Fact-Checking: Get Your Facts Right

In the past decade or so, the concept of “fake news” has become a major thorn on the side of consumers and content writers alike.

Digital marketing experts who write enterprise-level SEO content may not consider themselves journalists or news anchors — but there is more overlap between the roles than many people realize.

Like journalists, enterprise SEO content writers need to earn the trust of their audience by demonstrating authority, relevance, and expertise.

And while you, as a content marketing professional, may think that the only person you serve is your customer or business owner, the truth is that good SEO content provides just as much service to consumers.

You don’t just advertise to people; You help them find answers, information, and solutions to their problems.

That’s why, for SEO content writers, getting the facts right is key Important.

“Fake news” has eroded many people’s trust in the media. Online content, in particular, is always fighting an uphill battle over the oversaturation of the digital space — and the huge amount of misinformation that finds its way onto blogs and social media sites with little quality control.

Today, fact-checking is arguably more important than ever.

One small mistake is all it takes to lose consumer confidence forever.

But what does it mean to get the facts right? Is it just to make sure every name is spelled correctly, and every claim has an attributed provenance?

These two things are an important part of the SEO validation process, but they are just a small part of a big puzzle.

Best practices for enterprise SEO fact-checking

Fun fact: Even when consumers don’t know you’re lying, Google does.

Web pages with deceptive, inaccurate, or poorly screened content are penalized and less likely to appear in search results.

Do you want to avoid the wrath of the powerful algorithm? Here’s what you need to do:

Get the basics right

After a few paragraphs, I mentioned that fact-checking isn’t just about writing people’s names, ages, positions, and pronouns correctly.

However, getting the basics right is still important. If at least you can’t do much, you won’t be ready to do more in-depth fact-checking.

It is especially important to get this information right when quoting multiple people.

Not only do you need to attribute quotes and ideas to appropriate sources, but you also need to make sure that the information they shared with you is accurately reproduced.

Double check everything

If you get a quote from someone saying the sky is blue, go out and look up, just to be sure.

Well, this may be an exaggerated example – but you get the point.

Double and triple check everything.

If you find a helpful quote or statistic online, trace back to the original source. Check if you can find other trusted web pages with the same information.

Don’t be afraid to do a little research on your own. Scrutinize the numbers and try to find supporting evidence.

Don’t take anything at face value.

Go to the source

Speaking of tracking down stats and citation sources: This is a very important cornerstone of fact-checking, and it’s worth expanding on now.

Have you ever been told by a teacher or professor, in no uncertain terms, to never use Wikipedia as a resource?

Well, this is absolutely true when writing enterprise level SEO content. Wikipedia can be useful for pointing you to useful resources, but it should not be your primary text.

No source should be used. If another web page states something as a fact, confirm where you got that fact from.

If it’s a notorious source and you parrot it, you become a notorious source too.

Understand the information

Content writing—especially at the enterprise level and especially in an agency context (rather than an in-house PR team)—often requires authors to cover many different areas of expertise in many different industries.

It can be tempting to retrieve and impersonate information that is already there, but if you do, you won’t be able to provide any meaningful insights.

You have to understand the information you are conveying.

This will help you spot factual inconsistencies and errors and show true authority.

Is AI automation the future of fact-checking?

Enterprise-wide content validation takes a lot of time and effort, but cutting corners is a recipe for disaster.

Fortunately, as with many other aspects of SEO, AI automation may soon be able to simplify the process.

UK-based independent fact-checking organization, the whole truth, He has been leading the charge in recent years to develop scalable automated fact-checking tools.

Full Fact’s efforts have already garnered attention from the biggest names in search engine technology.

In 2019, the nonprofit was one of the winners of the 2019 Google AI Impact Challenge, which provides funding for potentially revolutionary automation research projects.

Full Fact’s stated goal is to develop an artificial intelligence program capable of breaking down long pieces of content into individual sentences, then determining what kinds of claims those sentences represent, before finally going back to those claims in real time using state-of-the-art facts. news data.

Although Full Fact is still far from achieving its goal, the benefits of this SEO content writing hack are self-evident.

However, you don’t have to wait for the future to use AI automation and other software tools to help you fact-check.

For example, file Grammar plagiarism checker It not only identifies duplicate content taken from another source, but also highlights parts of the text that require attribution.

SEO tools are commonly used for organizations such as smrashAnd AhrefsAnd Mozmeanwhile, can be used to investigate domain authority, helping you to identify sources that are considered reputable.

Fact checking in an oversaturated information and news market can be intimidating at first glance. But the number of resources available to content writers is growing by leaps and bounds every day.

Making full use of these resources better enables you to win consumer trust in an era when that kind of trust is a very delicate, precious, and valuable commodity.

More resources:

• 8 Essentials in Your Content Guidelines: What Your Writers Need to Know
• How to find talented writers to support the creation of quality content
• Content Marketing: The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to What Works

Featured image: redgreystock / Shutterstock