There are copywriters for copy, and content writers for content…but who writes a website’s homepage?

There is no doubt that writers and copywriter are in demand.

With the explosive growth of web content marketing and social media, a lot of words need to be written. Not to mention all those sales pages and landing pages. And the emails and newsletters.

So it’s no surprise that when you do some Google searches for words and terms like copywriter and “content writer” you get a lot of results.

Here’s what I found today on Google

copywriter - 13,800,000 results

“content writer” – 4,180,000 results

There is plenty of supply and demand when it comes to copywriting and web content writing.

Which brings us to my key question…who writes the homepage?

Is it the copywriter or the content writer? Or both? Or neither?

Searching on Google again yields some pretty skinny results:

“homepage writer” - 26,600 results

“homepage copywriter” – 4,750 results

Based on these figures, it seems there isn’t much interest in writers who specialize in writing homepages.

Which is nuts, because the homepage of any site is one of the most important and, arguably, the hardest to write.

Yes, I know that homepages aren’t seen as being as important as they were 10 years ago, because so much search and social media traffic is driven directly to internal pages. But even so, your homepage is your shop window. It’s where you make it clear to your first-time visitors what you’re about. It’s where you let new visitors know they are in the right place. It’s where you make people feel confident you have the answers to their questions or their problems.

And it’s where many people navigate to after they have read that internal page they came to via search or social media. They click through to the home page to answer the question, “Who are these guys?”

Which brings us to the next challenge when writing a homepage.

If challenge #1 is to clearly and concisely communicate what the site is about, challenge #2 is to work within the architecture of the site and help visitors link through to the interior pages that will provide the answers they are looking for.

Which brings us to challenge #3, which is working side by side with the designer, usability expert and site architect.

I think a lot of writers shy away from writing homepages because it’s often a tough and messy business. There are a lot of people to try to please. A big team is involved. In addition to the designer, usability experts and site architect, you often have to accommodate the site’s founder and a bunch of marketing people.

While the marketing people are fighting with everyone else on the team, the writer is often pushed to one side and asked to do his or her work only after everyone else has reached a tangled compromise.

Which bring me back to my earlier point… This is nuts!

The trouble is, it has been nuts since the 1990s, when it was just as hard for the writer to shoulder his or her way in and say, “Guys, without the right words you have NOTHING!”

A great homepage needs great writing. Period.

And for all its challenges - being part of that big, messy, squabbling team that fights over what should happen on the homepage - it can be a lot of fun. A challenge, yes. But fun too.

So if you have sharp writing skills and the aggressive instincts of a mixed martial arts fighter, this could be an exciting new writing niche for you!

Seriously. Based on a little Google research, there seem to be very few writers who specialize in homepages. There’s a gap there.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Millions of new content pages are published online each day. Most of them are derivative and boring.

How come? Several reasons. But perhaps the biggest reason is that the environment of marketing online demands that we keep publishing new posts and new pages, at an ever-increasing rate. And photos. And videos. And slide shows.

If we don’t keep publishing, we look like we’re falling behind our competitors.

Plus, Google has made is clear that it likes “fresh’ content. And social media is driven by what’s new, and what’s happening now.

New, new, new. Publish, publish, publish.

Everyone feels under pressure to keep pumping out new stuff. And as a result, most of that new stuff is “fast content” that is almost always derivative of what others have written before.

In other words, the driving force behind content creation has less to do with sharing new and important information than it should. Often it’s to satisfy the demands of the search engines and social media.

So…how can you avoid writing content that is derivative and boring? How can you make it truly original? How can you make it memorable, and your own?

You do it by making your content specific to your own audience.

If you are writing about content marketing best practices, and your audience is realtors, you make your post or article totally specific to the needs of realtors. Your focus is not on content marketing but on its application to very specific circumstance.

It’s the same if you are writing about social media and your audience is event managers. You don’t write about social media, because a zillion people have already done that. Instead you write about the application of social media in the world of event management.

Make it about your readers. Make it about their world at work.

