Here are some of my inputs on how to write great content - that works.
The right candidate: direct sales executives:
The beginners (and many experienced writers too) take sales in an undeserving sense. Please remove your slippers as early as possible. Selling is an art – you can’t sell a SUV and a chicken roast with the same approach. The success depends on the way you communicate with an unknown person – you get only one chance to hit the target.
Otherwise, regular interactions in related forums may help you gain some experience along with exposure to target market. Find out what the target market is looking for.
Multiple identity is not a disorder:
You must maintain these identities consciously so that you can shift between them as soon as you feel your client’s pulse.
Believe it or not, your success depends on your shoes or masks.
How to write SEO Articles – Things to Ask to the clients
Normally clients, who want us to ghost-write their articles for SEO or other purpose, arm us with a few keywords and URL of the website.
One thing must be clarified over here; we compliment each other. I can write article that someone will be interested in reading and you have the knowledge and experience of your respective field.
There is no need to mention at this point that, if we work together, we can really prepare quality content.
Not that I find all the clients as supportive but I invariably ask for the following details before writing seo articles:
- What’s your “company voice”? Serious, funny, playful, etc – This will help us craft the articles to fit your tone better.
- What are some “hot” topics in your industry at present or historically? We want to know if there is anything in your industry that is historically interesting, or new to the industry that other businesses or consumers would like to know. You may also do some Google search.
- What are some “controversial” topics in your industry? What is your stance on these? We want to note your stance on trends in the industry.
- What are people most interested in your industry (Your products specifically).
- Who is the target demographic?
- When people call you, what is the common question, and how do you answer them to get them to buy?
- What differentiates your from your competitors? What is your USP (unique selling proposition)? Please elaborate
- What are some websites, magazines or trade journals that you typically visit for information about your industry?
- How do you learn about the newest techniques to stay cutting edge?
- Are there any specific articles, blog posts or papers that really stand-out or are well-known within your industry? If so – can you please provide their URLs to us?
- Do you frequent these industry publications, or have you tried and found them to lack value?
- Anything else that you would like to share!
Web Content Writing: Use of Industry Specific Terms
Most of web content writers are not specific field experts.
Say for example, I have no idea about digital printing, or breathable fabrics but I had been writing pages after pages on these topics. And topics changed every other day. We need to start from nowhere most of the time. To add to this, we are given least little time to complete the task. Within this short span of time we needed to prove ourselves industry experts! (Joke of the day)Not just to the reader but also to search engines.
What can be done!
Every field uses some specialized action verbs or active terms:
People dealing with technical skills may use terms like assembled, Built, Designed, Calculated, Devised, Computed, Maintained, Operated, Programmed, Remodeled, Engineered, Reengineered or Transmitted to describe some actions.
Whereas people dealing with management may use words like Achieved, Attained, Administered, Coordinated, Decided, Delegated, Established, Executed, Handled, Implemented, Incorporated, Intervened, Launched, Led, Assigned, Managed, Mediated, Motivated, Organized, Headed, Oversaw, Planned, Challenged Prioritized, Recommended, Scheduled, Supervised, United etc. to describe certain situations.If we follow a bit closer we may find every field has a unique way of structuring and phrasing sentences and emotions.
We can use these terms to pretend to be one of them! And we need to be one of them to win their faith.
Be careful: don’t end up becoming a fool! A crow easily can identify another!
Let’s talk about some phrases people use – looks natural:
What about mastering another art, using related phrases and words that people use in day to day life!
This may be a very interesting project!
For example: we may find the following bunch of words and phrases associated with “Work”
Workplace, piece of work, employment, body of work, oeuvre, study, influence, act, act upon, put to work, work on etc….
We may also find some phrases like these:
This dough does not work easily
She knows how to work the system
He works his parents for sympathy
Work stone into tools
The political candidate worked the crowds
Work one’s way through the crowd
Work out your problems with the boss
The wine worked
The stitches of the hem worked loose after she wore the skirt many times
My personal trainer works me hard
The main problem of using phrases in web content is that the readers do not belong to a specific location.
Web Content Writing – When and how people feel comfortable!
The answer I have received so far:
PokerChip gives a one liner: “straight to the point of the topic”
From Raghavendra Mudugal I find:
- Content should be well organized
- It should tell on the topic with least words
- When I get what I was searching for
- Placement of the information
- Connectivity and collectivity between sub heading should be there
- Where the reading becomes more sensible and more meaningful
- Relevant pictures, extra resource link for our further reference
- WIKI does a good job in content wise
Personally I like a background color other than white, but you can allow the reader to change those colors for their own preferences.
