Google Zeitgeist 2011: Year in Review

Less Attention From Companies

Increased emphasis on Facebook Pages means less emphasis on traditional websites. It’s trend that’s still on an upward swing as more and more companies realize the advantages of a strong social media presence.

Ford was one of the earliest companies to promote their Facebook Page. In advertisements, both online and in traditional media, they directed customers to checkout Ford on Facebook, not on Ford.com. At the time, it was an unheard of practice. Fast forward several years and most major companies have established their own Facebook presence and reaped the benefits. As the remaining companies play catch-up, there will be even more emphasis placed on Facebook Pages, and less on websites.

Users Are Looking For Social Interaction

People love being able to make online tasks that would otherwise be solitary, social. That’s why so many people are visiting businesses on Facebook, instead of at their old URLs. A snowboarder looking for new bindings can browse different manufacturer’s websites, but his options are pretty limited. He can look at the specs, choose a model, and make a purchase. But on Facebook, he can get opinions from his friends on the model he’s chosen. Their good or bad reviews of the product help him make an informed purchase. If there’s a problem with shipping or a defect in the product, the snowboard company’s Page is his access point to a company representative, and the first step toward getting the problem rectified. His process of purchasing a snowboard went from being simple and solitary to thorough and social.

Facebook and Website Synergy

Facebook Pages and traditional websites are being designed to better compliment each other. Each platform has it’s distinct strengths – there’s interaction on Facebook, and robust functionality on websites. Bigger companies have the convenience of hiring both community managers and web designers who are especially adept at recognizing the strengths of Facebook and websites, capitalizing on them the both. They design the two platforms to work together to give their users the content they expect on the platform they’re visiting. The resulting Facebook Page is engaging and social with an available company representative, while the website is highly functional with straightforward operation. The Facebook Page contains links to the website, and the website links visitors to the Facebook Page.

Websites Forced Into Social Media

In some cases, companies try to recreate their websites on Facebook. There’s heavy emphasis on static content, lots of information, and straightforward action, but since that’s not the content Facebook users are after, these pages largely go ignored. Meanwhile, the traditional website is reduced to a placeholder with nothing more than a couple links to the Facebook Page.

Facebook Pages Have Replaced Traditional Websites For Many Small Operations

For family businesses and artists and musicians, it’s easier – and cheaper – to focus their online efforts solely on Facebook. Custom tab applications are a great way for small business owners and artists to design tabs with a professional look and feel at a fraction of the cost of professional design services. Facebook – and a custom tab app – actually has a way of bridging the gap between the presence of big-budget corporations and local shops, putting businesses big and small side-by-side in the same arena.

Websites Remain King Of Functionality

Facebook has cornered the social media market, but websites are more useful for functions outside of social media ideology, and they’re still the platform used for performing straightforward tasks. Furthermore, there are websites like WebMD.com that could never be replicated on Facebook. There is so much information, so much functionality, and it’s such a big name, that WebMD.com will continue to be the online resource for health and wellness related content.

The Future Role Of Websites

Websites will always have a place, but they’ll continue to get less attention as businesses figure out more ways to bring their content to the people, which means we’ll continue to see traffic being directed en mass to the social networking giant at the expense of traditional websites.

As an online marketing strategist, I continually come across business owners who rave about the number of visitors coming to their website. The irony is that website traffic alone doesn’t generate money.

I ask these business owners questions: Where is the website traffic coming from? What Web pages are visitors landing on the most? What percentage of visitors return to the site? How many visitors convert into customers?

Their lack of answers shows they’re concentrating on volume and not on quality, and I guarantee their sales are suffering as a result. It doesn’t matter how many people visit your website if those people are not the “right” people — the type of people who will buy something from you someday.

Good website analytics take the mystery out of wondering who’s visiting the company website and why. You don’t need to be an online marketing strategist to use them, either. There are plenty of website analytics packages for sale on the Web, but you can get started free through Google Analytics.

The Google service provides you with a line of code to plug into each of your website pages, and you can then start tracking. You can get a breakdown not only of how many visitors came to the website, but how long they stayed, what site they previously came from, what search terms they used to reach the website, and which pages they visited the most.

