Writing tends to be a daunting task for many but doesn’t have to be.  If you want  to give your message a powerful edge, capable of stirring up action in your market then keep reading.

Despite popular belief, crafting content on the web isn’t really about how good of a wordsmith you are or even how good of a speller you are. The most important feature of your message is how effective it is at finding the right audience.

Anyone can create powerful messages with ease by first considering a few important details. So set your pen down, take your fingers off the keyboard and ask yourself the following questions: (and in this order):

1. Who is my audience? (Need a better answer than “your market” be specific)
2. What is my message?

If you’re not sure what to write about – if you first consider WHO your  audience is, the topics will come much easier to you.  Then like magic…aaaahh…your message begins to form itself. Please don’t attempt to write an article that pleases every individual in your market – it’s not possible. That would resemble banging your head against a wall repeatedly. Okay well not exactly like that but close. It’s important to segment your market and focus on smaller groups within it.

Example #1

Let’s say you sell lawnmowers.  You may be wondering how to entertain anyone talking about lawnmowers but  believe it or not there are a thousand and 1 ways to deliver messages on any topic that are interesting and powerful to the reader. The key is delivering it to the right ears. Applying what we learned above we ask ourselves:

1. Who is my audience? Thinking of potential markets within the larger market of people who buy lawn mowers, we choose recent lawnmower buyers as our target audience.
2. What is my message? Now what do you suppose recent lawnmower buyers would want to know? Recent buyers of anything over $100.00 usually want to know if they got the best deal.  Congratulations! The hardest part of crafting your message is over.  After discovering these two very important details about your message you’ll find writing it to be much easier.

Crafting the Message and the Catchy Headline

Armed with some helpful considerations you are now ready to create a powerful message. Let’s pretend that you you personally sell the Cadillac of mowers, John Deere. With this in mind, you know just the right spin for your article starting with the headline which might be,  “Lawnmowers: Did You Get The Best Deal?” I think I would probably want to read that if I had just purchased a lawnmower, wouldn’t you?  Let’s look at another example.

Example #2

Audience:
Target: Individuals who have owned the same lawnmower forever and desperately need a new one.

Message:
(hint)People who need new lawnmowers or really anything are generally motivated by special deals. They may even be in the comparisons shopping phase of the buying cycle at which point you will now conveniently place yourself in the right place at the right time. However since John Deere is at the high end of all lawnmower pricing, you have to sell on quality – no problem! How about an excellent feature benefit article comparing all the bells and whistles of the John Deere vs. other comparable brands.

Possible Headlines:
“Choosing a Quality Lawnmower at the Right Price” or “Why Putting off Buying a New Lawnmower is Actually Costing You Money” “Cut the Grass and Your Costs This Summer” “What You Should Know Before Purchasing that New Lawnmower”

Both audiences mentioned are part of the larger market of all people who buy lawnmowers.  If we narrow our scope with our content, (imagine a dartboard) we increase our chances of hitting that bullseye.  A bullseye in this case is what we call a conversion. A conversion could be any type of action taken by the reader as a result of our message and is not necessarily considered a purchase.  Most often we have to win them over first, which is our goal when we write targeted content.

Now the reality is did we hit that bulls eye simply by breaking up our market?  No not really. We hit that bullseye because our message had more impact. Why did our message have more impact? It wasn’t because of our masterful skill of putting sentences together.  It had impact because it hit home. Our audience ate it up, every last word of it, because it was all about them.  When we try to speak to our market as a whole unit, our message is diluted and while may have some highlights for certain groups within that market, we failed to make an impression that was strong enough to resonate and initiate action from them.

In short, for all of you out there that struggle with putting words together – this is your key because the reality is, it isn’t so much about your skill of writing. As long as your message is well targeted, it will resonate with the intended market.

In summary targeted messages take a lot of the pain out of writing.  Having a clear direction of topic and audience will dramatically help the words flow much easier than trying to speak to masses.  In addition your message will have much more effect by it’s striking similarity to the audience for whom it was intended.  This similarity is the key to provoking them to take action.