Here is another way of looking at this. Instead of using your posts or articles as a way to showcase your own knowledge and expertise, use them to serve your readers by applying what you know to help them in their specific business.

And as part of that process, make a habit of asking your readers what they really want from you.

When you spend less time showing off what you know, and more time helping your readers and prospects, good things happen.

Plus, when your content is audience-focused, you’ll never have to look back at what you have written and think, “Ouch, I just rehashed what dozens of other people have already written before.”

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

If you write web sites, for clients or for yourself, you probably know about the importance of linking.

Attracting inbound links from other websites is a great way to attract new visitors, and also sends a strong message to Google that your content is of high quality. (If your content was of low quality, other people wouldn’t bother linking to it.)

However, paying attention to links is not just about maximizing the number of quality inbound links from other sites. You should also pay attention to internal linking, within your own website.

Why does internal linking matter? A couple of big reasons.

- It helps your readers find related content on your website. Instead of having to search through your navigation system to find other pages they might be interested in, they can find the links right there within the body of the page, or listed at the end.

- These links also help Google make sense of your website. They let Google know which pages are related, and also the relative importance of pages on your website. Lots of inbound links pointing to a particular page suggest it’s an important page.

This means your pattern of internal links has to be considered and deliberate.

Instead of creating random internal links within your website, you should think about it and create a pattern of links that are helpful to your clients, and send the right signals to Google.

For your readers, you formulate a plan - and help them move forward within your site - by asking yourself the question, “If someone has just read this page, what else might they be interested in reading?”

Let me give you an example from one of my own sites and areas of interest: coffee.

On each of my individual coffee review pages, on which I review a particular coffee or blend, I add a link to my main coffee reviews listing page. That makes sense. If someone has read one review it figures that they might be interested in others.

Also, if a page is about a particular coffee from Costa Rica, I might also link to other reviews I have written of different coffees from Costa Rica. That also makes sense.

At the same time, I am letting Google know that all these review pages are related, and also…because I always link back to it…that my main review listings page is a very important page on the site and that they should recognize it as such.

I do the same if I am reviewing a particular coffee maker. Within each I will link to my main page on coffee makers. I’ll also link to pages that feature similar coffee makers, or other models made by the same manufacturer.

A few words about anchor text.

What’s anchor text? It’s the term used to describe the word or phrase that you hyperlink. Also referred to, sometimes, as linking text. For example, if I were to link from this post to my About page on this site, the anchor text might be, “about Nick Usborne”.

And if I were to link to the page on my coffee site about manual coffee mills, I would turn the phrase “manual coffee mills” into the hyperlink.

It’s from these hyperlinks that Google can figure out the relationship between pages.

However…I also make a practice of not always matching the hyperlinked phrase to the exact keyword I have optimized for on the destination page. Mostly I do, but not always.

So if my page about manual coffee mills has the phrase “manual coffee mills” in its title and headline, I might sometimes link to it from another, related page with the phrase, “hand coffee grinder”. Same thing, but a different term. In other words, I mix it up and keep it natural.

And that’s the key…create a linking framework for your site, but keep it natural.

If you are not doing so already, you should figure out a plan and create a framework of internal links within your site that helps your readers find the information they want, and helps Google figure out which pages are related, and which pages are more important than others.

However, as you do this, keep it natural. Do it primarily for your readers. Don’t do it with the mindset that this is a cunning way to get more traffic from Google.

Finally, it is absolutely in your interest to do this for your readers. Not only are you helping them find more of the information they want by linking to related pages, but you are also keeping them on your site for longer.

And Google will give you brownie points for that too.

Create that plan or framework now

If you haven’t been paying attention to internal linking, it’s time to get started.

Internal linking is an essential part of a site’s overall architecture and usability. It helps people find the stuff they want.

And if you do it right, it will result in getting more traffic from Google.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Social media marketing is, thankfully, coming out of its trendy phase and moving into its business phase.

