The only thing that could signify the arrival of the Google search engine even more would have to be T-shirts with the phrase “Google it” written across the front. From homework assignments to simple questions that come up in your everyday conversations, googling has become the sure-fire way to get a quick answer. With that said, “How To Create Compelling Content that Ranks Well in Search Engines” by Brian Clark (http://scribeseo.com/seo-copywriting/) keys into the phenomenon that is Google and shows us how exactly to become that first link that appears on the screen. This article gives you all the ingredients needed to cook up a successful web-page. One with substantial writing and one that will be easily accessible to someone searching for the information you are providing; which is thus the ultimate goal of online writers.
One analogy Clark gives is that of feeding a 4-year-old. “You wouldn’t set a bone-in ribeye steak and a steak knife in front of a 4-year old and expect him to have at it. You’d need to present the food in easily chewable bite-sized chunks with appropriate utensils.” The 4-year old represents the search engine and the ribeye is your piece of work. In order for the search engine to digest what you have given it and use that to make your work available to searchers, you have to provide it in chewable bite-sized chunks through the use of keywords. These key words and furthermore the anchor texts you provide are essential to making your page visible. If someone is researching “how to create compelling content?” on Google, but neither of those words are in certain locations or frequencies throughout your text then how are they supposed to find it? Along with keywords and anchor texts your work has to have credibility. It has to be a trusted source in order for it to be successfully ranked on Google. Also the cornerstone of your website should be clear to the reader. What are you talking about? This question must be 100% clear in order to have good content. The reader must know how relevant your site is to them and more importantly how useful. This must be clear upon arrival otherwise you risk losing them to the back button.
Yet another website which is experiencing the same user faithfulness as Google is Wikipedia. More often than not this is among the first sites on the list of results after searching a question on google. In my opinion Wikipedia has a lot of the elements Clark requires, which might well be why it is so successful on Google. With Valentine’s Day around the corner I thought a good search would be “how did Valentine’s Day begin?” Wikipedia was of course one of the top results. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine's_Day) The title of the article is Valentine’s Day which shows the keywords in the search phrase, automatically the reader knows what the page is about. One of Clarks requirements is to link to relevant pages approximately every 120 words and to link to relevant interior pages of your site. Almost immediately after the title and much more frequently than ever 120 words, wikipedia links out to other pages within the site. At the bottom of the article you find 80 references, all with links to the sources, thus proving the credibility of the contexts. An example of bad writing found using the same search question would be the answer I found on this website: (http://www.chacha.com/question/how-did-valentines-day-originally-begin%3Fmore). The title of the article is “How did Valentine’s day originally begin?” The answer is almost impossible to find amongst the overwhelming amount of ads on the page. Finally all the way at the bottom we find a small explanation which is has no references, no links and ends in more advertising. Although the site fulfils the frequency of key word requirement and the title is deceivingly intriguing to a researching reader, the content is absurd and far from compelling.
The second article “Claremont McKeena College: How You Will Change the World With Social Networking” by Deanna Zandt focuses more on how to lure in an audience and start a following rather than the technical aspects of writing. Furthermore she encourages you to find a niche group which you will target. Rather than reaching out to a million people and only grabbing the attention of a few thousand, she suggest targeting a group of that thousand which are going to stick by your, be interested and thus spread the word about your movement. Her depicting of the Exhale project to me was moving. So much so that I had to go out of my way to research and see it for myself. That is thus the reaction wants you to get from your followers and from the work we should be doing to progressively change the world. Its his type of moving content that makes for good writing. Writing that will move people to action. A topic that moves me is that of pet abuse and pet abandonment. the number of animals being abused and abandoned is at an all time high and it is only increasing. I tried researching sites that addressed this problem and found (http://www.pet-abuse.com/).This site not only explains all types of animal cruelty laws and preventions, but it also has a clear objective stated in its About Us section. It provides links to different sources that could help in the cause and even has an option to search cases in your area. You can report cruelty and help them in their goal to stop this type of treatment on animals. At the bottom of the page you find a bar with links to its Facebook page on which they have over 30,000 likes and Twitter on which they have over 2,000 followers. This site has clearly done a good job of using social media to spread the word about their mission and gain a following. The next site I found is definitely trying to serve for a good cause but its informal nature makes it lack credibility (http://www.animals-shelter-me.com/animals-blog.html).As I clicked through the blogs its mostly just pictures of little animals and other scattered information. The goal of the site is not in line with its title “Animals Shelter Me” which I thought would suggest a place where one would find aid in providing homes for abandoned animals. The lack of proper writing, or in Clarks words compelling content, makes this site something readers would probably navigate away from.
What I took away from both readings would have to be that its all about content. Good content along with the right set of keywords can make for a great website which people will follow, link to and spread the word about to others. Without the right SEO copy writing strategies a good ribeye steak could go to waste and without good contents a reader is likely to stumble upon the wrong sources.
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