Limit the number of animations per page. One can be interesting; a whole page full of them is distracting. It also takes forever to download over a slow connection, which some people still have.
Basically, you want the presentation to add to your content, not get in its way
So what do you say! Do they seem to be add-on answers!
There is high probability of it as one can easily see what the first person have said.
But just look at the highlighted parts!
The readers are much concerned about what they want.
Winning reader’s faith: Alarming Survey results
The survey results are based on interviews with 1,500 Internet users age 18 and older, conducted for Consumer WebWatch by Princeton Survey Research Associates. The Internet users were identified from among 2,542 adults interviewed for the survey by telephone from December 20, 2001, to January 7, 2002. For results based on all Internet users, the sampling error margin is plus or minus 3 percentage points.1 The sampling error margin is higher for subgroups of users.
The result shows that:
- 29 percent of users say they trust Web sites that sell products or services.
- 33 percent say they trust Web sites giving advice about such purchases.
- 58 percent say they trust newspapers and television news.
- 47 percent say they trust the federal government in Washington.
What the end users want to know:
- Who runs the site?
- How to reach those people?
- The site’s privacy policy!
- How the site deals with mistakes, whether editorial or transactional?
- A prominent page where corrections of past mistakes are available!
- A list of the editors responsible for the site’s content including email addresses.
- 80 percent say it is very important to be able to trust the information on a Web site.
- 95 percent of users say it is very important that sites disclose all fees.
- 93 percent attach the same emphasis to statements of the site’s policy on using personal information.
- 57% have read at least most of the policies about credit card use on the sites they visit.
- 35 percent report reading the privacy policies on most sites
- 22 percent report reading the “About Us” Because this pages provides key information about the site, such as its personnel, goals and purpose.
For more detailed information download the PDF file here. Please don’t waste time.
Web Content Writing: How you Say is Important than What you Say
Internet Marketing Monitor published a good article on content writing. They have referred to another article on web content writing – “Resolve to Produce Great Content” by P.J. Fusco in this regard.
This article tries to analyze the edge between good content and great content using examples from different websites targeting same keywords.
Read the article!
It is all up to you if you would subscribe to their views or not but you may at least get a mode of analyzing web page content by yourself.
However, the reason why I mentioned this in my blog is because of a sentence used in the conclusion: “I didn’t want to change what the author was trying to say… only how they said it.”
This “how to say something” is more important than what you are saying.
What I believe is content itself cannot work to its full potential if not supported by all other page elements that includes page layout, color scheme, position of the content and everything and anything else.
It should be a complete package with “an established character” where one element is just complimentary to another.
That’s why I never use the phrase “Content is the King”.
Content is to the most Mr. General who plans and wins the battle for the product that you wanted to sell.
Product itself is the King. A product should have some potential to sell; content only supports and materializes the king and his objectives in the battle field!
Truth Claim of Newspaper
At most, it is the first paragraph if not the first line only, that people may read if they somehow reach your page- may be!
In many cases they read the first line and fly away to the next page or to some other website.
Yours is a web page and not a newspaper where people are bound to stick.
What say!
However, a newspaper has another great support to back it. Reader’s consciousness that assumes any printed material to be true, consciously or unconsciously. Newspapers explore this “truth claim” to the full. Our faith on any printed text on a paper is deeply rooted in our psyche, almost as a default category in the process of our growing up.
Interactive Content – “Reader vs. writer” – a psychological game
Reader's behavior while reading a web page content, as discussed earlier, thus forces us to close the sale straight at the opening lines.
One cannot let the reader roam on his own. If once the reader starts taking the upper hand, you can be rest assured that, he will fly away.
At the same time, a good web content writer should remember that the reader should not become conscious that he is being guided by the content.
This consciousness on the reader’s part will only grow apathy towards the page content.
A good web content writer should always make the hard earned reader involved. He must find the content interesting. Do you remember your text book! How often you closed it out of boredom!
You can not make the reader bound to continue reading the page (it’s not a text book for him or her either) if the words do not sound interesting to him.
Any individual, who can think, knows this thing, but you will surely agree with me that, at times you need to set some reminder to yourself.
Don’t worry, after a few days these will be implanted in you – by default.
Interactive Content – The finest of web content
You are in no way bound to believe me, or rely on me! But as far as my understanding and foresight goes, any conscious and dedicated person can dash on to that level.
