Well, the secret is finally out and now everyone knows how important it is to consider SEO when building or maintaining any kind of web presence. Sure, there are other important factors to Internet Marketing like Link Building, Social Media, Paid Search and others, but SEO is one of the big one’s for sure. As we all know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization which means optimizing a website or page’s on/off page text content to rank higher in search engines for specific, targeted keywords or search terms.
That doesn’t sound so hard to me. Let’s be honest, it takes more discipline than acumen to compile a list of worthwhile keywords and then to integrate those search terms into your content, whether existing or new. Despite the fact that it may not be technically challenging to compile and execute that list of keywords and bring in traffic from search engines, many of these websites suffer massive bounce rates and very little time spent on each page. The SEOs are bringing visitors in, they just can’t keep visitors there. And they sure as hell can’t convince visitors to convert to buyers. So what gives?
While it’s mostly true that anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection can identify and optimize a web page, for them it is sadly also true that not everyone can write a complete sentence. Doesn’t that sound bad? Well, it’d sound a lot worse if I wrote as badly as 90% of the people I meet on a daily basis. But would it surprise you to know that a major factor in high bounce rate and low customer trust is the fact that your content looks like it was written by, at best, a 10 year old? Seriously, what’s the problem with writing? Why can’t people spell? Why can’t people articulate a sentence? Why do people hate comma’s so much?
I remember seeing a little tweet the other day from Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media where she talked about getting nervous for her Personal Essay Writing class. See, I think it’s great when professional writers keep learning how to write. I started writing when I was very young and even wrote screen plays in my early 20′s. Sure, I never published anything more than a poem here or there, but the very act of writing is what makes me a better writer, and my desire to become a better writer pushes me into other realms of writing that, you guessed it, make me a better writer!
I recently took an English Composition course at a local Community College and despite the fact that I am already a relatively well polished writer, I learned a ridiculous amount about grammar that I had either forgotten long ago, or never learned to begin with. I thought I was a great writer and while I still agree with that, I know that now I’m a better writer because, for example, I understand where the stupid apostrophe in a possessive. For some reason I always had problems with that, but now I’ll never forget.
Keep an eye on your writing style and always work to be a better writer. I know your audience will appreciate the fact that they’re getting insight from a source that knows how to present itself, and trust comes with that. Once you have the trust of your audience, I think you can open up a whole lot of new doors that can lead to greater conversions and stronger relationships.