This digital age has given new meaning to the word brevity.  With information that is able to reach masses with a single click, one needs to consider how the audience is receiving it before they hit the “publish” button.

As mentioned time and time again, blog posts that are short get the most face time.  Keeping your posts short will  have a tremendous effect on how many actually read them.  When faced with copy that overflows a page, how often do you choose to read it?  More often than not, the shorter article wins out. Long posts often get passesd up for something more visually palatable.  Seeing an article that one is certain they can finish from beginning to end without too much effort is the likely choice for readers in this era and on this landscape.  It  becomes even more true when we consider how our audience may be viewing our content.

People seeking information on the fly, want to be able to read it on the fly. Reading articles on a mobile device is a common activity these days.  Consider how long, even the shortest article will look on a mobile device.  9 times out of 10, readers on a mobile device are passing time while waiting to board a plane, are on a plane or waiting to be called for their scheduled appointment.  They desire to learn something new, or be entertained- briefly.

Yep, that’s right, less is best, for web copy, despite what you have probably been taught your entire life, with every other form of content you’ve written or been required to write. This is why being brief with our blog posts, isn’t as easy as it sounds…..try it, I dare you.

[text-box]*According to Squeeze, an online news source, a study published by Pew Research on March 15th found that 60 percent of Americans get their news from an online source.[/text-box]

Writing content for the internet has taken on some characteristics that in the “politically correct” journalism world, may cause quite a stir. The good news is, you get to let your hair down a bit. Your focus for writing virtual content is flow, much like a conversation has. So  have one -with-your virtual audience

FLOW

BREVITY

VISUAL PRESENTATION

Give Flow to Exciting Content

This particular element may, for some, may be the most difficult one.  By organizing your thoughts into an outline beforehand will have an enormous effect on your flow.  For a quick review on composing an outline see “Content is King“    If some of your topics lead up to a larger main point, then those should be arranged in the beginning and middle, pulling the reader along to the “big bang”.  This is a great technique for keeping your audiences attention, which can be a difficult task on the internet landscape. The internet provides  thousands of distractions on any given web page to direct their attention away from your dialogue.   Leaving hints of what’s to come, along the way, is another great tip for capturing and keeping your readers attention all the way through.

Brevity is Your Best Friend

Content on the web should be brief and to the point.  Pack as much rich information as you can into one article and one sentence.  But try to keep your sentences short.  Long sentences will tire people out, exhausting them before they make it all the way through. Short sentences for short attention spans.  Try to make your content easy to ingest by requiring the least amount of effort from the reader in order to follow.

The Winning Visual Presentation

Unlike a book or other hard copy material the internet provides a challenging landscape for content writers.  There are many aspects of it that can draw the readers attention away from your article or web site.  Not to mention the ease of a simple click to take them on another journey is all the more inviting.  Your content has to be not just good-it has to be great!

Visual appeal can be the difference between good and great.  Leave enough white space between paragraphs. This is soothing to the eye and makes your content easier to tackle.  One long clump of words on a page looks painful to a reader.  Split your content up and use paragraph headings that describe what that paragraph is about.  Most people first scan web content before deciding to read in more detail.  This is your chance to snag their interest so make these clear, concise, and helpful to someone seeking information quickly.

It happens on a regular basis.  A client comes to me with his finished site, proud of its spectacular look with moving graphics and fancy navigation that spins around when you hover over it with your mouse.  After he proudly proclaims of his readiness to do internet marketing, I watch the deflation occur as I tell him his site will need to be entirely rebuilt if being found on the internet is important to him.

I cannot stress enough how important it is to include a marketing professional in your web design project. Moving graphics require coding that is not read by search engines.  Too much of it surrounding your HTML (the content that is understood by search engines) is likely to be missed or skipped over.  As a rule of thumb, keeping all moving graphics or text within the header of your site is the best policy for providing a “content rich” website that will have a much better chance at being found or ranking in the SERP’s 

This is just one of the very important reasons you should include a web marketing professional in your web design project, however there are thousands of others.  Often people lump web designers in with internet marketers and vice versa.  What is important to remember is that although their services may overlap in relation to that website, their purpose is very different.  A web designer is interested in two things 1. The way the site looks, and the client satisfaction in how it looks.  Internet Marketing professionals care much less about how a site looks and more about its functionality for users and marketability to search engines.   Asking or expecting your web designer to make your site “SEO Friendly” is like asking an electrician to build a house. 

