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Archive for the ‘Business Writing’ Category
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
One popular type of content is that which answers questions. It’s the type of content we should all be looking at on a regular basis, since internet users predominantly use search engines to look for answers. I am often surprised then to find the answer to a question in the contents title. Is that good or bad? In my opinion, it’s not the best way to craft a title, and it could effectively make your content redundant before a word is read. How so you ask?
If an Internet user types a question into a search engine and one of the results answers the question in the title, that user will most likely move on satisfied they have found an answer. Sure, there are some curious types who will dig deeper and actually read the content, however, most will just move on. Consider the following:
A user types a question into a search engine, let’s say they want to know “are keywords still important to SEO”. If your blog post is near the top in the search results, and the title is “Keywords Are Still The Backbone Of SEO” – their question has been answered, no need to dig further. There is also the problem of conflicting answers. If the majority of results are in the positive, and yours is in the negative, your content could fail the trust test, unless you make it stand out. A good example is to use a controversial title such as “They’re all wrong, keywords are dead”. Now that would certainly draw readers in, even though you have answered the question.
When putting together a title, you need to consider how it will appear in the search results. If your title answers a question, chances are the title alone will satisfy a reader. If you can turn that title into a question similar to entered by users, you may find your title delivers a perfect, or near perfect match to the questions being asked by users. This may even help to give it a lift in search results. More importantly, users will immediately relate to the title and come to see if you have the answers they need.
Tags: search queries, search results, Titles
Posted in Business Writing | 4 Comments »
Monday, April 9th, 2012
When it comes to SEO for small business, it all starts with a good content. I’ll go further and suggest great content. Do you need ‘killer’ content? Some would argue yes, however, try coming up with ‘killer’ content everyday and you’ll most likely burn out within the week. Good content is your first aim, great content is your eventual aim, and if you can find that ‘killer’ content to throw in occasionally, so much the better.
So why the emphasis on great content? It’s very simple – search engines are looking for just that. Internet users are looking for information and answers. In general, they are not really looking at whether or not your content is good or great – they just want that information, or the answer to their questions. When writing content, the emphasis has often been on two audiences – Internet users and the search engines. There is a third group, and this is the group who will look at whether or not your content is good, great or ‘killer’. That group is made of your peers and those who have websites related to yours.
This is the group that will, initially,’vote’ your site up by linking and using social bookmarking tools. Customers are there to spend money. If you can get them to leave a review, or mention your site through social media, that’s great. However, the hard honest truth is that many shoppers forget you until they need that product, or something similar, again. Think of your own online shopping site. Do you use social media to bookmark them and recommend them to friends, or are your favourite site bookmarked in your browser?
When writing online content, SEO is important, however, it isn’t your customers that you need to win over, it’s your peers. Get them onside and ‘voting’ for your content, and you’ve achieved a major SEO goal. SEO does start with your content, your keywords, and the way you present that content. Consumers will read it – if it provides what they are looking for. Will they vote for it? Most consumers don’t even have a website or blog, so how can they provide those necessary inbound links?
Tags: consumers, content, SEO
Posted in Business Writing | 3 Comments »
Saturday, February 25th, 2012
If you look around the Internet, particularly on blogs, you’ll notice that some articles have bios in their footers. In most cases, the articles themselves are guest posts, and the bio is the ‘reward’ the author gets for writing the article. Reward? One of the major reasons for writing a guest post is to receive a link back to your website and links have been regarded as gold in the past. There are, however, many sites that are now including small bios in the footer of their own content, particularly if they have multiple authors.
Should you include bios in the footer of your posts? If you have multiple authors, then it could be a good idea. If you employ several people in your business, then it may also be a good idea to have them write content for your website. Who better to write about the technical side of a product than a technician, what about your company’s customer service – someone who handles customer service? So what purpose does a bio serve? I can think of three very good reasons to include a bio.
- Personalize – a bio helps to personalize the content. The reader knows they are looking at content that has been published by a particular person, someone they can put a name to, even if it’s only a first name. You can link the bio to a profile page, contact page, or a social media page. Personalizing also leads to
- Credibility – if your bio (or profile page) includes qualifications/training/skills in a particular area, then the reader is going to put more credence on the information they are reading. Credibility is also affected by
- Ownership – your employees (writers) are going to take ownership of content that has their name attached. People are more likely to produce quality material if they know they are going to be acknowledged for that material.
Bio’s are not for every website, however, even single author website gain some benefits. Placing a bio on a particularly good page of content, and linking to your Google+ profile, or a social media page, can add credibility to you. Credibility is one of the first stepping stones to trust, and trust often leads to sales.
