 2018 means that sites that don’t perform well on mobile get ranked down in the SERPs regardless of other factors.

7. Authoritative Content

Sarah Blocksidge, Web Producer at Sixth City Marketing, reminds content marketers that SEO for blog posts and other content in 2019 relies heavily on authority. “In 2019, for our agency, it’s all about establishing authority. So we are writing informative blog posts on topics that potential clients might be searching for.”

Blocksidge and her agency aren’t alone in chasing authority for online marketing. Google has signaled repeatedly that authority content is important, going so far as to publish its own E-A-T guidelines aimed at helping marketers create more authoritative content.

For a more detailed look at this, check out our article on creating E-A-T content.

Google is rewarding pages that do well according to their E-A-T guidelines with higher placement in the SERPs.  This usually means your site’s posts have expert bylines, bios, links from expert sources, and high-quality content. This is especially true if you’re writing blog posts in certain niches, such as medical, financial or legal. Google (and users) expect to see content that offers in-depth answers and comes from people with the professional experience to back up their words.

8. Content Aligns with Business Goals

The SEO Manager at Brand Buddha reminds content marketers that we’re never writing solely for the search engines. Yes, on-page SEO elements are critical to finding your audience and attracting them to your page, but there’s always a danger in chasing metrics for the sake of those metrics. Make sure you’re putting SEO tips to use in ways that align with business goals. Brand Buddha’s SEO Manager advises “communication with the sales team to come up with content that serves them better.”

If your content doesn’t align with business goals, it’s also possible that it might feel out of place to your visitors in context with the rest of your site. If this happens, your behavioral metrics like time on site and bounce rate might suffer, which could also end up impacting your rankings.

9. Link Internally a Few Times

Don’t forget about the content you’ve already generated. Just because you wrote it two months or even a year ago doesn’t mean there’s no SEO value for those blog posts. Doing some internal linking from new posts to old ones can help older posts get more eyes on them and boost its rankings. Consider:

• Linking internally to a couple of relevant pages or blog posts to keep readers on your website (and increase those critical behavioral metrics)
• Make your internal links contextual with the article it’s in and keyword rich with the targeted keywords of the destination post. This can help pass link equity to the destination page, which can boost its rankings.
• Updating older blog posts with keywords that are performing today to drive more new traffic to your content “backlist”
• Finding ways to repurpose older content; for example, if you’ve answered a lot of questions about a specific topic in older posts, create a pillar post that addresses the overarching topic, includes relevant keywords and links out to your other posts

Jeremy Harrison of Hustle Life believes internal linking is critical for every blog post’s SEO. “I’ve seen several sites boost rankings and average time on site by refreshing their internal links. I can’t stress enough – when you publish a new post – make sure you’re internal linking is on point.”

10. Link Externally a Few Times

While it’s really important to sculpt your site’s internal links, don’t neglect to link to authority sites in your blog posts. You’ll want to do this for a few reasons:

• Links to authority sites where readers can dive deeper into topics you cover quickly adds value to your readers
• Having links to sites considered authorities in your space can associate your site and blog post with those sites in search engines. There’s some evidence this can help your content rank after you publish
• When linking to authority sources, let them know you did. Often they’ll promote your post and their contribution there, which helps you get some visitors, social shares, and possibly even some backlinks.

It’s important not to go crazy with outbound links in your posts, but when done properly, they can add real value to your posts.

11. Meta Description and Other Tags are SEO-Friendly

Keywords aren’t just for the text content that readers see. Remember to include your keywords in title tags, image alt tags and meta descriptions. When possible, incorporate secondary or long-tail keywords into these locations too — search engine bots crawl all of this information, and when you include keywords here, it points to increased relevance. Title tags and alt image tags are direct ranking factors, so it’s critical you do this.

Including focus keywords in your meta descriptions has an indirect impact on search rankings as well, since search engines highlight keywords in the descriptions that they show in search results. This can boost your organic clickthrough rate, which not only gets you more clicks, it also serves as an indirect ranking factor through Google’s RankBrain. If you want to rank in Google search results, doing well with RankBrain is key.

For a full look at this, check out our article on SEO for metadata.

12. Schema Markup and Structured Data

It’s always advisable to look at your post to see which schema markups and structured data formats you can include on your content for a variety of reasons. While there’s no conclusive evidence that schema and structured data has a direct impact on rankings or getting featured in Google’s featured snippets (position 0 as its often called), many SEO experts have found that to be the case.

At very least, schema helps search engines better understand what your content is and that has a number of benefits including improving how your link appears in search engines.

By setting markup like the one for articles, Google may be able to pull additional fields such as adding the “last updated” field or including an image when displaying your post in their search results. That can make your post more attractive to searchers, which can boost your organic clickthrough rate and help your rankings.

For a full list of marking up your blog posts, check out Google’s guide to article markup here.

Similarly, consider using the FAQ or how-to structured data types when creating your next blog posts. At the very least, Google looks to content formatted like this when pulling content for their FAQ and How-to featured snippets, so even if structured data itself doesn’t help you get placement in the snippet, following their formatting guidelines might help.

13. CTA or Encouragement to Engage

Finally, encourage your audience to like, share, link to or engage with your blog posts. This type of engagement can be a boon to SEO for blog posts in numerous ways. First, linking to or sharing your blog posts on social media creates more backlinks and referring domains to your content. That’s a major factor that can increase your performance in the SERPs. Next, the more time someone spends engaging with your content, the better your behavioral metrics are. Again, that’s good for search engine placement.

To see how social media affects SEO, read Social Media: How Does it Impact Your SEO in 2019?

Get Content that Enhances SEO for Blog Posts Today

If you’re ready to publish blog content that serves you well on both the sales and SEO fronts, consider working with the teams at Crowd Content. Whether you want someone to manage the entire process or you just want to find a writer or two who can craft blog content that helps you move toward success with business goals, we can help.

The post Expert Checklist: SEO for Blog Posts appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Think of it like setting up a brick-and-mortar shop: you can have the best store out there, but if you don’t have signs, an address on the map or other ways for potential customers to know what’s inside, you’re not going to get people coming into the store.

For freelance writers, this need creates opportunity: businesses need high-quality articles, blog posts, city pages, website content and other types of SEO-optimized written content to help build out their search engine marketing strategy. Even the best written content won’t deliver the search traffic businesses need if it hasn’t been optimized for SEO, including the proper use of keywords, solving searcher intent and more.

Some companies leverage in-house talent to bridge the gap, but many now recognize the value in specialization of labor and are looking for highly skilled SEO content writers to help drive their content strategy. It’s no easy task: SEO writing takes discipline, focus and the ability to shift gears or change topics on demand. But for writers with the raw talent and willingness to improve their craft, SEO writing offers substantial opportunities.

Ready for a crash course? Here’s how you can become an SEO content writer.

Writing Is the Foundation

First thing’s first: Make sure you’ve got the writing skills to pay the bills. (Yes. I do like cheesy sayings.)

In practice, this means you’re able to create high-quality content that’s free of grammatical and spelling errors, draws in and engages readers and quickly communicates key points.

When it comes to SEO writing, there’s a tendency to think of it as more mechanical and less creative than other types of content, but the truth is that brands now recognize the value of SEO-driven articles and blog posts that draw in potential consumers with great storytelling and subtle brand positioning.

If you’re already comfortable with the basics — great. If you think you can use some improvement, check out our Writer University for actionable lessons to get your writing where it needs to be. There are also plenty of other resources, including Poynter University, Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL), and my personal favorite, Minion Fogarty’s Grammar Girl. You should also subscribe to AP’s online stylebook and do a bit of studying.

For help with content questions, writing structure or workflow you’ll find plenty of forums and writing groups online. One of the most popular is WriteWords; the site offers everything tips and tricks articles to job opportunities to writing groups that can help evaluate and critique your work.

You’re going to have to do all the groundwork on getting your writing, grammar, logic, flow and structure up to speed. This article is about how to add to those skills by learning how to take the really compelling, engaging content you write and adding value by optimizing it for SEO.

ALSO – 10 Things to Know Before You Start Writing for a Client

ALSO– Copywriting for SEO

Understanding Searcher Intent

Modern SEO demands more than simply using keywords in your writing. It’s critical that you understand what the most relevant information is to satisfy someone plugging in those keywords.

The days when keyword-stuffed content (Read: “I love peanut butter sandwiches because peanut butter sandwiches have a lot of peanut butter in the sandwich.”) are gone. Today’s search engine algorithms like Google’s RankBrain look at the behavioral metrics of content such as bounce rate and dwell time to determine how actual readers view your content and whether it’s deserving of a high placement in the search engine results.

Start by reviewing the set of keywords you’re given, and then try to put yourself in the searcher’s shoes. Let that guide you as you write.

Someone who’s thinking about getting a new dog might search for these keyword terms:

• Best dogs for families with kids
• Cost of canine veterinary care
• Dog training

While these are more likely queries from someone considering a career in the veterinary field:

• Canine anatomy
• Common diseases in dogs
• Veterinary schools

And someone who’s shopping for their dog might use these terms:

• Cheap dog collars
• Best doggy doors
• Soft dog beds

Though the topic — dogs — remains the same, the people plugging in those groups of search terms were looking for something very different and had unique searcher intents. Make sure you come to that same type of understanding before you head for your keyboard.

Good SEO-optimized content should focus on solving searcher intent instead of simply slotting in specific keywords. Focus on doing that through great storytelling, and your content should rank well.

The A to Z of Keywords

Keywords, key phrases, targets — call them whatever you want. But rest assured, they drive SEO content. If you’re an SEO copywriter, chances are assignments will come complete with keywords designed to help them perform well across multiple search engines.

Types of Keywords

Most clients will provide you with several different types of keywords. Though they may look the same and have a similar purpose, the way you use them in your copy differs.

1. Primary Keywords: These are the most important keywords for SEO. They typically have a high search volume and low competition, though you’ll also see clients rely on long-tail keywords — those that are more specific and have a lower search volume but a much more focused searcher intent.

2. Secondary Keywords: These keywords are very relevant to your primary keyword, though they typically have a lower search volume. Think of them as keywords that support the primary.

3. Semantically Related Keywords: These terms are related in some fashion to your primary keywords, though they go beyond mere synonyms. Often referred to as LSI keywords, these indicate topics that would naturally be included in an article about your primary keyword. Sticking with the canine theme, an article about “dog training” might have LSI keywords that include “potty training puppies,” “dog whisperer,” and “interpreting dog behavior.” Semantic keywords might indicate subtopics you should cover.

Keyword Placement

There’s no definitive way to use keywords, and how you will use them varies depending on the type of content you’re writing. But, here’s an example of instructions for a standard blog post:

1. Primary Keyword: Include in the page title, meta description, H1, at least one H2 and early in the body text.

2. Secondary Keyword: Include in an H2 and in the body text for that section.

3. Semantic Keywords: Include as many as you can at least once in the body text.

Each client may have their own philosophy on keyword placement, so be sure to ask questions before you start writing.

Occasionally you’ll have clients that ask for each keyword to be used multiple times or to reach a certain keyword density, but this is becoming less common. The approach outlined above lets you get your keywords in while still focusing primarily on writing for the user and solving search intent.

Stop Words and Such

Trust me — the time will come when you’re handed keywords that are grammatically incorrect or very difficult to work into the content, especially when you’re dealing with SEO-optimized local content (dentists New York, plumbers near me, etc.).

Making slight variations, adding/removing punctuation or changing a keyword from singular to plural should have no impact on how Google reads the keywords. You’re also able to add what Google calls “stop words” without impacting the recognizability of the keyword.

Don’t be mistaken — Google has gotten really, really good at figuring out what the actual keywords are meant to be despite everything else going on around them, but you are bound to run into clients who are adamant that their researched keyword terms can’t be altered.

Each of your future clients will have their own rules on what to do (or not to do) with the keywords they provide you, and it’s in your best interests to adhere to what they say — even if it may not be in their best interest SEO-wise. If what you know to be true conflicts with what the client says, simply make your point, send them some links to authority sites on the subject and then get back to work.

