Headings

The first place to begin in writing your content is to create a great heading for each page. In the last post I discussed grabbing the visitor’s attention. This is one of the primary jobs of page headings.

The heading is different from the page title tag. Where the title tag is displayed in the search results the heading is viewed on the page itself. Sometimes you want the heading and the title to be the same, other times you don’t. The title MUST use keywords in it. The heading SHOULD use keywords in it. It all depends on the hook you want to use to grab attention and entice your visitor to keep reading.

No SEO is complete without good content. You can stuff keywords into the text all you want, and that might be okay to get you some decent keyword rankings for a time, but it won’t do anything to improve the long-term success of your business.

A website without good copywriting is a sports car with an engine that doesn’t run. It doesn’t matter how pretty it is, the content is what is needed to provide your visitors the information they need in order for you to make the sale (or conversion, or whatever else you want your visitors to do.)

Understanding Copy

The information here has been updated to include not only the check points but also the explanations of each, so you don’t have to keep referring back to the blog posts above. I’ve also added a few points here and there, but no major overhaul or anything.

Anyway, here you go: The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, PDF!

Phase IV: Organizing Keywords for Success

Making SEO Successful

Organizing your keywords into an effective marketing strategy is the most important of the four phases of keyword research outlined in this document. While most often SEOs and keyword researchers focus on the research phases, organizing your keyword properly can truly help you create a vastly more successful optimization and marketing campaign.

Let’s use the analogy of building an engine to help us understand the value in this final step in the process.

What this is about: This checklist explores the development of your site’s web content including readability issues, message and overall effectiveness.

Why this is important: Content is an essential part of the persuasion process. Pretty, image-based sites may be appealing to the eye, but it’s the content that appeals to the emotional and logical centers of the brain. The inclusion of content as well as the effectiveness of the writing are all crucially important to the sales process.

One of the easiest ways to set yourself apart from your competitors is by creating a distinct voice through your written content. Whether you realize it or not, every website has a voice. For most businesses, the tone of their online voice is that of whoever wrote their content. Whether written by the site owner, an in-house writer, an SEO, a sub-contracted copywriter, or any such combination, each has contributed to creating the voice of the website.

Unfortunately, this type of collaboration also makes most content virtually indistinguishable from one website to another. Instead of creating a unique voice that is distinct throughout the site, what is created is a voice too diluted to be heard.

That’s not to say that the copy is bad. On the contrary, the copy can be quite effective at educating and engaging the visitor and driving them to the conversion point. Voiceless copy isn’t necessarily bland copy.

Last week I posted a series of articles about Destination Search Engine Marketing. Over the four-part series we asked the questions, do you deserve top search rankings? and what would sudden exposure get you? We then talked about what it means to have a business that stands out in a sea of thousands, and explained further how Destination SEM isn’t just marketing as usual. One of the common themes, and one of the basics of Destination SEM is that you’re not just trying to drive traffic to your website, you’re’re trying to build a site that draw traffic and compels visitors to purchase (or subscribe, etc.) You want to create a site that not only makes visitors want to return to frequently but for your site to become the go-to site for your industry.

Today I wanted to take a break from that series to discuss, over the next two weeks, the seven building blocks of a Destination Website.

It is often said that it is important to write for your audience. But what does that really mean? How do you determine who your audience is?

If you write for whom you think your audience is, you might be missing out on a completely different crowd.

Consider Your Audience – Three Major Members

1. Write for the researchers. The people in the beginning phases of purchasing are researching to learn more about the products or services that they’re looking for. They may not even really know what they’re looking for at all, so it’s crucial to be very general and to refrain from using jargon or other industry-specific terminology.

   Someone well-versed in internet marketing is very familiar with search engine optimization (SEO), but for a small business owner who just started a website, they need more broad references that make sense to them. Explain everything in layman’s terms, and you’re likely to get a repeat visitor when they move to the next phase of audience participation.

2. Write for the shoppers. The next member of your reading audience is the shopper. This is the person who has done the research on the topics and has a pretty good understanding of what it is they’re looking for. Now that they know enough about the product or service, they’re ready to do some comparison shopping.