For those of us who have been online for a while, the trendiness of social media has been somewhat irritating. The web was social before the web even existed. In other words, the Internet was social before the first web browsers appeared. Back then we connected with one another through Listservs and the like. It was 100% social.

Services like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent social media. They simply made it more popular and improved its functionality.

One of the outcomes of the trendy phase of social media is that well over 90% of North American companies now have a presence on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Those companies jumped in because they felt pressured to be on those sites. If that’s where their customers and prospect were spending their time, they needed to be there too.

But most of them jumped in without any kind of strategy. And they didn’t bother integrating social media with their other online marketing activities.

Hence the next step forward, which is to integrate social media with a company’s online marketing activities.

There is a huge opportunity here for online writers and copywriters.

The geeks have taken care of the technology side of social media. The gurus have done the big sales job and moved companies into social media. And now it’s down to savvy online writers and copywriters to integrate social media.

Here’s what I mean by integration…

Most companies have online marketing calendars. They have a schedule and know on which dates they are going to be promoting their various products and services. Smart companies have an integrated content calendar that tells them which kinds of content they are going to be publishing in support of their marketing campaigns.

But very few companies have taken the next step…which is to integrate a social media calendar, in support of both their content and their marketing campaigns.

There is a big gap here.

And every gap represents an opportunity.

Here are 3 examples of ways in which online writers and copywriters can profit from the coming integration of social media.

1. If you are an online copywriter, working on some sales pages, you can expand the scope of your work simply by asking, “Shouldn’t we be planning some activity on social media to drive traffic to these new pages?” The answer is yes, you should. And this gives you the opportunity to not only write the sales pages, but also all the social media entries that can be used to support them.

2. If you are an online content writer, creating new site pages, blog posts, product reviews etc, simply ask, “Would you like me to optimize this content for social media? And would you like me to write some social media entries to support this new content?”

3. Or, if you want to help more broadly with your clients’ social media marketing, you can ask, “Would you like some help in integrating your social media with your content and marketing calendars?”

This is an easy opportunity. Most companies already have their social media pages up there. What they are missing is someone who can help them work up a social media calendar that is integrated with their content calendar and marketing calendar.

And the people best positioned to help them do this are the online writers and copywriters who are already writing their content and sales pages.

I smell opportunity here, and hope you do too.

NOTE: I have created a social media training program specifically for freelance writers and copywriters. It is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page on the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Way back when I wrote copy offline, I was pretty much a one-trick pony.

I wrote direct mail. That was my thing. I have never written a radio spot. I have never written a TV commercial.

Back then, it was fine to focus on a single copywriting skill, because there was no connection between what I wrote for a client as a direct response writer, and what their agency copywriter wrote for TV.

Sure, we all worked to the same brief, keeping within the same campaign idea.

But the key point to understand is that the quality of my direct mail piece didn’t depend on my knowing anything about writing for TV, radio or any other medium. Why? Because each medium was separate from the other.

All that changed with the arrival of the web.

Online, everything is connected. (Think hyperlink.) Every page on a website is connected to other pages. Emails and e-newsletters are linked to site pages. Site pages are linked to social media sites. Social media tweets, updates and posts are linked back to websites.

This is a game changer for copywriters.

As online copywriters we can no longer do our best work in one area without at least a clear understanding of the bigger picture, and how everything is connected.

For example, if I were asked to write an online sales page for a company, I would do well to think about more than just the page itself. I would certainly ask about how the company planned to drive traffic to this page.

Just through internal links on the site itself? Or by email? Or through PPC ads? Or through social media? Or through all of these channels, and maybe more?

To put it another way, to write a great sales page I need to know my audience. And part of the challenge of knowing my audience is to understand where they are coming from.

Are these warm and trusting prospects from an in-house email list? Are they fans coming in through social media? Are they complete strangers who have come in through PPC ads? And so on.

Once I ask my client these questions we are going to get into a conversation about email, social media and PPC.

Or, just as likely, the conversation will be initiated by the client as part of the briefing.

It’s at this point that my client will learn whether I can hold an intelligent conversation not only about sales pages, but also about email marketing, social media and PPC.

