Does your company have challenges around content creation (especially creating optimized SEO content?).

You’re not alone.

I hear the complaints all the time…

“We create a lot of content every month, but it’s not very good. Our writing has quality issues, and we’re not sure what to do.”

“Our writers refuse to optimize their content because they think ‘SEO writing’ is bad. How can we fix this from a process perspective?”

“We’ve focused our writing efforts around social channels in the past. How can we gain more Google traffic and increase our site visits?”

“We’re creating content, but it’s not driving qualified traffic. What are we doing wrong?”

Sound familiar?

Many companies — especially B2B companies — struggle with SEO content creation. Although the individual situations are always different, there tend to be some fairly common fixes.

Here are some things to consider if your in-house content creation is falling flat, and you’re not sure what to do:

Is the writing quality poor?

The fix: Examine your content creation process, price structure, and support

Is this how your in-house content makes you feel?

I frequently hear this complaint from agencies, publishers, and companies with a large outsourced writing team. In many cases, the reason boils down to sheer volume — the writers are overwhelmed, writing too fast, and focusing on getting the content out the door.

Consider soliciting feedback from your writers and ask about the workload. Are your writers frequently working overtime to complete daily writing tasks? Are they concerned about their writing quality (good writers hate kicking out bad writing.) A solution could be as simple as hiring additional writers (or finding freelancers) to fill in the content gaps.

If you rely 100% on freelance writers, and you’re having quality issues, your pay rate may be to blame. Paying a writer $50 for a 2,000-word blog post incentivizes her to work fast, not smart. After all, she’ll need to write a lot of $50 blog posts just to make her mortgage. Paying higher rates for a more professional writer may save you money in the long run, especially if your editor is spending a lot of time revising your writers’ work.

Do your writers hate SEO content creation?

The fix: Train your writers (and your editorial staff, too).

SEO writing gets a bad rap.

Many writers, especially established writers with a print background, feel SEO writing is spammy. Unfortunately, this misconception is often fueled by in-house style guides that focus on keyphrase densities, ungrammatical keyphrases and focusing on Google instead of the reader.

In fact, an editor from a big-brand client once complained how SEO was killing their writing style. Their content didn’t flow — instead, it was choppy and pushed the SEO envelope way too far.

In cases like this, a team-wide training (that yes, includes the SEO department) is a smart move. The writers can learn that SEO content generation and strategy is based on smart, authoritative writing. Plus, the editorial and SEO department can learn how to balance optimization needs with creating quality — and readable — content.

We write exclusively for social. Where’s our Google traffic?

The fix: Time to optimize your content.

For many companies, creating social-only content can be a short-sighted strategy.

Certainly, social channels can drive a lot of traffic. However, your target reader is also searching Google for information that satisfies their micro-moments. According to CEB, 57% of the B2B buyers’ journey happens before the prospect contacts the company. If your company doesn’t have a strong Google presence, you’re losing leads — and money.

The key is to change your content creation strategy to include some optimization efforts. This may mean optimizing older content assets, as well as developing a new SEO content strategy.

(Do the powers-that-be insist you can ditch keywords and write topical-based content, instead? Check out this Whiteboard Friday video with Rank Fishkin.)

Your content isn’t driving traffic.

The fix: It depends — and you may want to look outside your company for the answers.

There could be a few reasons this is happening.

Perhaps it’s because your content is too company-focused, and it’s not serving your readers’ needs.

Or, it could be you need to optimize your content for Google and use some of your SEO writing skills.

Or, your content isn’t answering your readers’ micro-moments.

It’s easy to get stuck in a content creation rut, and miss important opportunities. You don’t realize your content doesn’t click with your target reader anymore. You’re not optimizing your posts as well as you should. Influencers don’t even notice your copy.

There are so many content marketing blind spots, you can’t “see” your content anymore.

In this case, it pays to work with a content marketing strategist who can help pinpoint your issues, highlight your opportunities and get your content creation back on track. Yes, it will cost money and time — but the outside perspective will be well worth it.

I’d love to hear your SEO content creation horror stories (and success stories, too!) Post your comments below!

Did I just send an email with a major typo?

I had one rule when I was on Match.com.

If I saw misspellings, typos or the wrong form of a word (like “they’re” when he meant to type “there,”) that person was no longer a candidate.

Harsh? Yes. But here’s my theory. First impressions count. If a person can’t spend two minutes proofing their email, they weren’t overly invested in meeting me in the first place.

I thought of my “Match rule” after receiving an email from a possible vendor. I was searching for solutions and had asked some pretty specific questions.

When I finally received an email, I noticed a number of typos:

– The customer service representative had misspelled the company name. YES. THE COMPANY NAME!

– He would Randomly capitalize words That didn’t need Capitalization.

– On the flip side, some words that should have been capitalized were not.

My response was an immediate “I’m not impressed.” If a company couldn’t be bothered to spell their company name correctly, how could I trust them as a vendor?

I immediately went from being hot to trot about this company to throwing them in the “undatable” pile.

Companies need to realize that good copywriting means more than having great SEO copy. It also means that all auto responder copy is top notch. All newsletters are proofed. And yes, all customer service emails are free from major typos, they’re easy-to-read and they address the recipients’ needs.

Otherwise, your company may also be considered “undatable” – and you’ll lose the sale.

Don’t let this happen to you! Here are some copywriting tips to consider:

– Comb through all of your auto responder content. Do you see any typos or grammatical errors? Can you see ways to make a good email even better? This is a task you can do in house, or you can hire a copywriter to help. An outside person can often see opportunities and mistakes you may not notice anymore. Like the Febreeze commercial that talks about being “nose-blind,” it’s easy to be “content-blind” when it comes to your own copy.

– Review your sales teams’ email correspondence. There are some folks out there who are great talkers, but their emails are full of mistakes. It could be because they’re writing fast and they need to take some additional email time. Or, it could be that they just aren’t good writers. In that case, you may want to consider other avenues (pre-written templates, hiring an email editor, pairing them with another sales person) to make sure the job is done right.

– Are you a business owner? If you know that email writing isn’t your strong suit, don’t take chances. Hire an assistant who can write your emails for you (as well as take on other duties.) It may seem like a luxury. It’s not. You’ll free up time and know that everything is written correctly.

What about you? What do you think when you see an email typo from a vendor? Are you forgiving? Or does it depend on the situation?

Photo thanks to © Spaxia | Dreamstime.com – Oh Boss That Are You Doing? Photo