With many careers and jobs, it is hard to fully appreciate what goes on behind the scenes unless you work in that sector yourself. The role of a pet industry writer is no different. There’s a lot more to writing top-quality content than meets the eye, so we’re going to showcase the various tools and steps that one of our writers uses when crafting their pieces. This should give you an idea of what to try yourself, or what you should be looking out for when employing your next content creator!
Research tools
Research is a huge part of content creation and can take up as much time as the actual writing itself. For your content to be credible it needs to be backed up by scientific facts and the vets and vet nurses in our team know the importance of up-to-date information.
A good writer will use reputable sources like Pubmed, which contains scientific papers about a variety of topics in both veterinary and human medicine. They will then try to include papers in their references or hyperlink to them within your blog so that fact-finding pet owners can see the original sources for themselves.
However, it is not good enough to just stick in a load of references at hope for the best! This is where having a veterinary professional as a pet industry writer really pays off. They will be able to interpret the scientific data, assess it for relevance and be able to interpret it for your intended audience. This is a skill, being able to make complicated scientific knowledge accessible to all.
Your veterinary writer will also know where to look for other top-quality sources of information. Linking to reputable resources will improve the credibility of your website, increase search engine optimisation (SEO) and make it more likely you will get those all-important clicks.
Search engine optimisation (SEO)/keyword research tools
It’s no good having a great website and articles if no one can find it! This is where search engine optimisation (SEO) comes in. This is the art of getting your website higher up the results list generated by search engines, meaning you are more likely to get clicked on. A key part of this is including certain keywords and phrases within your website or blogs.
To come up with keywords for our pieces we look at what is trending on Google searches through the ‘People Also Asked (PAA)’ results. When you Google a keyword or question, PAA automatically shows you similar popular key phrases that people are also searching for.
We also use websites like ahrefs. This website allows you to type in a keyword and it will produce a list of similar keywords. It also generates information about these words including search volume (the average number of searches for that word per month). This indicates how popular a keyword is – the more popular it is the more you want to feature it on your website!
But it’s not enough to know what the keywords are, you then need to know how to use them in your work. They need to be peppered throughout the piece, featuring in headers and text, while still sounding natural and making for an engaging read. A good content writer will be able to achieve this.
Writing/grammar tools
Once your pet industry writer has written their blog or article, then it is important that they check their grammar and spelling. Nothing ruins the professional appearance of your website faster than poorly written work! Not only do we use the spelling function in Word, but we also run it through further checks using websites like Grammarly. This helps to hone the grammar we use, whether that’s in UK English or US English.
It is also possible to check whether the language we are using is appropriate for our target audience. Using some of the ‘insights’ on Word or the scoring system on the Readability Formulas website can help us to check our work is written appropriately accessible level for our readers.
And remember that all of this happens before we put it through our own internal editors for checks too!
Graphics tools
Graphics are also important when you are putting together your content. Large blocks or lists of text can be a bit dull if not broken up with pictures. Canva is a great example of a tool used for design and photo editing.
Just remember that each image also adds to your website’s SEO. Its file name and alt text should therefore be something relevant to the image, ideally using popular keywords or key phrases. For example, someone searching for the ‘best dog chew toy’ is more likely to come across your image and website if your picture has a descriptive file name rather than a generic one. Google can’t ‘see’ your images so relies on you naming them. It reads image file names to display them during a consumer search.
Final thoughts
There’s a lot to think about as a pet industry writer! While most of the tools we have listed are open to anyone, it is important to know how to use them. Hopefully, some of our tips will get you going, but if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed then speak to us! We have a variety of services available, and we can tailor them to your needs. This includes writing all your content for you from scratch, through to reviewing and advising you on your already written pieces. Contact us today for more information.
