Click-Sniff-Click School of Documentation

Optimize Your Content for Search Engines

briant — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:22:41 +0000

Writing for Your Customers

An occasional series on writing for the average web site visitor.

When creating content for your web site, you want to optimize it so that your content will be readily found when users search for it.

Identify Relevant Keywords

While you are the expert in your products and services, it is helpful to think about it from a naive user’s point of view. What keywords are visitors likely to use in a search engine to find your site and a specific page? Avoid extremely generic or single keywords, like “property management.” Use at least two- or three-word combinations, for example, “Monterey property management,” or “Monterey real estate property management.”

If you are not sure what keywords to use, do some research using Google’s Keyword Tool. For example, if you enter “property management,” the Google tool shows that other keywords are also often used as search terms:

real estate property management
property management companies
real estate management
rental property management

These other keywords, because they are more specific, are more competitive niches for search.

Add Keywords to Your Content

Once you’ve identified your keywords, you want to add them to your page in the right places, and in the following order of importance.

Use a Keyword-rich Page Title

Your page titles should contain the most important 2-4 keywords for each page. The page title should also match any link to the page itself. This enriches the keyword density of your content. Keep titles unique and specific, so when bookmarked by visitors, it makes sense.
Put the keywords towards the beginning of your page title. The page title is ranked most heavily by most search engines. Remember, the customer may only see the first 15-20 characters in their bookmark list, so make the characters count.

Add Keywords to the Page Body

Use the keywords in the first and last sentence, and 2-3 more times throughout the body of your page. Add it again in the last paragraph. Recast the keywords using slight variations. For example, if your keywords are “Monterey property management company,” you might write, “[Your_Business_name] property management company in Monterey serves clients across the Monterey Peninsula…. We offer property management services include property maintenance, tenant management, rental and leasing, not only in Monterey, but Carmel, Pacific Grove, Seaside, and surrounding areas…. Our Monterey property management office offers full service to our customers so they never have to worry about a thing.”

Add Keywords to the META Description Field

Enter two- or three-word combinations of keywords in a sentence in the META Description field. This can be the first sentence in the body area of the page.

Add Keywords to the META Keywords Field

Enter two- or three-word combinations of keywords. Single keywords are too broad and do not work.

Meet Your Audiences’ Needs

briant — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:54:40 +0000

Writing for Your Customers

An occasional series on writing for the average web site visitor.

Keep Your Content Relevant

If any content might cause someone to think, ‘So what?’ get rid of it. Avoid obvioius information, like the name of the department, when it’s already clear.

Use Simple Language

Don’t use long words where short ones will do. You want to give your visitors information — make it easy for them. Avoid convoluted syntax, vocabulary that outsiders won’t understand, and over-use of acronyms.

Use Your Audience’s Language

When federal agencies communicate with the public, they are required to use plain English. Increasing numbers of state governments are also implementing this policy.

Use your readers’ language, not yours. Try to use the words people are searching for. Remember that the thing you care about most may be a turn-off for your audience. To your audience, you are not the center of the universe, your website is one among many.

Describe Benefits and Not Features

People are naturally motivated by what is of use or interest to them. No matter how good your product or service, if you can’t tell people why it benefits them, you won’t advance your cause. You must translate your features into benefits.

Features are qualities or characteristics of your product or service.

Benefits are the favorable results that your prospective customers gain by using your product or service.

The best way to get your message across is to focus on the benefits you offer.

Features vs. Benefits

If a feature does not have a companion benefit, your customers won’t care. For example, you could tell prospective customers that your business is located in Stockton. That tells them nothing of value. But when you cite your close proximity to the San Joaquin River Delta, and you happen to sell marine supplies, they better understand the benefit your location offers them.

When using the Internet to search for products and services, they are usually very task-oriented. They don’t care what we have to “sell” them, they care whether what you have meets their needs. We have to cite benefits that meet their needs.

Creating Benefit Statements

Benefit statements are often referred to as selling the “sizzle”, not the steak. You can tell prospective customers that your business, like so many others, offers quality customer service. The fact itself stirs virtually no interest. But when you offer testimonials from customers that describe how you have gone out of your way to serve them, the fact gains some sizzle.

