May I have your attention please !!

THIS IS MY EXPERIENCE WITH CONTENT WRITING ASSIGNMENT THAT I WAS GIVEN.

Do not have the attention: Sometime writers’ intention becomes less relevant than readers attention for content. Take for example when the reader is searching for any sightseeing or travel destination for Germany or other than Singapore. Even if I write one of the best contents for Singapore, as the travel destination, but the possibility of reader/s interested in my content is very rare. But if I have the content which has the best travel destination keywords used it will certainly, to some extent, increase the readers’ possible visiting my blog even if he is not interested. Many times the reader is not alert about his search and may get routed to other interest that he is not in.  At the most even if he is not interested in visiting Singapore, but still the content may impress him and may contact you for more relevant information requirement. 

I may not purposely use the keywords during my pre-writing session but during my copy writing session I will try to implement it as Google search engine will search each word from the query the reader is searching for and if any of the word is found in my content, it will get listed. 

What would you do? How much is the reader interested in reading long sentences, as long as he is not reading a speech? And we are not giving any speech though we are giving information in an interesting and funny way. Even the novelist writes shorter sentences. Whenever you are travelling long distances without any halt, you’re travelling becomes boring and exhausting but if you enjoy it by taking small halts, enjoying the scenery and around sights  it will be fun.

 In a single paragraph of 4-5 lines having 2 sentences makes the readers read it faster skipping the un-interested items. With longer sentences the reader will not read it but will scan it. The research shows that people can read one single wide column faster than multiple columns, but they prefer multiple columns.

It’s a quandary: Do you give people what they prefer or go against their own preference and intuition, knowing that they will read faster if you use a longer line length and one column?

What would you do?

 Unconscious: Did you recently purchased something like television set, a camera or a car or anything that you do not buy it very often? I recently got a camera only because I was going on vacation. My budget was 7000 however I purchased one costing 14000. I was very impressed with the quality of the pics and its functionality. Whenever you want to buy anything, you do some homework based on various factors that strikes you such as cost effective and efficiency, technology, etc. However these are the factors are there in your brain which weighs them to the relevant purchase and you purchase it. However these are the factors that you are aware of but not conscious. If we put forth other factors that a reader may not be aware of, he may consider them and this will make him visit the blog. 

I will write all the factors, at least try to, in various paragraphs with bold font. So that whenever the reader is not aware of any of the factor and catches his attention to a particular one that he is not aware of, that paragraph will make my reader read. I will try to do my home work whenever I am writing any blog. I will become myself conscious about the subject.

Memories: Research has shown that memories are not like the one we all store our computer files in hard drive. But they are reconstructed each time we see, hear, smell, touch or even taste it. Lets concentrate on seeing. Try this. “I appreciate your reading” and “I love your reading”. Even if the context of “appreciation” and “love” are totally different but they do make an impact and people can recall the memories when they read a word or a paragraph in a blog. We do not want to change the context of the subject but why not try to change the words that we write. May be that will also increase our clicks. What wrong when we write 2-5 words out of the context of the subject.

Google: Did you ever wonder what if Google is not there or Google site is down for 3 working days? What I am trying to say is we generally tend to SEARCH out what we want and spend more time in digging further for the interesting things rather than what was suppose to, except when technical or something urgent needs to be searched. Human mind cannot ignore what interests him/her. You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. May be that is the reason for Google, Facebook, Twitter for their popularity.  

A drug is also called as medicine and also referred as cocaine

        

        Colors: What are the other things that makes the readers are more interested or fascinating? What about the background color and foreground or font color. Try with different colors and see the effect.

        

        Choices: People want to have multiple choices. Taking a simple example of shopping and you enter a shop where there are only few items and you tend to lose interest in that shop. Now you enter a mall where you have multiple items with multiple varieties and your will forget what actually you have planned to buy. So having multiple choices makes interesting? No they actually found a different style altogether with what they intend to buy. And that’s what we should make them click. During my email campaign, I was trying to run around the subject, not very away though, instead of writing what the actual subject was. I see it as “HYPNOTIZING”.

Just watch the video and work it yourself. 