A better understanding of the reader’s behavior can take you their.
Think about it twice! Think twice about the market segment for which you are writing! Identify their behavior if not their thinking process.
I admit that, every individual is different in his or her own way; please don’t misunderstand me!
Still, if you can reach a bit more close to them, you are bound to identify certain patterns they follow, in respect to their communication process, attitude, and outlook.
You can easily identify the words they use in day-to-day communication. I don’t believe in following any so called sanctity of language!
I believe in the language that you and I use everyday to communicate personal and non-personal emotions. And to add to it, language is such a fountain that lives healthy as long as fresh rush of water gets in and big enough that no individual can damage it.
Another most important point I want you to note, “Language is merely a tool” that you use and you need to use. The most important thing is to express you to the utmost point and cutting off the noise level!
At the same time don’t forget that if there had been no language (verbal, non-verbal, or sign language) there would have been no race!
Don’t shout! Ask yourself!
NB: Noise: it occurs when the meaning of a word or sentence or the mode of speech is not transported to other person as intended. It may be a barrier occurred within the same language or language group as well as between two different languages or between two persons from the same socio-political structure and language base.
Reality Check: We don’t think in words, we think in images!
When I say COW and you understand a cow! Have you realized what I am saying!
Sure about that!
Try to sit by the reader to become a successful web content writer
So by now you know that, the same word may not carry the same meaning to you and me. When I say cow you get an image of a cow that you have constructed of yourself.
The cow I am referring to you may be black in color, three legged, brown ears and chewing tobacco; while your cow may be white one, four legged, red ears and chewing grass.
Words that we are uttering or writing are nothing but coded images and the listeners are decoding them on their own. This process of decoding is structured by his or her socio political history, his growing up and any thing and everything else.
Do I need to elucidate what may happen in this process of transportation?
We normally come down to a common platform (where we take some coding for granted) and start communicating with each other.
While talking or writing to a friend of yours, you need not be conscious, as the common rules are already constructed, however while communicating with an unknown person you need to construct and reconstruct the platform again and again.
You feel uncomfortable! The air bubble that we always carry with us, ego and super ego and blab blab blab etc…. pushes you further and further away…
Nothing sales like simplicity.
One of my friends once said, “as long as I am with you, there is no one on earth who is closer to you than me!” and I have picked this up and perhaps will remember it the rest of my life.
Did anyone ask me anything like WHY!
How to win reader’s faith through your content!
How can you win someone’s faith without even shaking hands!
From a distance it may seem almost an impossible task but to continue a successful communication with the reader you must win his faith at any cost! There is no other shortcut to it.
The simplest of the hard ways to win your reader is to start up from a common platform – a platform containing some facts or anything else that the reader is bound to believe. This will help you and your reader to move forward.
You can also try the other way round when you have got much of expertise in this field of web content or article writing. Otherwise you should be mentally prepared for a backfire.
Make it clear what the reader can expect from this page – it’s a rule of thumb. It has no meaning to make someone read about photography techniques when he wants to buy a photocopier. He or she is not your targeted audience for the time being.
How to win reader’s faith through your content – Prove Yourself!
At any cost prove your point or claim.
This never means that I am asking you to make a dead person alive. What I am saying is that while making a claim, be sure if it has enough potential to prove itself! Or take no time in going for another issue!
Provide data and not flowery adjectives to support your claim. At the same time be sure of not turning your content into a data-bank [provided, the page is not targeted for economists……. (ha ha ha)]
Don’t even try to make the reader move round and round the issue.
Don’t even try to puzzle them and you can not do that as they will honor you by flying to another page.
Try to be as clear as daylight!
How to win reader’s faith through your content – other way round!
Here you start from a platform that the reader is bound not to believe (say, sun never rises in the morning). At this point the reader may think that you are a fool and know nothing of that field.
Now you can either carry it to conclude that sun never rises in the morning for a blind or in the very next line confess that the statement was wrong and the real statement is sun rises in the morning. There you go now to prove that if this statement holds false than whatever you are going to say is false!
A bit confusing!
Don’t push your visitor to buy anything
I often come across web copies that try to trap the reader! This is the worst thing writers do! Moreover, this is never a good way to close a deal.
To the most, you can bring the reader in a situation where he must take a decision – yes or no. If you can do this, you are a great content writer – no doubt about that. I presume that the decision solely depends on his or her own NEEDS – present or future.
