Congratulations! You’ve written a great post and now it’s time to hit the publish button. However, the web is full of sub-standard content and the only way to separate yourself from all the noise is to produce truly outstanding work. If you also perform the necessary due diligence and checks before you publish, you are more likely to establish yourself as a credible source and as a writer who puts quality before quantity.

Before you publish, it’s important to ensure that:

• You have proofread and edited for spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors.
• Your post is easy to read and
• Your post is search engine friendly.

Here is a quick checklist of essential tasks before you hit the publish button:

#1. Proofread for error free copy; Check Grammar and Punctuation

Punctuation can save a life

Here’s a great example:”Let’s eat Grandma” and “Let’s eat, Grandma”

Proofread and test your copy for the proper:

• Sentence structure
• Grammar
• Punctuation
• Spelling
• Numbers
• Style

Is your copy clear, concise, coherent, captivating and compelling?
Edit your copy so that your sentences are crisp and easy to understand.

#2. Optimize your Headline for Social Media

The true challenge in these days of twitter and social media marketing is to write headlines that are:

• 140 characters or less
• attention grabbing
• search engine friendly

Headlines can make or break your blog promotion efforts. The first impression people have of your content are your headlines as they show up on rss feeds and on social media sites such as twitter and Facebook. If your headlines do not attract, then readers will not read your posts. Copyblogger has a great article on the art of crafting headlines that work. Before you publish, your headlines need to be optimized for social media.

#3. Seo

Seo your post in 5 easy steps:

1. Does your copy include the relevant keywords?
2. Include your keywords in your title tag, headlines, copy and anchor text.
3. Add keywords to your metadata and description.
4. Certain WordPress plugins such as All in One Seo Pack and WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast are extremely useful for gathering your keywords, description and metadata.
5. Are your images optimized with the alt tag and have you used an image optimizer such as smush.it for optimizing image size?

#4. Links

For seo purposes, it’s important to have internal as well as external links. Always link to another related post on your site. Test all the links on your site as part of regular quality assurance of your post.

#5. Html Tags

You don’t need to be a pro in Html but a little knowledge of html tags will go a long way in helping you optimize your copy. The W3 schools have excellent tutorials for Html, Css and HTML 5.0 as well.

• These html tags open your external links in another tab of your browser so that visitors do not leave your page. <A href=”http://example.com” “target=_blank”></a>
• Alt tags are extremely useful html tags. They describe your image to search engines and are also useful for blind readers, certain mobile phone users and users that use screen readers and text browsers.
  <img decoding="async" src="smallcat.jpg" alt="Small Cat Image">
• More and more users are reading through mobile devices. Read up on the upcoming html tags that make it easier to view your site on mobile phones. Use the viewport meta tag to control layout on mobile browsers.
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1">

#6. Make your Copy Easy to Read on the Web

Most readers scan info. on the web rather than read everything for 2 reasons:

1. It’s easier on the eyes to scan info when people read from their laptop, tablet or mobile.
2. There is an overload of info. on the web today and scanning saves time.

If a reader first scans your post and finds it useful, he is more likely to read your entire post or article.
Here are some tips for making your blog easy to read and scan:

• Proper use of headings, subheadings and bold text will guide your readers through the important elements of your copy.
• Bullet points and numbered lists are easy to scan for key pieces of info.
• Include lots of white space.
• Ensure that your copy is not too cluttered with too many distracting elements.

#7. Add Categories, Tags and Slugs (WordPress blogs)

Categories provide a helpful way to group related posts together, and to quickly tell readers what a post is about.
Tags are essentially keywords for each page/article you create. Search engines look for these tags and index your page accordingly. For example, if you were writing a recipe for brownies, then the category would be dessert and the tags could include recipes, brownies and chocolate. WordPress creates a page for each category and tag, which helps readers find the topics that interest them.
A category or tag can consist of multiple words, but this creates a problem, because website addresses cannot contain spaces. For this reason, WordPress creates a “slug” for each category and tag. The slug removes spaces and converts all text to lowercase. To change the URL that appears in a reader’s Web browser when they view a category or tag page on your WordPress blog, modify the slug for that category or tag.

