The essence of SEO writing

Explore keywords with traffic potential

Identify search intent

Google chooses what content to show people according to their search intent. Search intent is what the person wants to find behind a query. In other words, you must understand all possible “why” and “what” that your content must cover to satisfy a user’s needs.

To make sure your content goes in line with the search intent of your target audience, you should fulfill the next three conditions:

• Choose the correct content type

The most straightforward way to understand what type of content you should put money on is by exploring the top positions on Google. It will tell you what type of content ranks well and you should take it into account.

For example, if your target keyword is mainly used across interrogative queries like “what is the difference between organic and paid search“, you will get such content types as blog posts, articles, or videos.

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However, if your target keywords don’t have informational intent, you won’t rank for blog posts. You will rank for video content or attract your target audience to your product pages.

• Think about content format

It won’t be hard to understand what content format you’re willing to create. There are a few standard formats to choose from – listicle, how-to guides, expert roundups, etc.

• Work on exploring content angle

Content angle reflects the purpose of your content. To put it simply, you must understand what message you want to send. To give you a clear idea of what it means, let’s analyze this very post per these three aspects.

1) Content type is “blog post”

2) Content format is “guide”

3) Content angle is providing concrete actionable tips on SEO writing for the beginners

Keep in mind these nuances and move forward with implementing the next tips.

Proceed with the determination of subtopics

You already have your target keyword. You know what type of content you’re going to write. You know in what format content will be created. Plus, you decided what angle content will take. 

What is the next step?

The next step is to figure out subtopics for your future writings. Three ways will help you here. Let’s review them:

• Analyze your competitors’ content

Must admit that this is a cool idea to analyze content created by the competitors. Just type your top priority query on Google and review the top pages it suggests. Afterwards, review the outline for each post paying attention to headings. For instance, this post on explainer video covers different subtopics that you could cover in your content as a separate topic.

• Review “People also ask” section

“People also ask” section can provide you with more topic ideas. These are the variations of what people might also be looking for on Google based on your primary keyword. 

• Explore what your competitors might rank for

If you want to be ahead of your competitors, you must explore other possible keyword ideas and topics they rank for. One of the best ways to do this is by using Content Gap tool. Just paste your competitors’ URLs and hit the “Show keywords” button.

Review the results and compare them with each other. Focus on those keywords that are used by all the competitors you’re analyzing. 

Once all the preparations are done, you can start writing the post. Nevertheless, continue to read and you will find out five SEO writing tips.

SEO writing tips

It won’t be hard to guess that SEO writing aims to create content that would rank high on Google and attract traffic to your website. Consequently, without knowing some SEO tips you won’t be able to write optimized content right off the bait. 

Here are five tips that will help you drastically.

Create a perfect title

Without a proper title tag, you won’t get neither traffic nor CTR from your target audience. Hence, review the titles of the pages from your competitors and think about how you could write the better one. 

You must use a target keyword in the title tag + keep in mind search intent you have identified at the beginning stage. Try to make every title tag unique that would make people never bounce back from the page.

Short URL

If you want to create SEO-friendly content, you should start with the URL of the post first. Basically, any URL must be simple and easy-to-read. It must include a primary keyword and you should keep it short.

Work on featured snippets optimization

Being featured in “featured snippets” is a wonderful opportunity for your content to be easily noticeable by a target audience. To be able to optimize your primary keyword snippet, you must understand the exact format that would meet the requirements of a future featured snippet. Afterwards, create content accordingly.

Internal links

Internal links are one of the on-page SEO elements you should never ignore. Plus, these links are good for user experience. Remember, you can’t cover everything in one topic. All additional subtopics related to the main topic can be covered in separate posts on your blog. Internal links help your target audience to navigate on your blog reading information from other articles thereby. 

Add images

Images make your content more engaging for your audience. It helps people to absorb information visually. Just imagine if you read this very guide without images and screenshots. I bet you would leave it without compunction.

Conclusion

Summing up everything mentioned in this post, SEO writing is not about using the right keywords, ranking, and traffic. These elements are just a part of the game. The main course of the process is creating readable content that would help the audience to solve the problems.

