If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a noise? Now, if you write an article that is on a topic, but don't include words that will get picked up in search results, does your article get indexed and consequently read? When it comes to writing for the Web (and really, what isn't written to be syndicated in some way, shape, and form, on the Web these days?) articles, blog posts, essays, reports, registration pages, should contain words that visitors will most likely search upon. More often than not I will see pages that have great content, but are heavy on technical words and/or phrases, not the common man's word for the same thing, which is more likely what will be searched upon. So if you write great content and do not use the rich keywords that are most likely to be searched with, will anyone find your published content? The answer is probably no more than yes.
What sparked this whole line of thinking was the article This Boring Headline Is Written for Google(TimeSelect Article $$) by Steve Lohr from the New York Times. In the article Lohr discusses how newspapers are experimenting with their headlines to make them more search engine friendly. Some are going through the practice of using two different headlines for articles. The "marketing one" where it grabs the readers' attention from the main news page and a more SEO one that is published on the deeper article location, which is more likely to be picked up as the link in search engine results.
This is an interesting approach. Of course newspapers are all about getting readers to read columns. Thus writers are coming up with crafty titles for their stories. Where the problem comes in where the headline has nothing to do with the content if taken out of context, something a search engine is great at. And because newspaper's headlines on their homepage change daily, if not hourly, they essentially can do this without consequence from the search engine algorithm changes. So how can you get your content indexed by the search engines so it can be read more often by Web searchers? Here are some tips.
Recommended Reading
First, I have read a couple of books that I highly recommend when it comes to learning how to write for the Web. They include:Net Words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy
by Nick Usborne
Content Critical: Gaining Competitive Advantage through High-Quality Web Content
by Gerry McGovern and Rob Norton.
Both will give you a great insight as to how surfers "read" and how you can adjust your writing style to accommodate for that behavior.
Tips You Can Use Today
Here are some tips I recommend you try before and after you write that next blog post, news article, report, or essay.- After establishing a topic, do research on the commonly used terms or keywords that are related to the topic. Understand that these terms are more likely to be searched upon than not, so try and use them in your content. Beware not to go overboard using them. You will want to use them in moderation.
- Conduct some quick searches yourself on the topic. What do you type as your search terms and do you find content related to the topic?
- Conduct a keyword density check against your completed content to see if your identified words are present enough.
Some Quick SEO Tips for Formatting Your Content
- Use the title of the content as the title of the Web page.
- Use rich keywords in your sub-headers (h1-h4 tags).
- Use sub-headers instead of formatting paragraph tags as bold and size 4.
- If you link to other pages on your Web site, do not use "click here." Rather, use more descriptive words for the link text. This will help visitors who use screen readers as well as give the search engine bots context about the page it is about to spider.
The ultimate goal around writing for the Web is to make sure you write for search engines and in readable chunks of content for scanners. The more you know about readers' behavior (search, reading, etc) the more you can tailor your content to meet their needs and thus the more you will get read. The only other recommendation I can offer when it comes to writing for the Web, be sure the content is of value. Value has a wide range, but the real goal for the best search engine optimization is to get your content linked to. The only way that will happen is if it is good enough to be linked to – thus valuable to somebody.
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