The biggest downside of excluding a marketing professional in the web design process is that trying to make changes after the fact is sometimes more difficult even impossible without a complete redesign.  Internet marketing has a huge focus on code/content that is the framework of your website.  Just like a house,  if you take the frame away the entire house comes crashing down.

Many misconceptions exist about selling products on the internet that land thousands of internet marketers offline to sell in a more lucrative and forgiving market. The first mistake is viewing internet sales much like they view offline, B2C sales. They figure by throwing up a site with some pictures and text, magically people will not only come to it, but that they will also buy their product. Unfortunately, the internet is not a sidewalk where local passerby stumble upon your site while window shopping. Then as if by some magical attraction, like love at first site, fall in love with the representation of your item for sale, a graphic and some text, and are convinced to buy it, regardless of the numerous risks involved with the purchase.    

Whatever you do to sell your product off the internet, you must be twice as good at it online. For one, you are basically attempting the impossible, to convince people to buy your product without saying an audible word.  It’s like someone asking you to sell shoes for example without speaking a word and without letting the buyer try them on.  Every purchase made on the internet is viewed as a risk by a buyer for many reasons. To name one of the more obvious is, will I like it once I get it? Buyers also hesitate for safety reasons, cautious of paying for the item and never getting it. As an ecommerce marketer you are asking people to “take your word for it,” that the product is worth the cost and that you are a legitimate business selling a legitimate product.  This is in addition to the thousands of other objections that go along with buying something before getting to see it up close. Why would someone want to purchase something online versus in a retail store? Truthfully I cannot think of any.  As an online marketer,  you have to create that reason.  Probably the most common reason people would actually prefer to buy it in a retail store is the immediate satisfaction it brings.  Overcoming this objection is quite possibly the hardest one since most buyers would actually pay a higher premium to satisfy their need to have it now.  By giving your potential buyer a lower price and free shipping creates a reason to buy your product online versus in a store.  If your margins are already tight, you may want to rethink internet sales especially if your competitors are offering free shipping.  Believe it or not this is a big deal breaker no matter how little or how much the shipping costs actually are.  Assuming now that you have reduced your price for the product and offered free shipping, “what risk are you going to take to even the score for the risk they are taking by giving you their money, trusting that they will eventually get the product if all goes well. This includes the unforeseen shipping blunders that now add a third party to their risk of purchasing.  That’s a lot to ask of someone you don’t know, don’t you think?  What kind of guarantees do you offer?  What is your return policy? Can people ask questions with a quick reply when inquiring about your product?  Can people sample it before they buy it?  I urge every internet marketer to have a solid return policy that guarantees the buyers satisfaction in the purchase otherwise the most prevailing guarantee is – no sale.

Your lead capture must be polished and you have to be willing to give something away.  You take a risk and the buyer takes a risk. Whatever it is you use to persuade your audience to buy, it must be worthwhile, bordering on exciting! The idea on the internet is to sell your product in bulk to make up for how low you’ve had to reduce the price. Now with all of that said, before worrying about how to sell to your visiting traffic, you may want to first worry about getting them to your site.  That in itself is enough of a challenge to kill off the first round of the misled marketers before even making a single sale.  Do I think selling something on the internet is easy?  The answer is a resounding, “NO.” Contrary to the belief of a large majority, it is one of the hardest sales to make.

