SEO - Content Writing Advice - Web Design

Just what is great content writing?

Well, there are quite a few schools of thought on this subject. However, great content can be defined in many different ways. In fact, great content can be a fairly subjective device to help people find your blog, web site, or whatever other device you use to communicate across the web. There is no set definition of what great content is – what one person considers great content, someone else will consider horrible content.

The good news is, you don’t need to be a talented writer to create great content. You just need some general guidelines to follow to ensure that your content doesn’t appear haphazard, drab, dull, or at the very worst, doesn’t bring in any readers!

1. Great content is written towards a specific audience.

This is an important first step. If you don’t know the audience that you’re writing to, then how can you write in the appropriate tone that will communicate the purpose of your article appropriately? How can you convey the specific points that you want to get across to your audience if you don’t know what they expect? THis is why market research is so crucial in the development of your content.

2. Great content is engaging.

Think about it. Would you read a sentence that says: Becky went to the mall and purchase a pair of sneakers? Or, would you rather read a sentence that says: Becky danced to the mall of shiny shoes and bought her sneakers that made her happy the rest of the week? It would depend on the kind of writing you’re doing, but the point is simple: without a hook to draw your audience in, your audience won’t be impressed. You want to engage your audience in something that they would find interesting, exciting (or even surreally terrible) to be a part of. Develop a hook that draws your audience into the piece that you’re writing, and your article will be a hit.

3. Great content includes knowledge about a particular subject.

Without knowledge of the subject that you’re writing about, you might as well be caught dead in the water. You have to have some knowledge of the subject matter that can be utilized in your writing. This is another important component of great article writing: give something away that the reader can take with them when they’re through reading. Even better, provide something useful that will help them accomplish a specific task. If you can create a long string of articles that does just this one thing per article, then you’ll be able to draw readers in and develop a reader base you can be proud of.

4. Great content is credible.

What kind of experience do you have in your field? What expertise are you able to bring to the table regarding your subject matter? Are you a student studying full time seven days a week? Or are you a professional that has several books to their name and is accomplished in their field? Then use some of that information as a basis for developing credibility. Include at least one about page on your blog or article column that provides information about what you bring to the table. Remember, credibility is going to back what you write even more.

5. Great content looks professional. Remember to edit, proofread, and for God’s sake, SPELL CHECK y our WORK!!

This point cannot be emphasized enough. If you’re writing content that’s going to be seen by a wide audience, then you’re writing professionally, even if it’s free. You need to make sure that you spell check, proofread, and edit your work. Unless you’re a professional typist that can type 117 wpm with 100% accuracy, your work will have some errors. Also, be sure to edit your work to eliminate redundancies and unnecessary terms. And, if you’re an SEO, this goes without saying: make sure your content is user fiendly FIRST. Make sure that a human being can, at the very least, read your content without their eyes glazing over at the multitude of keyword stuffing. Write your content for your user, not for search engines.

By paying attention to these suggestions, you’ll be able to create decent content that will cause visitors to want to re-visit, and perhaps, even link to your site as a result! That’s one more bonus of creating great content: people will want to link to it over and over.

Remember, have fun and happy writing!

1. Content Writing is easy

Writing is not easy. If it was, then everyone and their brother would be doing it. It’s a skill that takes awhile to develop through consistent efforts (unless you’re one of those rare individuals that have the skill already). You have to be able to come up with article ideas nearly every day. You have to be able to write the articles in your own words, and you have to be able to utilize the correct spelling, grammar, and complete mechanics correctly because if you don’t you may end up working through run-on sentences like this one that makes no sense because of the fact that it is a run-on and you’re probably going to get tired by the time I’m done typing this. There’s a reason that mechanics, grammar, and spelling count. These standards of writing help establish credibility and that you know what you’re doing.

2. Copying and pasting content from another site is content writing.

Copying and pasting someone else’s content is NOT content writing, or any kind of writing. It’s cheating and plagiarism, plain and simple. There’s a reason that plagiarism is looked down upon (not only is it looked down upon, it’s illegal) in professional and academic circles: you’re stealing someone else’s copyrighted content. If you get the urge to take the quick route and copy and paste someone else’s work, remember this question and ask yourself: would you like someone else stealing your work and making money off of it without your permission? When in doubt, write it out yourself.