#8. Include a Call to Action

Every post needs to end with a valid call to action. It could be as simple as requesting customers to sign up for your newsletter, invite interaction on your post or buy your product. Research shows that customers want to be guided and it’s beneficial to use language that propels them forward.

Have I missed any essential tasks? Please feel free to add and share your ideas. If you liked this post, please share it generously on all your social networks.

Ever wish that you had a crystal ball to predict which content will most influence your audience? The good news is that with all the resources on the internet today, you don’t need a crystal ball. You can accurately pinpoint what your audience is looking for and create the right content, at the right time for your audience.

The only way to influence people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it ~ Dale Carnegie

The secret to being an influencer on the web is to write articles and blog posts that people want to read. The one surefire way to engage your audience is to write about stuff that your audience will find useful in their daily lives.

What questions do your audience want answered?
Once we know the answer to this all important question, content creation is a snap. The writing process becomes an enjoyable adventure where we wait in anticipation for audience feedback and participation.

The internet is filled with resources that we writers can tap into to find out what is foremost on peoples’ minds. These are also the same resources that can help cure temporary writer’s block and simplify the entire writing process.

Here are some tools that will guarantee audience engagement since they are search terms put in by real people doing research on the web:

#1) Google Keyword Tool

The Google Keyword Tool is a goldmine of information and is also an essential seo tool. It shows you actual searches that match your search query. You can see how many times a particular keyword was searched globally, locally, monthly and annually. You also get a good idea on the number of searches for related terms. Here are the content ideas I got by simply putting in a search for financial planning:

• Financial planning salary survey information
• Retirement planning
• Financial planning best investment options
• Business financial planning
• Financial planning industry statistics
• Christian based financial planning

#2) Q & A Websites

Q & A websites are excellent places to get content ideas and simplify the writing process.
Quora, Linkedin answers, Yahoo answers are all tremendous resources for finding out what is foremost on peoples’ minds.

A quick search for social media questions gave me these ideas to research or blog about:

• The next big social app
• How to build a sustainable business on Pinterest
• Social media strategy when pitching for a new account
• Klout’s competitors and how good they are
• How to share a private twitter list with others

#3) What’s Trending Websites

These websites keep up with the latest trends or topics of interest and measure how they fare over a period of time. They interest us as content creators as they easily allow you to stay current and on top of the latest trends. Some examples of trending websites:

• Ice Rocket
• Alexa’s What’s Hot
• Google Trends
• Yahoo! Buzz Index

It’s all about trends.

#4) Google Instant and Searches Related to..

Google Instant and Searches Related to (your keyword) are both tremendous resources for content ideas.

Google Instant is a search enhancement that shows results as you type.
I began typing social media and got these results:

Searches related to..are the search terms that you see at the bottom of your results page. It helps the writing process to see what other people searched for relating to your topic.

#5) Adjusting Content According to Clicks Using Url Shorteners

Here is an interesting piece I read in Advertising Age:

Click behavior is already starting to change content in real time based on click behavior
A news organization is already changing the content of articles based on what readers do when they click using url shorteners such as bit.ly.
If a certain link gets a lot of clicks, but readers don’t scroll below the third paragraph, editors can see that a headline might be strong, but that the content of the story needs a boost.
“If scroll depth is not that impressive, you can change the content of the page based on what you are seeing.”

In addition to seeing which post got the most link love you can also see tons of other interesting statistics which will help in your future content strategy:

Referring sites and clicks for your bit.ly URL

Referring sites and clicks for all bit.ly users that shortened the same target URL

Time-based runchart for clicks

Pie chart showing clicks by country

Twitter conversations with the target URL

A list of bit.ly users that also shortened the URL

#6) Google Analytics

The Content section of your Google Analytics will give you tons of information that will help you in your content writing strategies.

• If you go to the Content section of Google analytics -> Pages, you will get an idea on the most popular pages of your website.
• Pages per visit are the average number of pages a visitor views when visiting your site.
• You will also see a ton of information such as average time on page and bounce rate.