Call for action is very important. However, words like “buy now”, “Best Value Offer” – are not “Calls for Action” in isolation. They must be supported with enough data. Otherwise, these are simply “Pushing terms” and the answer often turns to the negative side. People are conscious when they see an advertisement.
You must turn the visitor into a family member (reader), let him feel comfortable; let him believe that you are not trying to cheat him. Otherwise, you cannot sell anything to him or her.
People highlight (often blinking) “buy now” or “20% special discount” in a top corner of the page – I do not say that this is wrong, but I am not sure about the effect. Here you assume that the visitor has already become a family member. Have you given him enough time!
Do not assume that web is a big pond and you have enough prospective buyers to let one pass by. Come out of your dreams – one loss is a huge recurrent loss.
How Much Content is Enough Content – Example: Forum Maintenance
You need related content to grow – more and more of it. Webmasters go on creating pages after pages of beautiful or trash content.
Just take a look at any good forum – thousands and thousands of pages (not words alone) are being scribbled every other day with lots of emoticons.
We are getting so much of fresh content everyday. We are happy.
But have you ever wondered – how much content is enough content!
Why do we need those pages! If your only motivation is that of satisfying Search Engine’s needs – start counting – your days are numbered (did you ask why?).
How much quality information does a long thread carry! Someone, looking for some information, needs to pass through hundreds of questions and answers (related and superfluous) to get into some conclusion on the content of the thread. There is still no guarantee that the thread will solve his or her problem. It is like searching for bits and pieces of a lost mummy in Sahara.
If they are not finding answers to their own problems, they are not spending quality time in the forum – that means they are not getting value for time.
If this trend continues, people would just become guests, who would post their problems and wait for answers – that also means that they are acting as a passive agent.
You would argue to turn a good thread into sticky – this is only a temporary solution – how many sticky threads would you like to have in the dashboard!
To add to this problem, the titles of threads are often not descriptive enough to reflect the content (one must remember that the title was written before the second post and it was written by a semi-conscious person).
What can be done!
My suggestion is very simple – when a thread is dead (i.e. discussions are quiet), turn it into an article that would include the most important points of the discussion. Put descriptive title, summary and make a different landing page with a title like “Solved Issues…..”.
What do you get!
- quality content (SE friendly)
- control over content
- organized content
- clean discussion board
- simple navigation
- better solutions to visitors
- etc.
Unique and Quality Content
In the world of netizens, we all are looking for unique and quality contents, but what are the conditions that tag something as unique!
Uniqueness of a piece of content, as I believe, not simply lies on passing Copyscape Test. Uniqueness of content may also lie in the way of looking at the issue, if you have already identified it (the news element). A single point on a single plane may have at least 360 x n number of unique points of looking at it. Now here is another crux, which one is the best path or gives a fresher look at the point and how do you choose it!
While talking about quality of content, the same ideas prevail too. Ask yourself a single question, does your content, adds up or offers some information that was yet to be discovered! Will you read this again, yourself!
If you have primarily gathered 10 points to write about something, be critical and thank yourself for being in the right track, if you find that you have ignored, say, 5 points in the final layout.
Be precise and to the point… you are not asked to write an epic. The success of an article, be it for seo purpose or anything else, lies on how critically and mercilessly you can edit it!
If a potter falls in love with clay, he or she can never make beautiful vase.
Answering 4 W and 1 H in your article – How Newspaper Works!
Research on “How Users Read on the Web” shows that, they in fact scan a web page.
The same thing happens with a newspaper. You don’t really read a newspaper, you scan it and somehow you know where the gist of the whole story is – yes it is there in the introduction.
Thus a hardcore news story (front page lead story in a newspaper) is written in inverted pyramid format where the important news comes first and the journalist answers all the 4W (who, what, when, why) and 1H (How) there in the first line. If the introduction interests you, you go along to the next brief but substantial readings.
Can this be incorporated while writing a regular seo article or for that matter, should we use this technique to write a normal article!
Active and strong verbs and sentences instead of flowery words
“In one study, people who had to interpret federal regulation language spontaneously translated passive sentences into active sentences in order to form an understanding of the passages.”
Remember! You had the same experience some days back!
Use active and strong verbs and sentences instead of using flowery words. Strong verbs help the user know who is acting and what is being acted upon. But be conscious that, it solely depends on the subject you are dealing with. “To make a website commercially successful, avoid using sentences that starts from nowhere and lands into another ‘nowhere’.”
Read the last sentence once more!
