| Introduction
Page 16
Writing for a Machine
When you
write anything for publishing on the Net, you have to remember that
an indexing robot won’t know what a document is about and
where it is unless you tell it in a language it understands. You
create the context and you give meaning to everything on the Web
site through your words and hyperlinks. You are basically writing
for a machine. It literally follows and believes whatever you (and
other Web sites) tell it to believe. Some Web site owners take advantage
of this vulnerability and by misleading the robots and deceiving
the index. We’ll talk about these practices too so you don’t
caught unwittingly doing things that might get your site penalized.
To weed
out the so-called forged and spam documents, search engines rely
on an additional set of criteria. One is the link popularity of
your document. If many pages on your site and from other web sites
have a link leading to your document, then the search engine index
calculates that your document must be important and perhaps genuine.
It estimates your document’s value in a ranking.
The other
is known as filters. These database filters cull out duplicate documents,
along with other documents which pretend to be something they aren’t.
Some technically oriented Web site owners have used deceitful tricks
(called Spamdexing) to mislead the search engine into giving their
documents greater importance than they really deserve. They do this
to trick people into visiting their Web site, which really had nothing
to do with what the visitor expected. It’s basically fraud.
Search engines try to punish those attempts to mislead.
Good search
engine writing isn’t about these “spam” tricks.
Your writing goal is to capture specifically, those customer prospects
who are likely to make a purchase or at least want to receive your
company's message. Good search engine writing zeroes in on the best
prospects and gives them what they want. That’s important
because the web is so competitive now, that only your best, focused
effort will be successful.
Your copy
has to be efficient and “write on target” or your documents
will lose focus and power from the search engine’s perspective.
So where
is the creativity, branding message, tone, voice and spirit of writing
for search engines? It is there. This is where your mental flexibility
and communicative talent are given a chance to show themselves.
Instead of starting with an idea, you will start with the keywords
your customers use. You will use them expertly. You will also decorate
the document with the value your company has to offer the potential
and current customer. You can do this copy
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