By
admin on September 30th, 2007
Posted in Website Content | No Comments »
This article is from the Entireweb Newsletter and I thought you might find it useful.
Writing for the Web
Have you ever tried to read your local newspaper online? How about the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal? It just isn’t the same. Do you know why?
Because articles meant for print don’t translate well to the web, and the rules that apply to writing content for the internet are different than those for print. What constitutes quality content offline does not necessarily constitute quality content online.
How the web is different:
Text is hard to read
Typical computer monitors have a resolution of 96 dpi (dots per inch). Compare that with a printout from a laser printer that has a resolution of 600 dpi, or a magazine page that can be upwards of 2400 dpi, and it’s not hard to figure out why the text on a computer places a strain on the eyes.
According to the book Hot Text, Web Writing That Works, by Jonathan and Lisa Price, “because text is more difficult to read on-screen, people often read slower, comprehend less, recall less, and do less in response.”
Now here I disagree about that last remark and the writer actually points out why I disagree later in this article. I believe people do a lot more in response to what they read online vs what they read offline.
I believe they also respond to advertising more often online than they do offline. Just common sense. Online all that is required for them to react is clicking a link. To respond to an ad offline, they have to make a phone call or pay an advertiser a visit in person. People like easy. That’s why we have remote controls for our tvs. Let’s go on though.
Words can be linked to other pages and sources
The closest thing you’re going to get to a link in a newspaper is when a story is split into two sections and you’re told the story is continued on page 9. But when it comes to the web, words and images can be linked to other web pages, photos, videos, sounds, and a myriad of other things. Being able to link is the primary tool that web writers can take advantage of that print writers don’t have at their disposal.
That’s exactly it. That’s why I disagreed with the less response thing earlier in the article.
How you should write:
Write less
Because of the strain placed on readers when reading on a computer screen, you can’t expect them to read a 5,000 word article. Research has shown that most readers tend to scan an article before reading. Articles longer than 1,000 words will likely turn off your audience and result in few people reading your article (and therefore fewer visitors coming back to your site in the future).
500-600 words is a much much better idea. 1000 word articles are too long to read online and people’s attention span is short. After all, there are all those links to click. 
You should condense your writing to include only the most crucial points and eliminate everything else. Writing successfully for the web forces you to present only the necessary content and leave the rest out.
Utilize headings and lists
Since people tend to scan web articles as opposed to reading them from the first word to the final word, you should make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for by using headings, bold type, and lists. A great way to turn a print article into a readable web article is to transform it into a top 10 list. Lists make it easy for readers to scan and read only what they are interested in.
Use plenty of links and make them obvious
Since linking is the primary advantage of a web writer, it should be used early and often. Linking allows you to provide the reader with a roadmap of information. With your article as a starting point, your reader should be able to find more information about any and all topics discussed in the article. Common things to link to include reference pages, news sources, audio and video, forums, and applications that will enhance the reading experience. The best thing about links is that the user can choose which ones to follow and which ones to ignore. That allows you to reference something without citing the entire thing as you would have to in a print article.
Ok, here we disagree somewhat. First of all, it depends on why you are writing in the first place. If your only goal is to provide free information to your readers, then his writing strategy is ok. The author here seems to believe in the Wikipedia school of content writing.
If you sell products and/or services on the web, then every link to a reference he just suggested is nothing but a traffic hole. Traffic will leak right out to those reference sites, see another link and click it, then forget you ever existed.
If you sell anything on your website, the only links out from the content you write should be to where the reader can buy those products or services. If you use affiliates, then affiliate links are what should be in your content. I’m all for being informative to the reader, but if you want to sell soemthing, don’t send your reader anywhere that doesn’t help you sell.
One of the most important things to remember when linking is to make it visually obvious that a section of text is a link. Five years ago it was common place to use the standard blue underlined text for linking, but as the web has evolved, most designers have abandoned that style for better looking links. Site designers can still make links obvious by consistently using a different color than standard text and by providing a hover effect, such as underlining the link and changing it’s color, when users place their cursor over the link. This subconsciously tells them that the text is a link.
But only for those people who use the web a lot and often. Underline the links. Newbies might not ever “hover”. Don’t assume the reader is as familiar with the web as you are.
Write with the search engines in mind
Since much of the content on the web is found via search, it makes sense to write with the search engines in mind.
No, this doesn’t mean that you should stuff your articles with keywords to the point where they are barely readable. But it does mean that you should write titles and headings that actually convey what your article discusses.
