The SEO industry has come a long way since the days of creating content based on ezine articles and using spin syntax that barely made sense, let alone look anything like the generated content you can create with a literal click of a button these days.
Whilst the community routinely looks for shortcuts to achieve their content ambitions, realistically, creating content with the aims of both ranking in Google AND converting for users is much more complex than just asking ChatGPT if they can create the best article ever on the best types of food for diabetic dogs.
There’s a variety of written and technical skills that you need to be able to create near perfectly optimized content. I say near perfect because perfection in writing is an unattainable goal, and even the best will never achieve it.
When it comes to the best SEO copywriters though, they can:
- Analyze SERPs, competitors and entities
- Build easy to follow briefs and outlines
- Be able to understand the required tone, style and flow for the audience
- Write persuasively for the users whilst optimizing word positioning for search engines
- Add, format and validate schema and microdata
- Insert rich media when necessary
- Audit and update existing content
So in this post, I aim to teach you the basics of all of the above, what to look for in writers and their content, what users are looking for, what Google is looking for and all of the best services you can utilize on Legiit to let your content campaigns thrive.
Topical Mapping
Before we get into the creation side of our quality content churning machine, we first need to have a map to feed it, a topical map, to be specific.
The idea of creating a topical map is to create topical authority within Google to rank us for specific terms and often to help support our overall core money pages as well.
As an example, if we were wanting to rank for the keyword “diabetic dog food” we’d probably need a lot more content than just that page to rank, we would need to create topical maps around:
- Information about other types of dog food
- Types of dog breeds that are common to get diabetes
- Do/Why/What of diabetes in dogs
- Healthy dog foods
- Dog food alternatives
And potentially even more, as many other sites currently ranking for the term are DR57 - 77 sites with 1,000+ indexed pages already -
One of my good friends, Koray Gurbur, covered multiple examples of successful topical maps in this video I highly recommend you watch if you want to get serious about building out the authority of your sites and thrive in highly competitive niches -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrDPul4eAYw
Content Analysis
Before we create our content, we need to create an outline of what our content is going to be, or in other words, a content brief. This brief is going to be based on an analysis of already existing content in the SERPs.
The first thing you’re going to want to do is find your seed keyword for the piece of content you’re going to create; For example, “diabetic dog food” has over 3x the volume of every other keyword related to the topic, which means it’s going to be our seed keyword.
I’ve found our main 3 competitors to analyze for this keyword:
- Canine Journal (DR73 - 3,100 Words - Position #1)
- K9 of Mine (DR68 - 5,100 Words - Position #3)
- Entirely Pets (DR72 - 1,100 Words - Position #4)
As you can see, there’s a pretty wide range of word counts but a fairly consistent range of domain rating which means if we have a much lower DR than the competitors then we are going to need a lot more supporting content to rank on top of the main piece.
The main piece itself is going to need to be at least 3,000 words, and based on the competitors it’ll also need:
- At least 5 images
- FAQ Schema
- A YouTube Video Embed
- Table of Contents microdata
- Statistics & Fact checking
- Cited sources
- Tables for products and information
All of the above is simply based on manual research of the competitors, whilst also using the Word Counter Plus extension for Chrome. No expensive tools are required.
Building A Content Brief
When it comes to converting your analysis into a brief, it’s going to mostly depend on the level of your writers, luckily for you, all of the recommendations for services below come pre-equipped with SEO knowledge so your briefs can be as short as giving them a keyword you want to go after.
With that being said, I still like to format briefs to make sure the content I picture in my mind can become reality with another person creating the vision.
I start my briefs with my recommendations (Not exacts, because we don’t want it to be too narrow minded) for titles, word counts and headers based on my competitor analysis and potential knowledge of the field.
Then I give my competitor references, as well as any other sources they’ll need to be researching and potentially referencing too.
Finally, I give all of the keywords and entities I want inside of the content, sorted by a list of priority in terms of how relevant they are to the seed keyword.
