Get more readers for your blog with these helpful tips
A blogger with good readership has got many things to consider when launching SEO practices and Internet marketing endeavors. You’ve got to factor in how keyword density and affiliate linking will affect your content. You’ve also got to consider how to use email marketing tools to expand your reach while keeping your loyal readers happy. Remember, your RSS feed is a button that can be clicked at any time. And the Internet is a turbulent place, where micro-blogging, social networking, and marketing overlap for nebulous purposes. Here are a few ways you can be sure that the quality of your posts doesn’t suffer as a result of your SEO campaigns:
Do Your Research
One of the biggest problems in the blogosphere is overused and misrepresented facts. Don’t just rely on someone else’s numbers and platitudes, do your own research and fact-checking. This will also help you to endow your vocabulary with the correct technical terms and phrases in order to properly engage with a subject. This is another problem in the blogosphere: imprecise or lazy descriptions; clichéd, vapid phrases; and redundant information. Good research can help to remedy all these problems and will also keep you abreast of new developments.
Be Original
If you’re not offering something new to the discussion information-wise, you should at least be engaging or entertaining in your writing style. No one will be interested in reading a cloud of keywords if they’re not supporting a core argument or an original angle on a subject. With how many vitally crucial issues are at play in this world, you owe it to yourself and to your readers to bring fresh perspectives to your posts. Be opinionated, engage with material from other bloggers, and be relevant to the discussion. The best way to do that is by being original.
No Country for Typos
The blogosphere is rampant with bad grammar, misspellings, typos, and overall poor language use. But not everyone is William Faulkner, so the occasional sloppy sentence is forgivable. What is not forgivable and will lose you subscribers in a hurry are typos. They make your blog look amateur and of little consequence. One or two here or there will not get you blacklisted, but if your posts are regularly peppered with typos it’s obvious you’re not proof-reading your writing, which calls everything you say into question. Read through your posts before submitting them!
Don’t Misrepresent Yourself with Keywords
Littering your post with ‘Ashton Kutcher,’ ‘Kim Kardashian,’ and ‘Lindsay Lohan’ might drive a few more people to read your blog. But when they discover that your post has nothing to do with these people, or even pop culture as a general subject, they’re going to leave your domain and they won’t return. The Internet is an ecosystem–don’t pollute it with overused keywords and link spamming.
Be Concise, Relevant and Economical
Remember, it’s a blog, not an academic essay. As much as you want good writing and valuable insights populating your posts, don’t make the mistake of thinking people go to the Internet to read ‘A Historical and Sociological Analysis of Poetry.’ Some might, but most want short, succinct paragraphs that are relevant to what they typed into the search engine. If someone is looking for information about mobile devices and your post is entitled ‘Comparing Mobile Devices,’ don’t make the first 3 paragraphs a retrospective about the use of asbestos in ceilings. Your readers will leave quickly.
Content Writing Tips for eCommerce Blog
Content writing for an e-Commerce website encompasses many different facets of your business and of the craft of writing itself. It sure can be a lot to juggle.
You have to make sure the content is relevant to the product or service as well as to the customer. It must be informative, readable and to-the-point. You’re going to want Google to love it, too, so it should be search engine optimization (SEO) friendly.
Be Descriptive
One aspect of content writing as it pertains to e-commerce websites is describing products. But your ultimate job isn’t to give your customers a boring checklist of attributes. It is to sell them something.
To that end, use your very best descriptors from your vocabulary toolbox to paint a picture (aside from your actual pictures, of course) of the product for your customer.
One of the knocks people still have with online shopping is that they want to be able to feel the product, to hold it in their hands. If you are able to give them a poignant description of not only what the product looks like and does but of how useful it will be and specifically how they will use it to their benefit, then you will have written a terrific product description.
Descriptors are key. Write about every piece of the product you can imagine and then think up two more ways to describe it. Include look, feel, and application. Even reviews – both positive and negative – can be useful. The more information you’re able to give, the more confidence your customer will have in their purchase and you as a resource.
