by Gone are the days when you can get tons of customers with hollow brand promises. Though “diamonds are forever” have been a big hit decades ago, a cheesy one-liner is probably the last thing you need to get your niche site growing.
With the abundance of data available, buyers often go through an analytical purchase journey. Reviews. Buyer guides. Product comparisons. By the time they click on that “buy now” button, they have hopped around a dozen websites already. This creates a big challenge for webmasters. With all the competition, how can you make them secure a purchase through your website then?
High-quality content? Value-adding? You’ve probably heard these “tips” a hundred times, but still have zero idea what they actually mean. With this guide, allow me to walk you through actual steps on how to get the right content for your authority site.
Contents
What does good content look like?
It’s easy to be biassed and say that your article is already as great as it could ever be. But even if you have a hundred years of experience in copywriting, nothing guarantees good content better than understanding the perspective of your target audience.
Keep these goals in mind when crafting the latest content for your niche site:
Vivid and helpful product descriptions
People use Google for a reason, usually to solve a problem or be a step closer to a goal. They might be confused about a product’s features, or curious if it’s really worth the clout.
This means that your audience is looking for relevant answers. Publishing lifeless product descriptions in bullet format will most likely earn you a hundred clicks – not on your buy now buttons, but on “x” at the top right corner of the screen.
Remember these tricks when writing about products in your niche:
- Identify the common difficulties customers face and focus on writing about them.
- Keep discussions engaging, relatable, and easy to follow. If readers wanted technical explanations, they might as well scan through the product’s manual instead.
- Include a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section whenever possible. This ensures that you covered all keywords and queries related to a topic.
- Discuss products from a balanced point of view. You wouldn’t want buyers to have over-hyped expectations because you omitted all disadvantages on purpose.
- Pick the most interesting and relevant information for your articles. The history and origin of Samsung might be fit for a Wikipedia entry, but definitely has no room in your authority site.
By the end of your article, your readers must no longer feel the need to search further on other pages. Otherwise, the cookie for your commission might be expired by the time your audience makes a purchase.
Fresh, unplagiarized content
From the name itself, your authority site must take care of its integrity and credibility. Plagiarized content is a quick way for your reputation to go down the drain. You’ll want to be mindful of these tips to keep your content fresh and original:
- Never ever steal whole texts or even chunky excerpts from another website.
- Research is great, but make sure to transform ideas into your own words. Use your own perspective, style, and tone of voice.
- Don’t just focus on money pages filled with product recommendations. Try to explore varied types of articles, including guides which are often best in driving traffic from longtail keywords.
Concise storytelling
Being engaging is a solid technique for niche articles, but you have to draw the line between relevant explanations and pointless babbles.
With a product-related authority site, it’s pointless to bloat content with long, made-up stories. Remember that your audience is looking for clear answers. Not for a trip to imagination land. Picture how inconvenient it would be to read through 2,000 words and barely getting helpful solutions. I’m sure you don’t want viewers to tag your articles as a complete waste of time.
Strategic word count
You’re not required to always write a thousand words for each article. If 500 words is enough to get a message across, then that’s perfectly fine. The golden rule is to match your word count with the purpose and scope of your topic.
If discussing a product completely barely gets you to 200, you might want to consider comparing it with several more in a buyer’s guide article. On the other hand, you can also breakdown huge topics into several pages.
Expert tip: Give enough spotlight to products that have high search volumes on their own. It’s always better to publish multiple types of articles about them.
Easy to understand sentences
Writing guidelines matter. Although your readers might be no grammar nazis, always check if your articles are spotless in terms of technicalities. Here’s a quick checklist to make sure of that:
- Never leave any jargon or abbreviation unexplained
- Stick with short sentences to increase readability. If you already used a lot of commas, and’s, or but’s, that’s probably a sign that you have to convert the long string into shorter sentences.
- Reduce filler words in your text.
- Reread your article to make sure they flow smoothly and logically.
- To save time, you can use spelling and grammar checker plugins like _____.
Where can I get ideas for content?
I know, there are times that our brain could be all dried up. Zero create juices in stock. In these cases, you could still get ideas for niche site content in these ways:
- Keyword research. It doesn’t hurt to scout the competition. If you have a topic to start with, check out what kind of articles have already been published and decide how you can stand out from all that. For wider research, try to go through the first 10 pages of the Google search results.