Craig Campbell did a great video on how to use Frase (My favorite content optimization tool, no affiliate there) to create a content brief for you -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfr4pCWGqGU
Persuasive Copywriting Techniques
While ranking content is still going to be your primary revenue source, ensuring that content is optimized for conversions with persuasive copy is how you build a more consistent stream and beat competitors that have been lazy with their writing.
The premise of persuading a user in your writing to do an action is to understand what that user wants and to resonate with them in your own words.
Here are a few tips I’ve used over the years to get some crazy conversion numbers on my course sales landing pages, and that you can incorporate into your own copy:
- Establish Your Objectives - You want to clearly show a user exactly what they’ll be getting out of the page from the get go
- Dumb it Down - The average users comprehension of a language is likely much, much lower than yours and simplicity sells.
- Shorten Your Paragraphs - No one likes reading walls of text.
- Use Social Proof - Testimonials and recognizable people/brands are an easy way to get people to trust you and your content more quicker.
- Answer Questions You Asked - One of the cardinal sins in copy is leaving unopened questions inside. If you put a question into someone's head with your writing, make sure to answer it too.
- Storytelling - Don’t go off on tangents, but having an overall theme that has a beginning, middle and end is what humans are predisposed to.
- Create A Series - Want to keep people engaged? Have them get to know your content and your brand? Having a running and/or interlinked series of content allows users to be perpetually engaged with your company.
- Steer Clear of Controversy - Whilst some controversy does sell, putting anything political or insensitive inside your content is a surefire way to disenfranchise at least 50% of whomever you’re trying to speak to.
- Format Your Content - Formatting headers, bolding/italicizing words, adding images/videos/tables and splitting up your paragraphs will keep people reading a lot longer.
And the final part is all about knowing your audience and what they would want in terms of tone, delivery and even style. This is why making sure your content briefs are good is so important.
Optimizing Word Positioning
Most people in SEO don’t even realize that how you position words in a sentence, paragraph or on a page can be vital to where that page ranks for specific keywords or comes up in things like featured snippets.
The scientific word for all of this is semantic similarity, though that really means more about comparing the similarity of documents rather than individual entities/words.
Word positioning is very important as Google moves to being a consensus and specific focused algorithm. As an example, it may want an opinion for one term but a fact for another.
I’ve most commonly seen this with the CBD industry. Google doesn’t want you to give exact facts in many cases, for example:
You’ll notice that it prefers Healthline going with the words “potential” and “may” vs a “can” or “does” page that many other CBD specific sites have gone with, which would state it as fact rather than opinion.
Making sure your wording is positioned for the intent that Google wants is half the battle of winning featured snippets in the first place.
Rich Media, Schema & Microdata
Google has been actively trying to make the algorithm more efficient and cost effective. As part of this, schema and rich media embeds such as YouTube videos or Tweets have become more prominent ranking factors over time.
I personally utilize the schema that is most commonly used by my competitors in the SERPs, which means if no one in the top 10 is using schema then I’m probably not going to use it either.
The most commonly used types of schema and microdata are:
- Tables of Contents Microdata
- Navigation Microdata
- Organization/Person Schema
- FAQ Schema
- Review Schema
- Product Schema
- Video Schema
- HowTo Schema
There are dozens more types, but they’re all relative to the site you’re working on.
The 5 BEST Content Writing Services on Legiit
Whilst these are the top services on the platform, in my opinion, this isn’t in any particular order as I couldn’t put my hands on a #1 overall, so make sure to check out each individual review and see who is for you!
Christopher Jan Benitez
https://legiit.com/christopherjanb/content-writing-services-approved-by-seo-professionals
I may be a little bias here, as Christopher has worked for me for many years, but he really has shown himself to be one of the most consistent SEO copywriters I have ever come across and his pricing has always been fair to match.
Residing in and from the Philippines, Chris has both a mastery of the English language and a plethora of SEO and copywriting skills to match - You can just give him a keyword and he’ll create a perfectly tailored piece of content that should rank with ease.