For example, this article could be called “Content Evolution” or “Digital Distribution.” If it were a magazine article, those titles or other titles might have been more appealing, but they don’t capture the essence of the article, which is “Writing for the Web.”
If someone were to search for an article on writing online, they’d likely use a phrase like “how to write for the web” or “writing practices for the web” which would turn up this article, but probably wouldn’t turn up an article with one of those other titles.
Resource: Price, Jonathan, and Lisa Price. Hot Text - Web Writing That Works. Indiana: New Riders, 2002.
About the Author: Adam McFarland owns iPrioritize - simple to-do lists that can be edited at any time from any place in the world. Email, print, check from your mobile phone, subscribe via RSS, and share with others.
Most of the article I agree with, especially the last paragraph. I cannot emphasize enough how important titles and headlines are to SEO.
By
admin on September 29th, 2007
Posted in Website Content | No Comments »
We Write Your Website Content For As Low As $40 Per Page. Use this form to request a free quote.
There are a lot of writers out there who can write a decent article, but not many writers that know how to write good, original website content that is optimized for your keywords and phrases while still appealing to your potential customers. The text content is the most important part of each of your webpages for many reasons;
1. SALES: The text content is what your visitors will read when they find your website. It has to be interesting and informative. It also needs to guide the reader where you want them to go. Getting a reader to click the “buy” button or the link you want them to click on is our goal. It is the website content that will do that, not the pretty design and graphics.
2. LINK POPULARITY: If the content in your website is well-written, original, interesting, and informative, people want to bookmark it and they want to link to that content from their own websites. Organic Link Popularity can easily be achieved with well-written, original content.
3. SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS: Again, good, orginal content comes to the rescue. Search engines do not rank you well for your keywords and phrases due to the pretty design or graphics you have in your webpages. The search spiders or bots read the webpage content to decide if that text is relevant to your chosen keywords and phrases. Your website content must be informative and interesting as we stated before, but it also needs to be optimized for the keywords and phrases that will bring you more traffic from the search engines.
We Write Your Website Content For As Low As $40 Per Page, including meta tags if needed. Use this form for a free quote! We will answer you as soon as we receive your request.
We can help you choose keywords, length, titles, topics, etc.
Our email address is info@articlecontentprovider.com if you cannot Use this form.
By
admin on September 27th, 2007
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Submissions | 1 Comment »
by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
I submit articles to a lot of article directories and through isnare.com. A lot of the articles are my own, but most of them are ghostwritten for clients. Isnare and other article directories do an ok job of tracking how many views your article has had at their directory, but that’s where it stops.
Plus, once you submit to any article directory, how do you know where else that article was reprinted? Clients ask me about this all the time.
Sure, you can search for your article title in google and get a lot of results and sift through them to find which search engine listings are your article and which are just web pages that are related to the same phrase used in your article title, but is that the best method for tracking how well your articles are doing out there?
Submit and forget is the normal approach taken to article marketing. You just keep producing new articles and have “faith” in the system and that your articles are getting widespread distribution. For years, this was the approach I took to article marketing as well.
Since then, we have developed ways to do more with the content that we wrote or paid to have written for us.
For starters, those old articles you own and have already submitted are still good, useful content. You can continue to distribute them to other article directories they have not already been submitted to. You can offer them to be printed on other websites for a link back in your bio. You can break them into parts and reuse them on your blog as part 1, part 2, part 3, and so on.
The content you wrote or paid for still has value beyond the one time they were submitted to directories. How many articles do you have on your hard drive right now that you could be using?
Another method you can use is to place a tracking or serial number into each article. Use something unique as an identifier. Something with numbers and letters. Before you develop your serial numbers, search them in google and if you get a no results page, your serial number is perfect.
You can place the serial number into the actual body of the article or into your author bio. Anyone reading the article will ignore it, but you will be able to search google for that serial number later and you will start getting results that are your own.
With this method you can track which article topics get the widest distribution, track which websites and blogs reprinted the article after finding it in article directories, and which distribution method got you the most bang for your buck.
Stop guessing and start tracking and you will improve your article marketing results tremendously!
By
allen on September 25th, 2007
Posted in Article Writing | No Comments »
You know article marketing is important. You know keywords are too. But are they?
Search engines today are capable of discerning what you are articles are about based on natural language and semantic analysis. This technology will undoubtedly improve in the future. Will we eventually arrive a place where keywords in articles aren’t important? Or are we perhaps already there?
Before I answer that question I’d like to recount what is important about articles in the first place. Here’s the list:
- Articles brand you
- Articles make you an expert in your niche
- Articles market your business with links and key concepts
Branding Through Articles
You don’t need keywords for branding. You just need to establish yourself as the expert in your niche. To the extent that you do that through articles, the better able you are to attract the kind of clients you want in your article marketing efforts.