As a business owner, you know your product or service well. Sometimes so well you may forget that others know nothing about you, your products or services. You have to make the extra effort to communicate how the products and services you offer distinguish you from your competition.

Business owners must focus on the benefits you offer prospective customers and then develop your marketing and communications strategy around those benefits.

⁽¹⁾ Speak the Language of Your Audience (retreived June 14, 2007)

⁽²⁾ Writing for the Web / Plain Language (retreived June 14, 2007)

Why doors have signs that say “Push”

briant — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 07:16:00 +0000

You’ve done it. Walked up to a door and pulled, only to lose your grip in the process. And there it is: the sign that says, “Push.” Or maybe it was the other way around. You pushed, and the sign said, “Pull.” And maybe you felt kind of stupid for a second. “Why didn’t I see the sign?”

I think we ought to be asking another question. Why is the sign necessary? And a third: Why did you intuitively pull (or push)?
Many people assume they are at fault when they can’t figure how to use something. But it’s often the product’s fault: it’s shoddily made, poorly designed, or just difficult to use. And people just adapt to the poor design because they they have no choice. Look at that door again: was the handle a vertical bar? Which naturally invites you to push? But wait, there’s a vertical handle on both sides.
I currently have a Treo 700P,a so-called “smart phone,” that I use for business. I really hate the phone interface. The external keypad is tiny, requiring near pinprick precision. When a second call comes in, I can put the first caller on hold. But I have yet to figure out how to get the call back. When I remove an item from the phone task list, the next time I sync online I end up with two of the same task. Duh. On the other The iPhone is a great example of intuitive usability. Here is a product that doesn’t need an owners manual. For personal use, it rocks. And it seems like every time I’m done, I can’t just slide the sucker back into my pocket. I’m always accidentally dialing a number because if my finger brushes the green “on” button for a moment too long, it immediately redials the most recent phone call sent or received.

The iPhone looks to eliminate a lot of these issues. To turn it on, purposefully slide your finger across a slider icon on the screen. To access contacts, choose the contacts icon. And 80 GB of memory! Jeez. Too bad they are contracting with Cingular. I just signed a two-year deal with Verizon. Providing they add some business functionality, guess what I’ll own in two years?

My first lesson on usability

briant — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 07:14:05 +0000

During the fall of 1972, I was a senior in high school and Editorial Page Editor of “The Galleon,” Monterey High School’s student newspaper. As a member of the wrestling club, I sold candy and snacks during wrestling matches. I noticed that there were four fire hose boxes in the gym, and three of them were broken. One had, as I recall, no glass, hose and extinguisher. Another, the glass was broken, and the extinguisher was missing. During a wrestling match one evening, I thought that I might write an editorial about the state of these boxes and asking why the hose and extinguisher were not maintained.

For reasons I do not recall, while looking at the last box which appeared intact, I decided to open the box. The metal door stuck at the bottom corner, it flexed, and the glass in the door broke, shattering on the concrete floor. Now I could have run, but it was just an accident. The end of the story is that I was summoned to the Vice Principal’s office. He wanted to know what I had been doing. I told him I was thinking about writing the editorial. All I really wanted was an answer to the question as to why these essential life-saving devices were not maintained so they could be used as intended. He suggested that I could have brought the problem to his attention, and informed me that I could be suspended for this “vandalism.”

I was shocked. Me, the former Junior Class President? The Editorial Page Editor? The proverbial good guy? I told the faculty newspaper advisor the story, and he organized a meeting of concerned individuals. Three days later the Vice Principal told me I would, in fact, be suspended for three days for vandalism. And when the Vice Principle heard about the advisor’s plans for a meeting, the teacher was called in too. Not yet tenured, he was told in effect to back off and to mind his own business.

So I was suspended for vandalism. My teachers were surprised and supportive. Technically, they did not have to allow me to make up work missed during the suspension. All gave me advance copies of my homework and I had three days off.

What did I learn?

1) People don’t trust your motivations.

2) Watch out for yourself.

3) If something doesn’t work, it isn’t neccesarily because you are doing it wrong.