Proofreading & optimization are two of the most important things for content marketers. So, how should they approach these factors?

Did you know that 60% of marketers put out at least one piece of content every day? That means their content doesn’t only need to be of quality; it also needs to be appropriately optimized. That’s why it’s imperative to optimize and ensure content’s quality.

But how do you go about doing that? By ensuring SEO elements and proofreading to rid your content of any troubles. Problems like these don’t necessarily indicate spelling or grammatical mistakes.

They can also be related to plagiarism and content structure.

With 46% of businesses wishing to increase their content creation in 2022, it’s imperative to avoid such problems to stand out in SERPs. So, to prevent plagiarism and ensure content’s quality, let’s dive in and learn some of the best ways.

What Is Content Optimization?

Content optimization ensures your content’s quality and integrity to reach far-spread visibility over the web. Most optimization techniques include SEO elements, and the content itself needs to be of optimal quality.

Some of the chief ingredients of such optimization include:

• Using proper headline
• Breaking down content into various pieces
• Ensuring readability and keyword ratio
• Interlinking throughout the content
• Metadata to attract search engine crawlers

These factors ensure that content is up to usual SEO standards, allowing it to reach farther in SERP.

What Is Proofreading?

The common purpose of proofreading is to eliminate any errors, such as spelling mistakes, grammatical mistakes, and the absence of punctuations.

However, nowadays, proofreading also helps us with:

• Proper content structure
• Finding content that can be backlinked
• Ensuring content’s readability
• Ensuring content’s tone

These four purposes of proofreading are inherent in any SEO content today. Since content marketers plan content creation for specific audiences, the content needs to convey these ideas properly.

Here is where proofreading steps in and ensures that nothing is amiss, and helps you ensure your content’s probability. You can also go beyond proofreading and learn some copyediting skills. Copy editing is more thorough and will ensure your content is accurate in addition to fixing grammatical and tone issues.

Why Is It Important To Optimize & Proofread Content?

You can measure the importance of content optimization by the goals that it can help you achieve. Good optimization can help your content to:

• Lead higher in SERP ranks
• Attract audiences from far-off corners of the internet
• Become ideal for backlinking & guest posting
• Ensuring thorough delivery of complex ideas
• Portray your expertise

On the other hand, proofreading content can help you:

• Avoid plagiarism & ensure originality
• Improve content integrity by avoiding errors
• Ensure a generally high quality of your content
• Stand out with readable content

Optimization and proofreading go hand-in-hand and help content marketers convey their ideas emphatically.

8 Content Optimizing And Proofreading Tips

The primary thing any writer needs to learn is when to optimize and when to proofread. The simple answer is every time you write. The main reason you need optimization is that:

• You write for an audience
• You write for a goal/objective
• You write to outrank opponents

There’s nothing about these three bullet points that suggest you can compromise on the quality or integrity of your content. Hence, content optimization and proofreading are the bare necessities of any content in marketing today.

So, to help you do it efficiently, here are eight optimizing and proofreading tips for content marketers:

1. Experts Proofread Backwards – It Works!

Experts in academies and professional writing suggest proofreading backward, as it happens to be more effective than proofreading forwards. The primary reason behind this is the writer’s objectiveness. Why is that?

Because when you read forward, you are subjective to your content—which renders you unable to see any errors. However, reading backward can help you find errors and mistakes that go unnoticed or unseen. Therefore, try reading backward for a change and see the difference.

2. Paraphrasing Can Be Better Than Revisions

Paraphrasing any content can help you avoid many problems with it. Including content, tone changes improve the content flow and overall integrity of the content. However, most of all, it can help you avoid plagiarism and ensure your content is original.

Now, why is it better than revisions? Because revisions require you to sit through writing each sentence or passage until it achieves optimal quality. On the other hand, you can fire up a Paraphrase tool and change until the content is of optimal quality.

3. Use Headings & Subheadings – Break Your Content Into Sections

If your content is continuous and monotonous, you’re losing your reader. No content marketer can afford this. That’s why it’s essential to break down your content, such as:

• Using a title & headline to set the tone
• A proper introduction—a glimpse into the content’s context
• Subheadings: H1, H2, H3, and so on to convey your points
• Beginning, middle, and end

You need to structure your content this way to ensure its performance. So, break your content into sections and try to make it more readable.

4. Avoiding Plagiarism Is A Responsibility & A Necessity

Plagiarism is one of the major problems that any content marketer can face, and that’s why avoiding it is a necessity and a responsibility. Therefore, your content needs to be top-notch to make an impact.

So, how do you go about doing that? First, you need to check for plagiarism by passing your content through a online plagiarism checker. Then, you need to remove said plagiarism by either paraphrasing tool or rephrasing your content. Therefore, try to:

• Try to write original topics with a unique premise
• Detect plagiarism with a viable tool
• Remove plagiarism by avoiding duplicity
• Rephrase or paraphrase content with a sentence rephraser
• Cite your sources and use a citation generator if needed

You can do this to avoid plagiarism in your content. Avoiding plagiarism is necessary for your marketing content to rank in SERP. So, treat it like a responsibility.

5. Metadata Needs to Be a Glimpse of the Content

Metadata is an essential element of optimization. Suppose your content lacks optimization with metadata such as meta title, meta description, slug, and alt titles. In that case, it won’t be performing well in SERP.

However, you need to ensure that your content’s metadata is only a glimpse into your content. While it needs to be descriptive, let the reader/search engine crawler find details themselves.

6. Cite Properly & Quote Where Needed

Citations are your best friends in avoiding plagiarism. On the other hand, they are also vital to establishing your credibility as a writer and ensuring that you stand out with viable content.

An adequately cited content won’t only help you garner an audience; it will give search engines a reason to index your content. By citing another writer’s work, you add to their credibility while increasing your own.

Therefore, proofread your content, cite where you can, and add quotations to improve content’s integrity—it’s one of the leading optimization tactics.

7. Lead With A Strong Headline – Make It As Unique As Possible

Once you proofread your article, there’s a slight chance you might think your headline is a little misleading.  Alternatively, you might think your headline is lackluster compared to your content. The good news is that there are many things you can do to make your headline more effective.

Let’s say you’re talking about 10-steps to make a content strategy, then does this headline do it justice:

“How do you plan a content strategy?”

Compared to other titles with numbers and lists, any title beginning with “How to” only has 17% the popularity. Therefore, a title like this would be more relevant:

“A 10-Step Guide To Developing A Content Strategy”

As you can see, this headline has much more conviction. It promises a list of 10-steps, while it also guarantees the way to teach you how to make a content strategy. Using this optimization tactic can help you rank higher in SEO.

8. Edit For Better SEO – Upper Echelon For Optimization & Proofreading

The last step and perhaps the leading goal of your proofreading strategy should be to edit for better SEO. When you proofread your content, make a checklist like this:

• Ensuring no grammatical errors
• Fixing content structure
• Having 2-3% keyword density
• Avoiding unreadable content or fluff words
• Ensuring top-notch metadata

So, if you find your content missing these elements, you must add them. Therefore, proofread and edit with the goal of better SEO in mind.

Conclusion

These are some tips to ensure your content’s quality for marketing purposes. By adding necessary optimization elements and guaranteeing quality through proofreading, you can safeguard your content’s position on the SERP.