3. This is the internet. Spelling, grammar, and mechanics don’t count.

Let’s destroy that myth right now. Whether you’re writing articles, blog posts, or whatever, spelling, grammar, and mechanics absolutely DO count. Would you trust a writer that uses words outside of their own context? Would you trust someone that cosnsistnty typs lk ths wutith no regrad ofr your own understanding of the sentence itself? Would you trust someone that consistently misuses the semicolon, colon, and other means of punctuation? The whole issue with spelling, grammar, and punctuation is the fact that these things lend credibility to your writing.

4. Sounding smart builds credibility.

Just because you use big words doesn’t make you smart. Do you know what paradigm means? Do you know what xynophylactic probability is? Do you know what that bee is doing stinging your arm? Before you go searching for xynophylactic probability, don’t. I made it up. But, it does illustrate my point: just because you sound smart doesn’t mean the article imparts the knowledge that you want it to provide. Use words that you understand 100% fully so that you can get your point across clearly and succinctly enough to a wide enough audience.

Writing intelligently is all about imparting understanding and knowledge, not just making you look smart in front of your colleagues at the office.

5. I don’t need an audience for my writing!

Yes, you do. How are you going to write effectively if you don’t know who you’re speaking to? How are you going to promote your writing if you don’t know the people that you’re trying to reach? And, perhaps the most important part of dispelling this crazy myth once and for all: how is your writing going to move into the realm of credibility if you are not speaking directly to your audience? What, article ideas are going to pop out of thin air? Not hardly. Just as you can’t really create a successful blog by blogging about everything under the sun, you cannot write successful articles without a defined audience. Know who you’re speaking to, and tailor your posts to that audience. If your audience includes SEO Geeks (I use that term with pride, BTW) that expect a certain level of technical terminology, speak to them. If your audience includes those who are golfers, then speak to the golfers. The point is to reach your audience, deliver on your argument, and hopefully close a sale if the site is monetized.

6. Paragraphs don’t need any form or structure.

Okay, then, how do you expect your readers to read your web site? By going through an entire 100-page memoir? They won’t do that. In fact, most people will go to another web site whose text is formatted properly. Break your posts into paragraphs, and transition from one paragraph to the next until you reach the conclusion. It’s a much better method than forcing your readers to read one extensively long page.

There are many myths on the web when it comes to content writing. Remember, write when you are tired. Write when you’re wide awake. Write when you’re watching Reno 911. Write when you’re watching Star Wars in your Darth Vader helmet. Write while you’re watching episodes of Married with Children and the No Ma’am group chanting “At the nudie bar…” Write while you’re watching the latest contestant get voted off of American Idol. Remember, just write, write, and write. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing at the time.

Just write.

Okay. Let’s get realistic. We all know that not everyone is going to buy a product or service. We all know that the possibilities of that happening are slim to none. So, how is it possible that some people are making loads of money and others are failing miserably? One aspect is the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of the people make 80 percent of the money. Why? Because 20 percent of the people are doing things that 80 percent of the people are NOT: they are swatting the flies in the market who are still alive.

That small percentage of people are going after a market that actually wants their product. They are going after a market that actually wants to listen to how the seller of that product or service can provide the solution they’re looking for! Just blindly putting up a web site and hoping the sales roll in is like playing russian roullette, but with even worse odds. You have to be able to perform a basic market analysis at any stage of the game (not just the beginning) and adapt your business to that market model when things go bad for your existing business model. Let me explain.

One of the most volatile markets in the economy right now is the real estate industry. It’s basically dead, and many participants in the industry are reporting exceedingly slow sales because of it. I’ve seen reports of people making a ton of money in the market anyway. Why is this? This is because they are going after the market that almost no one wants to touch: foreclosures and bad credit, which are extremely hot right now. These areas are big right now, and if you can adapt your real estate business model to target these kinds of buyers, sellers, and investors, you won’t have to worry about going after Little Miss Buyer that has absolutely no interest in selling her house right now!