Keyword Research

While it’s not very common, clients sometimes ask writers to do keyword research for content they write. There are a number of tools that can help you do this including Google’s Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, SEMrush Keyword Magic, Moz Keyword Explorer, etc. You can also use Neil Patel’s new UberSuggest tool to get keyword ideas and analyze traffic, and LSI Graph to generate semantically related keywords — and they’re both free. It just doesn’t get better than that.

What you’re looking for is a keyword or group of keywords that have a reasonable search volume, show a clear intent you can address with your content and ideally isn’t overly competitive.

How do you know if a search term is competitive? Look at the existing top search results for the search term, and audit the resulting content. How long is it? Does it include lots of data and sources? Are semantically related topics covered? If the content does all these things well, it might be tough to rank higher.. But, if they’re lacking in all these areas, you have a good shot at outranking them.

Keep in mind that keyword research is generally executed by SEO professionals and not writers or editors. If you’re going to take this responsibility on, think about how you’re going to charge the client — whether it be an hourly rate or by the keyword — so you get compensated for all your time.

Keyword Formulas

On very large projects such as writing product descriptions or city pages, clients often won’t have a specific keyword for every assignment they order. Often, what they’ll do instead is ask writers to create their own keywords based on a simple formula involving broad keywords.

For example, if a client wanted city pages for a car rental business they might give writers this formula to build keywords:

Primary – “CITY NAME” + “Car Rentals”

Secondary – “Best Cars for” + CITY NAME”

For product descriptions, it usually looks something like this:

“BRAND” + “MODEL NAME” + “DESCRIPTOR” + “PRODUCT”

Formulaic keywords are simple to work with, but just make sure you get all the requirements you need from the client before you start.

Why You Should Care About Featured Snippets

Here’s the hard truth — 75 percent of users never click past the first page of search engine results.

Featured snippets in the form of instant answers, knowledge graphs and videos are stealing traffic from the top organic results.

Ahrefs reports that 12.29% of all search queries have featured snippets in their search results. On these searches, the featured snippet captures 8.6% of clicks, which takes away from the top ranked search result. On the flip side, Inc.com reports that if you can earn a place in the featured snippet, your page traffic could increase 20-30% and your organic CTR could go up by 677%.

Combine that with the 70 to 80 percent of users ignoring paid advertisements and the reality sets in: If brands can’t get their SEO content in the top 10 search results or featured snippets (position 0), almost no one is clicking through and their competitors will take most of their potential audience.

What you can (and should) do is optimize for featured snippets as you write. There are three basic types:

Paragraph Snippet

Listicle Snippet

Table Snippet

There’s lots to learn about writing content that Google will consider for a featured snippet, and we can’t fit it all in here. But it’s fair to say that most featured snippets are the result of a searcher asking a question. You just need to supply the answers.

Answer the Public is a great (free) tool to use. Simply plug in your topic or keyword, and it will spit out ideas in the form of questions:

Read this article from the Content Marketing Institute to get more advice on how to rank for featured snippets. This HubSpot article also gives some great advice.

The Importance of Metadata

Start strong. Searchers don’t see much of your article in search results — in most cases, all they’ll see is the title and meta description. The result? Your title and meta description need to grab attention and compel users to click through.  

There’s been a lot written about how to write engaging titles, and there are even (free) tools to measure their effectiveness. Though the data may be out of date, this 2017 study conducted by BuzzSumo is a great starting point for learning how to craft good titles. Once you’ve got the hang of it, use CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to see how well you’ve done. Ideally, you’ll want a score of 60 or higher.

The meta description is a short blurb — anywhere from 160 to 320 characters, depending on where Google stands on the subject at the time.

The sole purpose for meta descriptions is to get searchers to click on the link. That’s it. You don’t have a lot of words to use, so what you write has to be concise, informative, compelling and reflective of the article or post it points to. Shopify has a really informative post on the subject, a does Neil Patel.

Finding the Right Fit

No beginner’s guide to SEO copywriting would be complete without a few tips on where to get you first job and where to go for help if you need it.

Looking for a job? Great content marketers are hiring. Crowd Content is a great place to start — we offer jobs for writers of varying skill levels and specializations along with opportunities to work directly with clients if they like what you create. In addition, our quality rating system means that when you write great content you get more chances to write for better pay. It’s a win-win.

SEO Writing Jobs Going Forward

SEO is here to stay. Companies need content writers who can deliver fresh, creative articles that grab user attention and satisfy search engine algorithms. If you can master everything I talked about here and stay current with SEO trends, your skills will always be in demand.

The post Crash Course: How to Become an SEO Content Writer appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

SEO professionals always have optimization on their minds. Ensuring their websites, content, and blog posts are as optimized as possible is critical to their success.

And, we’ve known for a long time that blog titles are a key element of optimizing a blog post. Brian Dean even states that they’re the most important on-page SEO factor. They’re a ranking factor on their own, and in recent years, they’ve become important for other reasons.

If you’re an experienced SEO professional or SEO content writer, you already know the importance of creating engaging titles and meta descriptions for your blog posts. And if you aren’t, I’m going to explain why blog titles are really important.

What Makes a Blog Title SEO-Friendly?

There are a few things to consider when it comes to blog titles and SEO. The truth is that most of the things that made a blog title SEO-friendly before 2019 still work. Most notably:

1. Keep titles under 60 characters
2. Include your primary keyword in the title
3. Write an engaging title that encourages searchers to click on your link in the Google results

A title that does all this is still likely to help you rank. The biggest difference now is that Google is looking beyond the title itself, and is now looking at the behavioral metrics it drives through RankBrain.

RankBrain helps Google determine which pages are the best to display in their search results, and it does that by seeing how users interact with your page and its metadata as it’s shown in search results. It’s critical your titles are optimized for this.

So, in 2019, do all of the things listed above, but also pay attention to the impact your titles have on Organic Clickthrough Rate (OCTR), Dwell Time, and Bounce Rate. If a title is underperforming, it’s time to test out a different title. Your titles need more than just keywords, they need to be optimized to improve these behavioral metrics..

What Makes an SEO Title Clickable?

Optimizing your title for your target keyword is great, but what makes a title more clickable? There is no magic answer to this question.

You need to focus on a strategy that mixes SEO-friendliness with curiosity, intrigue and a little emotion. The goal of your SEO title is to persuade a user into checking out your material. A good title will accomplish this by making a user curious and tapping into their emotions.

Keep in mind, your SEO title (meta title) can be different than the on-page title for your blog post.

So, what does a clickable SEO title look like?

• The message behind the title is based on the intent of the search term you’re targeting and optimized to appeal to users searching for it.
• It’s short. Long titles often get cut off by Google, making them less effective.
• It should include your main keyword if you want your content to show up on Google for specific keywords. However, keywords should be used naturally, and there’s nothing wrong with stop words like “in, an, it, etc.”
• The value proposition should be clear. If you’re solving a problem, try suggesting that your blog post has the answers they need. But, make sure your title accurately depicts the depth of your content or you might get a high bounce rate.

And be careful not to fall for this trap either.

If Google detects your title doesn’t represent the content properly, it’ll change it on its own. This is bad for SEO, and will often diminish the value of your post.

In the end, clickable titles are based on human psychology. If someone feels that a post can solve their problem, there is a good chance they will click on it to find the answers they are looking for. That’s why understanding searcher intent is critical to titles.

Keyword Focused Titles Alone Aren’t Enough

Human psychology plays a large part in whether someone clicks your link or not. I mentioned it above, but the power of curiosity should never be overlooked.

Think about it like this.

Most searches start when a potential customer has a problem. The first thing they’ll do is search for that problem using a keyword. In this scenario, let’s say they broke their glasses frame and want to piece them back together.

Logically, they type something like “fix broken glasses frame arm.” Here is a glimpse at the results:

So, which one do you choose? The video has a direct title and may be helpful because it’s visual, but the best and worst ways guide will show you several methods. As a reader, the extra choices draw you in.

The words you choose to accompany your keywords are important. Choose the wrong words, and you can waste a perfectly good blog post. In the above example, all of the titles focused on searcher intent in some form, which makes it more likely a searcher will click on their link.

Okay. What words are best?

There is no single answer to this question. You have to understand the type of content that you’re writing, and who you’re writing it for.

Are you writing a guide? Your title should suggest you have the solution.

Are you trying to inform your audience? Try establishing why your topic is urgent and worth reading.

When your title appears in Google results, as shown above, it’s really acting as a headline for your post. And if the idea of writing strong headlines makes you cry a little inside, don’t worry, this next section was written just for you.

Headline Enhancing Tools Exist – Use Them!

Even some of the best content writers struggle with headlines. If this sounds familiar, there are tools you can use to improve your headline game.

I like the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer because it breaks the anatomy of your headlines down like DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man.

I made this headline up, but you can see that it scored reasonably well. If we look deeper at this headline, we can see that it had a strong mix of emotional and power words.

The tool also looks at your title length when determining your score. This feature is great as you can identify when your titles that are too long.

For WordPress websites, I recommend checking out Yoast’s SEO plugin. The plugin will analyze your titles and posts for things like:

• Focus keywords
• SEO-friendly meta descriptions
• Proper length
• Keyword density
• Internal linking
• Readability

And best of all, both of these tools are free. So, you have no reason not to use them when it comes to creating SEO-friendly blog titles.

SEO Titles Take Practice

At the end of the day, SEO titles aren’t rocket science. Know your keyword, the intent behind it, and write a title that your audience resonates with. That’s the key to any successful SEO content, not just titles.

Just remember, creating high-performing SEO titles requires proper keyword research, a certain understanding of human behavior, and probably a bit of testing.

And some days you may feel like this:

But if you keep writing, improving, and plan for the long haul, you’ll do just fine.

The post What Does an SEO-Friendly Blog Title Look Like in 2019? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

While the days of stuffing the meta keywords field full of search terms you’d love to rank for are long gone, metadata still impacts your rankings in a few key ways.

Title tags have always been an important ranking factor on their own, and including your primary keyword naturally in the title is an important aspect of optimization.

While meta descriptions have not been a direct ranking factor since Google launched RankBrain in 2015, behavioral metrics such as bounce rate, dwell time and organic clickthrough rate (OCTR) are key. Google pulls the page title and meta description to display in its search results, so both of them are now playing an active role in how RankBrain evaluates your site.

Metadata influences these behavioral metrics in a few ways:

1. OCTR – If you achieve a great OCTR, RankBrain will see that searchers find your metadata compelling enough to click on and might reward you with higher search rankings.
2. Bounce rate – If your bounce rate is too high, RankBrain might interpret it as searchers are not finding the content they expect based on your metadata, leading to lower placements in the search results.
3. Dwell time – This is the inverse of bounce rate. If searchers spend a lot of time on your site after clicking a link, that indicates to RankBrain that they find your content a good match for what they searched for.

These are the three primary factors that influence RankBrain’s “Relevance Score.” If your metadata does well with these factors, RankBrain should reward you with better search results.

While good metadata helps you rank, it’s also intrinsically important in encouraging searchers to click on your links and drive traffic. It acts as a guide to search engine crawlers and your audience, letting them know exactly what the pages are all about.

Think of your title and meta description as ad copy — it needs to entice a click and communicate what your page is all about.

But what does good metadata look like?

Let’s take a look at that.

A Quick Recap of Metadata Elements

There are two primary metadata elements that impact your SEO — title and description. These are the elements you should optimize for when trying to improve your SEO through metadata.

ALSO: The Do’s and Don’ts Of Metadata

If you’d like a more technical, in-depth look at these elements, be sure to check out the w3school page on the Meta Tag.

Title Tag

The title tag specifies your web page’s title. Potential visitors see this in a few places, including search engine result pages and when your content is shared in social media (if you’re not using Open Graph tags).

Note: try to keep titles to under 60 characters, as Google only shows about that many in the search results.

As mentioned, the title tag is the only metadata element that’s a direct ranking factor, and as such, it should be optimized for the primary keyword. Typically, this means you’ll include the keyword in the title in a natural way, including using stop words and punctuation to ensure it flows well.

The title also needs to be written in an engaging way that compels people to click on it.

In the Google search result below, Impact Branding does a good job compelling searchers to click with their title. They’ve also integrated the keyword “social media conversations” into their title. Though that’s not the only reason it’s helped them rank on the first page of Google results for that keyword, it’s certainly important.

