Blog # 1

According to http://scribeseo.com/seo-copywriting/, there are many steps that go into creating compelling online content. Clark states that “search traffic is clearly important, as long as it’s targeted search traffic.” That’s pretty much the outline for the rest of the reading. You need to take into account certain steps to have your website position well in search engines. Choose appropriate keywords. You need to ask yourself what the searcher is going to be looking for, and once you figure that out, your site is surely going to be at the top of a search. Tags and headlines are also extremely important as you want to draw the searcher in, and even more importantly, you want to have a good meta-description to ultimately determine whether or not your site will get the click. I started doing some research online and didn’t really want to use any obvious websites for good online content and for some reason beauty came into mind and I thought what if I wanted to design a beauty website or salon myself. I searched the term “build a beauty salon.” I came across a site called http://www.beautydesign.com/. It’s meta-description: Find Salon Plans & Design Ideas and Furniture for Beauty Salons & Spas. I’m sure for many people in the Beauty industry looking to design their own salon, this would be a common search tag and they would want to give this website that click. Their site is also visually appealing in the sense that everything you could possibly look to buy for a salon is listed on the left hand corner, just simply click it.

Another point that Clark states in http://scribeseo.com/seo-copywriting/ was that “the way to create compelling content is to focus relentlessly on ‘what’s in it for the reader’. And in the same way, no one is going to link to you unless theres something in it for them….the key is the same- understand who you're talking to, figure out what will catch their attention, then convince them to take the action you want.” I decided to follow the example the piece gave and go to Digg to find articles that apparently were appealing enough for them to make the home page. What I found was an article from the HuffingtonPost  about sitting at your desk all day: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/sitting-bad-for-health_n_1245261.html?ir=Health-and-Fitness&ncid=dynaldushpmg00000056 The headline was : Sit All Day? 6 Ways To Stay Active At Your Desk.  Self explanatory and straight to the point, and the article gives you exactly what the headline promotes. And just like so many other sites these days, you have the option to follow the page by adding it to your facebook, twitter, email, iphone, blackberry and droid accounts, increasing the chances of your site or blog to get that “click.” This coincides with the Deanna Zandt article http://www.deannazandt.com/presentations/claremont-mckenna-college-how-you-will-change-the-world-with-social-networking/ in which she states that “in the traditional media word, the work was about casting a wide net- if I get on a broadcast of 2 million viewers, maybe I can rope 2000 of them into the work that I'm doing. Wide net, small return of fishes. The wider the net, though, the more chance for more fishes.”

Now for the bad stuff- I decided to research the worst website of 2011 and stumbled upon http://chestertourist.com/. First off all, this site is a nightmare. If you can get through reading it without going blind as the fonts are small and fuzzy, you’ll notice that there aren’t even any key words under the site name. When someone finally does come across the site, as I did myself, you can be sure they will exit it, doing a disservice to the neighborhood that’s banking on it for tourism. The content of it is rather well but it's all lost in the design, which is just so discouraging.

Doing a complete 180, I thought of celebrity news sites as having bad online content for multiple reasons. On an obvious level, just like the magazines, you don’t really know how much truth there is to the information you're reading which by itself is just a waste of time, but even on a more critical level, the content is bad. Take  http://www.okmagazine.com/news/whitney-houstons-album-digital-song-sales-skyrocket-after-her-death for instance. Their headlines alone don’t really grasp you in and make you want to read any further because they practically tell you the entire story of what they're writing in the headline. For example, one link states “Whitney Houston’s album sales skyrocket after death”. OK. Thanks. Now I don’t have to give you that “click” because you already told me what I’m going to read. You want to draw the reader in, make them a little curious- you don't want to do all the work for them. Personally, I love headlines that engage you and right off the bat you know that you want to continue reading it. The same should be for online "news" content.

Sidenote: These pieces on the Internet and its content were rather interesting. I've always known about the keywords and such with search engines, but it was really nice to have a better breakdown of understanding how it truly works.