Here are five points to consider as you start delving into the numbers:

1. Do your website visitors already know you? The whole point of the website is to link you with potential new customers who have never heard of your business, not people who may be merely looking up your address. A well-designed website should only have a small percentage of visitors, maybe 5 percent, who have used the company’s name to find it.

2. Are you bringing in potential customers? Let’s say you’re a tennis gear provider. People who find your website searching for “tennis” probably aren’t going to help you. They likely won’t help you if they searched for “tennis racket.” You want the people who searched for “Dunlop tennis rackets,” or better yet “Dunlop Aerogel Titan.” They know what they want, and they will buy from you if you’re offering the best deal.

3. Does your social media presence work? If you spend 10 percent of your online marketing efforts on social media and 25 percent of your website visits come from Facebook or Twitter, you’re in good shape. Better yet, you can set up goal scenarios through Google Analytics. A goal might be that you want people to come from Twitter to see a post on your site that links to a promotional offer. You can then tweet the promotion and see how many people follow the path.

4. Are visitors bailing from your homepage? Google Analytics tells you your homepage’s bounce rate, the percentage of homepage visitors who never clicked on additional pages. If the bounce rate is more than 60 to 70 percent, you have a problem. The search terms your visitors are using to find the site tell you whether they’re the people you want. If they are the right type of visitors and they aren’t delving deeper into the site, then the blame goes on the homepage. It might not look professional, its content might not be compelling or the website might simply be confusing.

5. Are they looking at your product or service pages? The website is supposed to generate sales or interest in your services. If website visitors aren’t looking at the pages that allow this to happen, then your homepage is not doing its job. The homepage should be divided into decision-making paths that quickly separate visitors by their interests and lead them to the information they are looking for.

Most of all, don’t be intimidated by the analytics. Get your feet wet and decide what you really want. These numbers are the key to finding out whether your website is effectively generating business.

Twitter’s international reach is reflected in its top trending news topics for the first half of 2011. Among them: Egypt’s revolution, the fighting in Libya, the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and the British royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. The site also published a much lower-brow list of 2011′s trending topics in pop culture, such as Rebecca “Friday” Black and Charlie Sheen. Twitter did not say if its users are tweeting more often or whether the surge in tweets is simply just a reflection of more people signing up. Twitter is estimated to have more than 200 million users. In a post celebrating its fifth birthday in March, Twitter said that close to 500,000 new accounts are created every day.

Why do nicer restaurants have a no free refill policy on soft drinks? This is a question that has perplexed me for years. [I know, this is a deviation from the normal post you find on my blog, but in a way, it is business, if not web, related].

I often order a soft drink when I go out to eat, sometimes tea, but more often just Coke. And it has been my experience, having lived all over the United States, that I will have free refills. Seriously, how often do you order a Coke and ask, “Are the refills free?” I was eating dinner this evening with my wife, at what I would consider “a nice restaurant” called Libby Montana, located in Mequon/Thiensville, Wisconsin. Mequon is considered to be a  nicer or up-scale suburb of Milwaukee with a lot of nice and higher-end restaurants and shops.

We have eaten at several restaurants in Mequon recently and over my lifetime I have eaten at dozens of “nice” or “fancy” restaurants and the one thing that I have noticed is, in many cases, they typically have a no free refills on soft drinks policy.

Growing up, my parents were business owners, and I have been in management in the food service/restaurants a few times.  I understand business and the cost/price markup profit factor of what goes into the price of the food you order and why it costs what it costs.  Restaurants, as in any business, are there to make money. I realize this.

Typically, you get less food at a nicer restaurant than you do at other restaurants. But it’s the ambiance, the quality of the food and the expertise of the chef that all factor in to the higher price you pay.  Having graduated with a minor in business, I have also learned when it comes to business and marketing: That a higher price gives the illusion of value.  In tests, when given the option of three similar things to buy, consumers feel they have a better product simply based on the higher cost. The higher cost gives the product a higher perceived worth, even though the 3 items themselves may be similar or even exactly the same. So the price you see on the menu matters, its not just profit, it’s for appearance and perception as well, believe that.

But we all know what a soft drink is worth. Do we really think we are getting a better Coke or a better Sprite if the cost is $4.00 or they charge for refills?

