Choose Your Words With Care
This can be good advice when writing any type of content, whether it be a poem or a business article. However, it's particularly relevant when you're writing web pages. You must choose your words with care because search spiders will rank your pages partly based on the words you choose.
One easy way to do this is to stay on topic. Write about a specific topic and then expand your thoughts with variations on a theme. When I write web content, I don't necessarily start with a list of targeted keywords. Of course, it can help to have this list, but I don't write with specific plans to include targeted keywords in my sentences. This happens naturally when I focus on the topic. In other words, I write to the audience's needs, not the search spider's appetite for keywords
I've read books on web copywriting by several authors describing various methods. One is to create web personas. In fact, one writer suggests creating a personna for each type of visitor to the site, writing to their needs. I found this to be a lot of work, and I got lost in the details. Yet I understand it's a highly recommended and proven system. I also know it's not the only way to write pages that rank well. I can tell you that from experience.
When I was first commisioned to write web pages for an SEO client, I was nervous. I mean, they preach keywords on the page, right? So I asked for a list of key words and guess what, they never provided any. So I researched and focused on the topic for each section I was to write for -- web analytics, email marketing, and branding.
I immersed myself in web analytics and never looked back. The words magically appeared by themselves. I lived and breathed analytics for weeks while writing these web pages. Read several books on analytics and numerous articles by multiple authors. I almost thought I knew what it was all about at the time. Turned out the web pages ranked very highly. Whew!
I do the same for all the pages I write and haven't had any complaints yet. While it's great to use personas, don't feel bad if that doesn't work for you. I found that you don't necessarily have to get into the heads of the various types of site visitors to write to their needs. Perhaps it can be done intuitively without all that effort.
My advice for writing web pages is this: Live and breathe your topic, learn everything you possibly can about it, check out the research. By that time, you're ready to explain this topic to others much like an instructor would. Once you're in that mode, just relax and write -- be genuine and tell your audience what you know. Anticipate and answer their questions. Visitors and search engines will love you for it.