It’s all about being adaptable. Don’t stick to your old ways when things aren’t working. That’s death already and you’ve basically sealed your fate to the market. Adapt your business plan to changing market conditions, and go after the ones who are willing to help you make money. Don’t just put a web site up on the internet to sell a product without putting some thought into your business plan and marketing strategy. You have already ensured certain product suicide by not taking those last two items into serious consideration.

There are ways to keep web site content original while not falling victim to plagiarism, direct copying, and outright content theft (all the same thing but said in different ways). All of the above are frowned upon by search engines, job circles, the law, and academia. Now why is this? Consider this scenario. You worked for hours slaving on writing and developing original content for a large web site. The web site is launched. Six months into the search engine marketing campaign you’re #6 on Google, #1 on Yahoo, and #4 on MSN. Along comes some jerk that thinks he can take a shortcut and steals your content word-for-word. Then, to make matters worse, not only does he steal your content, he actually adds the content to his own web site on another domain name! He’s banking on the odds that you won’t care, won’t have enough money to go after him, and won’t have the slightest idea until months later. Also, it’s possible he would have accomplished his objective in that time.

Well, these plagiarists will need to think twice before stealing your content.

Some online tools are available at your disposal to help make sure that your content stays original and doesn’t fall victim to content theft. If you can’t find duplicate content with the tools discussed below then you can be assured that your content has not yet fallen victim to content thievery. Unless, of course, some individual out there is dumb enough to take all of your content and physically publish it without your permission instead of setting up a web site with it. But, then again, crazier things have happened.

Copyscape.com

This is a wonderful site. Copyscape allows you to check the web for all instances of the plagiarism of your content. You can see right down to the syntax (a technical term that means word order) exactly which content has been copied, which exact phrases have been copied, and the exact web site that has the same text. However, be careful. There are some sites that have been around for awhile, and many of them may just have the same content you do and may actually think the same way. I would recommend in this scenario to just let it go and re-write your content. You don’t want to make enemies in your industry and it can turn into an ugly situation if you’re wrong. However, if you believe that outright theft has taken place (e.g. a new web site that was just launched has taken your content word for word), there are steps you can take which will be discussed later.

JavaScript Options

There are scripts that were written in JavaScript that will allow you to disable the right-click option in the user’s browser. While this is an okay tool, it’s not the best way. Consider this scenario. There are mice that have no right-click options. And, the user can simply go to View > Source in Internet Explorer (along with other browsers) and bypass that option anyway. Although it’s a neat script, and serves a nice purpose, there too many ways around it to make it useful (try highlighting the text on a page that has this script and hit Ctrl + C then Ctrl + V to paste the content into your favorite text editor).

What to do if content IS stolen

If there is reasonable suspicion and proof that plagiarism is taking place, the next step would be to contact the offending party and request that they remove the content. If they do not remove the content, then you can proceed with contacting their web site host. Web hosts are willing to listen to your requests, and many times they will either disable the web site until the offender takes the content down or they will ask him to remove it and give him a deadline for performing this action before taking down the web site. Remember to provide the proof that you have of this plagiarism (suspicions are not good enough), otherwise it’s just hearsay and they won’t act on it for fear of losing their existing client. What the web host does in this situation does depend on what is in the web host’s terms of service that the client agreed to when they bought their site. Many web hosts are willing to comply with such requests, however, so it’s important to go up the chain of command before proceeding with the next step.

If you don’t get anywhere with the web host and the offender continues to keep the offending plagiarism up, it is best to consult an intellectual property attorney. They will be able to advise you on the specific legal implications based within your area. And, they will know how to proceed from there. Also, they’ll be able to draft a cease and desist letter that will have all of the legal components necessary if the offender continues to ignore your requests to remove your content. It can be costly, but can be well worth it to legally protect your intellectual property.

