Increase Your Earnings By Updating Your Writing Strategies for 2020

With the new Google update, BERT, new strategies can make your writing more profitable

Writers are constantly looking for ways to earn more from their writing. Often, they believe that in order to do this, they have to constantly write more. But there is a limit to how much anyone can write, and writers frequently learn the hard way that writing a lot more does not necessarily mean they will earn a lot more. The way to increase your profit is all about strategy and keeping your approach to writing up to date.

The need to keep up with new trends, altered preferences and changing expectations can be nerve wracking for writers. This is especially the case, when determining how to address these is based on trial and error.

Writers have learned by now that success results from high quality content, consistent and frequent posting and search engine optimization. But what each of these components entail may not be as clear as we’d like.

To cut to the chase, the prediction for 2020 is that a successful strategy will involve high quality writing, long-form content with a layout that can be easily skimmed and interactive components. Experts say that articles characterized by these factors will outperform others. Those who pay attention to editing, fact-checking, composition and clarity in long-form writing will likely see an increase.

The reasons for this are twofold. There has been a recent change made to Google’s algorithm, called BERT, which gives priority to work that is original and accurate. There has also been a continuing trend in reader preferences for thoughtful, in depth writing.

SEO strategies based on the new BERT update

The BERT algorithm (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) represents Google’s continuous shift towards user experience and as such has moved away from simple quality assessments such as keyword density to a more natural language processing focus. The new algorithm not only helps computer systems understand the meaning of words, it includes the subtlety of context.

BERT is able to understand language more like a human instead of like code, so audience-based concerns will be what boosts search engine rankings. This means that the algorithm examines not just at exact word sequences, but looks for individual words as parts of a search query within a sentence. So the writer doesn’t have to try to force long tail keywords into their writing and instead can break the phrase up and fit it into a sentence more naturally.

What BERT means for writers

Just because BERT doesn’t focus on exact keyword phrases doesn’t mean you should forget about keywords altogether. Do your regular keyword research for long tailed keywords. But when you incorporate them, do so in a natural manner, altering their form slightly when they’re repeated so they don’t sound forced. At the same time, if you are creating high quality content that flows, you will likely be including many keywords automatically as you write.

Reader preference for long form content

For a long time, the priority has been to publish content frequently and consistently. Previously, this might have meant publishing one or two 500-word pieces a day, with discussions about how many posts a day was too many.

Despite the argument that the more content that has been published, the shorter our attention span has grown, there is evidence now that readers have developed a preference for longer, not shorter, content. While frequency and consistency continue to be important, there are benefits to developing long form content in 2020.

One strength of long form content is that it projects authority. For readers, longer articles often provide more substantial information which serves to answer their questions more thoroughly. It also provides more details to help them understand what is being explained.

Another benefit is that longer pieces are more likely to be comprehensive. Often, long pieces require research to prevent them from being mostly fluff. Research enables you to see what is out there and even if your piece isn’t entirely unique, you can collect the information that’s available and include it in your article. If your piece is more comprehensive and all-encompassing than any other page or blog post it will be more valuable to the reader resulting in a larger audience.

What the preference for long form content means for writers

To determine what information you can include in your post, first determine what information is already out there. Focus on combining existing content in different ways, use it to supplement the topic of your post or to give a bit more substance to a personal story.

If you intend to create a comprehensive article, it will need to include all of the topics other pages have, while expanding on what’s out there and answering additional questions that other posts don’t answer. Ideally, if possible you should also try to include something unique that no other article has.

The take away

In the coming year, consistency, relevance, quality and natural writing will be the order of business for those who want to grow their audience and increase their earnings. These areas along with strong editing and overall excellent writing skills are no longer just valued by readers. Now Google’s ranking algorithm also values these factors, and BERT enables it to evaluate these variables. Focusing more attention on including these strategies in your writing may take more time, but it will pay off.

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Natalie Frank has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and often writes about how to create a more satisfying and successful writing life. She is the Managing Editor for Novellas and Serials at LVP Publications. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found on Amazon under her pen name, Taye Carrol. You can find links to her other work on Medium and follow her here.