Text Thoughts
https://legiit.com/Textthoughts/surferseo-content-writing-service
Most copywriting options are expensive, but when you start adding Surfer or SEO on top, the price usually skyrockets! O A K from Text Thoughts offers a cheap alternative while maintaining quality.
Sam Poyan
https://legiit.com/SamPoyan/500-word-article-seo-optimized
If you’re looking for high end, unique content with high surfer scores, then Sam is your man! Not only has he made a name for himself teaching others how to do exactly the same, but his service delivers quality pieces optimized for your keyword of choice within a week.
Whilst he might be the most expensive service in this list, it’s for good reason, because you won’t get the same level of persuasive copywriting and attention to detail for the user from anyone else.
Bart Magera
https://legiit.com/bartmagera/surfer-seo-optimized-content-that-ranks-1634822622
Another Thailand resident, I’ve met Bart at multiple Chiang Mai and Phuket SEO meetups and have seen his work in action multiple times.
Bart likely has the most case studies of anyone on this list and has experience writing articles from scratch as well as optimizing AI generated pieces to dominate Google.
This isn’t a fast food style service though, it’s a scientific approach using Surfer to its absolute limits to make sure that you’ve got the best piece of content possible for the SERP.
Deboxe
With multiple offerings, Deboxe is the only copywriter on this list who can do it all! If you’re looking for local pieces, product content, conversion oriented copy or the Surfer optimized pieces, then he’s the full-time freelancing dad for you!
He’s also got over 700 5 star reviews and is the best service on this list for those looking to consistently get projects done to exact requirements.
Honorable Mentions
There are still a couple of services I can’t go without mentioning, which I seriously think you should try because they may be some of the best bang for buck on Legiit.
BlogCave
https://legiit.com/BlogCave/500-word-attention-grabbers
For less competitive projects and local SEO, you often don’t need multi-thousand word monstrosities that users will never read and search engines think are overoptimized for the keyword anyway.
Instead, getting a lot of short form content (~500 words) to cover all your topics at once can often be the way to rank quicker by building topical authority and trust in Google.
BlogCave offers one of the best quality copywriting services on the market for the price and covers topics in detail but concisely so the smaller pieces pack a serious punch.
Ankit - AI Content Writing
https://legiit.com/icode919/ai-content-writing-service
Whilst every other service I’ve mentioned in this list has been hand written content, I feel like we can’t leave the inevitable evolution of AI out.
Ankit has been running this service for nearly a year now and has been able to produce quality, unique content at a fraction of the cost of a usual copywriter - 1,000 words for just $6.66.
The beauty of this service is that Ankit can help create the topic ideas and article titles for you, all with the help of our new OpenAI overlords and inclusive of the above per 1k word pricing.
All within under 24 hours, so it might be worth seeing if it can replace your current handwritten setup at that rate and timeframe.
Vetting The Content
The first question most people have had for me recently, is how to tell if their writers are just using AI content anyway? And the short answer is: You can’t.
The long answer? Most freelancers doing this right now aren’t doing edits, which means even HuggingFace GPT2 Output Detector can see it’s fake:
You want to do a small checklist to vet all of the content your writers produce:
- Does it pass a Plagiarism test?
- Does it test the GPT Detectors?
- Are headers formatted correctly?
- Does it meet or exceed the brief requirements?
As long as it passes all of those questions, it should be ready to be published!
Conclusion
Whilst AI content might be the future, the future isn’t now and there are still plenty of topics that it’s just too difficult to reliably have it create content without serious oversight and editing, which kind of defeats the purpose of automating the creation process.
There are definitely a lot of topics out there that can use this small edit style of AI content to great effect, but for anything that is opinionated, scientific, financial, personal or legal you’ll still be best sticking with a traditional copywriter that has a bit of an SEO background.
The great news is that there is an abundance of fantastic writers out there that you can choose from to create your content quicker than even you probably could! I hope this post gave you an insight into what to look out for when hiring one, who might be the best to hire on Legiit and exactly how to create your own maps, briefs and strategies to take your content to new heights.
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