All About Content

August 31, 2005 – 3:00 am

Content is one of the biggest influences on the success of your search marketing program. There is a saying that ‘content is king’ and this is true whether it is for your optimized web pages, your paid advertising message, or your optimized news releases.

Remember that writing and optimizing your content is an ongoing process and requires constant refinement and re-evaluation. If at first you do not succeed try again! This is a cliché that will make sense as you develop your written content.

Explore and discuss content and the effects on your search marketing success on the Elixir System’s Blog ‘Insights into Search for Business’.

Writing Page Content for your Website

Writing content for your websites pages is different that writing for any other medium. There are some simple facts you should be aware of before you put pen to paper. It can take some time to get the balance right so be aware that you are going to be fine tuning your content for some time.

Write for your visitors and not for the search engines. Search engines are a consideration but you want to communicate with the people who arrive on your site. You want to inform them and motivate them to take action. Fortunately text written specifically for your visitors will also be search engine friendly.

Inject your personality into your writing and try to connect with your visitors. This connection will make your visitors feel at home on your site. Informal, friendly, conversational language works best. You want your visitors to feel like they belong.

Another important thing to remember about writing for the web is that people scan what you write; they don’t read it from start to finish. This is a very important fact. Therefore what your write should be easily read and easily scanned.

To help make your site easy to scan:

Employ a easy to understand, attention grabbing heading
Start with the conclusion or summary (inverted pyramid writing style)
Do not bury your message
Include sub-headings that if scanned tell a story
Incorporate only one idea per paragraph – make them self contained
Highlight important words and phrases
Use bullet-point lists
Keep your language simple

Your writing should help to build credibility for your business. To do this you should build trust for your visitor.

Establish credibility by:

Customer Lists
Testimonials
Case Studies
Articles and White Papers
About Us Page

Use language that informs your visitors. Make sure the language does not exaggerate or over sell your offering. Any type of hype tends to make visitors suspicious. Avoid marketing language and focus more on an editorial style.

Even on a highly technical site it is best to keep your language simple. Remember that all visitors to your site will not be as knowledgeable as you are! Try to put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Be empathetic towards your visitors and address their needs. What information are they looking for? How con I describe things to really make them understand?

The goal of your writing is to inform and also persuade people. The key is to know and understand the people to whom you are writing. Once you understand them then it is a process of writing in a clear and understandable manner directly to them. As this is not an overnight process it is essential that you monitor your results. You need to know what is and what is not working. This way you can continue to refine your message over time.

Content – Some Definitions

‘Alt text’ is the text written to describe an image. Although it’s invisible to visitors reading your web page it is a useful tool for improving search engine relevance and for helping visually impaired visitors.

‘Anchor text’ is the text used to describe a link to another web page. This is of use to page visitors and search engines which use this text to determine the subject of your page and the targeted page.

‘Blog’ is short for weblog and is basically an online journal.

‘Body text’ is the text that makes up the body of your web page and does not include titles and headings.

‘Call to Actions’ are written messages that cause the page visitor to perform an act. Typical ‘call to actions’ include; sign up for newsletter, add to shopping cart, buy now, etc.

‘Content’ is a general term for the text and images on your web page.

‘Content Management System’ (CMS) is a software system to create, update and publish web pages throughout a web site.

‘Creative” is text written for paid advertising ads.

‘Heading’ is text within the heading tag used to break up body text. Used by many visitors who scan pages as opposed to reading the body text. Headings are also viewed as more important than body text by search engines.

‘Hidden text’ is a spam technique that uses text that is either too small to read or of the same color of the page background to improve keyword frequency. Avoid search marketers that use this technique.

‘Term density’ or ‘keyword density’ is the ratio of a search term or keyword to the total text you your web page. An optimized web page should have a term density of around 6%. Any higher and it can be considered spam by the search engines.

‘Term frequency’ or ‘keyword frequency’ is a metric used by search engines to determine the page’s relevance for organic search results.

James Peggie is the Marketing Manager for Elixir Systems - a search marketing company located in Scottsdale, Arizona. www.elixirsystems.com