Mark Twain said it best: "Write what you know."
Unfortunately he lived in a world before search engines and the highly competitive digital landscape. Today, no matter how great your story, how fascinating your insight or how wonderful your writing, it's all worthless if it's not created by and read by people who care.
Today if you want people to enjoy your work and you want to monetize it, they need to find and see it first!
The folks at Google would agree with Twain's advice here. To Google, content IS king, but only if it embodies accurate and authoritative information.
Writing for Humans
The first step in writing for your reader is to understand and cater to their search intent, which will one of these four types:
Navigational
Informational
Commercial
Transactional
From there, you should craft content that meets four essentials:
Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust
E-E-A-T is an acronym mentioned in Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines for raters (real humans!) to evaluate while rating a websites quality and purpose.
Writing for SERPs
Did you know there are over 200 rank factors that Google uses to assess your website? They have kindly published a list of standards for webmasters to use in their content creation.
Google is ultimately looking out for consumers, ensuring they can make informed decisions and sound purchases, while hindering money-hungry scammers who do not have the best intentions of the customer in mind.
It's true - Google just wants you to have the best information to allow you to make the best decision for your finances, your health, your life!
Putting it All Together
For the average blogger or small business owner, this information could be overwhelming. So I've created an abbreviated version here, with a few extra tips and tricks that are known to be universal best practices in the world of blogging.
Following best practices for blogging will ensure that each piece of content you produce make it easy for Google - and your customers - to find and navigate.
So much of writing copy is simply answering people’s questions in logical order. It doesn't have to be complicated.
Before hitting the "Publish" button, ask yourself: Is this blog or article...
ENTERTAINING - interesting, customer-driven, based on query data and keyword research, not rank ability, thought-provoking, insightful, compelling, engaging
EDUCATIONAL - informative, accurate, factual, research-backed, evidence-based, honesty and transparency, verifiable, clearly and correctly sourced and cited, author bios
ENGAGING - inspirational, motivational, inviting or encouraging action
EVERGREEN - timeless, classic, valuable, relevant, helpful, useful, substantial, simple, easy to understand, straightforward titles and copy, few ads or other distractions
What are other indicators of high-quality content?
ORIGINAL - sharing, reporting, research or analysis of information in a creative or innovative way
ORGANIZED - curated into a clear intro, body and conclusion, digestible with lists to summarize
ORDERLY - complete, comprehensive,proper spelling, grammatically sound, cohesive, coherent
OPPORTUNISTIC - easily accessible, viewable and functional on all browsers, devices and platforms
Each of these characteristics supports Google, and your audience's preference for intentional, high-quality content.
When it comes down to it, all content should be worth writing, but most importantly worth READING and SHARING. Anyone can write about something relevant, but to make that content be a source of reference - now thats something of beauty.
If you've created something that you're proud to show to the world AND that others would benefit from, then you're doing your job as a content creator!
Is all of this simple and easy to accomplish? Of course not! That's why I am here :) Let's set up a time to have a Brand Discovery call to chat about YOUR content creation needs.
Erin Ratliff is a certified feng shui consultant, holistic business coach and organic growth marketer for earth-loving, heart-centered soul-preneurs.
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