   Target your shopping readers by including more industry-specific terms and arm them with information that will make them want to pick your product or services over your competitors. You can include side-by-side comparison charts that show the benefits so that they want to come to you when they’re ultimately ready to buy.

3. Write for the buyers. After they have done the research and have made comparisons between competitors, the buyers are ready to convert. They know enough about what they’re looking for, so your writing can be very specific and can include a lot of terminology and facts that will make them want to buy your product or service.

   Your buyers want quick information that makes them want to convert, so give them the info they want quickly. When writing for your buyers, consider giving them links to any customer service, warranty, shipping, or refund information as applicable.

Let your audience know that they’re making the right decision in selecting your services over your competitor, and you’ll be sure to have repeat customers or generate referral business as a result.

Although I only post to this blog once a week on writing-related topics, I was baffled on what I was going to write about today.

I figured that I couldn’t be the only person who has had problems coming up with a topic to write about, so this post is dedicated to helping others find inspiration.

Four Ways to Get Inspired to Write

1. Read about what you want to write about. One of the easiest ways to get inspired to write is to read what others have written on the topic. If you’re writing about writing, read blogs/articles/books about writing. Do a Google Blog Search to see what’s been written, and sort your details for relevance or when it was posted.
2. Find pictures then write to match the image. I stumbled upon a cool site, a Flickr Related Tag Browser, that searches Flickr’s database and offers suggestions for related images based on tags. I found the image above by searching for “books.” Although my post isn’t about books or reading, it is what I used to get inspired to write.
3. Don’t write. If you don’t quite know where to start your writing, get inspired by not writing at all. Watch television, take a walk outside, play a video game, or just clear your mind by meditating. Some of the greatest ideas for writing come when you’re not writing.
4. Ask friends for input. On my Twitter account, I asked my followers to tell me what they do to get inspired. A big thank you to Patricia Mayo, Jttaylor, David Rosam, Melanie Nathan, and Adam Snider for providing me with their inspirational tips.

Many of the above techniques will work for helping you through any stage of the writing process. Whether your stuck for an ending, for a climax, or even for what topic to write about, use a combination of any of the above and get inspired to write now.

And if you have any inspirations of your own, please share them below.

Before you put your ideas on paper, brainstorming allows you to get any ideas out of your head. There is no one way and there is no right way to brainstorm. That’s the beauty of it. Whichever way that allows the ideas to leave your head in as quick a manner is best.

Here are some brainstorming / prewriting techniques that will help you get started in the writing process and can continue to help through revisions and edits.

1. Clustering/Mapping. This process allows you to put ideas down in a cluster or map format and contains ideas in visual form. Below is an example of what a cluster/map looks like from Bubbl.us (click to see a larger image). You can cluster thoughts online and can invite others to view and edit existing clusters. This is also great for brainstorming ideas in the workplace.



2. Freewriting. Just as it sounds, freewriting is writing freely. By not paying attention to organization, you will be able to get your ideas out. Once you’ve given yourself enough time to write down your words, thoughts, and ideas, you can later go on and turn them into sentences, paragraphs, and organized thoughts.



3. Listing/Bulleting/Outlining. If you have a general idea of what you’re going to be writing, listing (or bulleting or outlining) can help organize your thoughts early on. This technique will put your thoughts in paragraph form and can easily be translated to a blog post/article/webpage/etc.

Try them all out and see which one works best for you. Writing is a process that has many steps, the first of which is brainstorming.

Brainstorming your ideas allows you to get them out of your head and then write them down on paper.

The “creative types” defined in this book are men. The men are the advertisers and are the creative geniuses behind all great ads in 1979. This chapter begins by saying, “Housewives spend most of their time in the marketplaces; creative people spend most of their working lives in comfortable offices.” The first subheading, titled “In Defense of Women,” says that “women have been around long enough and are tough enough and canny enough to look after themselves.” It’s crazy how much has changed in just 30 years.

