Below are some of the top Content-Writing interview questions for freshers (with proper answers).
Content writing is a skill that requires you to write different forms of content, especially for the purpose of digital marketing.
It can be the captions that you read on social media posts, articles that you read on blogs, the content on web pages, landing pages, product descriptions on eCommerce websites, etc.
Below is a list of the primary roles and benefits of content writing:
The content written for a website’s pages is called web content or website content. For example, the content on the homepage, service/product pages, about company page, etc. are examples of web content.
The purpose of web content writing is to provide audience information about the company, its products & services, benefits & features, specifications, and much more. The main motive of web content is to bring the audience to the website and convert them into customers.
This is among the top web content writer interview questions for freshers. Hence, you must know its answer and should be able to explain with an example.
It is a type of web page where the audience lands from paid ad campaigns, email marketing campaigns, or other sources.
It is called a landing page because this is where the audience lands by clicking the link through an ad or other digital marketing campaigns.
Landing pages are generally targeted for a specific product or service, with the core purpose of conversion. Here, mostly the focus is on copywriting over SEO. Trust signals, scarcity, urgency, and other similar factors are taken care of on a landing page to boost conversions.
The different forms of content include:
There are several content management systems (CMS), like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc. However, I have worked only on WordPress.
The difference between copywriting and content writing lies in the purpose. The core purpose of content writing is to offer information, instructions, or educate the audience.
On the other hand, copywriting is done primarily to drive sales for the business. It is like a salesperson writing content.
While content writing can also help in driving sales, but it is not the primary motive. Copywriting is more persuasive than content writing.
There are several differences between creative writing and content writing, as shown below:
Editing is the art of enhancing the quality of the content by working on its organization, grammar, presentation, and ensuring that the context of the content is conveyed in the best possible manner.
In editing, the parts of the content may be removed, rewritten, or added. It is a crucial part of content writing and a crucial skill that every content writer should have.
Proofreading is the process of corrective misspellings, typing errors, punctuations, and other surface issues in a piece of content.
The proofreading skills require command over the language in which the content is written. Its purpose is to give the final touch to the content before proceeding with it for publishing.
This is among the most common content writing interview questions for freshers. You need to answer it well by explaining the reasons behind choosing to build a career in content writing.
For example, you can say that writing is something that you enjoy or you are passionate about.
Usually, people who have an interest in writing tend to have an interest in reading as well. If you are one of this sort and are asked about your favorite books or authors, mention the top books and writers that you love to read.
This is one of the top content writing interview questions for freshers. The good thing about it is that you can answer it without preparation.
When you present someone else’s content or work as your own, it is called plagiarism. In content writing, copying a piece of content and using it in your own content is considered plagiarism.
The following can be counted as plagiarism in content writing:
Some of the best tools to check plagiarism for free are:
The process of using automatic content generation tools to create a second copy of the content is called content spinning. Here, the tools change certain words with their synonyms or alternate words and generate new content.
Content spinning can also be done manually if a person rewrites a piece of content by simply changing the words in a piece of content with their synonyms.
Freelance writing or freelance content writing is a profession where a content writer works with clients on a contract basis. In this case, the content writer finds the projects on his own, decides the rates with the client, and works on the projects without working as a full-time employee.
A freelance writer doesn’t have any fixed working hours like a job. He/she can choose to work anytime or anywhere, but the end goal is to meet deadlines and deliver the projects on expected timelines.
Moreover, the salary of a freelance content writer is not fixed. He/she can earn according to the rates offered to clients, the amount of work done, etc.
Grammarly is one of the most popular content writing tools that help in creating error-free content. It is an AI-based writing assistant. Grammarly is the preferred choice of content writers because it shows corrections, suggestions, etc. related to grammar, spellings, word choices, sentence structure, and more.
The free version of Grammarly checks for:
The core differences between Grammarly’s free and premium versions are that the latter allows you to check plagiarism and offers advanced grammar suggestions.
Here is the tabular comparison between Grammarly Free vs Premium
For example, we have a book and wish to learn about search. Go through each page without indexing until the desired topic is located. It contains a collection of keywords that may be used to find the topic stated on pages. Then we may go directly to those pages without having to wade through all of them.