Articles Make You An Expert
Keywords are not necessary to establish your credibility. What is more important is your ability to convey useful information and to let your prospects know that you understand their needs and how to meet them.
Marketing Your Business
You can market your business effectively without keywords. Online, though, it is necessary to draw people to you by discussing the proper concepts. To the extent that keywords do that, you might want to use keywords.
The Bottom Line On Keywords
It is more important to establish your credibility than it is to talk to robots. On the other hand, if you don’t feed the spiders then people might not find you. Furthermore, when you write articles, potential publishers will be looking for keyword-rich content for their websites and e-zines.
When it comes to driving traffic to your website, you’ve got to think about what your human readers will need and what the search engines spiders will need. Spiders need keywords. Humans need valuable content. The two are not exclusive. The biggest problem most article marketers run into is managing both aspects of article writing simultaneously. It can be done and it does involve some emphasis on keywords.
Need Articles or Content written for you?
Article Marketing Blog
SEO, Content, and Link Building Stategies that work
Professional Management for Business Blogs
By
admin on September 23rd, 2007
Posted in Article Marketing, Article Writing | 2 Comments »
by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
Depending on where you look, you’ll find all kinds of information about marketing your business online. The key to wading through all of it is to be able to determine whether or not what you’re reading is hype.
Here’s a great example: article marketing can help to promote your business - truth or hype?
As long as the qualifier is there - as long as the question is can article marketing help your business - the answer is yes. By creating great original content that gives readers the information they are looking for about a product or service, submit your content to the right directories, and produce content that others will not only want to read but will also want to share on their websites as well as in their email marketing and in their newsletters, you can draw traffic to your site.
But take a closer look at that paragraph. The content has to benefit the reader - not just you. The content has to be informative and appealing and contain information that readers will want to share. The content needs to be submitted to the right directories.
Private label rights articles aren’t going to provide you with the content that you need for your business. That may come off as a dramatic statement; it’s also going to be contrary to a number of the things that you’ve read online in regards to article marketing.
Plenty of people will tell you that the fastest and easiest way of creating the articles you need to market your business is to invest in private label rights articles. While it can be quick and easy, you’re not likely to find that the content within them is appealing to readers or accepted into the right directories. Here’s why.
When you buy the private label rights to an article or series of articles, you’re buying the same content that others have - so much for having content that’s original. When you by private label rights to content, you’re often going to get information that’s stuffed with keywords and that is vague and general - content that offers little value to your readers. Unless you make dramatic changes to the content that you’ve purchased the private label rights to, you’re likely to find that the article directories are less likely to accept your content because, well, often they already have the same article in their database.
It’s for these reasons that you should look at private label rights articles as a private label trap. Just like other traps, the private label trap is baited with promises - in this case, ease of use and fast results. Also like other traps, the private label trap is easy to be caught in: once you give in, it’s hard to get back out.
What’s the best way of avoiding the private label trap? Creating your own content is always a great option; hiring a ghostwriter to create content for you - content that will be yours alone - is another great way of avoiding the false promises of private label rights. Whichever you choose, when you avoid the trap of private label rights content, you’ll see for yourself the effectiveness of article marketing.
By
admin on September 22nd, 2007
Posted in Newsletters | No Comments »
by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
The key to any successful business model is giving your customers something extra - offering a great price and great customer service, offering buy one get one at 10% or more off. When a great deal of your business is done online, however, you need to look to new ways of offering both your current and prospective customers something more. One great tool for offering more value to your customers is to create a company newsletter.
A company newsletter does not have to fall into the realm of that old folded paper style that is sent out through the mail or offered in a stack for customers to grab a copy of after they’ve made a purchase. These days, a content rich customer newsletter is something that can be sent electronically.
Your online newsletter isn’t just another email message: like a paper newsletter, your electronic content should be presented in HTML format. By creating - in effect - miniature websites to mail to your customers, you’ll be able to do a few things.
1. You’ll be able to create an extension of your website so that you can continue to establish a brand identity. When your messages have a consistent appearance, the recipients will recognize them; when they look like your website, you’ll find that your customers are more likely to explore your site because they’ve developed a feel for how easy it is to navigate.
2. With an HTML based electronic newsletter, readers will be able to look at a table of contents and jump to the area of the page that they want to read. This will save them time because they won’t have to skim through other information to find what they are looking for, or it will provide them with a chance to easily find the one thing in your newsletter that they wanted to remember or look back at.
