High-quality content is the driving force behind every successful marketing strategy. Whether you want to generate new leads to boost brand loyalty, you need awesome content to attract your potential and existing customers.
In recent years, new-age content formats, such as podcasts, videos, infographics, etc. have been rising to popularity. However, written content still continues to rule the roost. It breathes life into your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and even forms the lifeblood of your inbound marketing campaigns.
It isn’t surprising that 93% of B2B marketers use blog posts and short articles as part of their content marketing strategy. Also, blog posts are integral to content marketing for 86% of marketing professionals.
The Challenges of Content Writing
Despite the importance of content writing, most marketers struggle to get it right. This is because content writing requires a specific skill set. You need to have a deep understanding of your audience’s needs and create content that addresses their pain points.
Also, you must ensure that your content is precise, crisp, and optimized for search engines. Unless you have the right skills to craft outstanding web content, you’ll likely need to hire specialized content writing services for this purpose.
This is particularly essential considering that there are nearly 2 billion websites on the internet right now. Also, more than 70 million blog posts are published every month on WordPress alone. Thus, if your written content isn’t of the most superior quality, it won’t garner traction.
Moreover, the landscape of content writing and digital marketing is constantly evolving. New subjects and themes emerge now and then while advanced content marketing tools keep getting introduced.
This makes it extremely important to keep an eye on the latest content writing trends. Whether you’re regularly publishing blog posts or just revamping your product descriptions, thorough knowledge of content writing trends always comes in handy.
That’s why, in this blog, we’ve handpicked the most important content writing trends that marketers, content creators, and entrepreneurs need to leverage in. Let’s take a look.
Content Writing Trends
Writing high-performing content for the web isn’t a cakewalk. It requires extensive research and a deep understanding of the latest content marketing best practices. Here are the content writing trends you must harness:
1. Prioritize Brand Authority
Producing high-quality content is no longer enough. You also need to showcase an authoritative voice to grab your audience’s attention. This is essential because of the massive amount of mediocre and lookalike content floating around on the internet.
Your blog posts and web content will only stand out when they come from an industry thought leader or authority figure. This, in turn, can help build your brand identity and establish your blog as the go-to source of reliable information.
An effective way of achieving this is to select a single person or a few experts to represent your blog/website. In most cases, you’ll want to showcase the founder’s/CEO’s voice as representative of the blog.
Depending on the size and niche of your business, you could also assign various HODs as dedicated subject matter experts. This can go a long way to help your audience identify with the voices that represent your content and, in turn, help you earn their trust and loyalty. Also, it’ll be instrumental in optimizing your website for Google’s E-A-T ranking factors.
2. Focus on Keyword Research
You can’t create relevant, engaging, and search engine-friendly content without first performing extensive keyword research. Optimizing your content for relevant keywords ensures that it finds its footing in relevant search engine results.
Also, it helps you better understand the topics, themes, and subjects that would attract your audience. This, in turn, empowers you to create meaningful, valuable, and interesting content for them.
The simplest way of performing keyword research is to use a keyword research tool, such as:
- SEMrush
- Keyword Explorer by Ahrefs
- Moz Keyword Explorer
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ubersuggest
You can even use Google Search Console and Google Analytics to find the keywords your website is already ranking for. Also, make sure you use Google trends to identify popular and emerging keywords in your niche.
It’s also worth mentioning here that you should target a balanced mix of evergreen and trending keywords. For instance, targeting relevant coronavirus-related keywords will likely result in an instant uptick in website traffic. However, such keywords will lose their importance once the pandemic is over.
Thus, it’s important to keep targeting evergreen keywords as well. These are keywords that’ll remain relevant to your existing and potential customers in the long run. Also, once you’ve shortlisted your keywords, make sure your analyze the associated search volume and competition to determine whether they’re worth targeting.
3. Prioritize Search Intent
You can’t stuff a bunch of irrelevant keywords into your blog post and call it a day. Apart from adversely affecting the quality of your content, it can also get your website penalized. If you want to target a particular keyword, a wiser idea is to satisfy the search intent associated with it.
This involved understanding why your audience is using a particular keyword in their search query. An easy way of identifying search intent is to run a Google search for your target keyword. Take a look at the content of the topmost listings to understand what search intent they’re fulfilling.
Satisfying the search intent of a keyword makes your content more engaging and relevant. This, in turn, encourages your audience to spend more time reading it. Ultimately, it improves your website’s engagement metrics and its search engine ranking.
4. Optimize the Title Tag
Most bloggers and content marketers focus on the body of their blog post to make it more insightful and attractive. However, the first thing your audience will notice about any page on your website is the title tag. It’s also the piece of information that search engine spiders use to understand what a web page is about.
To begin with, make sure that the title tag is interesting and piques the reader’s curiosity. It should highlight what the blog post is about without divulging too many details. Also, Google recommends that you limit its length to 50-60 characters.
Next, you should ensure that the title tag includes your focus keyword, preferably towards the beginning. Make sure it organically fits into the title. It’s also a good idea to optimize your title using a tool like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.
5. Leverage Internal Linking
Internal links are crucial for helping search engine spiders navigate your website and index fresh content. They also help spread link juice to key web pages and in turn, improve your website’s search engine ranking.
Moreover, strategically placed internal links help you provide more valuable content to your audience and even influence your customer’s journey. But you should avoid flooding your blog posts with unnecessary internal links.
Make sure every internal link you add enriches the reader’s experience. Also, the topic of the target page should be related to the blog post. Lastly, don’t forget to include a relevant and descriptive anchor text.
Are there any other content writing trends that have caught your attention lately? Share your suggestions in the comments section below.
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