So now comes my question:  Why then do nicer or fancier restaurants not offer free soft drink refills like their lower cost restaurant cousins?

Thinking back to my managerial days in restaurants, I know what it costs a restaurant to serve a soft drink from a fountain.  Usually, it costs the restaurant more for the cup, lid, straw, pressurized soda water and ice than it does for the syrup in the soft drink.  And with all of that added up, it still only costs the restaurant pennies per drink. And with a restaurant contracting with a particular beverage company and brand, the company will give the restaurant the syrup and other logoed supplies for free if they order a certain amount.  And for restaurants that use plastic or glass cups that can be washed (recycled and used by many customers), the cost is often free to the restaurant for serving that soft drink that ends up costing the consumer $2.00-$3.00.

This evening, I paid $2.50 for a Mountain Dew at Libby Montana.  It was served in a large plastic Pepsi logoed cup (something often given to the restaurant by the soft drink brand for free just for promoting their brand).  During the middle of our dinner, I asked for a refill and was abruptly told, “We charge for refills on soft drinks, is that ok?”  I declined and told her I was fine with water for the rest of the meal.

So why does this bother me? I don’t know. I am not a socialist and I am not suggesting it should be mandatory for restaurants to offer me free refills every where I eat. They can charge whatever they want. But the thing is, after going to one of these restaurants that don’t offer free soft drink refills, I won’t go back, regardless of the food (which was great, by the way). It just irks me for some reason. It cheapens the restaurant somehow for me. And if I ever did go back, I would only order water.  But I guess enough people do pay and that is the reason they keep the policy I guess.  They justify it some way, and that is fine with me.  But it is perplexing to me. Why do they do it? They give free coffee refills, free tea refills (both of which cost the restaurant more than soft drinks and produce less profit).

Can it be mere economics? Do they need to charge for each refill to make a certain profit margin? Is the customer traffic at a higher-end restaurant less than that of a lower-end restaurant? Is the rent higher? Thus the need to find a profit wherever they can? But if it’s only economics, the profit on a soft drink is upwards of a 1000% even with multiple free refills.

The thing is, when I go to restaurants I assume that soft drinks have free refills, just like water, coffee or tea (in most regards). I just wonder, what’s their point? Why do they do it? Is it appearances, is it economics? What?

Am I cheap? I don’t think so. I mean its only a few dollars. But I think of it this way: I would venture that 95%-99% of sit down restaurants offer free refills for soft drinks.  When the server asks you for drink order and you order a soft drink, you assume refills are free.  I feel like it’s false advertising. It seems to cheapen the restaurant for me. I look at the menu, and they don’t go out of their way to advertise this fact that they charge. Does it really make it seem like a nicer restaurant that they charge me for it? I don’t know.

If it is so common for soft drinks to have free refills at most sit-down restaurants you visit, it makes me wonder why nicer restaurants don’t.

Libby Montana Website

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

Favicon

A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your website. Some browsers pick up the favicon if you save it in your root directory as favicon.ico, but to be sure it’s picked up all the time, include the following in your head.

And if you have an iPhone favicon:

Titles And Meta Data

Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.

Meta description and keyword tags aren’t as important for SEO (at least for the major search engines anyway), but it’s still a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.

Cross-Browser Checks

Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

Proofread

Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

Links

Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention.

Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. Don’t underline text that isn’t a link because it will confuse users. And what happens to visited links?

Functionality Check

Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use your website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

Graceful Degradation

Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox. Test your forms to make sure they still perform server-side validation checks, and test any cool AJAX stuff you have going on.

Validation

You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors. Common gotchas include no “alt” tags, no closing tags and using “&” instead of “&” for ampersands.

RSS Link

If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.

Put this code between your <head> tags.

Analytics

Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1. Google Analytics is a free favorite among website owners. Others to consider are Clicky, Kissmetrics, Mint and StatCounter.

Sitemap

Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you. After creating the file, upload it to your root directory so that its location is www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you use WordPress, install the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, which automatically updates the sitemap when you write new posts. Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

Defensive Design

The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist. Get your users back on track by providing a useful 404 page that directs them to the home page or suggests other pages they may be interested in.