It’s not easy: How often do you watch serials or movies or news on television. Mostly does but how often do you ignore the advertisements. I ignore all of them provided that they are very funny or new. We have lot many choices given the fact that there are very channels are even known to us even for their existence. It is very difficult to hold the viewers to channels or to advertisement.  

Unless I do not write humor I will tend to lose the possibility of reader reading the blog; commenting on my blog is very far. 

How to make them visit: Many times it is said that you should minimize the number of clicks that the user do. Leave the technical calculations aside but still if the clicking is something creative and informative readers tend to click it. But why to count the number of clicks if the users are willing to make that unless and until they find the right information? So it’s just the matter that how do you present. Many times I feel that we should coordinate with the web designers to present the information. 

I will definitely co-ordinate with the web designers to make a awesome presentation.

“I am not sure”: Once I was discussing about the content that I wrote. It was the second change effect that we were reviewing. He was not certain which one was the better. There was a dead silence for few seconds and me and the designer looked at each other and spontaneously the word came out of me that “Hey you know what we should try another one”. I am sure he must have jumped off his seat saying “yes” almost 3-4 times. What I am trying to say that when they are not confident about something and they get a supporting hand they became confident. Whenever I finished my writings in office, I generally leave it as it is and review it for next 2-3 days. Every day my mind has different perception.

Few things that I personally started doing are observation. Whenever I go shopping say for shoes and I mention my requirements that I want casuals with size 8. The sales person shows me some which are available at his store, some are branded and some are not. Initially I look for the branded one that does not attracts me. Then I looked for some different kind of shoe that was in display.  

It’s all about the equation that you should work. 

I will be writing more when I will be reading more on it. What else, I feel like writing for audience is like feeding a baby who do not like what is being given. In such cases what do you think that you do to make the baby to eat it?

May I have your attention please !!!!!

Before writing we, technical writers, analyze the audience. His/her technical level what I mean. But how true it is that we are not creating any interest what the readers want to read. True that we are not writing any novel or blog but at least try to create some amount of curiosity in the readers. What I believe is whatever we write should sound interesting, funny or curious no matter what and where, field I mean, are we  writing. We may not all the time do technical writing or content writing or blogging so why not keep the same blood for all of them, at least for some time on experiment basis and see the difference. Reading is entertainment, gaining knowledge, so let’s try to make it funny, curious. There is at least no harm in trying though I am not advocating doing so mandatory.

Do not have the attention: When we do content writing does not always mean that people are going to read, at least all of it. They are more interested in “their interest” rather than “my intention” of writing. Take for example, you write something on the page with few images here and there and even a scrolling text. Ask any one to look at it and ask to make a guess what it’s only a matter of seconds that the reader will let you know. And then you will also know what the reader exactly wants, something good, something interesting, in the page that he desires. Now make some amount of text change, not with the start but with the middle or the ending part of the content. Ask the same reader to read it again and he may not find any change.   

 

Or ask the reader to have a look at the website and let know what the interesting thing in the website is. Now you will make the change at two things, one which interest him/her and another one a general one. Let him view it once again and when he is finish his inspection he/she may not notice the general change but will notice the change that interested the reader. Though this is more appropriate with page or website building but I think content can also be camouflaged.

What would you do? Whenever the reader starts reading the sentence reader generally does the guess work what the writer is going to write, I mean the reader is with the flow as long as the sentences has something interesting but the movement he loses the interest reader may quit reading further and there is a possibility that you may just go on writing and that does not mean anything to them.

Many of you must have been confused while reading it concentrating more on grammar rather than the subject and not read the whole line. Audience tends to lose interest reading longer sentences. They prefer shorter one. They like it. Like just what I did. 100 characters per sentence and the graph of reading go down. 45-75 is acceptable.

Now writing in columns is another challenge. Suppose you have a single wide column with longer sentences. Break them down in 2-3 columns with shorter sentences and try to avoid something like half of the word in upper sentences and half of it to the next line. People read faster with single wide column and with multiple or even 2 columns we are forcing them to stop reading faster. Fast reading lets them know the future of the sentence structure and least make them read. But try to write in multiple columns. Even if they switch to columns without completely reading it, they won’t understand where they missed something. One simple thing: do you prefer what they want to read and you write what and how you want to write. You can always write what you want but also what the readers want to read. It’s just the matter of placing the words.