Below is a list of the top qualities of good content writing:
For deciding the tone of the content we are writing, the first thing to do is know exactly who is going to read that content. In simple terms, we need to understand who is the target audience for a particular article, web page, eBook, case study, etc.
When you know the audience, you can understand the level of their understanding, words they are familiar with, their age group, etc. On the basis of that, we decide the content tone, whether to keep it formal, casual, or semi-formal.
For example, if the audience of my content is entrepreneurs, it is better to keep the tone formal and professional.
Another important thing to take care of while deciding the tone of the content is to know about your brand values.
The internet is full of oceans of content. To stand out from the competition and make an impact, you must create authentic content in a consistent manner.
Here are some quick tips to write authentic content:
Content writing is a skill-based job. Most of the people choose to build a career in content writing because they enjoy the art of writing.
However, once you are in this profession, you need to write on a wide variety of topics. If you enjoy this part of the job, you can mention that you love to explore new topics. Content writing provides you with the opportunity to work on a broad range of topics.
Furthermore, the role of writing content is to offer information and educate users. If this is something you love about the content writing job, do respond accordingly to such B2B content writer interview questions.
This is one of the most asked content writing interview questions for experienced writers. If you have worked for multiple organizations or clients, you might have got the chance to create a blog plan or other content plan.
If you have crafted the blog strategy for a website, mention the site and what were the core elements of your strategy, etc. In case you didn’t get the opportunity to create a content plan, you can simply say no.
There are several types of articles or blog posts in content writing, including:
Examples:
Examples:
Graphic-based articles or guides
Example:
Without digital marketing, a website or app is as good as a brochure. – Kushagra Bhatia
Articles contributed on a blog or site as a guest author or contributor.
Articles written to take advantage of trending news stories or events for promoting the business and its services/products.
A comprehensive and detailed piece of content with subtopics having the scope of getting broken into individual topics.
Examples:
An infographic stands for information graphic. As the name suggests, it is a graphical or visual presentation of information.
In infographics, we can include pieces of content, charts, graphs, images, etc., and present the content in a visually-appealing manner.
These play a crucial role in content marketing because infographics are easy-to-understand and engaging. Users are more likely to consume the content on it compared to simple plain text content.
There are a number of differences between proofreading and editing. When such content writer interview questions are asked, explain the differences in simple terms so that the interviewer can be sure that you actually understand both things.
Here is a quick list comparison between editing vs proofreading:
Here are some of the best proofreading and editing tips for content writers:
Readability helps in presenting the content in the most efficient manner to the audience. The better the content readability, the clearly you can convey your message, ideas, or offer information.
Here is a list of quick reasons why readability is important:
These are some of the best tips to improve content readability:
You must be prepared for this type of content writing interview questions for experienced. Whether you have 1 year of experience or 5 years of experience, this question is usually asked in the job interview.
Here, you will obviously mention the number of years. But you should also talk about the companies you have worked for, your core niches, and the types of content.
I follow these tips to write excellent web content:
The inverted pyramid style in content writing is a technique used to prioritize the most important information in the content and structure the content accordingly.
This approach follows an upside-down structure, where the top section on a page includes the most important information, the next section includes the second-most important content, and the last section includes the least important information.
The inverted pyramid approach works great in content writing as it grabs the interest of the users when they start at the top. Then it brings them down to consume more content.
In such content writing interview questions for experienced, share exactly what were your tasks and related to which niche.
For example, you can say that you worked on the company’s monthly blog posts, web content, social media captions, weekly newsletters, etc. You can elaborate on the answer as per your experience and roles in the previous organization.
The answer to this question varies for every person. However, you can mention anyone who you follow for content writing tips, suggestions, trends, and more.
For example, I follow Copyblogger to improve my content writing skills.
There is no fixed number of words that a content writer can write on a daily basis. It is because it depends on the niche, topic, and amount of research required.
For example, a technical topic will need more time compared to a simple topic on solo travel tips.
Moreover, every writer has his/her own capabilities and skill levels. On average, around 2000-2500 words can be written daily if at least 8 hours of work is done.
In this type of interview questions on content writing, talk about your core strengths as a writer. Not all content writers have the same strengths. So, you need to identify what your strengths are.