From 1979, here is how men should address ads toward housewives:

1. Give plenty of facts on simple things, like the “sizes and washing instructions.” It has to be something simple enough for a woman to understand.
2. Never make a claim that a regular woman wouldn’t believe. If a woman in your life wouldn’t believe the add, most women wouldn’t. Unless it’s “one of the few intelligent women in the country.”
3. Steal techniques from women’s magazines. If you can stand it, pick up a women’s magazine and find an item about “cookery, fashion, knitting, make-up, and the best way to care for a husband.”

Here are some other tips to market to women:

• Be sure to include a lot of pictures (“very few women tire of pictures of babies”)
• Include recipes (have a “qualified home economist” try it out to make sure it’s good first)
• Use money-off coupons (of course housewives cut out coupons)
• Give free samples (she wants to make sure the product is good before giving it to her family)
• Use economy sizes and value for money (allows “the housekeeping money to go further, which is a major task of many of the women you’ll be talking to”)
• Target the beauty business (you can hook a women “on a new dieting aid or a new shampoo as easily as you can hook a man on a new car or a new beer”).

Lastly, “women aren’t dull,” so you need to astonish them with your creative copy. Say what you want to say like no one has ever said it before. They are, however, only housewives. My, how times have changed.

The copy of your website falls very distinctly into the marketing realm of website management. Yes, search engines look at copy too, and adding certain keywords can help you achieve search engine rankings rankings, but each page needs to appeal to your readers first.

Click here to continue reading at Search Engine Guide…

1. Read. It is often said that the best writers are great readers. In order to master the language, you have to read it and fully submerse yourself in it. Subscribe to other writers’ blogs to get tips, subscribe to Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day emails, and just read anything to expand your mind. One of my favorite books about how to be a better writer is Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing. Make this the top of your list, and you’ll be sailing through the year with plenty of ideas.
2. Write. As simple as it sounds, sitting down and writing can be an arduous task for some. Set aside time every day to master your craft. Keep a journal or tape recorder with you at all times to note those fleeting ideas as you drift off to sleep, wait in the doctor’s office, or sit in traffic. As a writer, you constantly have ideas jumbling through your brain, and by getting them down on paper or on tape, you can visit them at a later time when you’re ready to create your content.
3. Accept. No one likes to hear negative critiques, especially if it is in relation with something you’ve poured your heart, time, money, etc. into (i.e. your writing). The only way to grow as a writer is to accept criticism and revise your work. If you have a relationship with your editor, the community, etc., perhaps you can ask for feedback by getting the praises first and the shortcomings second. Don’t look at the critique as an act of faultfinding; rather, look at it as an opportunity to improve your craft.
4. Connect. By joining critique groups, attending conferences, and meeting up with other writers, you will be able to talk with like-minded people that share the same interests as you. Plus, depending on their areas of expertise, they can offer insight into your frustrations with content development. While you may be frustrated by not being able to come up with ideas, those who are closest to you (spouses, coworkers, friends, etc.) may be getting equally as frustrated in their inability to help you.
5. Overcome. While writing may seem easy to some (my wonderful coworkers say I’m just a typist), it can be quite formidable at times. This gets increasingly more difficult with writer’s block, negative criticism, and rejection. Overcome all the fears that we face as writers, and just sit down and write. Stephen R. Covey said, “Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition – such as lifting weights – we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity.” Develop your writing muscles by overcoming your fears.

I hope these help you to become a better writer in 2008. I know I plan on sticking to these resolutions, and I plan to enlist the help of my friends, family, and I guess I’ll even ask my coworkers to make sure I’m following my own advice. And you, my dear readers, can ask me anytime whether or not I am too.

Here’s to wishing you a prosperous and productive 2008!

In order to be effective, headlines (and even holiday window displays) must do the following:

• Grab the attention of your target audience. It’s one thing for a headline to grab attention, but if your target audience wouldn’t find it interesting, you’re essentially barking up the wrong tree. Similar to how social media marketing needs to target the audience, you want your headlines to be relevant to your readers. If you’re content is about a sensitive subject (like understanding cancer), you wouldn’t want to write a funny headline. Your readers will become upset and lose trust in you once they realize what they’re reading about.
• Appeal to your audience’s needs. You have to know what your audience needs and then have to give them a reason to want to read on. By exposing their need in the headline, you’ll pique their interest and get them to want to read more, and in the text itself, you can tie their need to the benefits of your products or services. An effective way to do this in the headline is by asking a question, and then you give the answer in the body text.

