Sitting in front of the computer, typing, deleting and retyping until the content is ready to publish is a common story for those who write or edit content as a profession. The importance of quality content is not just valuable for readers, but for the writer as well. Whether content will be accepted by the world largely depends on a number of factors other than the content itself. The following is a checklist of things to keep in mind while working with content. These pointers can help you to improve your content writing as well as content marketing strategies.

1. Evaluate your post before publishing

Is the topic you are working on popular with your audience? Do people really search for this type of content? You can quickly get your answer with the help of Google’s tools. One such tool helps you to find the most-searched keywords from across the world. Make sure your content is associated with good keywords to ensure better traffic. If you run a blog on a specific topic, check how popular the topic is with your audience and adjust your keywords and their usage accordingly.

 

2. Ask what makes your post unique

There are countless writers who publish the same content over and over again including only minor changes here and there. While their post is technically unique enough to be accepted by Google for publication, the quality of the content does not earn as many readers, followers, retweets or other publicity as would truly unique content. Even topics that have been widely discussed online can be refreshed with original content writing. Take your time and consider how your post could renew interest in the topic. Are there new ideas about it floating around? Have any new facts or stories emerged? Can the topic be put in a historical light? There are plenty of ways to win audience acceptance with original content on a seemingly saturated topic.

3. Take care in choosing the title or headline

How you title your content is critical to the effectiveness of your SEO efforts. The headline or title of your post should be unique, catchy, and to the point. It should inspire curiosity while including one or two potent keywords. “How to” headlines match many popular search queries on a wide variety of topics, even things no one intends to do themselves. “Top 10” and similar lists also catch attention since such content is thought to be easily digested.

4. Use descriptive sub-headlines

Sub-headlines are titles or headlines of sections within content. For SEO, the use of sub-headlines has become especially popular. When a sub-headline is written with H2 and H3 tags, search crawlers can more easily locate them which in turn optimizes the position of your blog. Sub-headlines add a break to the monotony of a large block of text. Lots of text can bore your readers before they find the information they seek. Sub-headlines can help keep interest and assist in navigation throughout the post.

5. Keep your paragraphs short

A huge block of text is not a welcome sight to most readers. They only stumbled upon your content because they were looking for a specific piece of information – not to spend an hour leisure reading. Break your content into shorter paragraphs and organize the ideas within it maintain focus on each topic as it is presented. If even well-written content has the feel of a medical textbook, many readers may become discouraged and avoid the post altogether.

6. Use colorful images

Though text is necessary, a plain text body can often become taxing on the eyes. Adding relevant images to your content will make it more entertaining for your readers. Also, renaming the images with appropriate keywords will increase the chances of the post getting noticed from an image search. Images can be particularly helpful in this regard, as they redirect interested visitors to your website when they click your image in the image search results.

7. Use internal links and URL’s

Linking from one post to another on your website can increase the number of total views of the posts on your website. When you are writing a new content post relevant to an existing post on your site, you can easily link it. Building a network of links like this can help increase the visibility of your site to a wider audience seeking a variety of topics.

8. Use appropriate Meta content

A good quality Meta description is a great way to boost any post. The Meta description should provide the gist of the content within four to five lines. Be creative with your wording; a Meta description should be both information dense and, to be accepted by Google Hummingbird, grammatically correct so a human reader can make sense of it. The Meta description is what Google views before accepting the content for publication. It is also used as the introductory text to your actual content on any platform where you publish it, so it should be interesting.

9. Draft your own excerpt

Each website platform has its own process for excerpts. For example, WordPress usually fills the excerpt line with its own set of text extracted from the post by default. However, when WordPress does so, there’s a good chance the excerpt won’t make much sense to the audience. The better option is to make the excerpt on your own by choosing it from the body of the text yourself. You can simply copy and paste the selection from the post.

10. Create a “call to action”

Once your readers reach the end of a post, what do you expect from them? A “call to action” is subtle suggestion for their next move. It could remind them to “like” the post right next to a “like” button; it could similarly request them to subscribing to your website or leave a comment. Any of these options will help boost the website and its content. For commercial purposes, your “call to action” may mean directing the user to a contact or purchase page. Their range of options should align with your goals for the website.