If I can’t, he or she will experience a moment of disappointment, and the perception of my value in his or her mind will fall.

Not good.

If I can, the opposite occurs. The perception of my value rises. Suddenly I’m not just a copywriter for hire, but am also acting like a consultant, exploring the larger marketing picture.

This is why it makes sense for online copywriters to understand all aspects of writing for the web, through multiple channels. No, you don’t have to master ever channel, but you do need to know enough to hold an intelligent conversation with your client, and to do your work with a clear understanding of how it fits in with everything else.

The bigger your toolbox, the greater the opportunity.

Several years ago I was approached by a prospective client and asked to rewrite their homepage. This was a fair sized company in the insurance industry. Certainly I was qualified to do what they asked. But I wanted to know more. I asked about the major category pages one level down from the homepage. Were they going to be rewritten too? If not, then it would limit the changes I could make to the homepage.(Remember, everything is connected.)

We talked about that, and in the end decided I should rework the homepage and those second level pages.

Then I asked about all the other pages on the site. If I were to significantly adjust the tone and approach of the top level pages, this would have implications for many other pages.

No, I didn’t get to write all those pages as well. Nor did I want to. But I did get paid to fly in and talk to their in-house web team about what I was trying to do with the new pages, so they could adjust the lower level pages accordingly.

On another occasion I was asked to write a landing page. After talking about it for a while I learned they were going to drive traffic to the page through an email campaign. I suggested that I write those emails as well. Having the same person write the emails and the landing page would ensure a clean and powerful transition from email to web page.

I took the same approach with every client, and significantly increased my earnings as a result. But I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I didn’t have a firm grasp on multiple aspects of writing for the web.

If, like in my offline days, I had been a one-trick pony, and focused just on sales page, or just on homepages, or just on email, I would have limited my opportunities and would also have diminished my value in the eyes of my clients.

Where can you get professional grade training in multiple areas of online copywriting?

This is where we are going to transition gently into a soft sales pitch.

After working with corporate clients online for about 10 years, and after training many of their in-house teams in online copywriting across different channels, I decided to create a program based on everything I have learned and taught.

That program is called Copywriting 2.0.

As far as I know it is the only professional-grade training program that is focused on teaching copywriters multiple aspects of writing for the web. Once you have worked through hundreds of pages of printed materials, watched the 16 embedded videos and sat through numerous bonus webinar presentations, you’ll have online copywriting skills that are both broad and deep.

Like I said…if you want to maximize your value and your earnings, you want to approach your clients with a big, fat toolbox, stuffed with online copywriting skills.

Copywriting 2.0 is published by AWAI, and you can find their information and sales page for the program here…

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

When the topic of web content comes up, whether I am talking with a solopreneur or someone at a large company, I ask a simple question: “What is its purpose?”

Right now everyone seems to be focusing on the quality of content. I get that. Quality content is good for your readers, and good for increasingly picky search engines.

In particular, quality content builds reputation and trust.

However, we still need to come back to the question of purpose.

Let’s look at this at the page level and at the strategic level.

What is the purpose of that individual page?

Yes, you want to wow and impress your readers. You want to entertain, surprise or educate them. No cut and paste. No boring stuff. Each page of content you publish needs to add to your reputation.

But…what do you want people to do AFTER reading that high-quality page? Do they nod, smile and leave? If that happens, you just failed. Your wonderful page of content had no purpose.

Yes, I’m being a tad harsh. A quality page with no specific purpose may still increase levels of trust, or have some other fairly intangible benefit.

But why not make it work a little harder? A great piece of editorial content can still work to pre-sell one of your products or services. Or link to one of your products or services. Or prepare the ground for an upcoming launch or promotion.

To return to being harsh for a moment, if you spent years creating wonderful content, and attracted a regular readership of 100,000 people…but none of them ever spend a penny on any of your products or services…what was the point?

Or, to put it another way, what’s the point of creating a wonderful page of content that attracts 10,000 visitors in a week if none of those visitors buy anything, sign up for anything or even return to your site?