What makes a strong title? Focus on the following:

1. Keep it succinct – less than 60 characters ideally
2. Use words that are action focused and elicit emotional responses
3. Follow a title convention that readers are familiar with such as lists, reviews, how-to and questions
4. Make sure the title connects well to your content

Meta Description

Your meta description is a short summary of the page. Similar to titles, descriptions get used in search results and social media previews. Google shows roughly 160 characters of a meta description in its results, so most marketers focus on keeping theirs under that count.

While not a direct ranking factor, the description lets you really sell your content to encourage clicks and boost OCTR, helping you with RankBrain. When displayed in the search results, Google even highlights any matching search terms in your meta description, increasing the likelihood of you capturing a click. If possible, include your target keyword (and secondary keywords) in your meta descriptions to give your OCTR a boost.

Here’s an example of Google doing that for the search term “social media conversation.”

The same advice we discussed for titles also applies to meta descriptions, but consider these as well:

1. Make sure you succinctly describe what your page is about, while piquing readers’ interest
2. Include a call to action encouraging searchers to click on the link
3. Include keywords you expert to rank for to help searchers know your content is a match for that term
4. Use a variety of keywords you expect to rank for and not just your primary keyword

Tesla delivers a strong meta description that tells us exactly what the brand’s website is all about in just a few words and compels searchers to click:

What happens if your meta description isn’t succinct and doesn’t accurately reflect what your page is about? Google might ignore your description and generate its own based on the content on your page.

That’s not an ideal outcome, so make sure you put lots of care into your descriptions.

As you come to terms with how important your SEO metadata is in terms of ranking, know you don’t have to go it alone. The internet is brimming with tools to help you test, analyze and audit to keep you on the right track.

Tools to Help You Optimize Metadata SEO

SEO metadata optimization ultimately comes down to working on your meta title and descriptions, and there are a number of great tools that help you do that. We’ve chosen six of the top choices that we just couldn’t do without.

1. ClickFlow

ClickFlow is an awesome tool that lets you test the effectiveness of your metadata so you can make minor adjustments for huge rewards.

Essentially, it lets you test metadata variations and see which one delivers the highest OCTR. All you need to do is connect your Google Search Console to the tool, and you’ll be able to start optimizing. ClickFlow organizes and manages all your metadata experiments, which is a huge benefit, as metadata experiments can be a pretty manual exercise otherwise.

The dashboard lets you organize all your experiments and get some high-level performance metrics. It’s pretty easy to prove your efforts are successful if you can show increased clicks, OCTR and revenue increases.

The beauty of this is that you get to grow your organic traffic without having to keep building lots of links or producing lots more content, as simply increasing your OCTR helps you with RankBrain. Subsequently, you can boost your rankings.

Besides — what marketer ever said no to more clicks?

2. Google Analytics/Google Search Console

This might be an obvious one, but these are two important tools for metadata optimization.

Google Analytics is a totally free web analytics service that lets you analyze a website’s traffic. It’s pretty encompassing, and when used in conjunction with Google Search Console (also free), it can help you monitor your organic clickthrough rate.

While not as structured as ClickFlow,  you can use it to work out how effective your titles and descriptions are by tracking a page’s OCTR.

To access this, navigate to Aquisition > Search Console > Landing Pages.

Here you’ll see how your pages are performing in Google’s organic search. By making changes to your page’s metadata and tracking changes to your OCTR, you can create your own metadata tests manually that are similar to ClickFlow’s.

Plus, Analytics will let you see which pages have the highest number of organic impressions. Finding a page with a large number of impressions can yield the best results if you successfully boost your OCTR.

While clickthrough rate alone can help you gauge how effective or ineffective your metadata is, Google Search Console also comes with an HTML Improvements section that flags potential problems with your title tags and meta descriptions. This includes missing titles or descriptions or duplicate titles and descriptions. I’ve focused on how you can improve existing metadata so far, but missing or duplicate metadata is a bigger issue and extremely low-hanging fruit.

3. Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are necessary to keep organized if you’re manually experimenting with metadata.

Make sure you create a spreadsheet that tracks:

1. Current metadata
2. Test metadata
3. Current Impressions
4. Current Clicks
5. Current OCTR
6. Test Impressions
7. Test Clicks
8. Test OCTR
9. Current search rankings
10. Test search rankings

All of this data comes from Analytics and Search Console, but keeping it organized lets you track the results of your experiments. It also lets you track titles and descriptions in case you need to switch back to them.

Any spreadsheet tool will work for this — Excel, Google Sheets, Open Office, Libra, etc.

4. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer is a great  tool to experiment with your meta title tags. A title tag works a lot like a headline, and it’s your chance to grab the attention of searchers in the SERPs. A title tag must be compelling and direct, and it needs to succinctly and powerfully explain what the content is all about.

As this is not always easy, it’s a good idea to use a testing tool that lets you analyze your data and results.

Headline Analyzer evaluates your headlines and gives you a score from between 1 to 100, with 100 being a perfect score. (Not sure if anyone has ever achieved that though!).

It evaluates your word choice, title length, keywords included and more. In general, if you can earn a good score with Headline Analyzer, your title should perform well.

Note: This tool suggests you have a minimum of 55 characters in your headlines; just make sure you don’t go too far above that or Google may truncate your title in search results.

This tool is free to use. If you want to use CoSchedule’s broader set of tools that let you organize your marketing and social media, packages start out at only $80 per month.

5. SEMrush

SEMrush is a premium search engine marketing suite that’s designed to boost your marketing efforts. Whether you’re running PPC campaigns, social media campaigns, or want to increase traffic organically, it’s pretty handy to have by your side.

There are many ways it can benefit your metadata SEO game, but one of my favorite features is the SEO audit. The tool scans all your web pages and identifies any that are lacking metadata or have duplicate content.

Many online marketers either sometimes forget to add meta descriptions to new pages or have inherited sites with missing metadata. In either case, adding metadata to a page that doesn’t have it is a big opportunity.

Here’s a resource on how to perform an SEO audit with SEMrush and nail your metadata.

SEMrush is a paid service, but if you’re looking for a tool that will audit your site’s metadata in a similar fashion, check out Screaming Frog, which offers a free plan that lets you audit up to 500 pages.

6. Crowd Content

Writing meta descriptions and title tags isn’t easy, especially when you have a large number of pages and want to run experiments.

Crafting compelling, persuasive bite-sized pieces of content that convince searchers to click on your web page at scale is tricky.

ALSO – Getting Metadata With Your Orders

This is where a service such as Crowd Content proves useful. Home to versatile, professional metadata writers, it lets you connect with a writer who knows what makes internet users tick. They’ll acquaint themselves with your business and your content, and then deliver compelling metadata that hits the mark with your target audience.

Wrapping It Up

Title tags and meta descriptions remain the most important metadata elements in 2019, and they should continue to form a key part of your SEO strategy moving forward. The overall role of metadata SEO has changed over the years, but it’s key that you continue to nail these two.

With RankBrain using behavioral metrics such as organic clickthrough rates to determine how useful and relevant a piece of content is to the end user, you need to leverage the power of title tags and meta description to persuade Google and the searcher that you’ve got the best piece of content.

The tools I’ve mentioned here should help you get organized and focused on improving your metadata’s SEO.

Have any other tools you think I should have covered? Please let me know in the comments below.

The post Is SEO for Metadata Important to You? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

First, it must include strong keyword optimization and content that captures the intent of what consumers are looking for online and capitalizes on and satisfies that intent. If your copy does this, you benefit from:

• More time spent on page
• Higher rankings in the search engines, which in turn leads to increased organic traffic

A second factor of strong eCommerce copy is that it provides the consumer with all information required to make a decision at whatever stage of the customer journey they’re at, whether they’re just doing research or ready to make a purchase. The goal is to encourage them to take the next step towards a purchase.

Ultimately, great eCommerce copy is copy that converts at a high rate.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”tWo4N” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Great #eCommerce copy is copy that has a high conversion rate. [/ctt]

Devin Stagg, the marketing manager for Pupford, an eCommerce dog food and supplements brand, puts it like this: “Even if you get organic traffic from Google, the user experience is what will get you the purchase, and that is all that matters.”

But how do you combine these two factors — strong optimization and user-centric content that converts — on the page? In our experience, the easiest way to do this via eCommerce content is with a mixture that includes:

• Product descriptions
• Brand/Category descriptions
• Buying guides

Each of these types of content tends to target consumers in various buying stages, which means they come with different keyword requirements and content intent.

We’ll break down each of these content types, providing some advice on how to get started with each one by looking at companies who are hitting it out of the ballpark with both keyword optimization and stellar content.

ALSO – What is Copywriting and What Are Its Best Practices?

Product Descriptions

Product descriptions tend to target buyers in the final stage of the funnel. These consumers are ready to make a purchase, they just need to be convinced that your specific product is the right choice.

And if you think what you say about your product on the page doesn’t make a difference, think again. Alongside detailed images and user reviews, consumers rank product descriptions as a top influencer in whether they will make a purchase online or not.

Before you can influence those consumers with cleverly written marketing copy that satisfies their questions, you have to get them to your page. That makes keyword optimization the first step to creating great PDs.

Matt Sklar, a writer for evo, a sports and outdoors eCommerce retailer, says his team always begins with keyword research. “Even if we think we already know the answers, we validate with data. This helps to see how searchers really talk about a topic,” he says.

Keyword formula: Optimizing thousands of PDs quickly

Keyword research is important, but it’s not always easy for companies with large catalogs and sites. And while keyword research is always valuable, there are some tips and tricks you can integrate into PD writing that we’ve learned from working on millions of product descriptions over the years.

Organic searchers who are in this stage of the buying journey tend to search using variations of the product and brand name. You can use this knowledge to build a formula for coming up with keyword variations for your PDs.

Keep readability and actual user behavior in mind when you use these formulas. While they work 90 percent of the time, sometimes you have to make a call to leave part of the product or brand name out because it’s too clunky and not likely to be searched for by a user.

For example, the technical name of a toy, including the branding, may be Mattel Barbie Doll Princess fashion set. Following the formula in the image, you’d also throw in a descriptor: Mattel Barbie Doll Princess pink and blue fashion set.

That’s a mouthful, and most people are going to search for a Barbie Doll fashion set because Barbie has enough name recognition to stand on her own. Keep this in mind when integrating keywords into your product descriptions, or the user experience gets a little hairy.

Where should keywords go in PDs?

Once you figure out what keywords to use in your eCommerce content, slot them into the page title, metadata and first paragraph of your PD. For short PDs, that’s really all you need. If your PDs come in on the longer end (100 or more words), you can also slip a keyword into the last sentence or paragraph as long as you keep readability in mind.

Write quality product descriptions

Matt Sklar’s evo team might start with keywords, but the end goal is high-quality content. “We write content that seeks to answer the searcher’s question. It is Google’s goal to serve users the best and most helpful content, and they are continually improving in that regard . . . So, we always set out to create the best content on the internet for a given topic,” he states.

Takeaway: Product descriptions aren’t throwaway content just to attract search traffic. They mean something, and you should write them like they do.

Plus, you get double benefits of doing so. The impact of great eCommerce content extends beyond just the impact it has on conversions. It also leads to visitors staying on site longer and interacting with more elements, which signals to Google that your site has a good interaction rate. This can indirectly influence rankings through the RankBrain algorithm, pushing your page up in the SERPs.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”Xs6ot” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Great #ecommerce #content seeks to answer the searchers’ question.[/ctt]

Some quick tips for creating quality product descriptions include:

• Understanding the appropriate length
  • What type of information will users expect to find in the description?
  • How many details are covered in tables or easy reference points on the same page?
  • How complex is the product? A 200-word PD about shoelaces is overkill; a 20-word PD about a SmartTV is unlikely to provide enough information.
• Creating variety on the page
  • Don’t just upload a wall of text.
  • Include media, such as photos and videos.
  • Make use of headers and bullets, especially in longer PDs.
• Keeping your target audience in mind
  • If you’re selling computers to general home users, you’re going to write about them differently than when selling laptops to gamers.

A look at eCommerce content that performs: Best Buy

Best Buy has its PD game down, which is saying a lot, since the company has tens of thousands of products to handle. Here’s an example of a PD page for a self-charging robot vacuum.