Tags: article writing, blogs, Social Media
Posted in Business Writing | 5 Comments »
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Having an online presence is very different to an offline one. Offline, you can publish a catalog and no one really cares if some descriptions are very similar if not identical (apart from name or color references). Online, the opposite is true. If you have products that have identical or near identical descriptions, then you could find that some of that content never appears in search results. The reason? Google won’t even index it let alone have it appear in search results.
Duplicate content on the web has been a big problem over the years. Search engines, in particular Google, do everything possible to filter out the duplicates. If you have product descriptions that are the same, then the search engines will consider some of them to be duplicates and filter them out. It’s not just on your main website either. If you are a little lazy and copy those descriptions to your blog, or if you have affiliates that publish your content, you could have similar problems.
Google has become fairly adept at determining which content should be classified as the original, however, it does get it wrong on occasions, so your blog, or worse yet, an affiliate’s content, could be indexed as the original. If you have a number of similar products, you have a couple of choices. You can write original content for each product or group them together under the one description. The latter generally makes the better option.
If you have a blog, be sure the content is original and that you’re not just duplicating what’s on your main website. If you have affiliates that sell on your behalf, be sure their terms include a denial of the right to copy content from your web pages. They too should be creating unique content to promote your products or services.
Finally, when creating articles for guest posts or article marketing, ensure that each article is only published in the one place. So-called ‘spinners’ rarely do a good job of rewriting content, and content produced is generally poor quality and hard to read. Avoid duplicating your content and you’ll have more pages indexed for search, and that means more opportunities to be found.
Tags: content, duplicate content, search results
Posted in Business Writing | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
Gone are the days where a website that was five or more years old with a thousand or more pages could count on ‘age’ as a positive factor in the search results. In some cases, those old pages could be having a negative effect on your search rankings. Search engine users have long bemoaned the fact that search results were often outdated and not relevant to what they were looking for. Sure, you could tweak the results to find the most recent content related to your search term, but that takes extra work, and modern users want the best results first time every time.
Google is now taking positive steps to promote fresh content over old content. I won’t go into the technicalities here – you can read an excellent article by Justin Briggs on this topic here. It’s not rocket science to work out that fresh data is often more preferable to stale data, even if the fresh data is only rehashing what is in the stale data. As website owner, you need to determine whether or not your content is starting to fall into that stale category. If it is, there are a number of options available to you.
The first option is to ignore the stale content while adding new content on a regular basis. Hopefully the new content fits the ‘freshness’ test and helps to prop up your website. A second option takes the process one step further – you create new content based on your very old content. The key is to make it relevant to today including links out to some of the latest information available. Your third option is to update your old content using current data and links to current discussions or information.
For most business owners, time is the biggest issue. Do you have time to work through your old content to bring it up-to-date? You will also need to consider relevance - is the content written five years ago still relevant to today’s user? If it is, then another option exists; that’s to gain some social media activity around the content and to build fresh links. If the search engines can see that your old content is still relevant to today’s users and that these users are still referencing it in social media and linking to it on their websites or blogs, then rather than being classified as stale, it maintains importance and age once again becomes a positive factor, not a negative. Is your website looking a little stale?
Tags: fresh content, search rankings, stale content
Posted in Business Writing | 3 Comments »
Monday, January 9th, 2012
One tool that has helped many new bloggers and article writers is to create a writing plan. Some people call it a publishing schedule. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s a useful tool.
Your writing plan is a pre-scheduled list of blog posts or articles that you plan to write over the next month. It’s best to put them on your calendar so that you don’t push them to the side. Put them on the calendar and mark them off your list as you write them.
So what details should you include in your writing plan?
First, note the date you want your article or blog post to be published. That’s important because if you want to publish it to coincide with a particular event you have planned, then you’ll have to write it a few days before you publish it. If you wait until publication date, your article won’t be as strong and you may find that you don’t have the time to complete it.
Secondly, include your keywords. What keywords will you target for that content? That’s important because this tells you how you will write the article and to an extent how you will publish it.
Next, include a one sentence summary of your article. What do you want it to say? What’s the primary message? If you can summarize the article or blog post in one sentence, then you have clarity. That sentence could go on to be your opening sentence or thesis statement for the article. Then all you have to do is write the article and publish it.
Focus is the name of the game. If you have a writing plan, you’ll be more focused and you’ll be able to produce more content at a faster pace.