As a bonus for your efforts, you get traffic to your website and ranking positions.

Everything you need to know about how to onboard a new employee

To ensure a successful onboarding of newly hired employees, there must be an optimistic mindset in the workplace and detailed planning. Additionally, whether you have a small, average, or large company, you need to know how to onboard a new employee and make them feel valuable from the get go. Here are some possible steps that will assist you in the onboarding procedures:

Utilize checklists

Checklists during the onboarding process will assist you in systemizing your company. Through this, you will improve a specific scheme that can be awe-inspiring to some personnel. Having an onboarding new employee checklist also focuses on the significant hiring steps.

Onboarding new employee checklists include procurement of new hire devices or equipment, setting accounts, scheduling new hire orientation, performing a company tour, preparing new hire paperwork, and many more.

Curate an onboarding guide

Companies manage an internship that begins with a five or six-month stint. To manage this internship program, it is best to curate all the most effective reading materials on the field, the external content, and the company’s internal process into bite-sized pieces in an all-inclusive guide.

Through curating an onboarding guide, newly hired staff will be guided on what to do and how they are expected to function in the company.

Work directly with the new hires

Having a new employee at the office needs direct supervision, especially during one or two weeks. As an employer, it is best to shadow new employees for a couple of days. Through this, newly hired staff will know that there is someone who is willing to assist them. They can freely ask some questions needed to complete their tasks and know how the company works.

This scheme is also a perfect avenue to know more about your staff. Moreover, you will analyze their skills and level of understanding during the orientation process. You can also use this to check whether that newly hired employee needs more training or can directly work on their own after a week or month.

Provide a mentor

Having a new staff at the office is quite a challenging task. You have to orient that person and need to ensure that they are aware of their functions and tasks. To ensure that they will meet your expectations, it is a must to provide a mentor. A mentor will serve as their ultimate guide in completing the things that they need to accomplish.

However, there is always a limitation when mentoring a staff. It is best to let them work on their own after a series of training and orientation. An empowered employee should practice minimal supervision.

Advocate a repeatable procedure

If your company is growing fast, it is a must to enforce a repeatable and scalable process. It means that you will put your new hires through a structured, organized onboarding procedure. The main purpose of this is to ensure not only getting everything they need to be productive but also to ensure that each staff begins the same way. This prevents new employees from being branded into their units from the beginning.

Let them meet the customers

This is one of the best ways for a newly hired staff to understand your offered products and services better. By placing them in customer service, they can know what your company is offering to the target clientele. This is also a perfect way to learn basic operations in your business.

Above all, they can easily become more empathetic to the needs of the most valued customers. Placing them in customer service also makes them better equipped for their hired tasks.

Expose them to your business

An ideal way to integrate a new staff is to expose them to your company right away. Say, for instance, you can get a staff on a team that will serve as the middleman in the project. Then, let the newly hired staff show off their skills by putting them as a member of the team. 

To ensure that you will have a competent staff that is not procrastinating at work due to lack of knowledge, it is best to set up your new hire to engage at a high level of business exposure.

Monitoring and feedback

Every new employee has the right to know whether they are doing their tasks or not. A week after the orientation and supervision, you need to set up a one-on-one talk with your staff. You need to tell them the strengths and weaknesses that you have observed. You may also provide some tips and proper intervention to improve their work if needed. 

Talking to your staff is also a perfect way of building a more human connection. You will know them deeply and understand their behaviors as well. Other ways to onboard a new employee include proper communication and allowing them to be part of multiple teams.  

Bear in mind that onboarding a new employee can be a stressful and overwhelming process. It would be a case scenario if the newly hired will feel the same way during the process. So, maximize the benefits of mentoring programs to ensure that you will have a successful onboarding.

Conclusion

If a company is not effective in onboarding new employees, it can lead to reduced confidence, low employee morale, a decline in the level of employee engagement, and many more. All of these results can lead to missing revenue targets and company milestones. Having a concrete step by step approach on how to onboard a new employee will allow the new hire to integrate with the core team faster and without any drama.