Let’s say you’re barhopping…cruising for company…
- You look as cute as a button
- You surround yourself with a touch of mystery
- You sprinkle the conversation with a bit of innuendo
- Your facial expressions bedazzle everyone around you
- Your scent is intoxicating
- Your accent is “so charming”
- Your use of metaphors is enchanting
- You punch ‘em out with your puns
Boy are YOU going to GET FOUND!
- You’ll be placed on a pedestal
- Your audience is fighting over you
- You are number one!
What if you apply this flirting technique to writing for the web?
Welcome to “Wall Flower City!”
Why? Search robots ain’t salivating humans, that’s why.
- Writing for the internet is no beauty contest – nobody sees you
- Cute innuendo cleverly packaged in mysterious metaphors means absolutely nothing to search bots. They won’t get it! Period.
- You may wink at your reflection from the computer screen, but the only “broad” you’ll intoxicate with your cologne is the broad named “band”.
- ‘Bots and puns’ belong into the kitchen only.
So, if you’re selling gift boxes of chocolate mint wafers online, and you describe them with “silken sheets of sweet nothing…for a romantic evening at home…you’ll want to kiss the pink glow of surprise off her cheeks” – Google will send you visitors looking for edible underwear.
Don’t phrase your headline “Even A Princess Breaks Wind During High Seas” – when your article tells us about mutual fears among rich or poor folks. You’ll see a high bounce rate from people looking for fart jokes and/or planning their next Alaska cruise.
Case in point: Over at SquidLog.com, I once wrote a post about fearless marketing. I called it “Fearless Marketing 101 – Lessons From The Nudist Colony”. Guess which search term brings a ton of traffic to this post, with a bounce rate of 100 percent?
No, it’s not “marketing”. (And I did this on purpose. For fun. 
)
Remember Data from “Star Trek”? Impressive computational capabilities but unable to understand human behavior and emotions. Write for him!
This doesn’t mean you can’t weave a story through “rain like knitting needles” or “pillowy puffs of white smoke in celestial seas…”
For efficient online writing, though – take care of the dumbots first! Tell them what your story is all about – in titles, subtitles and body of text. Make sure they know the straight dope of your message.
After that, go dopey as hell. We like that.
Image courtesy of ndbutter. Thank you.
Exactly why writing content copy is such a challenge. Social media is such a hit, but the good ol’ search engine spiders will bring you more traffic because most people who are looking to buy whatever you may be cooking (product, info, or a laugh) don’t belong to a community online.
There has to be a strategic blend of of writing to draw the ‘bots and hooking the human. Google is the master at helping us. By comparing the Title to the content, the ever increasingly intuitive ‘bots are determining what is relevant, yet the key words can’t be too dense. This gives us an opportunity to write to the reader while attracting the ‘bots. In the end, we still have to write good, honest copy to hold the reader’s attention and persuade them.
Copy is tricky. You are right about writing to the ‘bots, that’s for sure, but setting the hook is only half the fight.