Another defensive design technique is checking your forms for validation. Try submitting unusual information in your form fields (e.g. lots of characters, letters in number fields, etc.) and make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it.

Optimize

You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too. Reducing HTTP requests, using CSS sprites wherever possible, optimizing images for the Web, compressing JavaScript and CSS files and so on can all help load your pages more quickly and use less server resources.

Besides, depending on the publishing engine that you are using, you may need to consider taking more specific measures – for instance, if you are using WordPress, you may need to consider useful caching techniques to speed up the performance.

Back Up

If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install WordPress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet

If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet. Also, certain CSS elements, such as floats, don’t come out well when printed.

To point to a special CSS style sheet that computers automatically use when users print a page, simply include the following code between your <head> tags.

• Printing The Web: Solutions and Techniques
• A List Apart: Going to print

Download the Ultimate Website Launch Checklist!

Just recently Dan Zambonini has published a very detailed checklist that covers both the pre-launch and the post-launch phase of the web site life cycle. Among other things his Ultimate Website Launch Checklist contains checks related to content and style, standards and validation, search engine visibility, functional testing, security/risk, performance and marketing.

The pdf-version is available as well. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released.

You may also want to consider the Quick Usability Check List by David Leggett that highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts. Not all of these items will apply to every website, these are just suggested things to look for in your own site design.

What other checks would you list?

Make yourself a to-do list and keep it handy to check over before making any website live. Are there any other points you would add? Share them in the comments!

There certainly is! Here are the top five ways you can strengthen your site and increase your online visibility.

1. Strong Hosting

This first point is mostly important for those who don’t have their own Website yet but eagerly want to create one. After you have selected your domain name, the next step is to choose a hosting plan. There are many good, affordable alternatives, but what professionals usually recommend is specialized blog hosting. This form of Web hosting allows you to set up a professional-looking Website in no time at all. Why is this important to mention when it comes to making your site more popular? Well, without strong hosting, you won’t be able to handle a traffic to your new Website, which means you’ll have no chance at all of becoming well liked.

Of course, finding strong hosting is often easier said than done. The hosting industry has grown very popular in recent years, and this has lead to large numbers of companies offering various hosting services. But don’t be fooled by their tricky ways of making it sound as if they are the best in the industry. We would recommend you partner up with a company that has a strong reputation and experience in the business. You might start at Web Hosting Search for reviews and other information to help you find the right fit.

When it comes to hosting, you should compare the different features included with the plan. Make sure you are guaranteed at least 99.9% uptime and that customer support is easy to get hold of. You never know when you could need them. Likewise, it is also good to know exactly what kind of numbers in terms of disc space and bandwidth will you be allowed to use and manage. Some providers also forbid their clients to upload music or video files to their servers even if it is for personal use. It’s important to ask customer support to resolve such issues before purchasing a plan. Some other things you might consider asking are whether your domain name registry information will be protected and how many different e-mail accounts will you be allowed to use as part of the hosting agreement.

2. Optimize Your Website

In order to be truly successful online, you will have to get a high ranking in search engines. To succeed in this, you should learn as much as you possibly can about search engine optimization (SEO). The subject of SEO is vast and can be quite daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to see the benefits immediately and will probably wonder why you didn’t get started with it earlier. A few things you can do to get started are to make sure you’re using the proper keywords and to write for your visitors as well as for search engines. Writing for search engines is important, since you want to get high rankings, and writing for visitors is of the essence because you want them to stick around and return to your Website.

When you are satisfied with the keywords and content on your site, it is time to start working with link building. Search engines determine much of the value of a certain page/site by looking at the number of inbound links. Link exchange is one of the most popular and successful ways to get a good rank on search engines, and it’s really easy to do. Simply visit a Website that you like and ask the Webmaster if they are interested in a link exchange — it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Having something interesting and distinctive on your page is a great way to attract potential link partners. For example, if you are running a Website about domain names, why not add a domain name availability checker to your homepage? It will most likely attract links from other sites related to the niche, and people will tend to come back again if they want to know whether a domain is available or not. Try to be extra creative to set yourself apart from competitors.

