Tag: word choice

Website writing: maximizing SEO

04/04/2011

Bright ideas aren't always good for SEO

When it comes to website writing, sometimes it’s better to be boring. And in boring, I really mean, don’t get too carried away with your creativity, especially when it comes to titles.

Search engines are not built to accommodate creativity. The only goal of a search engine is to connect a person with the information they are looking for and one of the main ways Google and Yahoo do this is through titles.

The words in a title are key to making sure the information you’re posting connects with the people who want to read it. The best way to come up with a good title is to think about what people searching for this type of information would type in to find it and then use those very same words in the title.

I still catch myself writing overly creative titles, it’s not always easy to be boring. For example, even for this post I had the original title as “Website writing: when boring is better.” But no one is going to go to Google and type in “boring is better.” Hence the change to “Website writing: maximizing SEO.” There is a very good chance people will type in “SEO,” “website writing” or all three.

For those bemoaning the loss of creative titles remember, there’s not much point in writing if no one can find what you wrote. Save your creativity for the post or your website content, but keep the titles as straight forward as possible because it’s your best chance of maximizing SEO and being found.

Word choice in a personal essay

03/09/2011

Image credit: east718

When in doubt, stick to words you would use when writing a term paper. That means avoiding words like awesome, rad, or gnarly. Definitely don’t use words or phrases associated with the “valley girl” talk of the 80’s. Not only is it no longer timely, but annoying.

Also, avoid using these words in cover letters or professional correspondence. Something to keep in mind down the road when applying for a job. Awesome, rad, or gnarly doesn’t exactly convey professional job seeker.

And even more important than word choice, never use an emoticon to convey a sentiment in a personal essay. Never. This also applies to cover letters and job related emails, just don’t do it. It’s comes across as unprofessional and weird.