What do you find! Did I land into some abstract plain!
Some abstractions are helpful but it solely depends on your target reader’s taste and culture specificity. One must get into a sales man’s shoes to write a compelling and catchy content.
Write in simple and direct language, small words are always the best choices. Users are not reading the page in the mood of reading a story. There are a number of websites where you can publish your story.
Writing effective titles for your copy or article – A MUST!
I came across an interesting article on “How You Can Write Effective Titles” by DG.
A good article undoubtedly, but seemed to me that it was lacking something.
What the article was lacking:
Whenever you are writing an article, you are necessarily writing it with some target readers in mind, who may need some information on the topic.
And you would want them to come to your page while searching with some key terms or words or phrases!
Now here is the crux!
The title of an article is in fact the banner of a store, something that tells about what one is supposed to get inside – a gateway that will direct the prospects inside!
While writing content or article for web users, make sure that the title of your article carries those key-phrases – it is also recommended to fix the key phrases in the beginning.
This will let the user know that the article is relevant to his or her quarries.
Do some keyword analyses before you even start writing the first line of your article!
Don’t simply target the primary key-phrases, make sure that you use keywords associated with them (known as secondary keywords) too.
You would also need to use those key-phrases in the body of your article to make it relevant to the topic for readers as well as for search engines.
It will not only make the article prominent, but will bring the targeted reader to your door.
Guess your keywords to stay in the business – calculations wont pay
There was a news ‘Newspapers search for Web headline magic’ – interesting – at least this is good news for SEO web content writers to grab a job at news agencies! Jokes apart, the article unfortunately underestimated the process of SEO web content writing.
Leaving these things apart, I must say, the reporter’s job of writing unique and keyword rich headline is tougher than that of a SEO writer. Why!
SEO content writers like us are given some keywords to work upon; keywords that people use to search that specific item. That means we are working on a well established field.
But, reporters mostly dig out new stories; something that someone does not know for certain or got no clue about them at all. At least the primary story is as fresh as the logic of all my wired dreams! People at the first hand must be aware of what they can know about the unknown!
When the story is a bit old and the buzz has hooked the readers, they may use some words to arrive at that news. These words will turn into keywords for that story. But so far, I don’t think, AdWords Keyword Tool, WordTracker or Keyword Discovery may come to any use!
What seems to me is that, the reporters must work hard to:
- Guess the best keywords for that story (no time for trial and error)
- Reference to past experience
- Use sub heading properly for related or secondary key-phrases
- NO clever Headlines (something that you use in the evening dailies)
Critical reading of an S.E.O. Article – Author on Author
I got a chance to chat with Henry Dylan, author of “Corporate Identity Branding Agency; do you need one?”
Please read this article carefully before you proceed further.
In our field of SEO web content or article writing, we are simply given some keywords and a website on which the article is supposed to point. Nothing else what so ever; someone may feel lucky if the helping hands are extended!
In many cases we can’t figure out any USP (unique selling point or proposition) of that company in that specific field! Most of them don’t even have something interesting or valuable or uncommon or special to offer (may be there were some but we failed to identify! After all we too are human beings). The site owners want traffic along with link backs or either of the two!
Same was the case with Henry. He could hardly find any USP and was running short of time. Then out of the bolt, he came out with this unique article.
Why Unique!
Look at the opening line! If you had been an owner of some organization, wouldn’t that have stricken you at the first place! What if I ask you the same question, “How people look at your face?” or how people perceive you! Won’t you stop for a while and pass a few second on this thought!
The very next line goes like “Let us take a quick brain-storm.”
Look at the cleaver use of these two words, ‘take’ and ‘quick’ – I was captured!
In the next three paragraphs he proposes what he is going to deal with!
Then there is an example, which is in fact a game, a subtle plot or manipulation to route people to the website. And the site is none other than “Blaze Communication”.
“Don’t click on the link unless you have finished reading the following paragraph” – he has started navigating the reader.
“As soon as you read the name try to categorize what the name suggests to you.” –the reader is no more an individual.
In next three paragraphs, he ends the game.
In the following paragraphs he plays with the keywords, (the highlighted ones in the article).
And now, last but not the least, look at the ending line. The sale is closed.
Look at the title of the article! First four words are keywords!
Do I need to say anything else! Small paragraphs, active words, simple sentences ….. blab blab blab
Read this article again. This is a unique example of how much of thought one needs to spend to write a quality SEO article.
I will keep updating this article :D