The best way to keep making sure your content is original (and hopefully not have to go through all of the above steps) is to use vigilance and remain an active participant in making sure your content is kept unique and is not stolen by anyone else. While software programs can help you with some tasks, they cannot replace your judgment completely. Keep a regular watch on Copyscape, Google, Copyscape, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask to be certain that no one is actively plagiarizing your content. To paraphrase Smokey the bear: Remember; only YOU can prevent plagiarism.

Web site marketing is but one part of the process of developing and launching a web site. The web site development process contains many distinct steps that must be followed to ensure a high quality site. In fact, three objectives are being met when the web site is created: providing a professional appearance to clients, developing a reputation within the community, and converting leads from the visitors to your site. There are several different steps within the development process that are crucial to providing a web site that your clients will enjoy. When these steps are integrated successfully, they will coalesce into a fiery avalanche of ripple effects (to borrow a term from Back to the Future II) that provide significantly higher lead conversions than would be obtained otherwise.

While many of these points take search engine optimization into consideration, not all search engine optimization techniques will be introduced. The search engine optimization techniques will be introduced in later articles.

The first objective: Providing a professional appearance.

The web site development process is crucial to providing a second-to-none experience for your visitors. You don’t want your web site to provide a haphazard appearance that does nothing but sit there, do you? Think about it: would you buy a product from a web site that has default content that hasn’t been changed, looks like a template that hasn’t been customized, and where it doesn’t seem as if any thought or work has been put into the web site at all? If you answered honestly, you would say of course you wouldn’t. You’d go to a competitor that does do all of those things. That’s why it’s important to consider several things when developing your site: content, graphics, design, functionality, and most important of all: your user. Because while your audience may not think that technically, they’ll think more generally: if this site won’t provide what I’m looking for, I’m going to xyzsite dot com: they have a ton of stuff!

The second objective: Developing a positive reputation in the community.

This objective is two-fold and two steps in the development process will either help your reputation or destroy it: the design of the site, and its content. Think about it: would you buy a home theater television from Joe’s Home Theater Shack (this is a fictional business) if they never put any thought into customizing their web site’s template? What if their images are all blurry without any effort put into cropping and re-sizing them appropriately? What if they didn’t change their content from the default content that was provided with their shopping cart? Now, imagine that you visit a site like Pioneer.com. They have their own content, their own high quality photos, and everyone is familiar with their brand. That’s the kind of reputation that you want to develop within your own industry so that you have clients beating down the door of your office. So how do you develop such an online reputation through your web site? By writing your own content and paying strict attention to a few design rules.

Content

Developing content that is unique and centralizes itself around a specific subject is important. It’s not going to be very fruitful to steal content from someone else’s web site and call it your own. Not only is it wrong, it’s also against copyright laws. That’s why academia (and official job circles as well) not only frown upon plagiarism, one can also get punished severely for it. Intellectual content is the property of the owner that created it by default. If you’re not sure whether or not you have permission to add content to your web site, you probably do not have that permission. It’s better to leave the content off of the web site rather than get punished for having it on there without the owner’s permission. When in doubt, re-write it and make sure it’s all in your own words.

With the amount of information that’s on the World Wide Web today, it’s often difficult to develop unique content that you can add to your web site. But don’t fret! Think about the following questions and ask yourself how you can apply them to your industry: 1. Who am I targeting? 2. Why will they find this content important? 3. What is the purpose behind writing this content? 4. What do I want my visitors to do after reading this content? 5. Why is this content important to them? 6. Why would people want to buy from me after reading this content? 7. Which topics are the most important to people in my industry? 8. Which topics are the most interesting to people in my industry? Once these questions have been answered, you should be able to see the content ideas leaping out at you, and it will be easier to move on to developing better content.

Graphics and design

Another important aspect of web site development is its design and the coding behind the design. Do you have the proper H1 tags in place? Do the text links contrast enough with the background to be readable? Do you have the proper Meta title, description, and keywords in place on your web site? Does the code validate? Do you have an appropriate code to text ratio? Do you have appropriate anchor text? Do you have images that contain the appropriate alternate text so that search engines can read them? Are the images optimized for quick download speeds? Do you have locational Flash (much better for search engine optimization purposes) rather than a complete Flash web site? Do you have any dead links? Do you have any broken images? Are your images sized appropriately and are they free of any distortion? Do you have the necessary branding on your site? Is the color combination appealing? If not, why isn’t it appealing and what can be done to make it appealing?