For example, you can mention that you meet deadlines, perform thorough research on the topic before writing, or have the ability to switch between different forms of content.
The newsjacking articles are written to take advantage of trending news stories or events for promoting the business and its services/products.
For example, in 2021, a new ransomware attack called the JBS attack majorly impacted the businesses across supply chain businesses in the US and Australia. It was a trending news story and event.
Some of the top free websites for stock-free images are:
The content we publish must be 100% unique. While there are some exceptions where tools may show plagiarism but it is okay to skip it. But content writers must know what can be avoided.
For example, proverbs and idioms can be used without worrying about plagiarism. Common knowledge like “Sachin Tendulkar is called the God of cricket”, etc. will not be counted in plagiarism, even if the tools show it is plagiarised. So, one must have an idea of what can be ignored and what can not.
There are three types of plagiarism that we need to avoid while writing content:
It is the process of using automated tools or content spinning tools to generate a second copy of unique content. Moreover, if you copy the content of others and manually rewrite it by just changing some words and using synonyms is also content spinning.
When the majority of your content is copied from other websites, it is called content scraping.
When you write a piece of content on your own without copying anything from other sites, but some sentences or part of the content matches with other sites, it can lead to unintentional plagiarism. To avoid it, you must use plagiarism checker tools.
Some of the most popular premium plagiarism checking tools include Copyscape, Grammarly, UniCheck, ProWritingAid, and Quetext.
In such content writing interview questions for experienced, you should mention the tools you have actually used. Generally, companies or individuals opt for Grammarly or Copyscape.
Content plagiarism can lead to the following issues or consequences:
Here is a quick list of tips to avoid content plagiarism:
Usually, I follow these tips for content research to create authentic and high-value content:
There are several benefits of writing interesting and catchy headlines:
Here are a number of crucial tips to write better headlines:
I follow these product description writing tips:
Following is a quick list of content writing mistakes that are so common:
In such content writing interview questions, you need to answer according to your experience. If you have worked on freelance projects, talk about the type of work and niche, client, etc.
In case you have not worked as a freelance writer, then you can simply say that you haven’t done it.
The best websites to find freelance writing work include:
It is the process of writing content that is published under someone else’s name. Here, the writer doesn’t get the credit for the work.
For example, a writer can work on a complete book for an entrepreneur, life coach, business owner, or literally anyone who has the story of content, but not the writing skills. The writer here will not get his name on the book. So, he is a ghostwriter.
The process of writing straightforward and easy-to-understand content by simplifying the complex things or content is called technical writing.
Here, the role of a technical writer is to understand the context of complex or technical content and present it in simple words to the end users or target audience.
Among the frequently asked interview questions in content writers, you must be able to answer trickily to ‘why should we hire you?’
You can say:
“Content writing is something that I enjoy doing and am passionate about. I understand the importance of good content on websites and blogs. I have the skills to curate high-quality and research-based content related to given topics. Also, I am a good team player. Working in this organization will help me bring out the best of me while working on the growth aspect of the company.”
A technical writer must have the following skills:
The top tools for content writing include:
For writing error-free content (grammar suggestions)
For content editing recommendations
An online tool for productive writing, with options to share the document by links and manage access
The most common writing tool and editor
For keyword research and SEO
To find long-tail keywords and questions for voice SEO
An online tool to check plagiarism for free
Free online tool for plagiarism check
It’s more than what its name says. The tool offers grammar & spell check, goal setting, thesaurus, and more.
Must-use WordPress plugin for bloggers and writers to improve content SEO and readability.
For basic graphic design to create featured images, editing screenshots & images used within content
Most efficient Chrome extension to capture screenshots
For those preparing for a job role with SEO skills, you will be asked several important questions related to search engine optimization. But worry not, we have also covered the top SEO Content Writer interview questions and answers here.
It is the process of writing content for both the users and the search engines like Google and Bing.
To be precise, SEO Content is high-quality content written with SEO practices. For this, the writer should have basic knowledge of keywords, heading tags, meta titles and descriptions, and other common on-page SEO ranking factors.
To write SEO-friendly content that can rank on Google’s top results, we must follow the below things:
Keywords are the queries of the people searched on Google and other search engines. These are what people search for while looking for some information, product, services, on anything else on Google.