I am writing today to speak of an exciting project I am involved with for an online magazine that is all about managed services.  I was asked to participate not only as an editor of the magazine but also as one of the featured managed services providers.  SEO /Web Marketing is not typically classified as a managed service but in actuality fits the defintion of that term quite closely.  After first being asked to be the editor a decision was also made thereafter to represent the category of SEO and Web Marketing as an Expert for their “Ask The Experts” section of the magazine.  Here, visiting traffic can ask questions to experts in the fields of Managed IT, Telecommunications, Call Center Services, Offsite Data Storge, and now SEO and Web Marketing.  Amongst the exciting featured sections are: “Tip of the Day”, Executive Interview, Featured Article and Featured Provider. 

Adding to the blog with be posts from the experts themselves on their respective topic.  Our goal with this project is to initiate interaction and create an environment that opens up the communication lines.  Anybody intererested in getting information on any of the 5 mentioned  managed services, nows your chance to get it free from experts.  As some may know, since the conception of managed services they have found this service model to be a growing need for the small business owner as oppossed to the Enterprise business model that is started from.  The magazine is due to launch on September 9th.  Check it out if you’re interested at Managed Service Providers

 SEO starts from the very beginning of a website’s conception.  Although SEO can later be implemented, at times it can be difficult, requiring so much reconstruction one would virtually need to rebuild an entire new website to make it SEO friendly.  With that in mind, having an SEO specialist working with the programmer and web designer to make sure all of the necessary SEO components are built into the design and the text is optimal.  Although due to cost this approach isn’t always possible, it ensures an SEO driven site with the necessary SEO components built in.

The general design of the site can be a critical feature on the readability of your site by the major search engines. Though sites programmed with flash animation tend to be eye catching they originally were unable to be indexed by Google.  So they were eye catching if you could actually find them.  A recent article put out by Google states of an improvement in their search engines ability to read flash animation but not something I would even risk if your goal is to be found in the search results.  Despite the good idea to leave flash animation out of the body of the site having your header with such programming adds a similar appeal yet remains SEO friendly. This is just one of the many things to keep in mind while building an optimized site.

Another factor of SEO that can be incorporated into web design is the ALT image Tag feature.  Here the web designer would enter a keyword within the programming of each graphic that appears on the page.  This lends additional opportunity for keyword instances that attract search engines for user search.  Because this is not easily done by an SEO Consultant after the site has been completed and most often requires the assistance of a web designer it helps to instill these features during the initial construction.

Keyworded urls are also an important feature for SEO.  Sometimes this offers an excellent opportunity to drop keywords/phrases in for added optimization assuming your domain name has the keyword in it and if it doesn’t this feature is especially important.  Let’s look at an example of a keyworded URL and how we can maximize keyword usage.  Remember any link that has our keyword in it is worth twice its weight a keyword.  So let’s say the keyword is “Button Jewelry”  the domain name is www.uniquebuttonjewelry.com/  and one of the pages on her site found by clicking on the navigation button that says “browse our shop” has a url that looks like this www.uniquebuttonjewelry.com/buybuttonjewelry.html   The keyword “button jewelry” has now appeared twice within the url  and although by itself may not lend much weight in terms of optimization, when used in conjunction with the many other urls for your website this can have a strong affect on a sites performance in the search results. 

While there are many more SEO tactics that one can incorporate into the initial design of their website these are some of the basics and ones that will lend assistance with a site’s performance in the search results.  Remember to talk with your web designer about building these features and more into your website.  This could save you a lot of work later.  http://www.contentwriterseo.com

 Anyone who has been in this business more than a week can attest to the difficulty found when writing a proposal or pricing a project.  What should I charge?  It is nearly impossible to estimate how long certain tasks may take especially since there are so many variables that exist with SEO.  In addition, these services hold different values for everyone.  One individual may feel that $6,000 is worth all of the additional traffic, conversions, and online presence.  Others may not. Or perhaps you have failed to show them the value in it.  Whatever the case may be I have seen the shock on the clients face one too many times to not yearn for a new method. 

