It has never been easier for facts to get lost in the maze of fake news, misinformation and clickbait that is strewn across the internet. With opinions and industry rumours shadowing, high value factual information that we see in content, it is no surprise that users are becoming less and less trusting of what they see online. Of course, this can damage companies whose role is to educate and advise online. As content creators, we need to become more perceptive of what we share online, ensuring that it is true. This GrowTraffic blog aims to explore how you may have your blog posts professionally fact-checked, to avoid the risk of displaying untrue information!
With the introduction of AI software such as Chat GPT, which amalgamates existing information found online, to produce content, it is no surprise that more and more false information is being shared and published across the web. Sure this has been an ongoing issue for content creators, but AI has just made it that little bit easier
Ensuring that you are producing a true and factual blog takes years of attention to detail and commitment to a focus on accuracy. Search engines are fuelled by trust signals, trusting those sources who time after time appear authoritative in their field, through the use of factual and educational information. If your blogs aren’t correct, they won’t compete with the authoritative content within your industry, making them less likely to rank!
Why Should You Professionally Fact-Check Your Blog Posts?
Other than the obvious benefit of fact-checking your blog posts – to increase accuracy – it can host many advantages for your content.
The last thing you want when uploading content to the internet is for industry experts or well educated fans of your work to call you out on not being factually correct. This will result in you losing credibility and over time can affect your position in the industry and on SERPs.
For some industries, like health, for example, not fact-checking your work goes so much further than potentially damaging SEO and can have detrimental effects on readers’ lives. The point being that fact-checking can help boost your authority, which in some industries is more important!
You may have heard, when talking about Google, something called an E-A-T score – which takes into consideration the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness of a site’s content, with the sole focus to eradicate fake news and click bait. Fact-checking your work is likely to please Google, appealing to the key attribute it looks for when deciding the E-A-T score of your site.
Sure, fact-checking your blog posts is important for so many reasons, not to mention your SEO. But how can you have your blog posts professionally fact-checked? Let’s explore.
How To Fact-Check Your Blog Posts
There are multiple ways in which you can fact-check your blog post, to ensure you stand out from the sea of misinformation that floods the internet.
When creating content and writing your blog posts it’s important to remember that you are the professional. If you’re not, make yourself! It is important, even if you think you know the content subject like the back of your hand, to do the right research, gathering information and facts from authoritative sources that you trust. Once you have produced the blog post, it’s important that you check, and check again!
Fact-checking can be helped by a number of platforms including Google’s Fact Check Explorer.
Thirdly, it’s important and useful to cite your work. If you’re an avid reader of our GrowTraffic blog, you may have read my previous entry surrounding duplicate content – if not, you can find it here. Citing quotes in your work, or information, and linking it back to the original source not only helps you avoid creating duplicate content and boosts your SEO but it can also impact your fact-checking process. Citing back to other authoritative sites can have a similar effect than if you were to get a professional name to sign off your facts, attaching their title to your work.
Citing other works increases the authority of your content, sending those all-important trust signals to search engines that your work is worthy of ranking and factually correct.
Professionally Fact-Checking With GrowTraffic
Sure, at GrowTraffic, we aren’t the experts in everything (although, if you have spoken with Dalley, he may disagree with this statement). However, we are the experts in creating well-written, factually correct blog posts that are likely to position you as an authoritative figure within your industry and on SERPs.
If writing blog content is something you would like a hand with, whether it be starting from scratch or wanting to learn more ways to fact-check your work – get in touch with a member of the GrowTraffic team today!
You can call us on 0161 706 0012 or drop a line to info@growtraffic.co.uk.