Tags: articles, blogging, online marketing, writing
Posted in Business Writing | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 27th, 2011
If you are a small business owner and trying to pave a path to your door for your customers to follow in getting to know you better and do business with you, then the one thing you should prioritize above everything else is writing a book.
That’s right. Writing and publishing a book will give you instant credibility. Here’s why.
When people hold something tangible in their hands, they know it’s real. When you have your name on the cover of a book, you become an instant authority. Remember, the first half of “authority” is “author.”
So become an author.
It’s not easy. In fact, it’s easier said than done. But it can be done. By writing a book on your topic and offering it for sale on your blog or website, you tell your prospects and your customers that you are a person who knows your business. You are an expert.
So what’s it take to be a published author? It’s easier than you think. You first have to write a book. Then you can spend a couple of hundred dollars to have your first 50 or 100 books published through one of many Publish On Demand publishers on the Internet (be sure to do your homework and find a reputable publisher). Then you start marketing.
If you want instant credibility, write a book. Put the authority in author.
Tags: authority, credibility, publishing, writing
Posted in Business Writing | 3 Comments »
Monday, October 17th, 2011
One of the best ways to improve your reputation and your stature among your peers is to become an author. Write a book.
But don’t just write a book for the sake of writing a book. Instead, come up with something important to say to people about your niche. If you can do that and do it well, you’ll become an instant expert in your niche and your reputation will shine far and wide.
So let’s get down to a practical level. How do you do that?
Start by asking yourself, “What do people in my niche want?” You must identify a need in the marketplace. You did that when you started your business, right? You’ll have to do it again when you write your book. What questions are people asking?
After you’ve identified the needs of readers in your niche area of business, make an outline. Keep your book tightly focused on a single topic. Your book doesn’t have to be a tome to be successful. It just needs to be good.
So the three most important things to identify before you start writing are these:
- The questions people are asking about your niche area
- The target market for your book (who is the ideal reader?)
- The narrowly focused subject matter of your book which deals with the first two points
Get these three questions answered and you’re well on your way to writing your first book and improving your stellar reputation.
Tags: authority, Reputation Management, writing a book
Posted in Business Writing | 5 Comments »
Monday, August 15th, 2011
Every piece of effective marketing content ever written has one thing in common. It doesn’t matter if it was writing on a cave wall or a web page with two sentences. There is one piece of every effective marketing content that is absolutely essential. Without it, your marketing content has no chance.
That one piece of essential marketing is called a call to action. Its purpose is to spur your reader to a desired action.
It could be that you want your website visitor to give you his or her e-mail address so you can send them endless e-mails hawking your digital products. Or you might want your website visitor to click the “Buy Now” button. Maybe you just want them to download your free e-book or stand on their head and sing the National Anthem. Whatever it is, you need a call to action.
The call to action must be bold. It’s got to stand out as a bold statement or request. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
It needs to be short and to the point. A good call to action doesn’t need a set up. You sell the benefits, then ask for the order.
No marketing content – online or offline – can survive without a call to action. Remember, if you don’t ask your reader to take the action you want them to take, then they won’t do it. Spur them to action.
Tags: call to action, content, marketing
Posted in Business Writing | 3 Comments »
Sunday, May 15th, 2011
Copywriters in the Internet age are hard to find. Good copywriters are much more rare. But they are out there. So how do you find a good copywriter at the right price point for your business?
First, determine your goals. What do you want to accomplish with your copywriter? Remember, your copywriter will work for you so establish some realistic goals about what you want your copywriting to accomplish. Will it be information-only type writing or does your copywriter need a solid sales background?
Next, go to where the copywriters hang out. You can find good copywriters in places like Guru.com and elance.com. In fact, it’s an easy way to test copywriters to see who meets your standards. If you hire a copywriter to write a small article or a press release, then you can test their skills. If it doesn’t work out, don’t use them any more. You haven’t risked or sacrificed much.
You can also hang out in copywriting forums.This is a good way to meet writers on their own turf. In professional forums, people tend to let their hair down a little bit more so you can meet the copywriters “at the bar” so to speak. It’s a bit more personal and allows you to develop a relationship before you commit to any work.
Run an ad on Craigslist. Definitely put an ad on Craigslist, but don’t put all your hopes on it. You’ll likely get a lot of responses and you’ll have to wade through them for the best prospects. Give your responders a test before you commit to big projects.
There are a ton of other ways to find a suitable copywriter. These are just a few. Be sure you interview them and make sure they have the skills that are just write for the job you are hiring them for.
Tags: copywriters, copywriting
Posted in Business Writing | 1 Comment »
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