The Third Objective: Actually converting leads through functionality.

Do you have appropriate navigation in place? Is it easy to navigate from page to page? Easy is defined as being able to reach every page on your web site from at least one text link on every page. One of the best ways to do this is to utilize text links for your navigation menu rather than image links. Image links will still be followed by the search engines, but search engines place much higher value on those sites that use text links with the appropriate anchor text to describe each page that the text link links to. Another aspect of functionality that’s often overlooked in navigation is: does my navigation fall victim to the “Mystery Meat” navigation?

Mystery meat navigation is a term coined by Vincent Flanders, author of the book “Web Pages That Suck: Learn Good Web Design by Looking at Bad Web Design”. Mystery meat navigation, in its simplicity, means that your navigation doesn’t tell the user anything about where they’re going when they click on each link from page to page. Consider the following scenario. You have snazzy looking animated buttons without text. The user moves their mouse over the buttons, with the graphics moving and revealing no text at all until the user clicks through to the page the button links to. Now how is that user friendly? It may look cool, but mystery meat navigation does not provide enough information about the link at the outset, and does not provide anything for the search engines to read (unless the designer happens to provide alternate text within the image tag). Get rid of mystery meat navigation if you have some, and use text links with accurate anchor text styled by CSS instead.

Another neat functional item that will help immensely is including a lead generation form on your home page (or on another appropriate page). The whole point here is to create a way for potential clients to easily send you their personal information. This form can be a generic form with standard contact information requested, or it can be more elaborate with specific information that you can request based on your industry. So, if you build web sites for a living, you might include an elaborate form that asks the potential client to provide everything from their company information to additional information about what they plan on including on their site.

While there are many other aspects that go into developing a web site (which this blog will cover in the future), the above are generalized technical implementations that will get you started in evaluating your own site for your market. Keep in mind the above points as the development process on the web site continues. Double check these points again and again. It will be helpful to have a trained eye go over the site as well. They can help you spot errors that you otherwise may not have caught.

On the web, it’s easy to fall victim to errors when writing your content. Typos are understandable. Grammatical errors are not, considering the many tools that are available to catch these errors (MS Word grammar checker anyone?). In fact, grammatical errors can ruin your credibility quickly. That’s why it is important to edit your work and proofread it manually (that means using NO automatic tools) prior to publishing it. Would you want someone to read your work when it’s riddled with such errors as using you’re instead of your, and others? This material will examine the most common grammatical errors and attempt to provide tips and instructions on how to avoid them.

Let’s get started!

1. You’re and your. This is one of the most common errors that occur in everyday writing. It’s so easy to remember that I’m surprised many people simply utilize these words without any thought into their meaning. You’re is a contraction that means ”you ARE.” As in “You are the smartest person in this room.” Your is a possessive pronoun that is used to show the possession of something. As in “They used your car in the demolition derby.”

2. Lose and loose. This is another common error that I see everyday. Lose means to actually “lose something” like the following sentence “You are going to lose it!” Loose means that something IS loose, such as “The shoelaces on your shoes are loose!”

3. They’re, their, and there. Another error that’s too common on the internet is the very old switcharoos that occur with they’re, their, and there. There are significantly different meanings when using each of these words, and you will mess up the complete meaning of your communications when using them in the wrong context. They’re is a contraction that means “They are”. As in, “They’re the ones that did this”. Now, imagine if that previous sentence said “Their the ones that did this!”. That would not make much sense now, would it? Next, “their” is yet another possessive pronoun that denotes the ownership of something by multiple people. Such as “Their property came under possession by the bank once they missed several payments.”

And finally, we get to the next one: there. There is an adverb that means ”to that place” or “at that place”. The following illustrates one of the many proper usages of there: “How would you like to go there for your birthday?” I am hoping by now that you will put some additional thought into using these words and not use their in place of there! Imagine if you will that this sentence said, instead “How would you like to go their for your birthday?” It makes no sense and would you trust the credibility of someone that types something like that?

