John Honeck

I don’t normally do any actual content writing tips here, like most I like to keep my secrets to myself But while going over search engine referrals this morning I thought of something I’d like to share, just because it’s so basic and simple but effective.

There is an astonishing amount of people that ask search engines questions, literally. I’m not sure if it’s from the bygone days of the Ask Jeeves campaign or that people actually think Google answers questions but they do. They will form their query not as a keyword search but as a formal question.

For this reason I often include forms of a questions typically asked when writing a page that answers said question. If you’ve read my blog before you’ll recognize my tendency to do this. It’s not just another example of my poor writing skills but rather me looking for some long-tail search results.

For example one that comes up often is, “Why don’t I have a page rank in Google?”, which when queried in Google leads to the page I linked to as the number #1 result.

This applies to other types of sites as well. We spend all our time trying to rank for the holy grail one word term like “Widgets” or the more specific “Red Widgets” . You’d be surprised how many real people search using full questions with an action word in them for example; “How can I buy red widgets online?” or “What is the price of red widgets?”. These semantic phrases are much easier to rank for than the one or two keyword phrases.

I’m not sure if this is purely a symptom of people personifying the machine or it’s the searchers attempt to dig down in the results. Often if you search for “red widgets” you’ll get the manufacturer, an expired ebay auction, some ebay subdomain, a wiki page on red widgets, some review site with Amazon affiliate links, subdomain spam on 31sui38s.com, and then some real sites. The searcher isn’t looking for ebay or Amazon links, they’ve probably already tried those, wiki gives them information, the manufacturer gives them information, etc. so they narrow it down with action words like, “buy”, “price”, “order”, “purchase” and questions like, “Where”, “How”, or “Who”.

While writing your articles and websites, think not only about including all the information that you as an expert searcher would use to find the page, but also someone who isn’t as well trained. It’s important to include in the text the intent and purpose of the page as well as the content.

Tips

• If you’re site is trying to sell red widgets be sure to include in the red widget sales page that they can “buy” or “order” there and the “price” of the “purchase”. In sales you always have to remember to ask for the order, the same is true on the internet.
• If you are writing an informative article, try to include the common or multiple common questions the article will answer prominently along with the answer.
• Dump the “buy it now” or “add to cart” buttons and replace with text links, or at least include ALT text.
• Personalize the page rather than generalize it. A million sites may be trying to rank for “Make money online” but much less are thinking of the average searcher who is looking for “How can I make money online?” (then sell them their ebook telling them to sell an ebook)
• Everyone is looking for a bargain. Including bargain hunting words like “Sale”, “bargain”, “discount”, and “clearance” . Those are words that ebay, wiki, and the manufacturer won’t have on their red widget page, but you should.
• Smart internet shoppers are also coupon clippers so give them coupons, be sure to offer “promotional codes” or “coupons” on the sales page in addition to the cart.
• Don’t feel like you have to trap your users by camouflaging a sales page as information. Information is easy to find and you don’t want them people anyway, you want people who are ready to buy, trumpet that fact. The page should be as much about red widgets as it is about the purpose of the page, to sell red widgets.
• If you’ve wrote the definative information page on a subject be sure to include all of the questions it attempts to answer, in a form they will be asked.
• Write the way people speak. In grammar school you were chastised for not writing in formal language which is very true if you are writing a book, but in the reality that is the internet, most of the searchers aren’t writers and most will search the way they talk.