The creator of Dilbert — Scott Adams — keeps a regular blog. It's often pretty funny. Probably to entertain himself as much as anyone else, he likes to write posts to get a reaction out of people. He occasionally succeeds to a quite spectacular degree.

He wrote a post which was marketing related (sort of), and I couldn't resist making a reference to it on this blog. Here's a quote:

This idea was born of the old marketing truism, "Your customers tell you what business you are in." In my case, this blog has evolved to a forum where I say unpopular things and my readers abuse me in the comments. I'm just extending that to the virtual world where you can take out your frustration at my stubborn refusal to recognize the truth and beauty of your opinions, by kicking me in the 'nads. This is what you call being customer focused. I think Nordstrom could learn a thing or two from my example.

You can read the whole post here.

My last two posts have been about the structure and strategy of writing for the web, so Seth Godin's post The secret of writing to be read caught my eye. I was interested to see that short sentences spread ideas farther and faster as that's the usual writing style for both the web and for newspapers.

In my previous post (Writing for the Web: Structure) I wrote about how the text should be laid out and constructed. In this post, I will briefly examine how to decide what should be included in the text. These guidelines aren't inclusive, but they are a starting point.

I've divided the process for web content strategy into three sections. The first is "Satisfying the Marketer" which looks at hard numbers and the competition. The second step, "Talking to the Customer," is about deciding what needs to be included to keep customers happy. The final part is "Sealing the Deal" which covers a couple suggestions on how to motivate viewers to become customers.

Satisfying the Marketer

1) Setting Your Objectives
When putting together a commercial web page, the first questions should always be: What am I trying to accomplish? How will I know the website has been a success?

Work out what goals you want to accomplish with the web page. For instance, you might want to sell $1000 of product every week for the first 6 months with a net value of $500 per week. Or perhaps you want to sell 300 bottles of soap every two weeks. Or maybe you just want to drive traffic to the site and raise awareness.

Whatever the objective is, make sure that you have accurate ways to measure the parameters and see if you're hitting your goals.

2) Checking Out the Competition
Before writing anything, it's always worth checking out the competition and seeing how they are positioning themselves in the market. What features do they emphasize? What audience are they trying to appeal to? Does your product have features that set it apart? Take all of this into consideration when deciding how you want to position your product in the text.

Talking to the Customer

3) Who is the customer?
Work out a profile of your ideal and typical customer. What is their income, their location, their spending power, age, etc.? The stronger the grasp you have on this, the easier it will be to write targeted, effective copy.

4) What do you want to communicate?
What are the main benefits you can offer the customer? What are the most important things for the customer to know? Make a list and prioritize for the site, and then prioritize for each page. This will be an immense help for the copywriter; they'll know what to focus on and it will help them sell the product effectively in the text.

5) Are there any potential problems?
What are the problems your customers are likely to run into when using the site? What will puzzle/frustrate/annoy them? The fewer problems users have with the website, the more likely they are to become a customer.

Don't overestimate your customer's interest in digging up or deriving information. Keep it short, simple and in plain view.

Making the Sale

6) Create urgency
Creating urgency helps to motivate viewers to become customers by getting them to act immediately. Some ways urgency can be created are through a deadline for a special offer, an emphatic statement (buy now!) or a sale.

7) Make purchasing easy
While copy only plays a part in this, your site needs to have great usability. It should be easy to navigate between sections, easy to find products, easy to make a purchase. The text can help to direct the user to the next step.

The more obstacles you put in the way, the less likely it is that your viewer will follow through to make a purchase.

Final Thoughts

Above is a brief overview of some of the strategy behind writing for the web. More detailed information on this topic can be found at your local bookstore. I've also included a few links below for people who are just browsing.

More Information

Ten Essential Tips for Writing Effective Web Copy That Sells

Eight Steps to Consider Before Writing Website Copy

Whip Up Your Words

Writing for the Web: Structure: The previous post on Gazator about writing for the web.

Structure and strategy are two important parts of writing for the web. Structure is about how the text should be constructed and laid out. Strategy is about what needs to be included in the text and how you decide what to include.

To be a good marketer, it’s wise to be familiar with both of these parts. In this post, I’m going to cover structure. I’ll put up another post with thoughts about strategy soon.

These posts are written with commercial websites in mind; the rules are looser for websites whose purpose is to inform or to entertain.

How People Read on the Web

It would be nice to think that people read every word written by the copywriter. Your favorite text, after all, is elegantly constructed and tells the reader all they need to know about your product. And a few visitors apparently do read every word on the web page. Most people, though, do not.

Part of the problem is that it is physically harder for people to read on the computer screen. This typically causes comprehension and patience to decrease.