Not only is the copy optimized for key SEO terms, it also serves compelling content for each buyer stage at an appropriate point. The text is broken out between various forms of media, including images and spec tables, and the blurb directly under the image provides the keyword and several major selling points for the product.

Look at the results for Best Buy’s page. For this one product description, the company is ranking for 88 different keywords in the US index, which is worth an estimated $1,600 per month.

And Best Buy achieves this simply by following good protocol for creating product pages and descriptions.

Category Pages

Category pages are a step up from PDs in the hierarchy of an eCommerce site. This is the page where all the robot vacuums are listed, for example. You might have different levels of category pages, all depending on how your consumers are likely to search for various products.

For instance, if you sell vacuums, you might have category pages for bagless vacuums, pet vacuums and robot vacuums, because all of these product groups solve a different set of problems for consumers.

Category pages are great for individuals who are at the awareness and consideration stages of the buying journey, because they provide more information about specific types of items without delving into certain models. Customers in this part of the buying journey want to see different options and get answers to questions about functions, benefits, sizes, colors and other factors.

Category pages are one of the first pages visitors who land on your homepage will click to, and they’re also where most of the general or broad keywords searchers use in Google will land. In either case, you’ll want to help users satisfy objectives to learn more about this category of product so they move toward the desire stage, which is where they might make a purchase.

Category page content can reside above or below the product lists that go with the category. Content that might be included in a category page includes:

• Discussion about different brands
• Information about the different types of products (or sizes, colors, styles)
• Answers to common questions about the product type (ex: How do I buy the right size glove?)
• Use cases for various products (ex: use cases for Dutch ovens versus stock pots within a cookware category)

Determine keywords for category pages

As with PDs, you’ll need to start with keywords. The difference is that keywords for your category pages are broader; users aren’t looking for a specific Barbie or even a white, bamboo queen sheet set. They’re looking for Barbie accessories or queen sheet sets.

You can begin keyword research using SEMRush’s keyword research tool, Moz’s keyword explorer or your own Google AdWords account. As you compile lists of keywords, consider their intent: keywords that match the intent of finding out more about a specific type of product will likely have the highest return, though other keywords can be valuable and may be peppered into category descriptions as secondary or long-tail phrases.

Where do category page keywords go?

Include the primary keyword for each page in the title, metadata and heading. Because category pages tend to be longer than PDs, consider including the keyword (or secondary keywords) toward the beginning and end. If you can use subheadings to break up the content, use a keyword in at least one of the subheaders.

Patrick Delehanty, the marketing manager at Marcel Digital, notes that the keyword or relevant phrasing should also go in the URL for the category page. This is actually good advice for any type of eCommerce page. “Make sure that [the URLs] contain important product names and keywords that are relevant to the audience,” says Delehanty.

A look at CDs that perform: Dick’s Sporting Goods

Check out Dick’s Sporting Goods’ page for canopy tents and pop-ups. You’ll find the category description content at the bottom of the page, where it provides answers to common questions about products in this category and links to more eCommerce content (specifically relevant buying guides).

The page ranks for 2,400 keywords and enjoys monthly traffic worth nearly $45,000. This includes 223 keywords ranked in the top 3.

Buying Guides

Buying guides are ideal when you’re trying to help visitors who are at the early stages of the buying decision. They’re also perfect content for retailers that sell complex products.

They can be located in your site’s main navigation, and often retailers will include them in category pages as additional resources. In the previous section, we saw how Dick’s included links to buying guides in its canopy category page content, and Best Buy also includes links to buying guides in its CDs.

Buying guides don’t just talk about what types of products are available and what the features and benefits are; instead, they start by educating the reader. That may include some discussion about feature and benefits, but it’s not the goal.

Thomas Jepsen, the owner of Contractor Quotes and a marketing and SEO veteran, says certain phrases about the product’s intent or solution are sometimes easier to rank for than the product itself. And that’s a big benefit of buying guides.

“If, for instance you’re selling polyurethane, this product helps protect floors, which in turn makes them last longer,” says Jepsen. “Sit down and think about all the ways that people may be searching for relevant information regarding your product and create content for it. For polyurethane, the content you might want to create includes: What is the best sealant for floors? How do I apply Polyurethane to my wooden floors? How do I make floors last longer?”

This is the type of content that might be relevant to your buying guide. It’s also the type of thinking you need to do when performing keyword research to understand what might lead people in the earliest stage of the buying journey to your page. They’re either looking for information on an overall product type or looking for a solution to a problem without any specific product in mind.

Elements of strong buying guides

Buying guides are longer than PDs and CDs typically, so you need to break them up with headers, bullets and various forms of media. The best buying guides include high-quality images, infographics and even videos. They also answer specific questions for the reader.

Tip: If you ask a question in the format of a header and then answer it in a clear, concise manner, your content could be scraped for display in Google as a featured snippet, making your buying guide page even more valuable in the SERPs.

A look at buying guides that perform: Best Buy

Here’s Best Buy’s buying guide for 4K televisions.

In addition to having a great design, strong images, video and useful navigation, the content here is stellar. And you’ll notice one thing — this content all addresses questions someone who is at the early stages of their buyer’s journey would have:

1. What is 4K?
2. What is upscaling?
3. What is high dynamic range?
4. What 4K content is available today?
5. Can you stream 4K content?

By addressing these questions in depth on its site, Best Buy keeps visitors in its ecosystem and can direct them to category pages or even product pages as shoppers get closer to making a purchase decision. Plus, the retailer can track and retarget these visitors with relevant ads for 4K televisions.

As you might expect, there are a ton of monthly searches on Google from people looking to learn more about 4K televisions. Best Buy is capturing a huge chunk of that traffic.

In total, Best Buy’s buying guide ranks for 507 keywords, 55 of which are in the top 3 results. SEMrush estimates the monthly value of that traffic at over $30,000.

General Advice for Writing Great eCommerce Copy

Whether you’re pounding out PDs or getting into the nitty gritty with buying guides, a few tips hold relevant across all types of eCommerce copy. Check out this advice from experts in the field.

• “Create an outline for yourself. It’s the easiest way to hit all the important topics and not get lost along the way,” says Tyler Tassinari, a digital marketing strategist at Three29. (This is valuable advise especially for buying guides.)
• “It’s important to remain focused on providing benefit to your readers,” says Lee Dussinger, a senior content strategist with WebTek.
• “Keep an eCommerce-specific SEO checklist that you review before posting [content],” says Nicolas Straut, a content marketing associate with Fundera.
• “Avoid duplicate content on item and category pages by creating different descriptions and titles for each page,” says Stacy Caprio of Accelerated Growth Marketing.
• “Readers in the online world are often distracted and busy. So use short paragraphs, great sub-headlines and bullet points,” says Syed Irfan Ajmal, growth marketing manager at Ridester.

We know that’s a lot of advice to apply to your pages, and putting Caprio’s tip of unique content on each listing to work can seem like a daunting task. That’s why we offer professional eCommerce content creation services, which let you work with experienced project managers or hire freelance copywriters to populate your PDs, CDs and buying guides with high-quality, relevant text.

If you’d like more info on how to do these well yourself, be sure to check out our ebook on creating eCommerce content at scale or watch the webinar we hosted with SEMrush on this topic.

The post Product Copywriting for SEO: How to Be Sure Your eCommerce Copy Converts and Ranks appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

[Free Ebook] The Complete Guide to Creating City Pages For SEO – How to Create Engaging City Pages at Scale That Will Delight Visitors, DriveTraffic and Get You More Business

Local searches also drive sales: 50 percent of smartphone users and 34 percent of computer or tablet users who perform local searches make a purchase within a day.

The bottom line is — local traffic is significant and valuable. Many businesses are taking advantage of this through local SEO, which most often revolves around creating and managing their Google My Business (GMB) profile and local citation building. That’s important, but it does miss a couple things:

1. A lot of organic traffic goes to search results beneath the “local pack” — the local results and map section pictured below. The amount of traffic going to the local pack varies a lot by industry with some industries like restaurants seeing most traffic going to the local pack, whereas rehabilitation centers see significantly less.2. If you don’t have a physical location for each location you service, you can’t create a GMB account for that location — and that means missing out on local traffic

This represents a huge lost opportunity — for you and your potential customers.

To capitalize on this opportunity, many businesses create local landing pages (often called city or state pages) to rank for these local searches and connect with customers in those markets.

Why Local Landing Pages Matter

Local landing pages can benefit your business in multiple ways, but the biggest benefits are:

1. Search traffic: Ranking for keywords with local intent so your pages show up directly beneath the local pack
2. Better engagement: Connect with your local customers by sharing information relevant to their area
3. More leads: Companies with more landing pages get a higher number of leads than those with fewer landing pages
4. Competitive advantage: In many industries, creating local landing pages is not a widely used tactic or it’s done poorly, which means you can leapfrog your competition

Increased Search Traffic

There’s a huge amount of search traffic with local intent on the major search engines, predominantly Google. Capturing that local traffic can prove challenging, especially for businesses that don’t take advantage of all local SEO opportunities available to them.

Google My Business, for example, only allows address listings for the area where a business has a physical location, leaving your brand out in the cold if you don’t have multiple brick-and-mortars but you do service multiple areas.

The inability to create a Google My Business page for other relevant areas only means you won’t appear in the local pack.

While many searchers will click on a result in the map, many folks searching for “mechanic in Seattle” are still going to scroll down to see the traditional search results.

If you can’t be in the local pack, creating content that ranks for these traditional search results is your best shot at capturing local intent traffic. And, if you are in the local pack, you can still benefit from increased exposure.

Better Engagement

Local landing pages provide an easy way to communicate location-specific information and target regional trends, landmarks, neighborhoods and characteristics that may be the tipping point for a shopper on the fence or those customers not in your immediate location.

For many customers, knowing that a business has a strong connection to their community can make a world of difference to their decision-making process and who they actually end up working with.

Take our example of someone looking for a mechanic in Seattle. If that person landed on the homepage of a large auto service business with a long list of locations and only found contact info for the their nearest branch, how strong of a local connection has been made?

On the other hand, if they find information such as:

• How long that branch has been active
• Info about the staff, such as a message from the manager
• Examples of community involvement
• Reviews from local clients
• Photos of the shop and some of the staff
• Information unique to the area, such as how you need to have the right tires to drive in Seattle’s rainy weather

These are just a few examples, but this type of content can make visitors feel like a business has a strong connection their city and make them more likely to do business with them. It drives an emotional connection, and that’s powerful when marketing your business.

This type of content also usually contains relevant LSI keywords (latent semantic indexing) — keywords that are related to the primary keywords of your page. For example, if your primary keyword is “dog parks,” LSI keywords that your writers might naturally work into the text could be “canine parks” or “parks for dogs.”

Google tends to reward pages that have covered a topic in depth, and good use of LSI keywords is a great way to do that. So, while you’re delivering a better experience to visitors, you’re also keeping Google happy.

Finally, customers who visit your site often look for information on how you operate in their area. Having these types of pages built into your site’s navigation can help you easily deliver what they’re looking for, which also provides a better user experience.

More Leads

A recent HubSpot study indicated a 55 percent boost in leads for companies that increase their number of landing pages from 10 to 15, and companies with 40 or more landing pages get 12 times the leads of those with five or fewer pages. This happens for several reasons, but a primary cause is that these companies tend to have landing pages that are highly targeted and relevant for their audience.

While this is a great stat, marketers often struggle with how to get to a point where they have more than 40 landing pages. Given each landing page should serve a single purpose and provide unique value to visitors, it can be a challenge to justify getting that many landers up.

Creating local landing pages (or city pages) is a great way to get your site’s landing page count up because the local information you provide can be very valuable to your visitors from that area. Even if the conversion goal is similar, the focus of each page is sufficiently unique. And, each page will be highly targeted to the intended audience which should give it a strong conversion rate.

By creating your local landing pages, you’re very likely to see your site’s overall number of leads generated significantly increase.  

Competitive Advantage

Finally, local landing pages can offer competitive advantages as well, keeping you ahead of your regional competitors.

In many industries, creating local landers is not a widespread tactic, and in many more, companies have created very low-quality, generic pages. In either case, you have a great opportunity to get a leg up on your competitors by creating high quality local landers.