Nice content. No purpose.

Instilling purpose in your content at a strategic level

If you have a content calendar it should run alongside your marketing calendar, which should run alongside your business growth calendar. This doesn’t mean that your content should become promotional in any way. It simply means that your content is planned, written and published in a way that supports your overall marketing and business plans.

If you are launching something new in September, you can fill your August calendar with content that prepares your readers for that launch. Get them interested. Get them into a “gotta-have-that” state of mind – before they even know what “that” is.

In every business, regardless of its size, all marketing needs to point in the same direction. And yes, content is marketing.

Sounds obvious, right?

All this my appear self-evident. And in a way, it is. But I would venture that the majority of companies and solopreneurs online create content without it being part of a larger plan and calendar.

Very often, content is created simply because SEO experts, social media experts and content creation experts can’t shut up about the value of quality content.

Quality content is good. But it’s useless if it doesn’t move your readers one step closer to sending you some money.

Given the choice between quality content that doesn’t translate into revenue, and rubbish content that has people clicking through to my product, service and sign-up pages, I’ll go for the rubbish content every day.

Fortunately, well-planned quality content can also directly support revenue growth. So you can have the best of both worlds.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Last week I was speaking at an event in Austin, Texas, and had a chance to talk with dozens of freelancers at various stages of their careers.

I was particularly interested by what I heard from those people who had high-level, professional careers behind them and were now on the verge of starting a freelance business.

Here is the part that got me thinking. Several of those people seemed to assume that they had to get started on the bottom rung of the ladder as a freelancer. It’s as if a switch in careers somehow required that they start over and look only for low-paying, low-challenge projects.

Well, I don’t think that is necessary.

If you have some solid business experience behind you, why not start closer to the top?

OK, so you don’t yet have a ton of experience as a freelance writer or copywriter. So your first client probably won’t be with a sophisticated direct-response company that is used to working with A-level copywriters.

But you do have business experience, which is something a lot of those hotshot copywriters don’t have. So you can approach large companies and pick up plenty of writing and copywriting work that isn’t all about maximizing conversions on sales pages. Maybe it’s a case study, a series of White Papers, a monthly e-newsletter, editorial content for their website…and so on.

For those kinds of jobs, you don’t need to be an A-list copywriter. But you can ask for a fat fee because of your business experience. Large and medium sized companies like working with writers who understand business, speak their language and understand their culture.

Never position yourself as a beginner. Never behave like a beginner. Think of yourself as the person you were at the highest position you held in the business world, and behave like that.

Be that top-performing person, carry that persona and confidence into the world of freelancing, and position your services as top-end, close to the top of the ladder, starting on day one.

Can’t do that? Sure you can. You would have done it as an employee if your boss had told you to.

So why not do it for yourself?

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

First let me explain what Go Away Green means. It’s the color Disney uses in its theme parks for any object or building they don’t want people to look at.

Garbage bins, fences, administrative buildings…stuff like that. They want your eyes focused on the rides, stores and scenery, not on the infrastructure.

The idea of Go Away Green is that it’s such a boring and unattractive color, your eyes just pass over it until they latch on to something more interesting.

The concept of Go Away Green is important to grasp when creating anything that is a combination of attraction + structure.

This certainly applies to web design and yes, also to writing and copywriting.

The “attraction” in what you write is the story you tell, the core of your message and the supporting information that surrounds it.

The “structure” of your writing represents all the words and sentences you use to set up the opening, create transitions throughout and wrap things up at the end.

Every piece of writing requires some structure to hold it together. That’s OK. But when a page of writing includes too much structure or scaffolding, then you have a problem.

To get an idea of what I mean, think back to the last post or article you read where you found yourself skipping over a few lines. Or you found your mind wandering as you tried to stay focused. Or where you felt you had come to the end of the piece, but there were still ten more lines to go. Or it felt like the writer was trying to lead you through the text like a dog on a leash – “Think this now, and think this now.”

