Writing Style Guide For SEO-Optimized Content

B2B companies have woken up to the idea of marketing their business by writing content: articles, blog posts, fact sheets, and case studies. But with so much competition, the writing has to be the best in its category in order to stand out above others.  How do you ensure what you are about to write is clearer, more interesting, more valuable, and ultimately gets more views than the competition?

THE GOLDEN RULES OF CONTENT WRITING

1. Know the audience. What does your audience care most about? What do they already know and what do they want to learn? What style of writing would engage them? 

For example, if the audience is a Chief Marketing Officer who lives in California, you can guess that they already know about the basics of lead generation and brand building, so don’t risk insulting them by writing an article called “What is lead generation?” Instead, consider writing something more original that a CMO could learn from, such as “10 Ways You Can Use AI To Generate More Leads”.
 
2. Research what’s already been said on the topic. For example, if you’re writing about web software development, there are already thousands of articles about “how to do web software development”. Instead, pick something more original that the audience cares about. Even the client may not know what topics have already been done to death so you’ll have to provide this context to them.

3. Don’t ever fluff. Whenever you make a statement, back it up with a paragraph and an example. e.g. if you’re saying, “you should include a resume summary in your CV,” you need to follow up by saying why you should do that (“because it helps catch the recruiter’s attention from a single glance at your resume. For example…”).

It’s very easy to spot if you’re writing stuff for the sake of writing stuff. Everything you say should have some substance. So test each written sentence/paragraph by asking “So what?”. If it doesn’t bring value, remove it. Basically, the point here is that you shouldn’t stretch for word count. The audience will know.

 EXAMPLE AUDIENCE: THE CTO
Imagine you are a software development agency and the target audience of your content is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of an enterprise. The CTO is responsible for building, refreshing and maintaining all the technology in the company. They usually have a team of developers and other technical staff. Other related roles are the CIO, VP Engineering, VP Development, VP Digital, or VP Software Development. 

First: What are the CTO's Pain Points?
Here is an illustration of the pain points of a CTO, and how your software development services help the CTO overcome those pain points.

Style of Writing for the CTO
A CTO is usually an engineer by training and therefore is looking for facts and information presented in a concise manner. Therefore, the writing style should be concise and fact-oriented. Consider using bulleted lists and tables, or even attaching downloadable spreadsheets with original research and data.

CTOs also have low patience for fluff or information that they consider to be obvious or table stakes. Extra attention should be given to researching what CTOs already know to avoid obvious or table stakes statements. For example, you can guess that they already know a great deal about security of software applications in an enterprise, so don’t risk insulting them by writing an article called “Why is security important for applications in an enterprise?” Instead, consider writing something more original that a CTO could learn from, such as “10 Brand New Ways To Secure a Cloud Application in the Enterprise”.

Pitfalls To Avoid

• Don’t try to write for the CTO and for software developers at the same time. Developers care about specific implementation details (e.g. like programming language details), whereas CTOs care about the big picture of technology implementation. 
• Don’t try to write for the CTO and the CMO at the same time. The CMO is a secondary audience for Thinklogic. The two audiences care about very different things. 
• Are you writing for the CTO of a large enterprise (e.g. huge companies like JP Morgan or Walmart) or a small enterprise (e.g. less than 100 staff)? CTOs care about the same general things, but when it comes to specific topics like usability, pricing, or security, whether they work for a small or large enterprise makes a huge difference. Depending on the content topic, discuss this with the client or CRISPx strategist before writing.

ALWAYS START WITH A CONTENT STRATEGY HEADER

To ensure that your audience is clear and the goal of the content piece is clear, always start by outlining what the strategy behind your content piece is going to be:

• Project: what is this content piece is going to be about
• Target Audience: who am I writing for (e.g. the CTO), and why are they interested? This should typically be 1 specific persona. 
• Goal: what are the goals of the content piece? (e.g. support a specific marketing campaign, attract top-of-funnel visitors from a specific market segment of readers, increase conversions) 
• Primary Keyword Phrase: for SEO, more on this below
• Title and Meta Description: for SEO, more on this below

WRITING STYLE
(drawn from Apollo Digital)

• ​For each paragraph, use 1-4 lines max. Don’t overdo it with either end. We don’t want the entire article to be composed of single sentences, and at the same time, it shouldn’t be blocky paragraphs either. Example or proper styling:
• Unless specified otherwise in the target audience description, maintain a conversational tone. The reader is a friend you’re talking to in real life. Write accordingly.
• Make the style personal. Refer to the reader as “You.” Mention stories, examples, pop culture references or jokes when appropriate.
• Use personal anecdotes when appropriate. 
• Use active voice instead of passive.
• The article should be very easy to read - just about anyone reading it should be able to follow. So, avoid overly complex words and sentences. Hemingway can help you find complex words / sentences and eliminate them.
• Done with your article? Make sure to run it through and Grammarly and make appropriate changes.
• Use Bold to drive the point home.

​
SEO GUIDELINES

• Get the Keyword density right. The keyword should make up 0.5% - 2% of the article word count.
• Outbound/external links: 3-7+ (links to external websites)
• Inbound links: 5+ (relevant links to other posts on the blog - as many as needed!)
• The keyword must be mentioned in the meta description, the title, and some H2 headings
• Page title: between 40 to 65 characters
• URL slug: brief and contains the keyword  (“https://website.com/workflow-software”)
• Meta description: Between 148-156 characters. You can use the following [Free] Snippet Optimizer tool to check how your Page title, meta description, and URL slug will look when published.
• Use Headers/Sub-headers: H2, H3, and (rarely) H4 to properly structure your content. DON’T use H1. That’s reserved for the title. Make sure each sub-header answers a specific search query.
• Sub-header sections: Less than 300 words each
• To make sure you optimized the post properly, use this tool.

​Read more: Ranking with Google Isn't Hard, If You've Got Something Useful To Say.