Content writing is not an easy job. Pro content writers spend hours sitting and typing on their laptops to make sure they can write a piece of content for their readers. To build a following and gain notice for their content, writers must actively master each step of creating and building a strong network of readers for their articles. So if you would like to be a content writer, take notes, bookmark links and practice writing for yourself.
Step 1: Keyword Research
To rank well on Google with your article, you must have SEO (Search Engine Optimization) skills. This requires you to actively perform keyword research and add short-tail and long-tail keywords to your article.
You can do keyword research on Google by scrolling down to the bottom to find what searchers are looking out for. These keywords are typically long-tail keywords that make for good content.
Depending on how many keywords you are looking for and see how your competitors are using it. You can use KeywordAnywhere(this is free!) or use the most popular keyword research tool businesses use which is Ahrefs.
I use RankIQ, one of the cheapest and most valuable SEO tools in the market. At $50 a month, bloggers get to have 16 super high-value keywords. I’m getting almost 8/16 of my keywords ranked on page one on Google! That is why it’s a no-brainer for me to continue using their services. If you would like to check it out, here is the link to RankIQ.
Step 2: Forming Titles and Heading
No one is going to read a basic title, the world of reading has changed and titles with more personality stand out better.
Writers who can master the art of writing clickbait titles tend to stand out from the crowd as better writers since he/she is also great marketers.
Apart from that, writers need to know how to break down their writing understandably through the proper use of headings. The more detailed the breakdown of H1, H2, and H3, the better the readership and attention span of the reader.
Properly forming headings and titles also always writer to simply fill in the blanks which is a lot easier than thinking of a heading on the spot. With this strategy of formatting content, it is easy for writers to post a lot more articles, I managed to post 3~5 articles per day.
Step 3: Target Audience
Who are your target audiences, can you be more precise?
Yeah I know you might think the target audience is only aiming at a certain age group or certain topic. That is certainly far from the truth, you can do research on target audiences by looking at Google Trend to see what is the recently most searched, and from there you can research how is the content written targetted
Step 4: Affiliates to be Shared
A way for writers to make an income through content writing is through affiliate marketing. It is a form of sharing links to products and services with readers in the hopes that they would buy them.
Writers will then be able to make a small commission by sharing this link. Market research for good affiliate links is really important as it can vary depending on percentages of commission and earnings.
There will be plenty of these affiliate writers who can take on, but be wary that this sort of making-money business is built based on trust. And if the affiliate product and service turn out to be bad, your readership will lose out in the long run.
Step 5: Piecing up the work
Here comes the long-wind part of writing, which is adding the meat to the article. At this moment, writers should be able to get in the zone to allow themselves to be in deep focus on their writing so that they can create more content in the article.
To speed up the writing, content writers do reach out to AI writing services to write many types of examples. Thanks to AI writing, writers can now have more time to themselves learning how to crawl and find keywords. This means more time is used to find ways to make more money.
Step 6: Add internal and external links
Once done with all the writing, add as many internal links. This can help your readers bounce around the different articles that you have previously written.
This allows them to be stuck in the loop of getting more information. It helps to increase the level of trust in your work since you have an abundance of information.
Also, having high domain authority (DA) articles online to be used as external links can help to build authoritative content that has substance. A great recommendation for how to use this is to add researched information from these articles into your work.
Step 7: Publish!
Once all that hard work is done, it’s time to do a final check before publishing. Here are some key steps to take note of:
- Is your meta description done well?
- Has your content been broken done and readable?
- Has it passed Grammarly for grammar and vocabulary error checks?
- Is the Call to Action (CTA) good enough?
Once all that is done, remember to schedule the post at the best possible time in your country. By doing so, you maximize your reach to a larger readership.
Step 8: Use Social media marketing
Depending on what type of content you are writing, there are many different social media platforms out there that can do the right job of promoting your business.
Here are the types of social media and what they specialize in:
- LinkedIn — Businesses and Startups in general
- Instagram — Trendy and story-telling images for the mid-age audience
- TikTok — Younger audiences that your content can be described in under 1 minute
- Pinterest — Colorful fonts, a platform mainly used by women
- Twitter — Small and medium businesses
- Facebook — Great marketing tool to share with older folks
I highly recommend picking only 1 first and getting specializing in it before moving on to another.
Step 9: Let Google Algorithm do its work!
It takes about as little as 4 days to 6 months before content on Google is indexed by the bot. So during that time, you can constantly promote your article through paid and free social media marketing. This helps to build an audience and allows Google to curate your article faster.
Step 10: Edit and Improve
Google loves articles that they can constantly use to share information. If you edit or make changes to the article, it may require reindexing and take some time before traffic builds up again.
During this learning stage, reading and understanding how to write better as a writer is super important! You can read this article [SUPER USEFUL] on how to create articles on Medium that can help make you grow as a writer and make money.
