Assignment #1: Good vs Bad Online Writing

To be quite honest, I believe what makes good online writing versus what makes bad online writing is a matter of opinion. It’s solely based on one’s personal preference. Just because I think one piece of online content is bad doesn’t mean the other person next to me thinks it’s bad. They might think of it as good online writing, because it probably engages them more than it does me. It’s all about personal preferences and one’s own opinions.

With that said, I find what Clark has to say to be completely pointless in regards to your question of “what makes good online writing.” If the question were, “what makes online writing rank high in search engines” then it’s a different story. Just because something ranks high on Google search based on a few keywords, doesn’t mean it’s good online writing. All it means is that a lot of people have been to that site and for some, they just happen to enjoy going there.

Now before I go on about my opinion on the matter, let me outline the readings.

Clark begins by talking on and on about search engines and how they work, along with what traffic is and does and how keywords work. He doesn’t get to the “content” part until is subheading “Creating Cornerstone Content Online” and specifies it that it’s content that “Google loves.” The breakdown of steps in creating content that will rank high in Google Search:

1. Use relevant keywords, or keyword phrases, that will enable your website to show up on search engines and actually be relevant to what searchers are looking for.
2. A good title tag or headline that is also relevant to what you are writing about. The headline should be something that not only is relevant to your content, but also draws in the searcher.
3. Content, content, content. I personally think this is the most important because without the actual content all of the other steps are quite useless.
4. Content Landing Page, or a table of contents of sorts for your readers to actually get a sense of what your main content is about. Some benefits of your content landing page is:
• Retention, or keeping your reader engaged in what your content is about
• Bookmarks and Sharing. When people bookmark your page it often means that they will come back to look at it again. Also, it might lead them to share the link via social media sites, which is a plus as it boosts traffic to your page.
•  Links, or other sites linking to your page because they like the content of it
•  Optimization of your landing page will also boost your search engine ranking
5.  Related Content, or a cohesive set of content that often overlap or cross-reference one another. Blogs were an example of this.

Once you’ve got your content online, the next best thing to do is to promote it. For how else will you get other people to visit your site if you don’t strategically spam it everywhere. The steps to promoting your content are as follows:

1. Social Media News sites: Your website will gain a lot of attention if it shows up on various social media news sites like Reddit or Digg. Of course, a compelling headline that draws readers in will make this method highly successful.
2. Guest Writing: Guest writing on other well established blogs or websites is also a good step at drawing attention not only to you and your writing but also to your website, which you can always link to in your guest writing.
3. Social Networking: Gaining a network of “fans” through Facebook, Twitter and the like. Draw them in to content that seems to benefit them. Zandt talks about this in depth, saying that in order for other people to buy into your online content, they have to feel connected to you. You have to build a relationship with each of your “fans” or followers in order for them to feel as if they are getting something out if it. Even if you just post on your Twitter saying you just ate a bagel, all these small steps will lead your followers to a bigger picture of who you are and once you’ve made that connection, they will keep coming back to your content as well as maybe even spread it around.
4. Linking Out: Link out to other sites in hopes that they will link back to your site on their site. This is kind of like “affiliates.” You are essentially establishing a relationship with other websites that probably offer similar content to your website in hopes of sharing the same or similar readers.
5. Article Directories: Submitting articles to giant directories to boost search engine results and thus traffic to your page.

Clark also talks about “spoon feeding” search engines. Essentially, you want to write your content in a way that makes it easy and quick for searchers to find it. You want to use the language searchers use in their searches in your online content, but at the same time make your content compelling. Clark gives five SEO copywriting elements that matter when accomplishing this:

1. Title: the title should always have your main keyword or key phrase in it or near it that way it makes sense to the search engine and to the searcher alike.
2. Meta-Description: the meta tag is usually a small summary of your website that appears under your title in search engines. It gives the searcher a small abstract on what kind of content they will find in your site.
3. Content: As I stated before, none of this other stuff would matter if there weren’t content that backs it all up. Your content should stay on the topic that your keywords and such are about. There is nothing more annoying than clicking on a link entitled “Watermelons” and whose keyword is “watermelons” only to read stuff about strawberries.
4. Keyword Frequency: It’s the number of times the main keyword or phrase appears on the page. Avoid using the keyword or phrase a lot within your main content though, because the more it appears in regards to how much content there is, the more Google thinks your cheating the system and spamming.
5. Linking Out: again, this idea of linking out to other websites on the net, so the search engines can see that your site is connected with others.

To get on with my examples, as I've stated throughout my post, I think the actual content of the website is way important than everything else. That is how I would judge good online writing from the bad. Because there are many sites out there that follow all of what Clark has written, but the actual content isn't up to par. For example, I’m going to start with two DIY beauty blogs. One is good online writing and the other is bad. I’ll start with the bad. Entitled The DIY Beauty Blog, it was the first site to come up on Google when I searched the phrase “DIY Beauty Blog.” My keyword phrase was in the title, so it’s no surprise that it was the first site to pop up. Course, I looked at the page source and it doesn’t really have a clear meta description list, but I suppose since it’s hosted on Blogger, Blogger just generates that on its own. In any case, the blog only consist of three posts, solely on skincare. Though the posts are okay reads, I was searching for a DIY, do it yourself, beauty blog that gives me tips on all kinds of beauty. Honestly, it looks to me like the writer of this blog abandoned the blog because it hasn’t been updated in quite a while, which baffles me because it was the first link I got on my search. Does this SEO not apply to how often the content is updated?

In comparison, The Beauty Department is a DIY beauty blog that I happen to enjoy a lot. The writing is clear and concise and it gives tips on various topics of beauty. There are DIY tutorials with accompanying pictures and the content is engaging. It was just what I was looking for and yet it did not come up on the “DIY Beauty Blog” Google search! Compelling content cannot be gauged just by the site's search engine optimization. It just doesn't work like that. I will say however, The Beauty Department blog did have links to their social media extensions as well as a navigation that worked as a landing page, whereas the DIY Beauty Blog didn't have any outgoing links and worked as a plain blog. But I suppose Blogger blogs are different because they are connected at the top to other blogs?

Anyway, my second example of good online writing would be Perezhilton.com, though I seriously believe this is just a matter of opinion. I know a lot of people who think Perez' blog to be utter crap, because celebrity gossip is crap or sleazy or whatever. But I will say that when it comes to celebrity gossip, the gossip Perez reports is pretty accurate, which is rare. And even though he was a bit critical when he first started out, he's matured and reports the facts with a much nicer attitude. Not only is the content accurate, but I simply enjoy reading it. It's content that appeals to me and therefore it's good in my eyes. Though this example is based on my own opinion of good writing, I do believe it uses a few points from Clark. For one, when I Googled "Celebrity Gossip," Perez' blog came in at number two. My keyword phrase was in both the title and the meta description. Even though it is a blog, Perez has a nice navigation on top that links to his other websites and social media pages. Not only does he do that, but each of his post are properly linked to the information sources, which also generate according to Clark, more avenues in which his site is optimized for search engines.


I think I'm failing to understand what makes for good online writing and what doesn't in regards to what we've read. I'm trying to think outside of the box for this last example (ie not a blog), but it's difficult because it's really all about what the person reading the writing thinks, not what a search engine thinks. Like, if we actually look at the writing, anyone with some intellect will say that online newspapers present better writing than say FanFiction.net. But when it comes to engaging content, articles on NYTimes.com can be kind of dull and boring whereas poorly written fanfiction can sometimes be stupid and funny and thus more compelling to read. But when it comes down to it, it's all based on opinion and personal preference. What is good writing to some people may be bad writing to others and visa versa. So how can we really distinguish the two?