3. Another great benefit of this format is that it becomes even easier to add the content from your newsletter to your website and you’ll be able to add links to your website where readers can go to find more information.
In other words, when you send out an electronic newsletter, ultimately you’ll be able to drive readers to your web pages (including those pages where past newsletters have been collected and published). But there’s a catch: in order to motivate the readers to click through, you’re going to want to be sure that you’re providing valuable content to your customers.
Just like web content, you’ll want to include photos and images that are related to your products or services that will be visually appealing. You’ll want to include great articles - many of which will be shorter than traditional web content - along with advice, suggestions and product reviews. To make the content even more valuable, you’ll be able to add polls - to directly ask your readers what information they’d like to see.
When you are able to give your customers the information that they’re looking for, they’re likely to keep coming back for more. A great electronic newsletter can be just the thing that you’re looking for, the right way of communicating with current and prospective customers - whether you set it up and write it yourself or hire a ghostwriting service to generate it for you.
Need Articles or Content written for you?
Article Marketing Blog
Professional Management for Business Blogs
By
allen on September 20th, 2007
Posted in Article Submissions | 1 Comment »
The article submission process is long and arduous. It’s a bit like an in flight movie. You can enjoy it but you might fall asleep a couple of times, get interrupted by the guy sitting next to you or the flight attendant taking your drink order, or you could just miss the best line in the movie because you were daydreaming and looking at the clouds.
Sure, you could get one of those mass article submitters and send your articles out to thousands of article directories - most of which won’t publish your article anyway. After all, why would a Croatian language directory publish your article on infant mittens written in English?
Should You Use An Automated Submission Process?
There are thousands of directories online but not all of them will do you good. That’s why you want to be selective in where you submit your articles. That doesn’t mean you just submit to one directory, but it helps to know the directories and to submit to the ones that will help you achieve your goals.
If you want to use an article submitter, I recommend a free one that allows you to create an author bio and upload your article with a push of a button. Don’t use one that makes you jump through hoops or that sends out a spam blast to every article directory online. If you’re going to do that, just sign up for an iSnare account and send them your articles. They will send them to 40,000 directories for you for $2 per submittal.
Still, even with the best automation process, article submissions can be time consuming, but there are still great benefits.
The benefits Of Article Submissions
Here are a few benefits to ponder:
- You can be a recognized expert in your field in a very short time;
- Publishers and editors of newsletters and e-zines are begging for content - they need your articles and they constantly scour the Web looking for good material to use;
- Every article features an author’s resource box where your contact information is located along with links back to your web site;
- Whenever an e-zine publisher or web site picks up your article, the search engines count each link in your resource box as an inbound link;
- Articles are a great way to drive traffic to your web site.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. You really do want to submit your articles to the directories. Specialty directories, niche directories, general article directories, you name it.
Which Directories Will Publish Your Articles?
Not every directory will pick up your article, of course. They all have their guidelines. Some are strict and some are not. I like the strict ones because it means they are interested in well-written articles. That’s what I like. The only caution I would issue is this: Stay away from those directories that will take anything. Article spam is about as annoying as any other kind of spam.
If push comes to shove and you want to submit your articles but don’t have the time, you can always hire someone to do it for you. But the one thing you shouldn’t do is ignore it altogether.
Need Articles or Content written for you?
Article Marketing Blog
SEO, Content, and Link Building Stategies that work
Professional Management for Business Blogs
By
admin on September 19th, 2007
Posted in Newsletters | No Comments »
by Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
The key to any successful business model is giving your customers something extra - offering a great price and great customer service, offering buy one get one at 10% or more off. When a great deal of your business is done online, however, you need to look to new ways of offering both your current and prospective customers something more. One great tool for offering more value to your customers is to create a company newsletter.
A company newsletter does not have to fall into the realm of that old folded paper style that is sent out through the mail or offered in a stack for customers to grab a copy of after they’ve made a purchase. These days, a content rich customer newsletter is something that can be sent electronically.
Your online newsletter isn’t just another email message: like a paper newsletter, your electronic content should be presented in HTML format. By creating - in effect - miniature websites to mail to your customers, you’ll be able to do a few things.
1. You’ll be able to create an extension of your website so that you can continue to establish a brand identity. When your messages have a consistent appearance, the recipients will recognize them; when they look like your website, you’ll find that your customers are more likely to explore your site because they’ve developed a feel for how easy it is to navigate.