The majority of users scan pages, looking for the relevant information. If they don’t find it, because it’s buried somewhere on the page, they will leave. The ideal web page is structured so users can find the information they’re interested in easily and quickly.

Keep It Short and to the Point

Using short and simple text makes it easier for users to scan the page and find the information they are interested in quickly.

The text should be composed of short paragraphs that have one topic each. Typically on the web, people don’t track lines as well as they do in printed material and so it’s easier to lose their place in a paragraph. If in doubt, it’s almost always better to break up a paragraph rather than have one run too long.

The sentences should also be short and to the point. If the sentence is running on for more than two lines, it probably needs to be two sentences. Avoid excessive clauses, punctuation, etc.

It’s also best to avoid flowery embellishments and any other text that gets between the user and the information you want to convey.

Putting Your Best Information Forward

The most important information should go at the top of the page. People read from the top down on the web and can’t see anything beneath their browser’s window without scrolling. Putting the most important information at the top helps to make sure people see it before they decide to click away.

Heading and Subheadings

Headings and subheadings act as signposts. They direct the user scanning the page when to stop and read and when to just keep moving.

Headings should be succinct and descriptive of the content. They’re also important for keyword inclusion as some search engines apparently look at titles and bolded text to see what the content of the page is about.

Judicious Use of Text Treatment

Bolded and italicized words stand out, and can be a useful way to direct users’ attention. A user who is scanning the page may jump from title to bolded phrase down to the next title, looking for what they want. There is also some suggestion that bolded and italicized words are more heavily weighted by search engines.

So there is a lot to be said in terms of usability for text treatment. But don’t overdo it. Too much can make the page harder to read, as well as confusing for the eye.

Well-Written Copy: Readability, Spelling and Grammar

Readability is important. Interesting and informative text will help to hold the viewers' attention and give them a better impression of the company.

Grammar and spelling also matter. On a professional site, incorrect spelling and grammar are embarrassing and reflect badly on the company.

In addition, if the reader is confused or pauses because of bad grammar or spelling, they’re more likely to move on. Don’t trip up the reader; if their attention is distracted from the point of the content, there’s no guarantee you’ll get it back.

More Information

How Users Read on the Web

How to Write Effective Web Copy

Writing for the Web

Writing for the web

Writing for the Web: Strategy: The second post in this series on Gazator.

Blogger has introduced a feature called Blogger Play; it's a continuous slide show of photographs Blogger users have posted on their blogs.

I found the link today and followed it with some trepidation as I wasn't sure what sort of photos to expect. The photos were strangely fascinating. Many pictures of family, friends, pets, etc.; it's oddly moving to watch such personal images, one after another.

And while it's not directly related to marketing, it's such a strong example of the power of social media to include and effect people that I decided to post it here.

In Neuromarketing's post Damage Control That Causes More Damage they suggest that the best response by PR when confronted by an inaccurate accusation may be to respond positively.

Neuromarketing quotes a study that finds that when people put out information correcting a false statement, it can have the counterintuitive effect of reinforcing the original false statement.

Their advice?

"...the best approach to damage control may be to emphasize the positive. Instead of repeating a rumor that your noise-cancelling headphones cause brain cancer, emphasize their safety and the extensive testing that confirms that.

"..if a rumor or other attack gains so much traction that it’s major news, denial will be necessary. In general, though ... avoid repeating false facts whenever possible..."

Mobile advertising looms. It's not quite here yet in the U.S., but many marketers think it's going to become a significant channel. So I read with great interest this story in the New York Times: For Google, Advertising and Phones Go Together

Awhile ago I started doing research for a post on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In my optimism, I thought this would be be a simple matter of compiling rules and opinions that most people agreed upon. And then I started coming across statements like this: "...the more I read [about SEO] the more I realize I'm not alone in my guess work — virtually every article I read is a 'best guess' of some kind."

The reason for the "best guess" articles is that SEO techniques depend on what algorithms the search engines are using. Since the search engines change how they rank pages over time, inevitably SEO tactics also have to change. If they don't, rankings slip.

In truth, though, this constant change is a pretty close analogy to marketing to customers. The expectation is that how customers react now will not be the same in the future. Most marketers live with that perfectly happily (or at least don't actually quit) by focusing on what is working now and building on that.

In this post I will cover some general tactics that most writers agree upon, with the focus being on Google's search engine. As this post is not comprehensive, and there are varying opinions about best methods, it's worth checking out other sources of information. I've also included links at the bottom of this post to other articles for additional insights.

For the more refined approaches, such as how to react to a change in the algorithms, general wisdom is to research as many sources as possible, and test and then test again. Alternatively, hire a reputable company (there are many not-so-reputable companies out there) that specializes in SEO, and who can do the heavy lifting for you.