Forget it: People tend to forget things after about 20 seconds. If they try to remember, they hold on to it in groups. We also should try to write that way. New group new paragraph. Because if at all they want to re-call what they were reading previously they remember the paragraph location and you make their life easy.

Perspective: While reading people tend to make imaginations. So its fairly simple to write what the readers would be imagining. Of course the imagination will differ but what I mean is on an average. Various people will have various imagination. So why not change the perspective of the readers what they imagine. For blogging or doing content writing this can make a very good difference. 

Unconscious: Are you buying a television set? What comes to your mind, ratings, price, brand, quality, suitability. Even if you want to think consciously you may not able to but you can make the readers to do that. What else advertise your shop on internet saying that we give a month or a weekends trail free, want to negotiate with price with highest quality and see you will have maximum customers clicking your website. Even if you think that ratings, price etc are the conscious decisions making factors but they are not. They are the common factors that come to mind and you may unconsciously make the decisions. Our mind is filled with the data that we read, reading that may come “sometimes” or “often”. Do not evolve something irrational or bad amid efforts to create consciousness. Trust me while watching the television how many times do we really care about advertisement except for those who are funny and hilarious. It’s difficult to engage the readers to keep them on reading unless you are a very good writer and the reader is not so good forget about making them click your site. Write something unique and different but not irrelevant. 

Memories: Research has shown that memories are not like the one we all do storing the files in the hard drive. But they are reconstructed each time we see, hear, smell, touch or even taste it. Lets concentrate on seeing. Try this. I appreciate your reading. I love your reading. Even if the context of “appreciation” and “love” are totally different but they do make an impact and people can recall the memories when they read a word or a paragraph or even a blog. We do not want to change the context of the subject but why not try to change the words that we write. May be that will also increase our clicks. What wrong when we write 2-5 words out of the context of the subject. 

Google: Did you ever wonder what if Google is not there? Or worst Google site is down for 3 working days? What I am trying to say is we generally tend to SEARCH out what we want and spend more time when we find something interesting other than what we were searching. Human mind cannot ignore what interests him/her. You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. May be that is the reason for Google, Facebook, Twitter or maybe you can discover something sometime.  

A drug is a drug or cocaine and a medicine is also called as drug.

       Colors: What are the other things that makes the readers are more interested or fascinating? What about the background color and foreground or font color. Try with different colors and see the effect.

 

       Choices: People want to have multiple choices. Taking a simple example of shopping and you enter a shop where there are only few items and you tend to lose interest in that shop. Now you enter a mall where you have multiple items with multiple varieties and your will forget what actually you have planned to buy. So having multiple choices makes interesting? No they actually found a different style altogether with what they had thought to buy. And that’s what we should make them click. During my email campaign, I was also trying to run around the subject, not very away though, instead of writing what the actual subject was. I see it as “HYPNOTIZING”. 

Habitual:  just watch the video and work it you self. 

It’s not easy: To make the readers to read text is very difficult task. How to do it? Break the writings into groups, as discussed earlier, or into chunks, use easy readable fonts, make some funny backgrounds, use icons or images in between, add some personal experience  in form of humor.

I will be writing more when I will be reading more on it. What else I feel like writing for audience is like feeding a baby who do not like what is being given. In such cases what do you think that you do to make the baby to eat it?

9 Easy tips for Search Engine Optimization for business

I was talking with my boss and he was asking why that our website is not listed when anybody Google’s for payroll. I said I have no idea. Do something he said and asked me to research where the problem is. Then the idea strikes me of Google Search engine optimization. The contents that I have understood from Google documents, I am sharing with you.

1.     Title Tag of HTML

Title of the HTML page is important. It acts as a first-point-of-contact as the search engine targets the HTML tag first. The content of the tag will be the first thing that will be displayed during the search whenever the user is typing as page title contents are displayed in search results. This will help the users to decide whether the displaying webpage URL and its tag text are relevant to the search or not. As Google is using the AJAX technology, it will hit the page and come back with the URL and along with some information. Some basic information like the location or any offerings that the company may be offering should be provided.

