Content Writing is an effective online marketing strategy that can generate a lot of leads and conversion if planned correctly. Relevant and well written content will do wonders for your Website Search Engine Optimisation. Unfortunately, there are some mistakes many content writers make be it intentionally or unintentionally but before we get into the mistakes, let’s talk about some of the things you can do to improve your content writing skills.

 

Do’s of Content Writing

  • Research on your Topic Thoroughly

Researching is a huge aspect of article writing. It’s important for you to understand the topic you are writing about inside out to avoid sharing false information with your readers. There are multiple ways you can do your research prior to creating and publishing your content the common one being online research. These platforms give you a vast amount of information from different sources. Another method you could use is conducting interviews and/or having focus group discussions. This method is quite engaging and you are guaranteed to get fresh and new information/opinions from different people. A combination of these two techniques provides your audience with a wealth of information.

Research your customer’s interest as well. Remember that you are writing this content for your audience to read. What you may think is interesting may not necessarily be interesting to them.

  • Plan your Content

After conducting your research, prepare an outline of all the ideas that you retrieved and what you would like to include. Start by introducing your topic then create categories and subcategories that will break down what your topic is about making navigating through your content easy for your reader. Content that appears crowded will put off your reader creating a high bounce rate for your website.

  • Proofread your Content🔎

Sometimes as a writer time is of the essence and making sure you achieve your goal is important. With that being said, this is no excuse to publish content that is full of errors and poor punctuation. ALWAYS proofread your material. There is nothing as embarrassing as realizing that your content is full of mistakes after publishing it for the whole world to see. Use tools like Grammarly and free plagiarism checker tools to help you publish top content.

  • Use Call-to-Action📣

This is where you use a link or image inviting a first time or recurring visitor to be a customer. Things like “subscribe to my newsletter, download this pdf or don’t forget to share this article” may prompt the reader to do exactly that.

  • Optimize Old Articles

Old articles are not useless, all they need is you to breath new life into them. They can be revamped to meet new SEO friendly content writing standards. Using SEO audit tools like Screaming Frog SEO Spider Website Crawler will help you keep track of all your old articles. You can then review them and check out which ones need to be optimized for successful results. Add in new keywords and information plus change the content structure as well if need be. If they didn’t have images you could include that too.

  • Write New Blogs Regularly

Last but not least, be consistent. Ranking for new keywords/topics is a strategic move to ensure your blog gets a lot of traffic. Use Ahrefs tool to help you find keyword trends. Ensure it’s within your niche. Not being consistent means you may lose valuable customers. Blog writing is an affordable way to increase your SEO rankings overtime or to even hold your current SEO positions.

 

Don’ts of Content Writing

  • Avoid Plagiarism

Google does not like copycats. Google ranks websites that plagiarize at the bottom of the search results page. Plagiarism is the quickest way to destroy your brand’s image. That is why we do research in the first place, to be authentic. Do not copy and paste another writer’s article onto your website.

  • Do not use Copyrighted Material©️

Don’t just grab images from google images or other search engines and add them to your article. You will be heavily fined for that or may face legal consequences. The best thing to do is use tools like Canva or piktochart and custom design your images. These tools do have free images as well that you could use.

  • Avoid Offensive Content

Content that may trigger social rage should be avoided. Making comments on sensitive topics may get you into serious trouble so avoid them at all costs. Also offensive language and name calling is a huge NO!🙅

  • Don’t Complicate your Content

Your content should be simple and easy to understand. There is no need for you to write content that will have your reader referring to the dictionary every second. Also as you try to be creative don’t go overboard with it and confuse the reader😕. Keep your sentences short and sweet. If you are dealing with a complex topic, break it down into understandable subtopics. Don’t overwhelm your reader with information overload. Try to convey your message with fewer words.  

Writing quality content is an art that requires time and practice to perfect. Note that as a content writer, it’s important to remember that you should always be reader oriented and objective. Try not to be too biased with your writing. I hope these points help you.

 

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