These statistics will give you an idea on how engaging your content is and also which piece of content or topic is worth revisiting from another angle. If you notice that the top pages on your website are all referencing a particular topic, then you could create more content on similar topics. This way, you will have additional content that attracts even more visitors. Content Ideas Real-Time helps you understand what content is working best and which sites are sending you the most traffic.

Site Search: To set up Site Search, click on your website’s profile from your Google Analytics home page. Next, click on the settings wheel icon, located in the top right corner of the orange toolbar for your website’s profile. Under the “Profile Settings,” there is a section for “Site Search Settings.” Change the selection to “Do track Site Search.”

For a listing of search terms that people are searching for on your site, click “Site Search” under Content and then click on Search Terms for your site search data.

You will see:

• the number of pages people viewed after making their searches
• the percentage of people that exited after their searches and
• other related data.

This should give you a better idea of the type of content people are expecting to find on your website. If you do not have content that corresponds to the keywords that people are searching for, you could create content on that topic. If you have content that corresponds to what people are searching for and it’s a popular search, you could create related posts on that topic.

#7. Poll your Audience

The simplest way to find out what your audience wants is to poll them. There are a number of easy tools such as Polldaddy, which allow you to create a poll in under 5 minutes.

What do you do to learn what your audience is searching for? I would be very interested to know. Please share them in the comments section below.

If you are a small business or consultant, your content is your most effective selling tool. When prospects first visit your site your copy needs to:

• build their trust and
• convince and convert them to become loyal customers.

I’ve learned that the secret to writing outstanding web sales copy (and it cannot just be good anymore, it has to be outstanding) is to avoid these 3 costly mistakes:

#1. No Attention Grabbing Headline and Poor Lead

Headlines can make or break your conversion efforts. A great headline has the potential to grab your prospect’s attention, lead him into reading your copy, convince and convert him to become a loyal customer. The first step towards that conversion is the humble headline. Copyblogger has some great tips on the art of crafting great headlines.

The next step is to capture your prospects’ attention with a powerful lead. The first few lines of text need to paint the big picture and must be compelling and captivating so that they stay engaged and read the rest of your copy.

A successful headline will capture your prospects’ attention and get that first click. An effective lead will guarantee their engagement with the rest of your copy.

#2. Not enough WIIFM (What’s in it for me)

I learned this lesson early in my web career. I was engaged in web development at the time. The client had all the buzz words (according to me) in his website copy: We are the leading agency…We handle the top accounts…. Prospects just weren’t converting. He finally brought in an expert who transformed his content so that it spoke directly to his customers’ needs. His conversion rates skyrocketed and were up by close to 80% all because he spoke in terms of the WIIFM angle.

Your sale’s copy must tell me what are the benefits to me? Will it make my life simpler? Will I lose weight, get richer, save money or look younger? Is your product cheaper or newer than other products on the market?

Unique angle

What is so unique about your product? Why is it so different from the 10 other products on the market? In other words, why should I buy from you?
• For example if I want to buy seo tools for my website, why are yours different from the free ones on the market?
• If you are an electronics retailer, what makes your online store different for the 1000 other stores that sell electronics?

#3. No Calls to Action

“It’s your company’s website where your prospect makes a buying decision and the sale actually takes place. Each webpage needs to provide prospects with a compelling reason to do business with you, including calls to action that gently direct them down the sales funnel, getting them to convert, “buy now” or contact you. While an unprofessional website will derail the best web marketing campaign, a well-designed site is a powerful conversion tool that will continually deliver high-quality leads.”
-Rich Brooks, President of Flyte New Media

While It’s the job of the rest of your content to attract, engage and sell the benefits, the call to action needs to get your prospects to take the action you want them to right now.

Be direct. Tell people what to do. It could be to buy a product, sign up for a webinar or subscribe to your newsletter.

Very often your prospects really WANT you to give them a final push. Help them out by using language that propels them forward.

A powerful headline, strong lead, compelling WIIFM and direct calls to action are all important aspects of website copy. They all need to collaboratively perform well for that all important conversion. These important power elements if done correctly will work every time guaranteed as long as these essential elements of writing for the web are met.

What are the top content mistakes that that have cost you conversions? Please share your thoughts.