Write for your audience first
This is the key point in all content writing. It seems easy enough, yet so many companies make content for all the wrong reasons. Write content that appeals to the interests of your target audience and looks to answer their questions. Not all content needs to be about your product or service, but they all should be industry related. Assert yourself and your company as an expert or thought leader by writing content that is interesting and informative, whilst also doing it better than your competitors. Utilise competitor analysis to find content that works well and content gaps that can become opportunities.
Make headlines that make an impact
You have a very short amount of text to make a very big impression. So, don’t underestimate the power of an effective headline! Write headlines that are clear, interesting and make use of relevant keywords. In addition to a great headline, also make sure your meta descriptions are interesting and further elaborate on the topic of your article or page. Keep in mind that your title and meta description are what show up in the search results, so make them count.
Use keyword-rich & relevant phrases
Use relevant, keyword rich phrases in your headlines as well as throughout your content to let both your readers and the search engines know what your post is about. But beware, too many keywords will not only turn off your readers, but can also result in search engine penalties for keyword stuffing. Therefore, use keywords thoughtfully and sparingly, sticking to a natural placement, synonyms and relevancy. In addition to using keywords throughout the body of your post, also take advantage blog tags. Tag a few relevant keywords for each post; most general blogs have tagging capabilities already built in.
Structure your posts
The contents of your post may be great, but can be easily lost in an unorganized, inefficient format. Breaking your content up into smaller paragraphs with headlines makes for an easy read that will keep your readers engaged. For the search engines, back-end organization is key too. Using proper tag hierarchy when tagging headlines (H1 for titles, H2 for subtitles) is important to maintain a well-structured article. Also include where possible relevant keywords within the Heading structure.
Incorporate rich media
Make your posts more exciting with images, videos and rich media! People are visual. At the very least add an image along with your blog/article post as this can make a big impression and improve engagement.
Propel content with social media
Social media is a powerful tool that can help increase the reach of your content and promote sharing. Post each new article on social media sites and in forums, using engaging descriptions and a call-to-action. Since the power of social media lies in sharing, it’s also important to have share buttons on each of your blog posts. If you want more control of how your links appear when they’re shared, implementing Twitter Cards for Twitter or Open Graph for Facebook (technical) can give your shared links a boost, and may help your click through rates.
Promote natural link building & internal links
Link building has come a long way since the days of link buying and link farms, but links are still an important ranking factor for SEO. Linking to your own articles or website in your post ensures a link back to your website if your article is picked up by another site. If you get creative with other types of content like infographics and videos, adding an embed code on your site helps to promote content sharing and also adds a link back to the original source. Creating great content helps increase the share ability and the likelihood that other websites will link to it, so aim for quality! Creating links to other important area of the site will also help pass authority to that page, so if you are talking about a specific product or service internally link to that section of the site.
Keep it all under the same roof
Get the credit and traffic your website deserves by keeping your original content under your own domain name. That means, if you have a blog opt out of hosting with WordPress or Blogger and host the blog in a subfolder on your own domain (ie: www.example.com/blog). Any time you have an opportunity to showcase other forms of original content like videos, infographics or whitepapers, make sure to also embed them onto.