That leg up can manifest in several ways:

• Bigger share of local search traffic
• More awareness of your offerings in the area versus competitors’
• A stronger sentiment that your company is connected to the community

These are all big wins for any company serving multiple markets.

What Makes a Great Local Landing Page?

As effective local SEO tools, local landing pages are most often created to drive local traffic. They also help convert local traffic into leads, because they offer more personalized and relevant content to visitors.

A great local landing page goes beyond the basics, delving into the features and factors that define areas, cities, towns or counties, and highlighting the things that will make consumers purchase from you rather than from the business down the street. As mentioned earlier, this often results in pages that naturally make good use of LSI keywords.

When creating a local landing page, consider including:

• Unique, relevant content customized to regional information, including sites of interest, colloquial language, city or town nicknames, neighborhood information and any other community-specific selling points
• Strong use of location-based keywords
• LSI keywords (cover the topics they suggest)
• Unique and location-specific metadata
• Internal links to other relevant areas of your site
• External links to trusted sources with info your visitors would find useful
• Business reviews
• Staff quotes
• Local images and videos
• Service area maps
• A place within the main navigation of your site

These are just a few of many elements you could include on your city pages. Fundamentally, you just want to include content that connects your business to the community you serve and convince local visitors that your solution can help them.

An effective local landing page can take many forms, and how you choose to make a point can vary greatly from one business or purpose to another. Just be sure the location you’re using plays a leading role.

Note: this largely covers what you can do on-page to make your local landing pages great. There are a number of other things you can do off-page such as link building, soliciting reviews, and encouraging social updates about your pages. Check out this great resource from Moz for more info.

The Logistics of Landing Page Creation

If you’re reading this shaking your head and thinking, “My business serves multiple counties full of small towns. How can I possibly make a landing page for every one?” — you’re not alone.

The process of creating a large number of landing pages can be daunting — and some marketers ignore the process entirely in fear of the workload. However, mass-producing city pages isn’t quite as labor-intensive as it sounds.

Here’s a proven process that can help you manage a large local landing page creation project.

1. Develop a Template

Before you get started with content creation, you need a template that defines which parts of your pages will remain constant and which elements will update with every geographic area. For example, the headline, intro and photos may be region-specific, while the core call to action is more general. Be sure to set specific guidelines for each section to make sure all relevant information is captured.

Most companies will create a keyword strategy that supports each page’s SEO. If you’re creating a small number of local landing pages, you might just use a tool like SEMrush, Moz or Ahrefs to find targeted keywords in each area.

If you’re producing a large number of pages, you might consider creating a formula for your keywords. This most often involves finding your top-level keywords and then adding the location you’re targeting.

For example, “auto mechanic” + “Seattle” gives you “auto mechanic Seattle.”

2. Create a Style Guide

Like most brands, your business likely has its own style and corporate identity. This can vary from professional and polished to fun and casual, depending on the persona you want to share with customers. Your local landing pages should utilize this same tone, highlighting who you are and what you do.

To ensure all content meets your expectations, create a style guide providing an overview into language preferences, writing style, tone and voice. If you don’t do your own writing, this can guide your content creation team or freelancers in the right direction.

3. Assemble Resources

Once you know the kind of information you need, start pulling together resources to use when writing. These can range from Wikipedia pages to town or community websites; if it’s legitimate and it provides a well-rounded and authentic impression, it’s a potential source.

Common sources include Yelp! and TripAdvisor reviews, city hall and Chamber of Commerce sites, Zillow and Trulia for real estate information and even financial metrics from Nerd Wallet and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. You can also pull from your own experiences, using turns of phrase and colloquialisms that you’re familiar with.

If you have access to internal resources such as customer reviews, staff interviews or quotes and local pictures, it’s also great to collect those to use for your pages.

4. Create Content

If writing is in your wheelhouse and you have time to take on a large-scale project, it’s certainly possible to create content yourself. However, if you have dozens of pages and not enough internal resources, a professional hand will help.

Crowd Content’s team of talented writers can tackle content projects for you, utilizing a deep knowledge of language and SEO expertise to create local landing pages that convert.

With writers and editors across Canada, the US, the UK and Australia, it’s possible to put together a team for virtually any location, giving you instant access to experts in your region. Your team of writers can work with any format or style of your choice, ensuring a finished project that pleases.

Crowd Content will take your template and map each unique section to a field that your team of writers will complete. By doing this, you can provide writers with specific instructions for each field as well as minimum or maximum word counts. This ensures consistency and quality of your content which makes creating the actual pages much easier.

If you’d like to get Crowd Content’s help building out your content, please get in touch with us to get started.

5. Export Your Content

As writers finish each city page using your custom template, Crowd Content will export the finished content into a CSV file that will have each city page’s content one row. Each field you’ve mapped will live in a cell within that row.

This makes it possible to collect data for hundreds of landing pages in one concise document that’s ready to upload and publish.

6. Publish Your Pages

If the thought of manually publishing page after page sounds a little unpleasant, you’ll love what RallyMind can do.

Instead of building each page manually, RallyMind uses Google Sheets to collect data from properly-formatted CSV files to automatically populate and publish hundreds of landing pages at once.

Note: you’ll need to import your CSV file into Google Sheets and use the Google Sheet for this process.

Getting this set up is quick and easy:

1. Create your RallyMind  account
2. Build a master template design using the site builder. Use the drag and drop tool to create your template, and specify which fields you want to include. This will be the base for all of your local landing pages and should include all fields you wish to populate from the Google Sheet you’ve created.
3. Make sure that all fields are mapped exactly as how they are set up in your Crowd Content template. This ensures each city page will be properly filled out and formatted.

When you’re ready to go with your landing pages, you can then sync your Google Sheet with your Rally Mind project and template. In minutes this will auto-create a new landing page for each row of data in the Google Sheet based on your template.

If you love the idea of local landing pages but have been hesitant to make the leap, the partnership between RallyMind and Crowd Content is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.

Give it a try yourself, or drop us a line to help you get this process set up for your company.

The post How to Design and Implement A Local Landing Page SEO Program appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

I highlight what you need to know — and do — to put this new metadata and SEO trend to work for your site below.

The Importance of Writing Strong Metadata

If content marketing was a sport, it would be track. To compete, you’d have to put both long-distance runners and sprinters on the pavement.

A long-term marketing plan that builds an audience and inspires trust with high-quality content is critical to success. The bar for quality content rises every year — unlike the long jump record, which has been unchallenged since 1991.

At the same time, best practices, tools and search engine mechanics evolve rapidly in this industry, and your team must be able to keep pace with all of that.

It always surprises me to see brands not investing in either of these things; for example, we still see many pages that haven’t created metadata for optimized search engine performance. Even brands investing in producing in-depth, authoritative posts sometimes ignore these little details — and that’s like the relay team dropping the baton mid-pass. You might have the fastest runners on the field (or best content online), but without the baton pass, you can’t win the race.

Here’s what makes metadata critical to SEO success:

• The meta title tag is an important ranking factor, which means it’s a major player in where you end up in the SERPs. You’ll want to slip in a keyword or two, and maybe your brand name. Since most meta titles display to users within the SERP (but not once on your page), you also want to consider clarity and conversion.
• The meta description tag isn’t an explicit ranking factor, which means the content in it doesn’t directly impact SERP algorithms. The content is seen by consumers conducting searches, though, and is your one chance to sell your content’s value and entice someone to click on your link (and that behavior does factor into your performance in the SERPs).

Put these factors together, and you have a monstrous impact on your page’s organic click through rate (OCTR). This is pretty much the baton pass here, guys. You don’t want to drop it.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”f6Ue3″ via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]What about Google’s recent move to longer meta descriptions? Here’s what you need to know. [/ctt]

So, What About Google’s Recent Move to Longer Meta Descriptions?

Google announced in December 2017 that it was boosting character counts for meta description text shown in their SERPs. Previously, it showed between 160 and 180 characters; now it will display between 250 and 300 characters, depending on the results page.

Before you get excited over the extra space and start filling it with keywords, let me say this: I think Google is giving us a clear signal here.

Yes, Google wants you to provide more detail for searchers before they visit your site, and they’ve made it possible to do that.

No, they don’t want keyword stuffing and low-quality content in the meta description. And neither do you.

Meta Descriptions Are the First Impression

Meta descriptions are your first touch point with someone searching online.

Tossing keyword stuffed hodgepodge into your meta tags is like a restaurant serving up a random assortment of ingredients they pulled off the bottom shelf. It’s not going to look enticing, and most people aren’t going to order from that menu. Yes, include primary keywords so Google will highlight them in the SERP, but nest them in quality metadata marketing copy that says something about your page and convinces people to click.

Treat your meta descriptions as ad text — connect with whatever intent your searchers have, entice them to click and you’ll get more clicks. This will help you boost your organic click-through rate (OCTR) and can help you rank better.

More From Eric: How’s Your Image SEO Game?

Strong Meta Descriptions Can Boost Your RankBrain Score

A second reason you need high-quality meta descriptions is because it helps you attract the right people to your site, and that can indirectly boost your RankBrain score and your position on Google’s pages.

RankBrain is Google’s third most important ranking factor (after quality content and backlinks), and it essentially looks at how searchers interact with the pages they see in the results. Primarily, that comes down to two major factors.

• Dwell Time (Time on Page). This is how long someone stays on your page. Average dwell time for a Top 10 result is about 3m 10s (less than the current world record for fastest mile, which is 3m 43s). At an average reading speed, that’s enough time to ingest about 600 words of content, so you need to provide excellent, longer form or interactive content to keep people on the page. You also have to attract users interested in your content; if your meta description is attracting people interested in cars and you’re serving up even the best content possible on collectible ceramics, the bounce rate will be high (this is also referred to as pogosticking). You dropped the baton, and your RankBrain score will suffer.
• Organic Click Through Rate. This is the percent of clicks your page receives out of all the clicks received by the displayed results for that search. A high percent says that your meta data is doing a better job at enticing people than the meta data from your competition.

RankBrain combines these two factors, which are both dependent on strong meta descriptions, to help Google understand how your page is truly performing from a searcher’s perspective. Pass the baton and perform well, and Google may reward you with a bump up the page results podium.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”7esWZ” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]What should brands do now that Google displays longer meta descriptions? Here’s what you need to know.[/ctt]

What Should Brands Do Now that Google Displays Longer Meta Descriptions?

Reading between the lines, I think Google’s move to longer meta descriptions is going to change how you optimize for factors such as RankBrain. Your organic competitors are going to be leveraging the longer character limit to boost their CTR, so to keep up you need to do that too.

It’s not a 100-yard dash to see who gets to the top, but you do need to act now rather than later. Start by taking an endurance event stance; if you haven’t started managing your meta, you need to learn, and if you’re already in the game, extra training never hurt anyone.

If you have pages that you think you should be ranking better for, it’s worthwhile to head into Search Console and review that page’s organic CTR. You might find that updating the meta description to boost CTR will not only get you more clicks immediately, but it might also help your rankings in the mid-term.

If you see success with that, a full audit of your site’s OCTR could be in order.

And since everyone’s starting with the longer descriptions at the same time, the playing field is at least a bit level for now. Take this opportunity to rethink your metadata SEO strategy, work in some better performing keywords and work with partners to write meta descriptions that use the extra length to sell your page to the right target audience.

Keep Reading: Web Design Decisions that Drive SEO — For Better or Worse

The post What You Need to Know About Google & Longer Meta Descriptions to Boost SEO this Year appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

How It Works – The Workflow

When you place your first order, and any subsequent orders after that, it reaches a large pool of writers who can view and access orders at your preferred star level and higher. For instance, if you place an open order for 4-star content, it reaches all available 4-star writers in the system. Placing an order at the 3-star level makes it available to all 3- and 4-star writers. Similarly, 2-star orders are available to all writers with 2, 3 or 4 stars.

Writers receive an email notification when your orders have been placed, so they can log in and decide whether or not to write the order depending on their time constraints, interests or skills. After your order is placed, a qualified writer will pick it up to work on and complete it according to the deadline you set and the minimum time allowed by the platform — 24 hours per 500 words. To set a custom deadline, scroll to the bottom of the order screen, select Advanced Options and use the Processing Time dropdown.