3. Take Advantage of Social Media Optimization

Even though SEO should be a big part of your site optimization, it shouldn’t end there. Social Media Optimization is probably just as important, since it’s one of the strongest marketing tools available today. A social media optimization campaign should include a few different things. First, make sure the content on your site or blog is relevant to your topic and not out of date. Visit similar sites and join the discussion in leaving comments on posts/articles — don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind. Make yourself visible on Facebook and MySpace. Three other sites that can be useful for social media optimization are Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The two latter ones are not always applicable. Make sure you only take advantage of them when the time is right — you might do more harm than good if you don’t.

Obviously, don’t forget to include outbound links to your Website on any social media site you utilize. Even if your link has a “nofollow” attribute attached to it (e.g. like in Facebook), you will still attract new visitors and potential customers to the site. Lastly, your campaign should be built on friendly platforms, such as CoffeeCup Flash™ Blogger, which make it easy to create and edit content.

4. Get Your Visitors Involved

A crucial point to make your site grow in the number of visitors is by getting them involved. Try to write in a personal style, and don’t be afraid to leave an open question. If this shouldn’t do it, why not hold a contest? This will most likely get people talking about your site. The prize doesn’t have to cost a fortune, since people like to compete regardless of what the award is — it’s human nature.

Other easy ways of getting your visitors involved is by including a forum on your site or the possibility to comment on your posts/articles. Everyone wants to express their own personal ideas and thoughts on topics, and by allowing them doing so, you also increase the chance of visitors returning to see how was their feedback appreciated. As an added bonus, if the topic is extra popular, the discussion could attract interest from other Websites as well!

5. Emphasize Usability in Your Design

Investing in a good design is more important than some people seem to think. With a beautiful design, you will grow in trust among your readers/visitors. An important fact to remember is not over-designing the Website. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve put into designing the site if no one understands how to use it. Let some non-Internet-savvy friends navigate through your Website before launching it at a full scale. If they find it easy, so will the rest of your visitors.

It is difficult to say exactly what makes a beautiful and functional design. What looks good to one person might seem terrible for another. However, there are basic trends in Web design, and if you follow these, you can be sure to please most of your visitors. A few popular Web design trends for 2009 are multi-column layouts, large illustrations, and lots of white space.

If you wish to stay on the safe side, then it is a good call to make the layout and design features on the page easily accessible and simple to understand. Try to use standard coding and avoid over-the-top Flash animations. Some people may have browser settings that prevent them from viewing Flash, which means you might lose valuable visitors. Try to think how the visitor thinks, and your Website will grow more popular and respected day after day.

Here are some quick tips on what you can do to your website to take advantage of the holiday shopping season:

• Update your home page or news items.
• Check your analytics for what people are searching on and blog/write about that.
• Change your logo to something more festive.
• Add new images to the site or change up the background image.
• Offer a special deal if people sign up for your e-newsletter.
• Cut pricing on items or give something extra for 1 day (i.e. Cyber Monday) (and this assumes your website already gets good traffic).
• Give away a free sample of your products or services.
• Offer a small gift with any order if people purchase during December.

It’s nice to wrap up the year with a bang. Be creative. Ask your customers what they want (put a poll on your website or e-newsletter) and then respond accordingly. It’s a great time to take advantage of and hopefully makes your website a success that will grow into the next year.

Then we usually go and start worrying about how to make that content easy to share, how to provide valuable information, how to engage readers and so on to make it even harder.

How do you write your content? There are just too many things to consider…

1. What’s The Goal?

Yes, you can write a post with a specific goal in mind. If you have been blogging for a while, you should know already what kind of content to write in order to achieve different objectives by observing the impact on your previous content.

Your own experience will actually tell you how to write a popular post that gets tons of love from Twitter or provide a powerful list of resources to get Delicious bookmarks like it’s 1,999. Write a controversial piece to fire up massive comments or simply answer a very specific question in your niche to build trust.

Know what you want the outcome to be before you start typing. If you’re fairly new and have no experience in how your content behaves, take a shot. Dare to try things and observe the impact.

2. Research

It is very important that you’re not just repeating what someone else already said. Most of the time this happens not because we’re trying to copy other people but due to our lack of research. A simple search on Google and Twitter will give you a pretty good picture of what has been said around that topic.