2. With an HTML based electronic newsletter, readers will be able to look at a table of contents and jump to the area of the page that they want to read. This will save them time because they won’t have to skim through other information to find what they are looking for, or it will provide them with a chance to easily find the one thing in your newsletter that they wanted to remember or look back at.
3. Another great benefit of this format is that it becomes even easier to add the content from your newsletter to your website and you’ll be able to add links to your website where readers can go to find more information.
In other words, when you send out an electronic newsletter, ultimately you’ll be able to drive readers to your web pages (including those pages where past newsletters have been collected and published). But there’s a catch: in order to motivate the readers to click through, you’re going to want to be sure that you’re providing valuable content to your customers.
Just like web content, you’ll want to include photos and images that are related to your products or services that will be visually appealing. You’ll want to include great articles - many of which will be shorter than traditional web content - along with advice, suggestions and product reviews. To make the content even more valuable, you’ll be able to add polls - to directly ask your readers what information they’d like to see.
When you are able to give your customers the information that they’re looking for, they’re likely to keep coming back for more. A great electronic newsletter can be just the thing that you’re looking for, the right way of communicating with current and prospective customers - whether you set it up and write it yourself or hire a ghostwriting service to generate it for you.
Need Articles or Content written for you?
Article Marketing Blog
SEO, Content, and Link Building Stategies that work
Professional Management for Business Blogs
By
allen on September 18th, 2007
Posted in Article Writing | 2 Comments »
You can’t run an Internet business without articles. That’s a fact. But exactly how should you approach the art of article writing?
Well, for starters, you need to understand just what articles can and cannot do for you.
They can’t turn a bad web site into a good one. They also can’t fix design issues, nor can they tap the Blue Rhapsody in top hat and cane. Other than that, they can do a heck of a lot to give your web site credibility and good content. They can also market your website very effectively all over the world.
How To Acquire Articles
Articles can be acquired a number of ways. You’re probably aware of that.
You can buy one of those fancy PLR packages that have been circulating the Internet since 1995, or you can pay Charlie $2 per article to spell one syllable words incorrectly and copy/paste information from Wikipedia, or you can pay a professional writer to provide you with unique, one-of-a-kind content. Which method do you think will earn you the most respect online?
If you guessed the third method you’d be correct. You’d also be in the minority as far as action steps web site owners go through to obtain unique content - that is, if you actually went through with it yourself.
You have to be careful, though. There are plenty of so-called professional writers out there who claim to provide a premium service who can’t do much more than Charlie. Some of them work hard. Don’t get me wrong. But discriminating business owners look for more than just hard workers. You want someone who understands article writing and search engine optimization techniques.
What Qualities Should Your Article Writer Possess?
So what do you look for in an article writer? First, you should look for writing ability. And history. If a writer doesn’t have any offline writing credits, check to see how much they’ve been published online. A good article writer has history.
Secondly, check the references. If a writer can’t produce any good references, he’s either not a credible writer or he’s so new to the profession that he hasn’t developed any yet. Do you want to take a chance on that writer? It depends. You might get a good deal on his services, but be sure you look at the quality of his work before you pay for it. Ask for samples, or ask if he’ll do your job on spec and pay if you’re satisfied.
Many writers are willing to work for lower pay when they start out so they can build their portfolios. But if their fees are too low, they might be desperate. You’re better off paying Charlie. At least you’ll be able to fix his mistakes.
The best advice I can give is get the best writer you can for a premium fee. That doesn’t necessarily mean the guy who costs the most. It just means the guy with the best credentials for the best fee. You’ll have to check around.
Need Articles or Content written for you?
Submit your articles free!
Join The Publishers Network
Article Marketing Blog
By
admin on September 16th, 2007
Posted in Article Marketing | No Comments »
I have a lot of clients ask me whether they should do article marketing, blogging, ppc, press releases, advertising, directory submissions, blog comments, forum comments, or something else to build their link popularity and attract new visitors to their website.
They ask the question many times thinking that they should choose one of these things as their primary Internet Marketing Strategy.
The answer is “all of the above”. Any good Internet marketing strategy will include a combination of the things mentioned above and more. Diversity is the key.
Having a blog and doing article marketing is much better than either one alone. Adding a press release once in awhile adds to that. Directory submissions need to be done. Everything you can do to bring in more traffic and do better in the search engines helps you make more sales.
Think about the strategy you are using right now. Does it include all of the above? If not, I can help you with a plan that is more diversified. Call 786-317-8774 for a free initial consultation for the month of september!
Chris McElroy aka NameCritic
Need Articles or Content written for you?
Professional Management for Business Blogs
SEO, Content, and Link Building Stategies that work