That’s writing in Go Away Green. Too much structure in proportion to the content. The readers’ eyes and attention are likely to slide away.

In a theme park you are there for the day. The Go Away Green simply moves your attention over to the next attraction. On a web page, you don’t have the same kind of hold on your readers. They are not there for the day. Your hold on their attention is tenuous to say the least. So if they hit too large a patch of Go Away Green in your writing they are likely to do just that…go away.

The internal structure of a piece of writing should be invisible, or as close as you can get. Cut away as much of the structure of the writing as possible.

If you find this hard, and find yourself over-explaining in the opening or writing too many transitions from one point to the next, it may be that you are trying to cover too many topics within a single article or post.

Try sticking to one topic per page of content. That’s any easy way to minimize the need for structure.

Keep it simple, and stay away from green.

Related ebooks I have written about writing for the web:

Popcorn Content - the craft of writing short-form content for social media

Killer Headlines for Web Content

101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources

Writing Kick-Ass Sales Copy...

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

If you found this post helpful, sign up for my e-newsletter and get a free copy of my 35-page guide...

Writing For The Web #1 -- 7 Challenges every Writer and Copywriter faces when writing for the Web.

Sign up and I'll send you the link for the download, and then you'll receive my most recent post as part of my e-newsletter every Tuesday morning.

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

Like many people, I have spent the last couple of years furiously trying to figure out what Google is up to.

Over that period, some of my websites have seen an increase in search engine traffic while others have seen a decline. And no, I haven’t always been able to figure out exactly why each increase or decrease has taken place.

It used to be relatively easy to figure out what Google was looking for. Not any more.

The Panda and Penguin updates in particular had a huge impact on people who thought they knew what Google wanted.

Yes, many sites that deserved to be impacted saw their listings drop off page one.

But there were many false-positives too. People who had worked hard to play by Google’s rules suddenly saw their traffic drop significantly. It was toughest of all on those people who really couldn’t see where they might have gone wrong.

Some obvious fixes, like increasing the quality of the content on the site, attracting more high-quality inbound links, and making sure you didn’t over-optimize your pages didn’t always do the trick. Then there were other issues to consider, like the Venice update, the impact of Google+ and the ongoing introduction of Google Author Rank.

Confusing stuff for all but the most technical SEO experts.

And, if you did see some recovery after spending dozens or even hundreds of hours improving your site, your anxiety level remained high because of a nasty little question in your mind.

“What might Google do next? What if I invest all this time on improving my site today, but then get hammered by a whole different update in 3 months?”

Fair question.

Here is what I’m doing… And, let me qualify all this by saying that while I have a firm grasp of SEO, it’s not my core expertise.

First of all, I pay close attention to all the updates and changes coming from Google, and I make changes as and when I can. In other words, I don’t ignore what’s happening out there. But nor do I stress about it too much.

And I reduce my stress levels most of all by no longer freaking out over getting my top pages listed on page one of the Google search results.

That may sound odd. After all, if you have optimized your home page and second level pages for some strong keywords, why wouldn’t you want them listed on page one? Well, you would, of course.

But if those pages are no longer appearing on page one, and you are in a competitive subject area – which most of us are – then these are the keywords and pages that will stress you the most.

While Panda was going through its various revisions, I watched some of my most important pages disappear, appear and then disappear again from page one. Meanwhile, I would see totally awful sites and pages appearing in the spots that had previously been mine.

When you can’t quite figure out what’s going on, or why, and horrible pages are appearing in the number one, two and three positions, it’s time to step back, stop chewing your fingernails and regroup.

As soon as I realized I no longer knew how to get those site pages listed on page one, and no longer understood why crappy pages stuffed full of ads seemed to be doing so well, I stopped struggling. If I know how to fix something I’ll fix it. If I don’t, then tinkering around without a clue as to what might work is a waste of time and a source of stress.

Now what I do is make sure my most important pages are of high quality, well optimized, with strong inbound links, and not breaking any rules…and then leave them be.