4. Too, two. These are errors that I come across a lot in web writing. It’s almost as if most people tend to use too and two almost interchangeably. That is not correct proper usage of the English language! First of all, too is used to denote the addition of someone or something. As in the following example “Let’s go there too!” Two is the actual verbal translation of the number 2.

5. Commas and semicolons. Yes, I see errors involving the use of these as well in writing across the world wide web. A comma (,) is used to separate words within a sentence and can contribute greatly to the meaning of the sentence. For example, the sentence “I saw Johnny run to the store, get his cake, eat it, and throw part of it away!” would look and have an altered meaning if the commas were switched around “I saw Johnny run to, the store to get his, cake, eat it and throw part, of it away!” Not only do commas add style and structure to a sentence, they can provide a whole basis for its meaning!

Be careful with how you use commas. I could go into about ten pages of how to use commas, but that’s beyond the scope of this article. Semicolons (;) are used to join two sentences together rather than using a join word such as and. Such as “I went to the store and they were out of the product I wanted.” Semicolons allow you to provide additional style and variations to sentences rather than saying the bland boring thing over and over again “I went to the store. They were out of the product I wanted. I wanted that product.” Notice the difference when a semicolon is used? “I went to the store; they were out of the product I wanted. I wanted that product.”

These are a list of the most common errors I’ve seen when it comes to grammar. There are others, but I wanted to make it a point for you to make sure to check and proofread your work manually. Don’t take a spell checker or grammar checker and have it automatically correct all of the errors in your writing. This will make your writing look haphazard and clumsy. To correct this, please take the extra step to manually proofread and edit your writing.

Your readers will thank you for it.

Content writing for the web is not hard! In fact, it can be one of the easiest tasks you can accomplish when writing content for your web site. The hard part is gathering the information that you need before writing your content: market analysis (who are you writing for?), what is the purpose behind your content, how you are going to write your content, who are your competitors, what content writing already exists, and what kind of content writing do you wish to partake in? The best thing you can do to begin writing effective content is to get those ideas DOWN!

Don’t worry about form and grammar at this point. You can edit your work later. Use a keyboard if you prefer typing on your computer or a notepad if that will allow you to write your content more comfortably. Some great advice my English professor gave me was to find the following: what do you do that can get you into a comfortable mood of writing? This can mean something as simple as grabbing a glass of water before you sit down to an empty page. It can also include a few combinations of activities, such as taking a shower, having dinner, and dressing down to your sweats before sitting down for content writing. The point is to get your mind into a creative habit before you begin content writing, so that you are clear on focus and can stay on track throughout your content. In addition, if you plan on writing content daily, or every several days, try using this method at the same time every day. You will find that you will be able to come up with original ideas more quickly, and original content writing is gold for the Search Engines.

While writing your content, you will need to be able to zoom out of the page of content (in your mind) to get the main big ideas on paper. Then, you will need to zoom back in to edit your writing for style, grammar, punctuation, and syntax. Practice this zooming technique while you’re writing your next page of content. In your mind, picture the template of your ideas from the beginning paragraph to the end of your argument (or informative content that you’re providing to the reader). Then, using your mind, zoom into the letters themselves. Take your focus away from the main ideas and look at the i’s, look at the t’s, and look at every nook and cranny of these letters while asking yourself “Is my punctuation correct? What is wrong with this sentence? Is my usage correct? Does the syntax truly convey what I actually mean? Am I using the correct word? Am I using the right grammatical form for the sentence? Do I know what the word means within the content I wrote?”

About grammar and punctuation

This is the internet. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax don’t matter, right? Wrong. Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax do matter because these devices allow people all over the world to understand what you’re writing about! Could you understand this sentence if it were written like this: “Cuold undstnd sentece u wrtt erew htis ekli?” While that is an over-the-top example of bad usage of these devices, it does illustrate my point: grammar, punctuation, and syntax allow you to build credibility through your content writing. If you don’t have credibility, no one is going to listen to you, especially your audience.