If you place an order that requires 500 words or less, you can set the deadline for 1 to 10 days. A 1,000-word order requires a minimum deadline of 2 days and a 1,500-word order needs a minimum of 3 days. If you need content faster than that, you can call us directly and we’ll put you in touch with a qualified writer who may be available to complete it for you right away.

After the writer produces the content according to your instructions and guidelines, they’ll submit the content for you to review. At this stage, you have two choices: Choose to accept the content as-is or send it back to the writer to make revisions. If you request revisions, you’ll have an opportunity to provide specific guidance for the writer to let them know exactly what you want changed. The writer has 24 hours to complete revisions, and then the content is sent back to you for further review. If everything looks great, then you can accept the content, and the writer is paid. Once the content is accepted, you can use it as you need for your business.

How Many Orders Can I Place at Once?

You’re not limited to how many orders you place in the same day. If you have a large batch of orders to complete, such as hundreds of product descriptions, you may be better suited for our Enterprise services — you can contact your customer success manager for more information on this.

Different Order Types

At Crowd Content, we offer several content types that can be sorted into four main categories.

Custom Content

Custom content is our specialty: Entertaining articles, blog posts, web content and press releases belong here. You can provide a specific title, instructions and exactly what topics you would like covered in the written post. Our writers are skilled at being able to help you meet your business goals through developing and implementing successful content strategies.

Product Descriptions

This is a specialized category and applies to written descriptions of individual products on an e-commerce website. Depending on your product types and preferences, product descriptions can be short, long, or somewhere in the middle, and they should include strong keywords to help drive eager buyers to your site.

Facebook Posts

Need help promoting your latest blog posts? Want to keep your fan base engaged? You can do that effectively with a batch of custom Facebook posts. Customers must order a minimum of 10 posts to use this service.

Twitter

This is an excellent platform for promoting your brand and getting the word out to the masses about how great your business and services are. Our Twitter-savvy writers will create a minimum of 15 tweets for you when you choose this content option.

Going Through the Order Form, Step by Step

Once you’ve signed up for an account on crowdcontent.com and communicated with your customer success manager, you’re ready to place an order. Our simple, one-page interface asks essential questions related to content creation and ensures writers will have everything they need to create great content.

Campaign

The default value for this is “Campaign 1”, but if you’ve worked directly with a customer success manager, they may have created a custom campaign for you with specific pricing and services. This is selectable here.

Folders

Customized folders let you keep content in an easily accessible place. They can be organized by topic, date, or content type — the labels are totally up to you. Folders make it easy to group individual orders together. During each stage of the content creation process, that order remains in the folder you selected for easy retrieval later.

To create a new folder, go to your content queue and click the + to the right of label Folders on the left sidebar.  

Content Types and Categories

The next drop-down let you choose the type of content you need, whether it be Facebook posts, tweets, an ebook, a blog article, product descriptions or a press release. The box directly under content type lets you select a category for the content. Categories are important because writers add tags to their profiles to match category types, so someone who is extremely knowledgeable about photography equipment or animals is more likely to write your order if it falls into their area of expertise.

Instructions

The rest of the order form changes based on the content type, but in general, it lets you provide specific directions and guidelines for the writer. For instance, if you’re placing orders for tweets to be posted on Twitter, there is a field for you to include your business’s Twitter handle so the writer can view your current Twitter page. An instruction box lets you provide details about your order, links to Google docs or links to example content.

Order Type, Pricing and Word Count

Next, you must select an order type. On Crowd Content, we have three basic types of orders:

• Open Order: The most common type, these orders are available to writers at the star level you select. We recommend 3 or 4-star content for most orders, because these writers have proven skills in the industry and often have specialized areas of expertise.
• Direct Order: This type of order is placed with one writer that you choose yourself. The individual writer selected is the only one to have access to a direct order.
• Team Orders: This restricts order access to writers placed on a team that you create. Gather as many writers as you’d like and place them on individual teams; this way, you know your order will be picked up by someone you hand-selected.

Pricing is based on word count, star level, and services selected (such as whether you’re just using writing services or writing and editing). When you fill in the word count fields for each individual order, the sidebar on the right updates to reflect accurate pricing based on the word count provided and the star level selected for both writing and editing.

Editing & Proofreading

Editing and proofreading services are also available for each order you place at an additional 3 cents per word. Just as with a writing order, you can choose to place editing open, direct to a specific editor, or to a team of editors.

Advanced Options

Advanced options let you upload a relevant document, spreadsheet or PDF for the writer to use as a reference. There are also several other order options included here:

• Keywords: The writer will include keywords you select when you indicate them in this box. You can include a total of up to three keywords. The system lets the writer know when they submit the order if they’ve met your keyword requirements. Keywords are extremely important for SEO.
• Target Audience: You’ll receive better copy in the end if you let the writer know upfront who the intended audience is. You may have formal buyer personas in place that you can summarize, or you can say something as simple as “golf enthusiasts.”
• Suggested Outbound Link: If you have a URL you would like the writer to link to within the order, insert it here.
• Identifier: This option lets you tag the article with an identifying number. For product descriptions, for example, this may be the model, item or UPC number.

• Metadata: Choose this option if you would like the writer to create a meta title and meta description to go along with your order.
• Layout: If you need multiple fields available to the writer, you can use this option to create a layout that contains the fields you need. If you don’t select this, the writer will have access to a title field and a single text field.
• Language: Use this option to indicate the language you’d like the writer to use. The default is English (US).
• Processing Time: Choose a time frame when you’d like the order returned to you. Most clients choose 1 or 2 days as an appropriate time frame, but options are offered up to 10 days if needed. You must give the writer at least one day for each 500 words in the order.
• Point of View: Indicates from what perspective the writer should create content from. Options include:
  • 1st person – Using pronouns such as I, me, we, us
  • 2nd person – Using pronouns such as you, your
  • 3rd person – A company, the business, and pronouns such as it or they
  • Let the writer decide: Often skilled writers know what perspective to write from based on the content you need. You can check this box if you’re not sure, and the writer can choose whatever seems appropriate for the content type.

• Things to Emphasize/Things to Avoid: Text boxes are provided for both of these fields for you to indicate exactly what points you want the writer to emphasize and things you definitely want avoided.

In general, the more information you provide to the writer about what you want, the better chance you’ll have at receiving quality written content that suits the needs of your business. Anything you want to see in the created content should be communicated when you place the order — this way, the writer has everything they need to create quality content. If you placed an order but missed an important detail, find out how to get in touch with your writer and message them while it’s in progress.

The post How to Place an Order: Tips and Tricks for Your First Order appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Now, how’s your image SEO for the post?

After putting in the work of crafting a killer post, you need to make sure that your visual game matches up. What does that mean?

Kissmetrics tells us that quality content isn’t enough. To maintain a solid ranking, you need to include rich media, such as images and videos, and they should reflect the same quality and voice as your post to help communicate its point. These graphics can include charts, graphs, screenshots, GIFs and photos. They’re are a big part of the overall perceived quality of your post, so it’s important that you get this right.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”Rx0S0″ via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Combine quality content with optimized images to achieve and maintain solid rankings. [/ctt]

How Can Image SEO Help Your Site?

There’s no question about it — images that aren’t optimized can hurt your website. Photos that take a long time to load, for example, can send your rankings plummeting and your bounce rate skyrocketing. On the flip side, properly optimized images provide a better user experience, which might improve time on site, and they can broaden your site’s ranking opportunities via the SERPs and Google Images.

Google and other search engines have a large list of factors that determine search rankings (check out Search Engine Land’s table of ranking factors), and it’s important to understand what they are and which ones are relevant to the media on your site.

File Name

Include your targeted keyword in the media’s file name, but in a human, readable way. Readers and spiders should be able to get a good sense of what the subject of the image is based on the file name.

Alt Text

Adding relevant, descriptive alt text to each image ensures that readers who are using screen readers or have images disabled are able to understand what the image represents. Bonus points for including your target keyword, as this is a ranking factor and will impact both the post’s ranking as well as the image’s visibility within Image Search. According to Moz, industry best practice is to keep your alt text to 140 characters or less.

Image File Size

High-resolution images are necessary to give your site a professional look, but bloated file sizes can impact load times and your overall ranking. Use tools such as Optimizilla, TinyPNG or Kraken to compress your images to reduce their overall footprint.

Responsive Design

Google is placing a greater emphasis on the mobile experience and are even making moves toward using a mobile-first index in the near future. If you want to rank well, you’ll need to make sure your site delivers a good mobile experience. A critical part of that is ensuring your graphics respond to mobile devices to show an appropriately scaled image. This isn’t just good for SEO; it also enhances the user experience.

Image Captions

Entice your readers to stick around and read more by giving your images “deep captions.” Image captions are one of the most-read elements on a web page after headlines, so make yours count. Deep captions are typically two to three sentences long, which is usually enough to engage readers so they stay on the page.

Link Bait

Creating graphics that engage users, offer some unique value or are just entertaining ups your chances that readers either link to the images in their own content or share them on social media. This can be a valuable source of backlinks for your post. If you’ve optimized the images as described above, it tells Google that your post is relevant for the keywords and topics you’re targeting.

You can get creative when using images, but high-quality photos, charts, graphics, GIFs, infographics and visual quotes all work well. If you do choose to use these types of images, make sure to include share buttons and/or embed code so you don’t miss out on getting some easy links.

Related: 3 Things You Have to Get Right for Successful Infographics

Getting the Most Out Of Google Image Search

Roughly 22 percent of all searches in the U.S. are Google Image searches, giving properly optimized images a much broader reach. Google Images also frequently appear as featured snippets in many text search results where they can steal clicks away from text results. That’s a substantial amount of traffic that you can capitalize on if you put the time and effort into the images on your site.

The good news is — if you follow proper image SEO and take the time and effort to optimize, your pages will most likely rank well in image searches for the graphics already in your posts. Still, there are a few more things you can do to get even more out of image search:

• Use Google’s Search Console to see what images are ranking for in Image Search. To do this, visit Search Console > Search Traffic > Search Analytics, and then change Search Type to Image. You can then view the Clicks, Impressions, CTR and the Average Positions your images are ranking for. Keeping an eye on this can give you a good sense of whether your images are ranking for the terms you want them to. It will even help you identify high-value opportunities where you might want to try to get better rankings for your images.

•  
• Benchmark against the competition. Once you’re able to see which search terms your images are ranking for, you might want to start comparing your on-site graphics (and possibly metadata) against your competitors. Look at things such as image quality, legibility, whether they’re offering unique info and whether they’re engaging. Try to improve your image SEO so image searchers would rather click on your image than competitor images.
• Brand it. Add your logo, web address or some text that will encourage someone viewing the image to visit the page the image lives on.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”nVN2J” via=”yes” nofollow=”yes”]Don’t forget to optimize images when giving your posts that last-minute #SEO pass. [/ctt]

And now, for your reading pleasure, a well-placed graphic with full-blown image SEO:

Share This Infographic On Your Site

The post How’s Your Image SEO Game? appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

The penalty for selling recalled products can be up to $15 million, but this is only one example of the importance of data organization and tagging. Strong metadata across all your content creates credibility, enhances navigation and user experience, and reduces costs and risks for your brand.

Beyond Titles and Descriptions

Many content marketers stop at the big two: meta titles and meta descriptions. Yes, these are critical branding and SEO tools that you must leverage appropriately for success in the search engines and with organic traffic. Titles and descriptions are about traffic, though: Yoast points out that the main function of these tools is to get someone to move from the search engine to your website.

Once users are on your page, their experience is important too. Bad user experience equals high bounce rates, which makes all your SEO efforts meaningless.

Meta beyond titles and descriptions helps with that. Metadata is any piece of information attached to your digital assets, including tags and categories. You can organize photographs and pictures, text objects, videos, pages, and links with meta. Some common types of metadata include:

• Keywords
• Short descriptions of the digital asset
• Location
• Date
• Author, photographer, or artist
• Title of work
• Model numbers, SKUs or other product identifiers
• Brand-defined categories

An ecommerce store likely has images of its products, for example. A shop that sells dining chairs might have two images for one listing: one of a single chair and one of the chair in a group at a table. Tagging the images with data such as the height, color, upholstery, style, date added to the catalog and catalog number help you link this information appropriately so users can find it in searches on your site, but it also lets site managers quickly add, remove or otherwise manage image assets during listing processes.