There are many different ways to write headlines that get read:

• Use a scare tactic. While this can sometimes be effective, it’s important to use it sparingly. By playing off of readers’ fears and insecurities, you can get them to want to read more. If you’re selling mortgage loans, you can write a headline like, “How to Keep From Getting Foreclosed.” Because that’s a genuine fear for many homeowners (especially in today’s topsy turvy real estate market), chances are that many will read on.
• Inform them. People love to read top lists and how-to articles. For a site selling cloth diapers and organic bedding, you can write “Top Ten Ways to Become a Green Parent”, “How to Become a Green Parent”, or better yet, combine the two “How to Become a Green Parent – Ten Easy Ideas.” The only potential downside to this approach is that many writers are using this type of headline, and yours may get lost with all the others.

To get your readers to want to read on (and for businesses that want to get shoppers in their doors), it’s important that you get their attention at the earliest opportunity. For copywriters, that opportunity is with the headline. You’ll never get conversions if your copy doesn’t get read.

Make it interesting, make it useful, and make it stand apart from the rest.

Organic is Best

World-Wide: Buying organic products, such as foods, clothing, business supplies, and household organic cleaners, is best because they are made or grown using the least amount of virgin materials and because they contribute the least amount of waste and harmful chemicals. Using organic household cleaners instead of petroleum-based can help limit the amount of barrels of oil consumed every year. Because they’re vegetable-based, they’re biodegradable and safer for the environment.

World Wide Web: Organic searching is the process of finding websites that don’t pay for advertisements that appear at the top and on the side of the results page. These searches are “natural” because the websites that are ranking are getting there without pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Search Engine Optimization helps websites rank higher based on their content and their keyword relevancy. Organic searches have greater click-through rates and higher conversions, and best of all, they’re (for the most part) free.

Recycle All Reusable Items

World-Wide: Recycling means taking a product or material at the end of its useful life and turning it into a usable raw material to make another product. This means that you will be contributing less to the landfills because you’ll be reusing (or will be sending the can, bottle, or paper off to be reused) materials for other purposes. According to the EPA, the United States recycles 32 percent of its waste, which has almost doubled during the past 15 years. But in order for recycling to work, everyone needs to participate in each phase of the process.

World Wide Web: Link building is the process of having other websites link to your site. While it may sound simple, it is a lot of work and requires a lot of time and patience. When a site agrees to host an article or editorial, you’ll want to build content for that site around your keywords. After the content has been up for two to three weeks, you can recycle the article by changing the title and sentence structure and can then submit it to article directories. If you have articles that are similar and relevant, you can compile them into a free ebook to place on the site as well. Reusing content will provide multiple links from different places all going back to your site.

Conservation is Critical

World-Wide: Although it seems rather easy, many people have difficulties with conserving water and energy. By making simple changes – like turning off lights when you’re not in the room and turning off the water when you’re brushing your teeth – you can help conserve resources. Changing to a compact fluorescent light bulb (cfl) will save around 300 pounds of carbon dioxide a year because they use 60% less energy. When buying new products (the holidays are quickly approaching), consider purchasing energy-efficient products, such as washing machines and dryers, dishwashers, televisions, and even computers.

World Wide Web: In SEO, you need to conserve and carefully utilize all of your resources in order to prevent depletion of time and/or money. While the process of optimizing a website to rank higher on search engines is a lengthy process, you don’t want to waste your time or your money on things that don’t matter. Pay attention to what’s important, like picking powerful keywords that are relevant to your site, avoiding things that search engines hate (like paying for links, for example), and bulking up your site with content that is relevant to your products.

Be a Part of the Solution

As we continuously strive to be better search engine optimizers and marketers, we might as well aim for becoming better world citizens while we’re at it.

Going green is a bandwagon we should all be proud to jump on.