Content Writing: Behind The Scenes
Content writing does not just mean that you write a piece on a given topic and your work is over. All your sleep-less nights, all your toils behind your endeavour to write a perfect piece might just become futile if you do not check for errors and faults in your finished write-up. It is thus necessary to check the article thoroughly before letting them be read by the world at large. Any fault in the write-up would hamper the credibility and reputation of the company that the content writer has written the article for.
Below are the standard steps that a content writer takes to improve her writing:
- The realization that everybody makes mistakes
- Grammar checks
- Ensuring that the write-up is original
- Checking the readability grade
- Ensuring proper placement of keywords
- Adding copyright-free images
- Giving inbound and outbound links
- Little technicalities go a long way
- Write a meta description or snippet
Let’s Delve Deeper
1. The realization that everybody makes mistakes:
Before delving into the technical aspects, let me hammer this idea first that one must quit thinking that her write-up is up to the mark and free from all errors. Grammarly advertisers correctly say that there is nothing called a perfect writer. The content creators must always be on the lookout for faults and mistakes in their articles. It is only after this realization that they will actively check for errors in their writings.
2. Grammar checks – Make Your Writing Solid:
You don’t need to be a grammar ninja but basic grammatical correctness is what you should aim for if you’re serious about making it big as a content writer. Small, hard-to-detect grammatical mistakes like writing ‘dont’ instead of ‘don’t’ or putting the plural form instead of the singular form of the verb after the third person plural number noun – can seriously dampen the quality of one’s writing. Fret not. There are sites like Grammarly or Grammar Lookup that proof-read your articles to detect such types of grammatical mistakes.
Grammarly even has the option to choose the target audience before checking for grammatical errors. That way if you are the UK or any commonwealth country-based writer and you are writing for the US audience, Grammarly can suggest the US variations of words like ‘realisation’, ‘colour’ etc.
3. Ensuring that the write-up is original:
Often, our subconscious minds confuse us and we end up using in our articles words and phrases that we read somewhere on the web. When this unintentionally copied content is detected, our credibility and reputation as content writers get shattered. Moreover, no search engine algorithm tolerates plagiarism and the ranking of the website you are writing for drops gradually. So, plagiarism is a strict no-no in content writing.
There are many online plagiarism checkers that come to the aid of talented content writers. Grammarly is the go-to site for all content writers. It offers plagiarism checks. Then there is Plagscan whose USP is that it checks even the deep-web databases. Other free software tools and online plagiarism checkers are Plagiarisma, Paperrater, etc. Turnitin and Copyscape are the most reliable names among paid plagiarism checkers.
4. Checking the readability grade:
There is no dearth of content online. Nobody really shows an interest in reading a half-baked, difficult-to-comprehend article. Long, complex sentences with too many predicates and conjunctions are a strict no-no. Too much use of passive voice is not welcome too. Words that are difficult to understand hamper the readability of the article. We have services like the Hemingway App to detect these negative points in our articles. A grade between 6 and 8 (Good) is what you should be aiming for while writing a piece of content for the web audience.
5. Ensuring proper placement of keywords in your writing:
We write content with the target of placing that content on the first page of Google. How do we do that? We ensure that the keywords that we are asked to include in our articles are there at the right places – one or two times in the introduction, two or three times in the body and one or two times in the conclusion. The frequency may vary but the density should be around 1.8 to 2 percent beyond which it is considered as keyword stuffing. After finishing the article, a good content writer makes sure that the keywords are mentioned for a sufficient number of times and that they do not look like being forcefully incorporated.
6. Adding copyright-free images:
Sometimes, content writers are also asked to compliment their articles with images that enhance the explanation of the concerned subject matter. Websites like Pixabay or Wikimedia Commons help greatly for this purpose.
7. Including outbound links:
If you know which website you are writing for then you must hyperlink a few important phrases with the relevant landing pages of the same. At least, you must hyperlink or mention separately the websites which you think give more authentic and reliable information on subjects related to what you are writing on. Outbound links are true value-addition for your readers and the search engines love them too for their role in improving authority and ranking of the page.
8. Little technicalities go a long way:
There are quite a few things that, if done right, gives your article/content an extra edge. For example, if it is an article, you must write an H1 title that is not more than 57 characters long (including space). Otherwise, the rest of it (beyond 57 characters) does not appear on the search engine result page. Then, the paragraphs should ideally be not more than 150 words. This is not water-tight but more than 150 words in a paragraph make it look too chunky. Finally, you should add a call-to-action to your conclusion or any other strategic position in your article. To learn how to write subtle yet effective call-to-action, click here.
9. Write a meta description or snippet:
Do you mind walking the extra mile for your valued client or employer? You don’t because, at the end of the day, it’s your article that gains better visibility. How? Write a meta description or a snippet, ideally not more than 157 characters long including space. A meta description is nothing but the takeaway from an article described in a sentence. It is also an important requisite for search engine optimization. Many content writers, bloggers, and website owners lift a sentence conveniently from the article itself and use it as meta description. But it is always advisable to write a fresh sentence or two that tells about the key takeaway from the article and also act as an effective call-to-action visible right on the SERP.
No matter how expensive the clothes of a person are, if they are wrinkled they will not make him look good. Similarly, no matter how well-researched one’s article is, it will fail to attract readers if it is not grammatically correct or not readable enough. It is for these reasons that a well-trained content writer employs these techniques to polish the articles. This is how they stand apart from the crowd of untrained content writers. For the perfect handholding in content writing, type ‘Content Writing Training’ in the Comment section below.