Some Definitions

Confusion about the meaning of a word or term inevitably leads to confusion about the topic as a whole. I won't actually be using all of these terms in this post, but they are important if you're beginning to research SEO so it's worth including them here.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to optimizing a site with the goal of increasing page rankings in search engines.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) refers to marketing a site through search engines both by SEO and by paid advertisements.

Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a relatively new idea. From Influential Marketing Blog: "The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs."

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are the listings that appear after a query is entered into a search engine.

Page Ranking refers to where a page shows up on a search engine after a query is entered. Often, to be in the top ten is considered the cut off for a good ranking.

Website Structure

When deciding on a website structure, the first thoughts should always be about users. If the site is unworkable or people can't find what they are looking for, they will just click away, no matter how highly the site is ranked.

The structure of the website affects not only users, though, but also how well spiders can catalog the site. Spiders, of course, are the search bots that search engines send out over the web to collect data to index. So it makes sense that the easier the site is for the spiders to deal with, the better the data will be that the spiders collect, and so the better the indexing will be of your site by the search engines.

So what makes a spider happy? The general recommendation is that the code should be as clean as possible (and validate) and that all links should work. Interlinking the site is also thought to be very helpful so spiders can navigate thorugh the site easily. For the sake of both users of the site and spiders, the site should also be well laid out and easy to navigate.

It's also been suggested that spiders don't like too much Flash or Java Script.

Keywords

By far and away the most important aspect of putting together website content is to use high quality content that users want to see and that is useful. Then, once you have the quality content all lined up, optimize it for keywords and keyword phrases.

Keywords are the words and phrases people use when they search for a webpage. The goal of optimizing for specific keywords is to drive as much targeted traffic to the website as possible.

Keywords, obviously, should be in line with the overall content of the page. The keywords need to deliver what they promise or visitors will just click away again.

I wrote more extensively about keywords in a previous post.

Inbound Links

Inbound links can be hugely beneficial to a website's ranking. Each inbound link (i.e. a link from another website) is viewed by Google as a vote. Google views some pages as being more important than others and so some votes are worth more than others. Get enough votes and page ranking improves.

One way to generate more inbound links is by link baiting. Put together content on the site that people want to read, view, interact with, etc, and let people link to it. The more people who link to it, the more it will help the site. The link bait, of course, needs to be added to regularly.

Another way to generate links is to link to other relevant sites. This can indirectly encourage others to link to you. If they follow the link back to your site, they may like what they see and add a link to their own site, setting up a reciprocal link. One article also suggested that there is a benefit to a site's page rankings if relevant outbound links are included on the site.

There are planned reciprocal links where two sites agree that each will link to the other. My impression is that this is viewed with hesitation by some SEOs as it may cause problems for the page's ranking down the road.

Other Suggestions

A site map is generally thought to be advantageous for rankings as well. One of the advantages is that it makes pages on your site just a click or two away from each other. This in turn makes it easier for the spiders to navigate the site. It's also a pretty good idea to provide a site map for your users sake as well.

A blog which is updated regularly is also thought to help with page rankings. A site which is updated regularly is crawled more often by spiders. This means new information starts appearing on the search engines sooner.

Another idea which appears to be gaining traction is that themed sites can improve rankings. The logic is that if the entire site is devoted to one topic, or theme, then Google will assume the site provides great expertise in the area.

Final Thoughts

A lot rides on a good page ranking; a top ranking can be an enormous boost for a company. However, if search engines think people are trying to cheat the system it can have extremely negative effects, e.g. being dropped down in the page rankings or being removed from the index altogether.

So be sensible about what tactics you employ to boost your page rankings and do your homework.

More Information

Search Engine Optimization for Blogs - SEO

SEO For Google In Five “Easy” Steps

SEO Book: A regularly updated blog on SEO

Google Webmaster Help Center

Our Search: Google Technology

In my last post I talked about how the author of Dooce, an influential blogger, had spent an entire post, complete with product shots, talking about how great a soap was.

At the end of the article she wrote that she was posting about the soap because she loved it, not because she was paid or asked to do it. I got the impression that this was as much for her audience as it was to discourage marketers from requesting a post to promote a product.

Awhile ago, I came across a blog called elise.com that posted a great article on this very topic: The Do's and Don'ts of Marketing to Bloggers. It's good press when a popular blogger posts on a product and it can be fantastic for search engine rankings. Bloggers tend to view product promotion requests as a pest, though. The article on elise.com gives solid suggestions on how to go about making the request, and hopefully not irritate the person you want positive press from.