Part 2c - Write for People and Search Engines
This book is not a writing guide. It's a road map for online marketing success. So I can't tell you how you should write. But I can tell you that what you write is more important than how you write it.
If you create helpful content that answers the fundamental questions of your audience, they will not care much about your writing "style." Trust me. The most important thing is to choose topics people want to know about, and then write about those topics in a clear and thorough manner. It need not be any more complicated than that.
How to Write a Great Web Page
Here are some of the techniques I've used to write hundreds of web pages efficiently but without sacrificing quality:
1. Outline Before You Write
Creating an outline will help immensely as you sit down to write the first draft of your web page. If you remember nothing else from this section of the book, remember this ... outlines make web writing much easier! Your outline doesn't have to be complex. Forget about those Roman numerals from English Composition 101. All you really need to do is plan how you want to begin, what points you want to cover, and how you want to end the article.
When writing, there's a certain tendency to wander off track. An outline will help you stay on task. It will also drive you through the writing process much more quickly, because instead of staring at a blank page you'll be looking at your outline.
2. Turn Off Your Internal Editor
You will be able to create content much more easily (and quickly) if you turn off your internal editor — at least for the first draft. At first, don't worry about grammar and spelling. You can cover those during the revision. The first draft is all about getting your thoughts down before they "float" away. So just write, write, write!
3. Forget About Search Engines
Writing for search engines is one of the worst things you can do when trying to create quality content. So forget about the search engines for now. Write for people. Write for your ideal audience, the people who are searching for those key phrases you identified back in the SEO chapter of the book. Write in a clear, helpful and informative way.
As for the search engines — if you create a 300- to 500-word page of web content around a particular phrase / topic, your pages will be search-engine friendly. Once you've written the first draft, you can go back through and check for the presence of your key phrases. But write for people first!
4. Put Quality Before Quantity
Poorly written web pages will not help you win new customers or increase sales. In fact, they will likely have the opposite effect by making you appear unprofessional or unknowledgeable. On the other hand, if you take the time to craft web pages that are helpful, well written, interesting and engaging, they will do wonders for your company's professional image.
It's nearly impossible to quantify how many customers a business has acquired partly as the result of a favorable first impression online (such as that provided by quality content). But I believe beyond a shadow of doubt that well written, meaningful website content plays a huge role in the process. I've been working with websites long enough to connect those dots.
Want a prime example of this in action? About once a week, I receive a phone call from a potential client who says something like this: "You know, I was reading some of the articles on your website [or blog], and I wanted to call and ask you about..."
Often, these conversations lead to clients. Other times they don't. But they are the direct result of the time and effort I put into my website's content.
I have taken the process of web writing / content creation and spread it throughout this book. It appears in multiple steps, because I want you to focus on content quality first and content quantity second. Content also relates to all of the other chapters of this book (blogging, SEO, publishing articles and press releases). All of these things require quality content, so we will revisit the topic many times and in many ways.
An Example Web Page
On one of my websites, I've created a page of web content specifically to reinforce this lesson. The page listed below meets all the requirements outlined in this section. It is written clearly and is meant to be informative and helpful to a particular audience. It is also written around a particular phrase for SEO purposes.
- Key topic / phrase: "Austin internet marketing services"
- Web page: http://www.austinseoguy.com/internet-marketing.php
- Google ranking for that phrase (at time of writing): page 1
- Yahoo ranking for that phrase (at time of writing): page 1
- MSN ranking for that phrase (at time of writing): page 1, position 1
The web page listed above is a prime example of how you can write quality content for business-building purposes, and still have it rank highly in the major search engines. Now ask yourself how you can translate this for your own business. Do you have at least one page of informative content for each of your products or services? If not, put that on your task list!
Websites Continued >> A Must-Read Website