Appropriate tagging and categorization also reduces risks. In the case of recalled products, well-managed inventory and site data lets you pull items from active listings and the shelves quickly.

When Metadata Works Right

Content strategist Michael Andrews calls metadata the secret sauce of relevance.

“I call metadata a secret sauce because when it works right, it’s invisible. You don’t notice the metadata; you just notice that things work right.”

Getting to that magical recipe on your site can be more difficult than it sounds. You have to strike a balance between meta that is functional and the effort it takes to create and maintain it. Adding too little meta doesn’t support you or the user — you see this on sites with dysfunctional search bars, which rarely return what you’re looking for. Add in too much meta, however, and it becomes unwieldy and impossible for your team to manage regularly.

Planning ahead by deciding exactly what you want to do with digital assets lets you define appropriate meta parameters to stay in balance. Use as much meta as you need to get the job done, but never more.

Creating Successful Metadata is a Team Effort

Meta creation and management is a team effort that requires a lot of communication, especially if you work with third-parties to tag or categorize items. Take time to create glossaries, ensure words mean the same to each person working with your data, and develop parameters for applying data tags to avoid errors.

At Crowd Content, we can connect you with hundreds of writers who are adept at crafting high-performing meta titles and descriptions. If you’re looking to go beyond basics, consider reaching out to find out more about our enterprise content solutions.

The post Tagging to Protect Your Brand and Support Your Customer appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Density Goes the Way of the Dodo

When using keywords in an article it is important to consider how your writing will look from Google’s perspective. If it looks “spammy” or poorly written, Google’s Panda algorithm (released back in 2011) will penalize it. And now that Panda has been incorporated into the Google’s core algorithm, the emphasis must definitely be quality over keyword.

On-Page SEO and the ‘Natural Keyword’

On-page SEO deals with the material you want the search engine to rank. It includes both the content and the HTML source code. When writing an article that uses keywords you have likely already chosen a few phrases or words to focus on. Now it is time to infuse these keywords and phrases throughout the page naturally. This means thinking of the reader and his experience instead of the Google algorithm. Avoid keyword stuffing (repeating the same phrase at the expense of flow) and random placement of keywords (like at the end of a paragraph or at the bottom of an article just to increase the keyword count).

Ideal Use of Keywords in Today’s SEO

The Keyword-optimized article is still a powerhouse for online content writers, as long as you utilize the keyword or phrase in a way that emphasizes user-experience over analytics. Having said that, however, you can make your article more appealing to Google by considering the following advice:

1. Use the keywords in your content at five crucial points: the MetaData (Title and Description), Headings, Image Titles, Article Title and then once per section if possible. This will give your article the needed keyword inclusion without over-doing it.
2. Be specific. Since Panda’s release, Google has had a thing for specialized websites, giving them a higher rank. It only makes sense that if you’re using a keyword, the more specific the better, particularly if you’re writing for a company that is in its own niche.
3. Be creative. Writing an article around a keyword doesn’t mean it needs to be dry or monotonous. Any subject can be made interesting by using your imagination. Write the article from a different perspective or add a little of your individual style.
4. Be honest. In reality, not all keyword phrases can be turned into a masterpiece. If a client asks you to write a quality keyword article around the phrase “mechanics Los Angeles” you’re in for a difficult task. In this case you can try to talk the client into tweaking the keyword phrase to one that sounds more natural. Many business owner’s don’t know a lot about Google analytics or its new preference for quality over keyword density.

The best advice for the website content writer is to put your energy into writing a genuine article with relevant and interesting information. Infuse keywords naturally and be smart about your choice of keyword. Google will take care of everything else.

The post Keyword Optimization for Freelancers appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

But the only way you can engage your audience is if you get website traffic to begin with.

In fact, getting website traffic is so important that a majority of B2B and B2C content marketers rate website traffic as the most important metric for success.

Curiously, only about 40% of content marketers consider SEO ranking to be an important metric of success. This suggests that many content marketers don’t fully appreciate the synergistic relationship between an optimized SEO strategy and website traffic.

Optimizing SEO isn’t a new idea, but due to the constantly changing standards that search engines like Google use to identify quality content, your strategy for optimization needs to be constantly evolving. Almost every content marketer makes a few SEO mistakes, but one of the most common mistakes that many content marketers make is relying on outdated strategies and metrics.

The following tips will help you avoid common pitfalls and develop an up-to-date SEO strategy that will improve website traffic.

1. Make Keywords Count But Don’t Actually Count Them

A common request from my clients is to use a keyword a specific number of times. This was standard operating procedure a few years ago after many search engine modified their ranking metrics to try to counteract keyword stuffing, but ranking metrics have since improved.

While keyword density is still a small part of determining the rank of a web page, the quality of that content is even more important.

If you are using keywords organically, you don’t generally need to worry about total number, though replacing a few with synonyms probably won’t hurt (see below).

2. Trust the Robots

Technically Google, Yahoo, and Bing rankings aren’t controlled by robots, but there is a significant amount of automation involved in search engine ranking. One of the nice things about that automation is that it is remarkably good at recognizing query term synonyms and co-occurrence.

Thus, even if your blog uses the keyword “dog walking service” repeatedly, every major search engine will recognize that the term is synonymous with “dog walker” and probably even “pet walker” and “pet care service.”

This is another area where I have found that the knowledge of many of my clients is out of date. I commonly receive requests to use specific keywords, with no room for variation.

You can and should use variations on your keywords if you want to improve your ranking. For similar reasons, you shouldn’t overload your metadata with keywords that are synonyms or co-occurring.

3. The Search Engine Wars Are Over

…and Google won. Google is used by roughly 4 times as many people as the rest of the competition combined.

That means that you want to adhere to Google’s guidelines for creating high quality content if you want to improve traffic. Thankfully, those guidelines were leaked and it is easy to find guides on how to adhere to Google content quality guidelines precisely.

One of the most important takeaways of this leak is that human beings adjust the rankings after the robots have done their job. Appealing to the human reader is just as important as appealing to the robots, if not more so.

And the secret to that is value, variety, and volume. The first two are particularly important for the human analysts who will be judging whether or not your content should be considered high quality or expert.

Always produce top quality work and the volume will automatically come with time.

4. A Picture is Worth a Thousand Clicks

Words aren’t the only metric being used to judge your content. Images and links also need to be a part of your SEO strategy. Good link usage is actually quite easy, because the rules for good links are pretty much identical to the rules for good keyword usage.

Use them organically and always make sure they are high quality.

Images are a little different, though, because they are used to provide a visual break for the readers almost as much as they are used to support your content. One of the best examples of excellent image use on the internet is Cracked.com.

For example, in this article about the environment, note the third image on item #5. It breaks up the monotony of nature images, adds humor, and makes a meaningful statement about the content.

While every use of images won’t live up to this gold standard, you want your images to create a mental break for the reader whenever possible, even if just by adding a little color to your content.

A Great Marriage is Built Over Time

No matter how much you optimize your SEO strategy, and no matter how many advanced concepts you implement, you won’t see drastic results overnight.

It will take time for your content marketing to net positive results from your optimized SEO strategy. Be patient and the results will be worth the effort.

The post How to Unite Your Content Marketing and SEO Strategies appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Metadata is data that describes the content of your website.

The blurb that shows up on a search engine page and on social media is metadata, but other than that most non-programmers don’t see metadata.

Metadata makes it easy for your audience to find out what your website is all about and if you can provide the products or services they want.

There are 3 main components to metadata: title, description, keywords.

Search engines stopped using keyword metadata around 2009 as a ranking factor because spammy websites were using keywords unrelated to their content to get lots of page views. But the metadata title and description are still used as ranking factors.

Want to know how to create compelling Meta tags that will help drive traffic to your website? Here are some do’s and don’ts to keep in mind when writing them, direct from our team of pro metadata writers.

Title

Do: Keep it short and to-the-point. Search engine results pages will only display the first 55 characters, so make sure you don’t get cut off mid-sentence.

Don’t: Duplicate the title from other web pages within your site. The title should be unique to each page with a keyword describing its contents.

Description

Do: Use a call-to-action. Give readers a reason to view your webpage by telling them what they will get if they click on your link.

Don’t: Try to fool the viewer by stuffing tons of keywords into the description that are not relevant to the information they will find on the page. They will end up exiting your page immediately. Both the viewer and search engines will start to look at your website as one that can’t be trusted, hurting your online reputation.

Do: Provide a solution for the reader. In less than 155 characters, explain how your products or services can help with a problem your audience may have.

Keywords

Do: Use long-tailed keywords because these words have less competition and traffic, yet will direct more targeted Internet searchers to your website.

Don’t: Use generic keywords. While they get hundreds or thousands of searches, they are not specific to your webpage and could get lost in the shuffle with larger, more established websites.

While Meta tags alone won’t help your rank higher in the search engines, they will provide your audience with a snippet of what to expect from the webpage. Keep these tips in mind as you create interesting and valuable content for your audience, or hire a Crowd Content writer to create content with great metadata.

The post The Do’s and Don’ts of Metadata appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Creating a high quality blog isn’t difficult, but it does require that you obey certain guidelines.

If you are looking to build a better blog for your online property, make sure to always follow these 8 guidelines:

1. Pick Your Topic Carefully

A blog post is only useful if it is about something that interests your target audience. Obviously, this means your blog posts should relate to your product or property, but that isn’t all you should consider when choosing a topic.

You also need to consider the demographic of your target audience and whether your content can add new value to topic.

Useful ways to determine what your interests your audience is to analyze page views from previous blogs and to create digital surveys for your audience using a program like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.

2. Create an Attention Grabbing Headline

There is a reason that newspapers and magazines have a person on staff whose entire job is literally just to create headlines. A powerful title is critical to getting your audience to read your blog.

A useful tool for building great headlines is the Coschedule Headline Analyzer.

3. Use Strong Formatting

Effectively formatting a blog is a rather in-depth topic. Whole books have been written on the topic. The short version, though, is the internet is a visual medium.

This means you want the formatting of your blog to be visually appealing. Variety in formatting, like bold lettering, italics, and bullet points is one way to create a visually appealing aesthetic.

The other way is to break up the writing into smaller sections, using subheaders and short paragraphs, much like in these guidelines.

4. Include Interesting Images

As just mentioned, the internet is a visual medium. No matter how creatively you format, a plain screen filled with text simply isn’t that appealing.

Add visual appeal to your blog with high quality, interesting images that support your content. Whether you use custom images or stock images, always make sure to follow best practices for image use, including citing your sources.

5. Include Valuable Links

Creating good internal links is both a science and an art. The science has to do with search engines. Your content is more likely to be top rated on a search engine if links are directly relevant to your content.

The art has to do with creating value for you and your audience. Your audience gains value when the links are fresh or interesting.

You gain value when the links support your brand, either by linking to older (but freshly relevant) content you have previously written or when you link to websites that have good authority within your field.

6. Include Strong Metadata

It takes a long time to understand metadata and how it affects the reach of your website, and even longer to master the concept.

Moz has some great resources to help you better understand metadata, or an experienced Crowd Content writer can provide that know-how and create strong metadata for your blog.

7. Include a Call to Action

While it is fine to occasionally write a blog post that exists purely to entertain and engage your audience, the majority of your posts should include a call to action.

That call may be subtle, but it should direct your audience to take action on products or services that you provide.

8. Double Check Your Voice

The voice of your blog is the voice of your entire online presence (and potentially your business). Before you publish anything, confirm that the voice of a blog post is consistent with the overall voice of your business.

If even a single blog post is too light, too firm, too dry, or otherwise doesn’t engage your audience, it can have a negative domino effect on your business.

The post 8 Simple Guidelines for Building a Powerful Blog appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

What could have gone wrong?

One possible reason for the lack of readership could have something to do with the fact that it hasn’t been picked up by the search engines.

There are plenty of reasons people may not be reading your press release, but here are some tips on how to increase your traffic and get it found on Google.

1. Make it Search Engine-Friendly

By creating your press release with search engines in mind, you will increase its rankings, making it easier to find by both readers and reporters.

If the reporter likes what they see, there’s a good chance they will publish it on their media website. To do this, you need to make a list of keywords you want to get ranked for.