Research will give you a better idea of where you stand and how to approach the topic.

3. Your 2 Cents

Chances are there is already some content published on the same topic you’re writing about, that’s fine as long as you’re adding to the conversation. Again, focus on answering questions that are still open, disagree, do something but add your 2 cents. Don’t make people leave your post with a sense of “being there, done that…”

Kick it up a notch and reference the previous material and then take the discussion further. In other words, provide value or die!

4. Be Yourself

The beauty about blogging is that you have become the publisher, the content creator. Remember that when you’re writing a piece of content.

There are two common thoughts:

• One is trying to write like somebody else. There are some awesome writers out there BTW… but you should try to bring out your own personality in your content. People will eventually see that and maybe recognize it as your writing style.
• The other one is the world famous “finding your own voice”. Great, but sometimes we force the situation and end up with a final product that doesn’t represent who you are.

Being yourself when you write content should be a natural process.

5. Forget The Search Engines

There is a lot to chew on this topic but I’ll give you the quick version. Do you write for search performance or do you write for your readers?

This is just my humble opinion, forget the search engines when you’re writing and focus on communicating with human beings, robots don’t benefit from your content. Once you’re done, go back and optimize as much as possible but please stop as soon as you feel you’re starting to sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Seriously.

6. Clever Headline

Of course you heard this before, first the headline then the first paragraph and so on, that’s when the reader is sitting in front of your post. I also want you to take this in consideration…

Social media is an attraction tool and if you think about it, the only part of your content that makes it to Twitter, Facebook and the others is usually the headline. With the invention of the 140 characters, we are forced to allocate a little more time on crafting that headline.

Let me also point out that I said be clever. Sure, a cute headline will probably get you that click but if there’s no meat on the other side, you’ll also get the visitor to bounce.

7. Never In First Person

The focus of the post should be on others, not yourself. Nobody cares about you (sorry…). People care about getting their needs covered and their questions answered.

A good exercise to accomplish that is to prohibit yourself from writing in first person.

8. Make It Fun To Read

People love when you throw in a little humor or use some sarcasm here and there, without being obnoxious of course. There are bloggers that get away with lots of this stuff, in fact, people can’t get enough of them, but this is not always the case.

This should start with you, if you’re not having fun writing it, this most likely reflect on the post. Do your readers a favor and lighten up a little =)

9. Provide Resources

Don’t be afraid to share links to other people, specially if somebody else has written a great post on something related to your topic. This is not only appreciated by your readers but it builds relationships with other bloggers.

Besides, links is the name of the game baby…

10. Examples

Use lots of real-life examples to illustrate your point. You can even point out people as case studies. This makes for a more entertaining read and allows people to see how a concept works in the real world.

Metaphors can also get you home if you can’t find a good example.

11. Images

It might not be considered as important but I gotta be honest and say that I put some time and thought into getting photography for the post. Having a bad image (you’ve seen those blurry old images…) on your post will damage your chances of a good first impression.

There is a lot of good content you can use for free on sites such as Flickr but if you want to step up your game, paid services are also available and for a buck or two you’ll have your post looking like a million dollars.

2 quick tips on the use of images:

• Optimize for web so it doesn’t affect your loading times while it still a good quality.
• Optimize for search engines. For example, change the name from “DC_10112009.png” to “specific name of what the image is.png”

12. Get Rid Of The Clutter

After you finish writing your post, strip it down. Eliminate the fluff. Thank you!

Find simpler ways of getting your point across. Get rid of all the unnecessary wording we sometimes use trying to sound smarter or because we feel the post is too short.

Don’t be afraid, people appreciates the simplicity in reading.

13. Hand It To The Reader

Finish with a call to action. What do you want from the reader? If you want the reader to participate in the conversation by leaving a comment, then ask for it. Sometimes we complain because we get no interaction from readers but we fail to open a forum to discuss the topic. Leave some room for people to add their thoughts.

Here is an idea: Invite people to disagree with you!

Your Turn Now…

As I said, these are some considerations I take when writing a post and thought of sharing them with you, feel free to share your process.

Happy writing.