Pricing SEO proposals can be a rather unpleasant experience if the customer is not at least familiar with pricing up front.  Personally I have decided that if the customer does not seem to be familiar with SEO pricing, I am going to assign him/her homework; to look up  the going rate for SEO services and get familiar with the very wide ranges of pricing everywhere on the internet from $50.00 and hour to $200.00 an hour.   Then we might have something to talk about, like what they can afford and what to them is “reasonable.”  It may also place a bit more value on the work that we do.  Let’s face it, this knowledge can turn a mediocre business into a thriving money maker.  So the value in SEO is truthfully well beyond even the highest priced proposal found anywhere as long as you deliver what you promise in the time frames stated. 

Equally difficult is predicting how many hours various tasks will take you up front.  With the plethora of variables that can occur in any one service of SEO,  what you thought may take 10 hours may end up taking you 20 or maybe just 4 hours.  If we give ourselves some leway in the initial pricing, although hours may be lost here and there, it can help to minimize the loss.   It is always a pleasure to have the client who understands those variables and hourly pricing but most small businesses want to know up front how much they are spending and understandably so.  Any wavering of that intial price can send shockwaves through the entire project.

If possible giving a range of hours may work best and maybe adding a “not to exceed” x amount of hours to cover yourself should the task take longer that you proposed intially and to ease the small business owner’s fear that things could “get out of hand”. 

Since I haven’t yet had a chance to try these new pricing methods I am not sure how effective they may or may not be.  Being that my pricing is at the lowest end of the wide range; what have I got to lose, besides a customer that cannot afford SEO services? It appears that was never mine to begin with.

Presenting proposals to clients for SEO projects can be a hectic and stressful process especially for the small business client whose expenditures are almost always on a tight budget. Some feel like they might be throwing money at a losing battle…their business, and at this point are unsure it being worthy of success at all. After having done an initial analysis on their competition and current web presence you conclude that with a strong back linking campaign and onsite seo/copywriting they could turn their business around and take a strong position in the search results for their keyword. Naturally you have already shared this exciting news with them but somehow at the moment when you present the proposal, it seems forgotten; the excitement lost in dollar signs. What can be done to make this proposal process less stressful for both the client and the SEO professional? Here are a few things I have come up with for a win win proposal:

Upon introduction discuss:

A) What is their budget? Or, how much do they want to spend on a marketing campaign and SEO for their website

B) Ask them questions that quantify the value they place on ranking well in search results or driving traffic to their website. Let’s face it. Getting noticed online can bring endless value to the customer in hard revenue. It is important however to help them make that connection when you are selling something intangible like services.

C) Ask them if they have ever paid for SEO services/copywriting before, and if they haven’t, get them familiar with cost immediately. That way they can do their own math along the way and thus no surprises. Many people are unfamiliar with the process, therefore unfamiliar with its cost.

D) When presenting the proposal, include the estimated final result of the services being recommended i.e, what this will do for the customer, is it better ranking in search results, driving traffic through a pay per click campaign, increase conversions, etc. That way the cost and value can offset each other yet again for the customer.

E) Make sure your pricing is clear cut and if you offer an hourly rate only, try to estimate how long each process will take or give maximums (not to exceed x amount of hours). Small business owners are much more comfortable knowing in advance how much they are spending.

F) And as always deliver what you promise in the time frames outlined. It is always better to under promise and over deliver and because SEO and online marketing are not exact sciences, don’t promise the number one spot in google’s search results, instead promise the top 3 but only if your totally confident it can be done!

I just recently have joined the online community of blogging and would like to start out by gathering responses from other professionals in the SEO world to five questions I have selected that I think are relevant topics of interest to anyone looking to create an online presence.  They are as follows:

1. What steps would you take to optimize a new website.  Let’s say your initial goal is to get ranked for the keyword(s) within the top five of googles search results?

2.  How many keywords do you think a website should have and why? How many should each page have?

3.  What type of SEO technique is most important for ranking: linkbuilding or onsite content/keyword saturation?

4.  If the customers main goal is to drive traffic to their website quickly what steps/methods would you take to do this?

5.  Briefly describe the role social media marketing plays in SEO and the steps you take to implement a campaign.

Tags: content writing, keyword, onsite and offsite seo, seo