Content writing is one of the most important elements of digital marketing. And not only that, but it also helps with digital branding. As you may know, marketing is the act of making your brand known to many people, while branding is instilling positive feelings in your customers.
However, both of these things rely on SEO. If the SEO of a webpage is poor, then the content on it will not be able to reach many people. Conversely, if the technical SEO is good, but the content is bad, then it will result in a ranking reduction.
That is why it is necessary to write great content so that it boosts your SEO instead of dragging it down. To do that, we are going to tell you three proven tricks.
3 Writing Tips for Improving SEO
These are three tips that can help you out with SEO.
Make Sure that You do not Plagiarize
A common mistake that content writers make is plagiarizing content. It is not usually the writer’s fault, as it can happen accidentally rather than by design.
Plagiarism can severely harm the SEO of a web page since it can trigger penalties from search engines. They can either reduce the ranking of the offending page or remove it from their index. Due to this, it is important to not have any plagiarized content in your work.
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First of all, let’s see what are the reasons for plagiarism. It can happen due to the following:
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Imperfect knowledge of the subject
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Biased research
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Lack of time
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Coincidence
When a writer lacks knowledge of the subject or doesn’t have enough time, they end up copying from others in order to sound authentic. Obviously, this is considered plagiarism. The only way to deal with that is to do thorough research.
Biased research is when writers only read from a few sources which make them biased toward the viewpoints discussed in them. To deal with that, you need to research from many sources.
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Now, we come to the final type, which is coincidental plagiarism (also known as accidental plagiarism). This is the one that gives people trouble because it is not done intentionally. It can pop up out of nowhere. The main reason is that there is a lot of content on the web already, so it is very easy for newer pieces to have matching parts with the existing articles.
This accidental plagiarism can hurt the SEO of your web pages. So, whenever you have to write an article, you have to ensure that there is no plagiarism in it by using an online plagiarism checker.
You can easily find a plagiarism checker free of cost for this purpose. Plagiarism checkers can compare your content against billions of online sources in a few minutes. This means that their results are very reliable.
Unique content is favored by SEs and readers, so it is always a good idea to use a plagiarism checker free to ensure its uniqueness. When readers consistently find unique content on your site, they start recommending it to others as well. So, you get some free advertising out of it.
Incorporate Multiple Keywords in Your Content
Keywords are the lifeblood of SEO. You need to be adding them everywhere, such as in your headings, titles, content body, and even meta descriptions and tags.
Without keywords, search engines cannot know what your content is about. As a result, they have trouble ranking your site and matching it with the right searches. This naturally leads to poor rankings and loss of traffic.
That’s why you should add appropriate keywords—those that your site ranks for—in your content.
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But, there is an issue with this approach. Using the same primary keyword over and over can result in keyword stuffing, which is a black hat technique.
The usage of black hat techniques while doing link building is always penalized so you need to avoid them like the plague, in order to do this you can either build your own internal team in charge of doing these tasks of hire an external specialized firm like these services.
What you need to do is to use different variations of the keywords. That can include LSI keywords, long tail keywords, and even semantically-related terms. This allows you to tell search engines what your content is about, without keyword stuffing.
Consequently, search engines have an easier time matching your pages with the right searches. That starts a positive reinforcement cycle where visitors to your website become satisfied, which further improves the ranking.
Keep the Content Readable
Believe it or not, readability now directly affects SEO. That’s because of the advancements in search engine algorithms. They can now gauge the satisfaction level of visitors.
Naturally, visitors become unsatisfied if the content is too difficult to read. Their course of action is to leave the site, and this contributes to a high bounce rate.
Bounce rate is one of the metrics that search engines use to measure satisfaction level. The other one is dwell time. A high dwell time means that the visitor was satisfied.
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If you make your content readable, then it contributes to a high dwell time. So, how can you make it more readable? Here is how:
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Format it properly with headings and subheadings
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Use simple vocabulary
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Keep your sentences short.
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Avoid run-on sentences
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Keep paragraphs shorter than four lines
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Only provide as much information as is necessary, and avoid anything extra
These are some tips to make the content more readable.
Conclusion
These were three tips for writing that help you boost your SEO. By incorporating these tips into your list of techniques you can ensure that your content is able to rank high and does not get penalized.