Best thing to do:

Avoid:

v  Leaving the title of the page as “NewPage1”, “Untitled”, or “product/project name”.

v  Choosing that has not relevance with the content of the page.

v  Using the same page title for all the pages of your website.

v  Using the heavy words. Users type easy words for quick search.

v  Using too much description. The level of too much is not known but one should decide on that based on experience. Too lengthy and the SEO will take the partial of it and may leave the important thing to catch. Construct the description that you have in mind and keep on hitting the description until it reaches to 3-4 words. The purpose of this activity will be to keep the sound of original description that you want but reducing the words weightage.

It’s just the overview and not the brief overview.

2.     Meta tag of HTML

       Even though you have limited your business description to say 3-4 words and still you feel that you need to add summary so that the SEO scope of search will increase, use the Meta tag. In Meta tag, one can describe the business in 7-8 words and maximum one paragraph. Here you can use the Google webmaster content analysis section. This section will help you to analyze whether the content of Meta tag is too long, short or repetitive. As Google uses them as the snippet. If the title tag matches with the users query the description text will also be referred and displayed to make users more comfortable to search. There is another part in doing so, as Google implements Open Directory Project (ODP), a list of internet links volunteered and list further organized by the categories. If the snippet is not matching with the users query it refers to ODP. Also if the snippet is matching then whatever text is matching in Meta tag will be displayed in bold letters. The Webmaster Central Blog has an informative post on improving the snippet. So if the description is matching or interesting to the users, without going any further directly will go to your website.

Best thing to do:

Avoid:

v  Copy-paste the whole content of the website.

v  Putting the generic description like “About sports” or “My first page/ this are the webpage.”

It’s not the overview but the brief overview.

3.     URL

After the title & Meta tag of the HTML pages, we will see now about the URL’s. I guess one must know what is URL but still, it’s the (wwwDOTwebsitenameDOTcom) that is known as URL. I won’t go into technical details about it but it’s important in this context as the URL’s are displayed in the search.

       Whenever the user is querying on Google, simultaneously the URL is also displayed. If the URL is not user friendly the user will lose the interest. As the related part of the URL will also interest the user so it is recommended that you need to have a friendly URL.

       A URL like http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1, is much less appealing to users. This doesn’t look professional and audience or the user will lose the interest looking at the URL.

       Another thing, use “rel” attributes. What happens is your site may have advertisement, blogs and you do not want to get judged based on the comments of the blogs or rated based on the business advertisement. Considering the fact of security on web you do not want your site to be named as SPAMMY.

This advice also goes for other areas of your site that may involve user-generated content, such as guestbook’s, forums, shout-boards, referrer listings, etc. Using the rel attribute will tell the Google certain things NOT to be followed.

Best thing to do:

Avoid:

v  Avoid using lengthy URL’s

v  Do not parameterize the URL’s with session id or folder name or path.

v  Using underscores instead use hyphen.

v  Using the domain name and sub-domain names in the URL.

v  Using the capital letters in the URL.

v  Using bad directory structure. Do not use root >> dir1 >> dir2.

v  Prepare two site maps, one for the user and one for the SE. To learn more about the site map, Google provides the user guide to site map.

v  Occurring a 404 page error. Construct a customized error page or redirect the user to main page, in case the user deletes some part of the URL.

4.     Creating quality content

Creating quality content is more compelling than any of the factors discussed so far. The contents are displayed once the user is finished with the query-writing in Google. The user has the choice to make from various websites that are displayed along with the content. So the content of the website should also have jargons, buzz words, security implications of the website, awards, etc. One of the most important thing here is the content should also be latest and not outdated. It should have the latest keywords that are in the market. Google AdWords provides a handy Keyword Tool that helps you discover new keyword variations and see the approximate search volume for each keyword

Best thing to do:

Avoid:

v  Making grammatical mistakes.

v  Making length sentences which will confuse the user with the subject matter. Try breaking the sentences into smaller parts.

v  Publishing with what you have written in First-go. Do copy writing before publishing.

v  Writing unnecessary non-subject matters.  Write relative.

v  Writing for the SEO but target the users.

5.     Anchor text

Even though you have a URL with www.example.com, cover the URL with an eye-catching text. Links to your page will be internal but the user is not interested in the URL rather than his own interest.

Best thing to do:

Avoid:

v  Using “Page”, “article”, or “click here”. Describe it, so that user does not waste his time and energy on it.

v  Using too long text or too short text. Use descriptive but not too length enough so the URL becomes one liner.

