Good online writing seems to be summed up be a couple of key factors. In Brian Clarks article How to Create Compelling Content that Ranks Well in Search Engines he explains that content needs to be relevant, compelling, comprehensive and useful to the reader. However, there are several ways to be savvy about writing internet content. But, before I go into that Deanna Zandt gave a speech exemplifying principles to remember when writing online content. These principles are important to think about before you even begin to write.
1. Be yourself. Know that what you write should reflect who you are. Eventually, everything that we write online will make up somewhat of a virtual auto-biography.
2. Understand that what you contribute online will make up your reputation and that can ultimately effect your career. Your career may ultimately boil down to three things, your reputation, a referral and a recommendation (Basically, in some cases your college degree might not have as much sway as you'd like to think).
3. Know about privacy online. Don't let the belief that privacy is dead scare you away from using the internet, but understand that in many ways your contributions are out there for millions to access.
Represent yourself. And if you'd like people to notice you, well Clark's article touches a lot more on that.
First, UNDERSTAND SEARCH ENGINES
Before writing online content you must know that search engines are one of the most effective ways of being discovered. In order to appeal to search engines you must be specific and you must understand that how people respond to your site will effect how search engines rank your site. Ranking is benefited by in three ways:
1. If your site is trust worthy. This will be determined by flow to your site and if authorities use the site.
2. The number of links to your page. Simply, the more links the more people like and use your site.
3. Anchor text links. These are important because the anchor texts describes what your site means to other people. For example, if you have a recipe site and someone anchor texts your site as "best red velvet cupcakes," that's what your content means to them and may catch on to mean that to others as well.
Remember with online content, "what people say about you is more important than what you say about yourself" (Clark 6).
KNOW THE IMPORTANCE OF KEY WORDS
Clark emphasizes the importance of clarity. In order for searchers to find your site, you must speak their language. That means include keywords in your content that someone would search for. Be informed of the 5 Essential Elements of Keyword Research:
1. Use Keyword or Research Tools. These will help identify keywords for your site, get knowledge about the people who access your site, help your content compete with other sites, among several other things.
2. Be specific. MAKE SURE you use searchers keywords in your content. Creativity is good, but using synonyms of your keywords might make your content unclear and hard to find.
3. Strength in Numbers. Pay attention to the popularity of search terms.
4. Highly Relevant. Make sure that your search terms are relevant to your ultimate goal. Depending on if your offering goods to be purchased, a subscription, or information will determine what your search term should be.
5. Develop a Content Resource. That means developing a particular keyword phrase that will support your content as valuable to readers and is a foundation of what your online content is about. This will have to A), satisfy the needs of the site visitor, B) act as the first step to whatever action is the goal of your visitor, C) prompt people to link back to your site.
With that said, probably the most famous online search is Google. So, how can you appeal to them? Start with UNDERSTANDING HOW TO RANK WELL:
Do this by creating cornerstone content. This is essential in increasing your rank. A cornerstone is something that is basic, essential, indispensable, and the chief foundation upon which something is built (Clark 10). It is what people immediately need to know to make use of your website. It tells the searcher that your content is worth linking and is a foundation for optimization and usability. How do you do it?
1. Start with keywords. Make sure the keywords are appropriate for your content. Ask yourself, what are the searchers asking that your business will answer? Are enough people asking the question to make it worthwhile?
2. Know the importance of title tags and headlines. Keywords in your title tag and headline enhance the chance of a searchers results linking to your site. A killer keyword-enhanced headline makes it more likely someone will link back to you.
3. Content. Make it interesting, impressive, and comprehensive. Make a searcher want to stay on your site.
4. Use a Content Landing Page. This page is designed to instantly communicate what's going on to the visitor as soon as they arrive. This approach aids in retention, increases the likelihood of the reader bookmarking or sharing your site, linking your site, and optimization to boost your ranking.
5. Make sure to be active. Frequent activity will help you be favorable to search engines, participate online, and give context to your information.
The benefits of cornerstone content are usefulness and relevancy to the visitor and compelling and comprehensive content. It's not just about selling yourself short on the web just to get noticed, you must make attractive content. Clark gives 5 strategies to let you understand who you're talking to, figure out what will catch attention and convince them to do what you want.
1. Use Social Media News Sites. Try and get noticed by a notable one that gets a lot of attention. Even more beneficial, if the site is concentrated in topics related to your content.
2. Guest write. Write on blogs and other sites that allow for comments. This gives you away to give some feed back and link your site, but do it tastefully. There are certain etiquettes on the web.
3. Social Networking. If you're not already, get in on one. This will increase the distribution of your site and will help you build relationships.
4. Link out. Engage strategically with other blogs or site owners. What I mean is, talk to people who can benefit your goal, not just anyone. Remember, now a days it's all about who you know.
5. Use Article Directories: Submit articles to different directories. The more you put yourself out there the greater exposure you will get.
Most importantly, you can't write about something that no one cares about. It must be relevant. Make it unique and theres a greater chance people will pay attention.
Lastly, the 5 MOST IMPORTANT SEO copywriting elements that matter. Apply everything else to these elements and you're golden (I'm sure it's not as easy as it sounds,) but pay attention to these:
1. The title. Keep it short and too the point, include keywords and try to make an alternative title to jumble the keywords around in different orders that will benefit in a search.
2. Have a meta-description. This is a straight forward snippet that will help inform the reader on what your site is about.
3. Content. Now I'm beating a dead horse, but make it unique and be attentive to it. That means update your stuff. The world and web quickly changes and you should be up to date on it, or at least what pertains to your site.
4. Use keywords frequently. Make sure they appear on the page numerous times, but not too many. Don't do keyword stuffing, it makes you seem desperate. Make sure your keyword density (the ratio to keywords compared to other words on the page) is less than 5.5%.
5. Link out. This shows you're connected. Link to relevant content early on, link to relevant pages about every 120 words, link to relevant interior pages, and link with naturally relevant anchor text. Don't force a link, make sure it's appropriate.
That's the basics. Well, there are a lot of basic, but to try and make this more clear I've found four sites that exemplify either good or bad content.
While writing this, I had to clarify what a keyword tool was. I Googled it and choose this link as my first option. This is an example of good content. It's straight forward. It gives you a little description of the tool as context. You can see tags to other relevant and related sites, so therefore it has linked out and probably become notable. Here is an example of bad content. Not because the content is bad, but because it is not relevant to my search. Granted, I had to go to the double digits in Googles pages for the search, but still.
Who doesn't love pizza? A simple search of 10 Best Pizza Places gave me a lot of results. As a Food Network junky I'm familiar with the show Serious Eats and I got their blog with their opinion of the 10 Best Pizza Places In NYC. The winners are right there for you in blue, they link out to other social media outlets, and offer a place for people to give feedback on the site. This site is just a recipe. It doesn't give me the 10 best places. Maybe their keywords are off? There is no way of knowing if it's a reliable site. It does give some other links for linking out, but there is little description of the site.
Now, venture out and create some online content if you haven't already. Make it good.
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