Be Concise
This quote espouses one of the single most difficult things about writing.
This may seem contradictory. And, in a way, it is. However, writing that is able to be both engaging, descriptive and concise is so much more effectual. There is a pretty good quote of the great American writer, Ernest Hemingway.
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and bleed.”
"Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.”
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”
Ernest Hemingway
Not only are these exceptional writing tips from a master of the craft, but these quotes also elucidate my point. Hemingway’s writing is able to be terse yet descriptive and moving with only a handful of words. This can be applied to e-commerce product descriptions and collection headings alike. The focus is on getting the point across with as few words as possible. Just be sure to use the right words. Write naturally, pick your words intentionally and always check your work.
Write Content for SEO
It must be done organically. This tip falls flat on its face if you simply toss a week-old keyword salad on Google’s table. In fact, your site will likely be penalized for attempting to take advantage of the system.
Keywords are important because they reflect the significance of the content you’re offering to potential readers and shoppers. Search engines want to supply the most relevant websites to the person searching. If they offered up results based on keywords alone, you’d end up with spammy pages with little or no valuable content.
Instead, it’s best to aim for writing with an eye toward incorporating previously-researched keywords that are useful to your customers and easy for search engines to spot value in while at the same time creating some form of narrative. Many times, that might merely be adding a few additional sentences and a couple of new keywords you’ve discovered to be of some use for you into a product description that was beginning to feel stale. Other times, this may mean writing a full 3,000-word blog article full of excellent information, beautiful photos (with alt tags, captions and a description of its own), and several relevant internal links. This latter is fantastic for giving readers the ability to seamlessly link from one related page to another. Always write to your reader but keep Google in the back of your mind as well.
Include Attractive Images
Images are not writing…or are they? In the context of a web page, images hold a complex responsibility.
There’s the obvious obligation to be visually pleasing and relevant. But they should also be an immersive aspect of the experience by utilizing text. Whether or not your pictures contain text in the image itself, they still contain the power to improve the quality of the page using words.
Using text on and within images can improve your web page’s user experience.
By adding a brief, descriptive caption to an image which is significant to the page’s product or message, you lend your reader yet another point of immersion to retain their attention and keep them reading. Also, the internal description, title, and tags are words beneficial for search results. This is generally considered an aspect of SEO best practices.
Write Conversationally
Style is an underrated aspect of content writing for websites. Anyone can slap a couple of straight descriptive sentences of a product together and hit "Publish”. A better writer will have a feel for who their audience is and write to them as opposed to the product.
A conversational writing style is comfortable for most readers. It will set your product descriptions, headers and articles apart from most others. And writing conversationally does not preclude your content from being professional as well.
Don’t write it like you would a text message to a friend. It would probably be too informal to describe a product with food emojis or to begin a new article with, "hey, you up? iwrote a new thing 4 u”. Try to find a style that is comfortable for you that fits somewhere in between this and a stuffy, formal product presentation that most people aren’t going to want to read.
Everyone Needs to Proofread
Every writer needs to proofread every piece they create, every time. Probably multiple times. There almost always seems to be something that was missed or that could be slightly improved.
Everyone can understand and forgive a misspelling or improper use of tense because we’ve all done it. The real problem is, it takes your reader out of the flow of the writing, even if only a little bit.
Quantity is important for your blog. Posting often and using numerous, relevant keywords helps your SEO and gets you seen by more people, and you want as many people viewing your blog as possible, otherwise what’s the point of writing it? But if you’re sacrificing quality, you need to rethink your strategy. Otherwise you are simply alerting more people that you’ve got a mediocre blog. Quality is and will always be more important than quantity.
About the author: Alissa Zucker works as a copywriter and web developer for the online essay writing service. She is interested in reading classic and psychological books which give her an inspiration to write her own articles and short stories.