6.     Images

Agreed that pictures speak more than words but not always. Not always it’s recommended that you use the images. That will make the website bulky and will take time to load and this all will attract the user to let the website load and visit other available sites. And if they found the information in other websites that they are looking for, even though your site has it, you may lose the possible customer. Make use of images whenever it’s very essential or will make the difference. Store the images in the separate image folder of the directory structure. It’s also possible that the images may not be displayed or may take time and time consuming site may lead to “Time out connection”.

Even though sometimes when the images cannot be avoided, use the “alt” attribute of the image. Even if the image is not loading and the entire site is loaded except an image, alternative text will be displayed and increase the possibility to retain the tentative customer. Use commonly supported file types - Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It's also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the file type.

Best thing to do:

Avoid:

v  Using generic filenames like "image1.jpg", "pic.gif", "1.jpg" when possible—some sites with thousands of images might consider automating the naming of images.

v  Writing extremely lengthy filenames.

v  Stuffing keywords into alt text or copying and pasting entire sentences.

v  Writing excessively long alt text that would be considered spammy.

v  Using only image links for your site's navigation.

7.     Heading tags

Please do not mis-understand with head tag of HTTP tag. There are six sizes of heading tag starting with <h1> till <h6>. The top most heading tag will describe what will be content below it. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.

8.     Robot text

It may be possible that certain websites do not want some pages to be displayed during the search. I am talking about the sensitive data like the client information or list, accounts data etc. In such cases use the robot text method which will prevent the search engine to access those pages.

There are a handful of other ways to prevent content appearing in search results, such as adding "NOINDEX" to your robots Meta tag, using .htaccess to password protect directories, and using Google Webmaster Tools to remove content that has already been crawled. Google engineer Matt Cutts walks through the caveats of each URL blocking method in a helpful video. For more information on robots.txt, we suggest this Webmaster Help Center guide on using robots.txt files.

Use more secure methods for sensitive content.

You shouldn't feel comfortable using robots.txt to block sensitive or confidential material. One reason is that search engines could still reference the URLs you block (showing just the URL, no title or snippet) if there happen to be links to those URLs somewhere on the Internet (like referrer logs). Also, non-compliant or rogue search engines that don't acknowledge the Robots Exclusion Standard could disobey the instructions of your robots.txt. Finally, a curious user could examine the directories or subdirectories in your robots.txt file and guess the URL of the content that you don't want seen. Encrypting the content or password-protecting it with .htaccess are more secure alternatives.

9.     Mobile sites

Today world is moving very fast and shrinking as well making new challenges on their way. Users want to access the information from anywhere and anytime. After creating the site you come to know that you site is not visible on mobile phones. The reason could be many as mobiles come with different formats that you site may not support. Needs to consult with the experts if it so. Create a mobile site map and submit to Google using Google webmaster tool.

Some mobile sites refuse access to anything but mobile phones, making it impossible for Googlebot to access the site, and therefore making the site unsearchable. Our crawler for mobile sites is "Googlebot-Mobile". If you'd like your site crawled, please allow any User-agent including "Googlebot-Mobile" to access your site (2). You should also be aware that Google may change its User-agent information at any time without notice, so we don't recommend checking whether the User-agent exactly matches "Googlebot- Mobile" (the current User-agent). Instead, check whether the User-agent header contains the string "Googlebot-Mobile".

Once Googlebot-Mobile crawls your URLs, we then check for whether each URL is viewable on a mobile device. Pages we determine aren't viewable on a mobile phone won't be included in our mobile site index (although they may be included in the regular web index). This determination is based on a variety of factors, one of which is the "DTD (Doc Type Definition)" declaration. Check that your mobile-friendly URLs' DTD. If the declaration is in an appropriate mobile format such as XHTML Mobile or Compact HTML  If it's in a compatible format, the page is eligible for the mobile search index. For more information, see the Mobile Webmaster Guidelines.

ONE LAST THING:

Even after doing all or any of the above activity and still feel that your site is not listed properly make sure that Googlebot is the first thing to refer. From here onwards you will be able to trace where the actual problem exists.

Make use of free webmaster tools.

Google Webmaster Help Forum

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Website Optimizer