- Question and answer portals. These are gold mines for identifying common difficulties your audience has. They’re superb for earning longtail keyword brownie points.
- Product listings. Down below the intros and variants, take a look at the section for reviews and customers’ questions. Be on the lookout for special features not usually mentioned by a generic description, and for interesting tips in using the product.
Should I write articles by myself or hire other authors?
There is a growing demand for frequent publication of articles, and I’m personally ain’t happy with that. Fast writing has never been my strength. Though I have been used to writing my own content, there came a point where I decided to outsource it.
In making the same decision, you have to assess yourself and your goals first.
If you’re an expert on the topic and you find writing a breeze, you might as well do it yourself. Apart from saving money, you’re also sure that what you publish is exactly as you imagined it to be.
On the other hand, poor writing skills, lack of time, and minimal experience in a niche can be considered as go signals to just hire another author to get the job done.
Best practices for writing articles
If you’ve decided to put matters into your own hands, here are a few pointers to help you stay on track when writing content:
- Start off with a basic outline before you start writing. Create an initial list of subheadings, and draft what discussions you want to see for each section.
- Use your keywords as a compass. Make sure your main keyword is repeated in strategic portions of the article, including the introduction and conclusion. Meanwhile, your entire keyword clusters must be spread across subheadings and elaborations.
- Don’t hesitate to reread and revise. Focus on checking the flow of your thoughts, and rearrange text blocks whenever appropriate. In your last round of revision, watch out for any missed spelling or grammatical errors.
To know more about the best practices in writing blogs for niche sites, check out __________________.
Best practices for hiring authors
I have been buying my content for several years now, and Textbroker is my personal favorite in scouting for talented authors. I also occasionally check out __________ as an alternative.
Let’s dive into hiring tricks I’ve gathered with my experience in outsourcing content production:
- Never place “open orders.” I’ve always been very picky and specific on the type of authors I want to hire. Publish specific job descriptions and requirements.
- Be mindful of the authors’ experience. Especially when you’re paying on an hourly basis, you want to get the job done swiftly without sacrificing content. I always look for authors who have a background in my niche site’s topics. Whether it’s a professional or a passionate hobbyist, hiring them gives me the peace of mind that my authors take my project seriously.
- Don’t just depend on Textbroker’s five-star rating. Good texts can come even from 3-star authors, and the brilliant skills of the perfect rated writers can be useless if they know nothing about your topic. Pick and screen your recruits based on your own criteria.
- If you want to attract quality authors, be prepared to pay more. I consider content as a worthwhile investment, so I have no problems with paying up to $45 for a single article. I even give a bonus to those who have consistently delivered great service.
After getting a pool of interesting authors, it’s now time to pick the best. Instead of paying for them to work on a starter task pronto, I conduct an interview disguised as a screening exam. Simple questions like “what do you think of my blog?” or “what possible discussions should we cover for this topic?” are excellent opportunities to know more about your applicants’ skills and knowledge.
The quest for getting quality content doesn’t stop there. Upon hiring a qualified author, you have the responsibility to brief them effectively and completely. No matter how talented the new hire is, this isn’t the time to be lazy and just say “Okay, so I need an article on positivity. Have it submitted by tomorrow.”
Remember, your goal is to keep up with the need for fast content production. Getting vague, substandard articles because you screwed up in the briefing process will cost you a lot of time for revisions. Frankly, you can’t blame your author if you weren’t clear about what you want in the first place.
To help you brief your writers, here are my checklist of information I make sure they understand before letting them start on any task:
- Content and structure of the article, including links to relevant references and websites
- Ideal writing style for the article
- Detailed description of my blog and its target audience
- Essential keywords that need to be integrated into the article
Once your author gets the hang of your preferences and branding, it’s best to keep them for a long-term contract. Less hassle for hiring and on-boarding. Consistent writing styles. Even if I’ve spent years of buying content, I’ve only transacted with a small number of writers. Most of them are still in my small but reliable team. Whenever I want to build a new authority sites, I ask my current authors first if they’re willing to help me with it.
What does good content mean to you? Would you rather buy texts, or write them yourself?