Next, I use the time saved to create more long-tail pages. In other words, pages which are of interest to people, albeit fewer people, and which are a great deal less competitive.

For example, in the world of coffee information websites, of which I have one, the term “how to make coffee” is hugely competitive. I have a page optimized for that term, and it used to float around within the first 5 results on Google. Not anymore. And I have stopped stressing over that. However, long-tail terms like “organic coffee pods” are less competitive, so I can still rank highly for them.

Whatever Google has been up to, it seems that it is still pretty easy to get a long-tail page listed on the first page of search results. And then, of course, I add links to those pages which move people forward to my most important pages.

By creating more and more long-tail pages which do well in the search results, I have found that I can more than make up for when some of my more important and competitive pages fall off page one.

Best of all, I can still keep building search engine traffic to my site without all the stress that comes from fighting a battle in which it’s hard to figure out the rules.

For me, stress-free SEO now comes from creating as many long-tail content pages as I can.

Related resource:

101 Web Content Ideas, Tips and Resources...

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…

One of the things you’ll notice about soap operas is how hard the writers work to let you know that the best part is yet to come.

For example, just before each commercial break the drama is built to a point of peak suspense…so you just have to sit through the commercials to find out what happens next.

The same devices are used at the end of each episode to make sure you tune in again next time. Will she run off with the pool cleaner? Did he survive the plunge off the cliff? Will she be found guilty and sent to jail? And so on.

What is happening here is the script writers and story editors are trying to achieve two goals at the same time. First, they are trying to create some compelling and entertaining drama. Second, and just as important, they are working hard to make sure you don’t stop watching the episode after commercial breaks, or abandon the series between episodes.

They achieve this by making sure they never resolve or close off a story segment before a break in the program. For example, the program won’t end with the line, “Thank goodness you’re alive!” Instead, they make you wait until the next episode to find out if that character is alive, or not.

They do this because they know that the times at which they are most vulnerable to losing viewers is when there is a break, during commercials or between episodes.

What does this have to do with headlines on web pages?

Web writers face a similar challenge when writing a page of web content.

We are most vulnerable to losing readers immediately after they have read our headlines.

You have probably experienced this yourself. You click through to a page, read the headline, and then click away. Or you see the headline on Twitter or Facebook, but don’t click through to the page.

One reason your headline fails and you lose readers is that the message in the headline was too complete, and didn’t provide a reason to keep reading in order to find out “what happens next”.

Here is an example of a headline that is too complete.

- Studies confirm that drinking a glass of milk a day is good for you.

The problem with that headline is that it tells the whole story. It reveals the entire message of the page. I don’t need to read the body text, because I have already been given the complete answer. During the “break” between the headline and the body text, I’ll just click away from the page. Or if I see the headline in my Twitter stream, I won’t feel the need to click through.

Now let’s look at a version that is open-ended, and drives you to keep reading to find the answer.

- Studies confirm your grandmother was right to make you drink this.

The answer is no longer in the headline. The message is not complete. There is a reason now to keep reading. Plus there is an element of intrigue. If I keep reading, will I find out that my own grandmother really did make me drink this? Now I have an unresolved question in my mind, and a bunch of memories of my grandmother from when I was a child.

Concluding thoughts…

Always keep your headlines open-ended. Make sure the reader is left with an unanswered question. Give them a reason to keep reading.

And if you ever lose touch with what this all means, or how to do it, just watch a soap opera, and see how at the end of every segment and episode, they always give you a reason to stay tuned for what happens next.

Related info:

Killer Headlines for Web Content 15 Different Approaches to Writing Compelling, Shareable Headlines for Your Web Content. The craft of headline writing is changing fast...and that's what my latest ebook is all about. The explosion of social media, and the massive adoption of content via smartphones, means your content headlines need to be shorter, more noticeable, harder hitting, and more shareable For more on the craft of writing web content headlines, check out my new ebook, Killer Headlines for Web Content.

About the author: Nick Usborne is an online writer, copywriter, author and coach. Read more…