Once you have a good list of words to work with, include them in the article. Also, don’t forget about the metadata; include a few keywords in the metas to increase your chances of getting found online.

While the article should be easily scannable by search engines, remember that actual people will be reading it, so don’t stuff keywords where they aren’t necessary.

2. Write About a News-Worthy Topic

As much as we all want to sell our products or services, that’s a big no-no. Even if it ranks well on Google, no one is going to read it if you are blatantly trying to get them to buy something.

What big change has been going on with your company (new management, product launches, etc.)? Also, make it sound professional by using a third person writing style so that it doesn’t sound like you have a biased opinion.

3. Optimize Photos

Most audiences are more likely to read an article or press release that has an image. Pick one of a customer using your products or something else relating to your business.

Include meta tags and links on your image so that it is easier to share on social media by your audience.

4. Create a Great Headline

The first thing readers will notice about your press release is the headline, so it’s vital to have one that captures their attention. It should be short and sweet, yet act as a little teaser to give your audience a hint at what it will be about.

5. Promote it on Social Media

I’m sure you already know this, but social media is one of the most effective ways to get the word out, so don’t forget this step. Post a link to your press release on all of your social media pages where your target audience hangs out in order to make it easier for them to find.

Press releases are a great way to keep your audience informed on what’s going on with your business, while also being used as a way to build links to your website.

With these tips, your press release will be much easier to scan and find by the big search engines and your potential customers.

The post 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Press Release appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

It can be a pain to come up with titles and descriptions that meet the proper character count for meta descriptions and titles.

That’s why we’ve made it easy for you to get metadata for your content. Our writers have you covered!

Having properly formatted meta titles and meta descriptions are essential to looking good on the SERP.

Check out this video for more information on how our writers will take care of your metadata for you.

If you would like more information, do not hesitate to contact us!

The post Feature Friday: How to Order Unique Meta Descriptions and Titles appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

It is because SEO requires a greater understanding that it is valuable for content marketing writers to take a “back to the basics” approach when examining the relationship between SEO blogging and content marketing.

“S” Stands for “Search”

In an effort to create great content with strong keywords that will inspire readers to continue reading, make a purchase, or share the content with friends, it is easy to forget that the first step of SEO blogging is to hook the reader.

If the content never appears on the first page of search results or if readers never click on the content, because the title or metadata doesn’t attract their interest, then the content has no SEO value.

Keywords, Metadata, and Titles

In the past, before Google updated its search engine algorithm extensively, keyword saturation was king of SEO. That time has passed. But even though keyword density is no longer critical, quality keyword usage still is.

You want your content marketing to use important search keywords naturally and in conjunction with related search keywords. This lets the search engine algorithms know that your content has value to the reader.

If you aren’t sure what keywords are best for your content, use a program like Google Analytics to determine what people are searching for.

Keywords are only half the equation though. Keywords get you on the first page of search results, but metadata and titles get readers to click on your content. You need to appeal to the instincts of your target audience when creating titles and metadata. Try to make sure that the tone of your title and metadata fit that audience.

In general, unless you are writing purely for academics, something slightly witty will draw the attention of potential readers and earn a click.

Engagement is Critical

The key to any inbound marketing strategy is engagement through excellent, focused content. Readers are more likely to click links, share links, or make purchases when they find the content of a website engaging. Furthermore, the search engine algorithm changes that companies like Google constantly make are literally designed to promote more engaging content.

By making your content marketing more engaging and more valuable to your target audience, you will get better returns from your investment in that marketing.

Long Term Strategy

One of the main advantages of SEO for content marketing is, unlike social media marketing or e-mail marketing, it is a long term strategy. Your content can and will be discovered by random searching for years to come.

You want the majority of this content to be evergreen, so it is just as engaging ten years from now as it is today. Finally, make sure to periodically update this content to maintain engagement value and keep it in line with evolving SEO algorithms.

The post The Relationship Between SEO and Content Marketing appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Here’s three important SEO tips from the experts to make sure you’re getting the most out of your content.

Keywords Are Important: Don’t Overdo It!

Content consumers on the Internet are savvy. So are search engines. They are able to discern if content is actually content or if it is fluff stuffed with keywords. Keywords are important.

However, they must be used sparingly and intelligently. Too many instances of a keyword on a page or blog can actually work against its page rank. Keywords perform best when included in text that answers questions and provides true value to the reader.

Vitally important is that relevant keywords are used in a natural manner that agrees with the context in which they are found. Titles, headings and metadata are perfect places to find intelligent ways to include keywords.

Search engine spiders notice keywords in these key areas. Words that describe the services offered by a business make better keywords than the business name itself and may attract potential customers from markets of which you were unaware.

Search Engines Love Text Links

Everyone loves a website that is well-designed with catchy and functional Java script. Kelcey Jones, with The Search Engine Journal, explains that the problem with Java script is that search engine spiders are unable to understand it.

If the home or landing page of a website or blog is created entirely of Java script, spiders will be unable to search your domain more deeply and leave much of your website or blog un-indexed. Make things easier for search spiders by including text links to other pages in your domain.

Backlinks, Backlinks, Backlinks!

One of the most powerful tools in the box of knowledgeable SEO professionals is the backlink. A backlink is simply a link on another website to your website. If you know another website owner who is willing to link to your site, great!

Even better is if the link is included as part of the body of original and relevant content. If you don’t don’t have contacts at other websites, don’t worry! There are still many ways to get backlinks to your site out on the web for spiders to follow and increase your page rank.

Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, and blogging sites, such as WordPress, are the perfect place to add intelligently placed backlinks to your site.

What is particularly appealing about social media backlinks is that when other users share your content, the backlinks gets shared as well! This helps to make a website much more visible to search engines. Matt Cutts from Google reports that eventually backlinks will become less important, but for the time being, backlinks “still have many years left in them.”

By using each of these techniques consistently, as well as offering valuable and compelling content, website and blog owners can expect to see an increase in their page rankings and a healthy boost in traffic!

The post 3 SEO Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Website/Blog appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Looking for new ways to improve the quality of your marketing content? There are literally hundreds of online content writer tools and applications that can help you.

The following top ten content writer tools are the best digital options to help you improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your content marketing.

9. Google Calendar – This free, easy to use online tool lets you organize the release date of your content to avoid flood and famine marketing. A great addition to your content writer tools.

8. WordPress SEO by Yoast – If you have any difficulty with metadata tags on your WordPress articles, this tools will help you always pick the best tags for your content.

7. Tag Crowd – Tag Crowd creates a visual representation of your keyword density that allows you to judge how efficiently your content can be found by search engines.

6. Dropbox – Besides providing additional storage, this tool simplifies online collaboration with client or other writers when creating content marketing.

5. Piktochart – Infographics are both popular and effective in content marketing. This valuable application will have you creating your own in minutes.

4. Yahoo Style Guide – This is one of the best style guides available for content marketing because it was specifically designed for internet content, as opposed the AP Style Guide.

3. Keyword Planner – Keyword use is much like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You don’t want too little or too much. You want it just right. This tool is ideal for your needs.

2. Brainy Quote – An on point quote will make your marketing more memorable and memorable marketing sells better. This tool will help you find famous quotes quickly.

1. Thesaurus.com – Your audience will bore quickly if you call a product “amazing” more than twice. Use this website to call it “fascinating,” “incredible,” “marvelous,” and “prodigious.”

The post Top 9 Tools Needed to Master Writing Quality Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Today, Matt demonstrates how to order SEO metadata with your content.

We’ve made it easy for you and your writer to work together to get the metadata you need for your SEO strategy.

From within the advanced order option area in the content order form, you will want to click ‘yes’ when it asks you if you would like metadata.

You can specify keywords, or leave it up to the writer to decide.

When your writer picks up your order, they will be presented with 3 fields.

Metadata Title- This section defaults to the h1 title of your order. It can also be customized based on your strategy.

Metadata Description- A best practice for metadata descriptions is anywhere between 150 and 160 characters. We’ve set the character limit to 156 to ensure there is no overage.

Metadata Keywords- As previously mentioned, you can decide whether you’d like to provide these for your writer, or, you can leave it up to the writer to decide what best fits.

Once the writer has returned the SEO metadata and content back to you, you can export the content in HTML or as a CSV file.

If you have questions about this feature, feel free to leave a question in the comment box on this post, or contact your client account manager at any time.

The post Feature Friday: Getting SEO Metadata with Your Content appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

Keep in mind that when launching an eBook, you are essentially acting as your own publisher. You’ll be writing the content, or hiring someone to write effective content for you, and putting your content together as an eBook. There are plenty of eBook templates you can use to put your eBook together. Once you get passed the initial preparation phase, it’s time to launch your eBook.

Protect Your Content

Make it clear that you own your content to avoid someone, possibility a competitor, from using your content for their marketing purposes. You could either copyright your content or publish it via an attributions license, which permits people to copy and share your content as long as you are comfortable with how it’s being used.

Consider that an attributions license does makes it easier for people to share interesting parts of your content via social media and other online sources.

Note: If your content is copyrighted, clearly state this within your content. If you have specific rules for usage of your content, either mention this briefly at the bottom of the page or create a separate page disclosing your policy on sharing and reusing your eBook content.

Optimize Your eBook Metadata

While you can’t optimize your eBook content itself for search engines, you can optimize external factors such as the descriptions you use to promote it. The following types of metadata relating to your eBook should be optimized:

• Relevant tags
• Any websites, blogs or social posts referencing your eBook
• Meta description of your eBook
• File name used to upload your eBook

Let People Know About Your eBook

Once you have an eBook ready to go, you have to let people know it’s available. If you have an existing email marketing campaign, this is a perfect way to get the word out.

You could either include a link to your eBook or a link to subscribe to your blog or newsletter if you want this to be a condition for someone to get your eBook. Additional ways to get the word out about your eBook include:

• Mentioning it in as a new post in your blog
• Sending out a Tweet (grouped with a hashtag to take users to your related content)
• Placing a post on Facebook
• Creating a landing page to the specific page of your website that mentions your eBook

Now that people know about your eBook, the final step is to get people talking about it. Be active on your social networks. Rather than just posting messages and sending out tweets, actually interact with users by responding to comments in real time.

This kind of connection gets people talking and encourages more people to join the conversation. Consider guest posting on blogs related to your business or eBook topics.

Another option is to have a contest where the prize is a free copy of your eBook. The more creative you are, the better. With a little imagination and promotion, your eBook can be a highly effective marketing tool.

The post Tips for Launching Your Successful eBook appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.

It Demonstrates Value

According to search engines like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, value is the product of a number of factors. Whatever those specific factors happen to be, a common indicator is the number of people that link to a site and share its content via social media. It’s an unfortunate truth of the SEO game that online content is only as valuable as its appeal to web users. Social media activity in the form of Facebook Likes, Twitter Tweets and up-votes on Q&A sites demonstrate value, and that’s just not going to change any time soon.

The Organic Boost: Post-Penguin Ranking Factors

Like it or not, social media impacts organic search results, a fact that former Google CEO Eric Schmidt readily admits. All those inbound links garnered from the viral sharing of social media matter. Google went on the offensive against cheap SEO tricks and link schemes with Penguin. Now, it’s not only the number of people that share your content but also who’s doing the sharing. Social media SEO is all about link authority at this point.

Constant Content Creation

While the latest Google algorithm updates place a greater emphasis on links and link authority, content is still the most critical determinant of value. More importantly, the freshness of content holds a lot of weight. That’s why sites like Reddit, Quora and Facebook manage to nail down so many keyword queries in organic search. They leverage social media to churn out a great deal of user-generated content without having to do much work. User-generated content is yet another excellent fringe benefit of using social media to enhance your SEO efforts.

Bringing It Together

Just because a billion people find something momentarily interesting and express their fleeting approval of it doesn’t make it a high-value resource online. Likewise, just because something has demonstrable value, it doesn’t make it instantly popular. Social indicators in SEO are just another technique that Google and Bing use when trying to rank content on the web. They’re increasingly important, but they’ll never completely take over. Regardless, webmasters and marketers need to factor in their weight when deciding on how to best promote content for wider dissemination around the Internet.

The post Why Social Media Is Important for SEO appeared first on Crowd Content - Blog.