So, if someone is writing web content to represent a course, he will first find exactly what are searching for related to that particular course. Then, those keywords will be used within the content.
The use of the right keywords helps in optimizing the content for the search queries of the people on Google.
The right way of using keywords in content is to:
Once an article or other content is published, we can promote it in the following ways:
CTA stands for Call to Action. It is the point of action for the visitors to a website.
By curating the relevant content, the role of a writer is to persuade the audience to the CTA where they can take some action. It is a core part of marketing or advertising.
Some of the common examples of CTA are the buttons on web pages like Buy Now, Call Now, Book Now, Enroll Now, etc. All these are Call to Actions (CTAs), but to make users click on these, the web page must have the content that can convince and persuade them for it.
Guest blogging, also called guest posting, is the method of contributing the content to other blogs or websites as a guest author or writer.
For example, if I want to write for a blog in a digital marketing niche, I’ll connect with the blogger and ask for the opportunity to write an article for them. If they allow, I’ll share the article with them (written according to their guidelines) and it will then be published in my name.
The article published will be called the guest article, and I’ll be the guest author.
It is a win-win for both me and the blogger, because the blogger is getting free content that can bring traffic. Whereas, my benefits are that they are publishing it in my name, and I can include a link to my website within the guest article. It is good for SEO and marketing.
Here is a quick list of guest blogging benefits:
Pillar content is a comprehensive and detailed piece of content related to a topic. This content offers complete guidance to the users. The subtopics in pillar content have the scope of getting broken into individual topics.
For example, there is a pillar content on the topic “Guide to Digital Marketing”. Here, we can cover everything related to digital marketing, including different forms of digital marketing, its importance, top tools, SEO, social media marketing, PPC advertising, Google Ads, YouTube marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, and content marketing, and more.
In this content, I’ll offer an overview of everything and the word count may go around 5000 to 60000. However, I still have the scope to cover detailed content on its subtopics like SEO, social media marketing, etc.
The process of promoting the products or services of businesses/individuals in exchange for some commission for every successful referral is called affiliate marketing.
For example, you can join the affiliate program of Amazon and start promoting its products through your blog. Whenever someone purchases anything from Amazon through your links, you will earn some commission for it.
The process of optimizing the content for voice queries is called voice search engine optimization.
Today, people are using digital assistant devices like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant. They tend to ask specific queries and questions to these devices. Then, the devices find information from Google and tell the answer to the users.
In order to optimize for those voice queries or voice keywords, we must opt for voice SEO.
We should focus more on long-tail keywords and question-based keywords for voice SEO. Tools like UberSuggest and Answer The Public are great for finding long-tail keywords and questions asked by the users on Google.
Use these keywords and questions naturally within the content. Moreover, try to include an FAQ section on the pages with FAQ schema for better structure.
The SEO techniques and processes that are against the community guidelines of Google or the methods used to manipulate rankings on Google come under black hat SEO.
When you use too many keywords in the content and that too forcefully, it leads to keyword stuffing. It is a black hat SEO practice. Many website owners and SEOs use numerous keywords in a piece of content thinking that it will bring them more traffic.
However, Google detects it and can penalize the website by dropping its rankings.
While there are numerous rankings factors for SEO, content writers should take care of these:
Long-tail keywords, as the name says, are those that are longer or have more words. These are usually more targeted, specific, and meet the user’s query. Such keywords are also great for voice SEO.
In general, the keywords with more than three words are considered long tails. Another important characteristic of these keywords is that they have lower search volume but also low competition. It means that long-tail keywords are easier to rank for.
We can follow the following tips to write SEO-friendly titles:
FAQs stand for Frequently Asked Questions. These are the most common questions of users about a product, service, or business. The FAQ section on a web page works like a go-to area for visitors looking to learn more or have any queries.
By following the below FAQ writing tips, we can curate a better list of frequently asked questions and answers:
The content that offers little or no value to the visitors, or doesn’t meet the user intent is called thin content.
Automatically-generated content, pages having a few words of content, blog categories with a low number of posts, doorway pages, etc. are examples of thin content.
Websites must avoid thin content because it is bad for SEO, increases bounce rate, impacts conversion rate, and can bring penalties from Google.
