Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

By Jon Symons from Art of Money.

It’s ironic but in the whole deluge of textual information presented on the web, the skill most sorely lacking it the ability to write. We’ve seen Yaro and others write about how AdSense (I’ve nicknamed it Crack-Sense) is ruining the Internet and it certainly is true. Not only has the fact that Google will pay you very well to put crap sites online contaminated the global well of information by spawning infinite spam sites, but it has also changed the nature of that information as well.

Thanks to the magic pill of search engine optimization (SEO) we have a new bizarre skill set that is dominating the online world: SEO writing. SEO writing is the art of writing like a search engine thinks - only backwards. Keywords are important, keyword density (the number of times, represented as a percentage, that a keyword appears on a page), tagging keywords in bold or italics, placing keywords in the first and last paragraphs; and on and on it goes.

With these shackles iron locked to their wrists the SEO writer is now given the task to write quality articles on a given topic keyword phrase. It just isn’t possible. Why? An essential ingredient in effective writing is to understand the audience that you’re writing to. SEO writing is the art of writing to the GoogleBot. Real writing is the art of writing to someone in your target audience. You get to pick only one or the other.

The choice should be fairly obvious (this coming from a reformed SEO writer) but you still see a surprising amount of effort and money put into finding the magic on page SEO factors.

The Arms Race

Google is constantly trying to make its search engine algorithm more and more organic. What this means to an SEO writer is that you are in a constant “arms race” with the Google algorithm. The algorithm shifts and you must shift your mental keyword stuffing pattern. The problem with being in an arms race is that there is no improvement factor, the best you can do is to just keep up with the formula: not a very satisfying position to be in. There is no business synergy in an arm’s race with a search engine.

What’s a poor webmaster to do? Write well and wait for Google to evolve. As the algorithm refines, it is becoming less and less productive (meaning the return on time invested is deteriorating) to attempt to consciously manipulate the search engine results. In my online business I’ve found this to be a very refreshing fact. I’ve taken “SEO” off of my business card and begun to focus on the craft of writing for humans.

Writing is to Evoke

Whether a child’s bedtime story or an online sales letter the point of the most writing is to persuade. It may be to empathize with the perils facing a curious teddy bear as he attempts to quench his appetite for fresh honey, to sell an set of e-books, or to express your perils when trying to balance your checkbook on your personal personal finance blog.

Whatever the topic or purpose, the result is accomplished by skillfully tickling the reader’s thoughts and feelings like a conductor coaxes sounds from his orchestra. As your writing skills progress the melodies can become more complex and incorporate more suspense, misdirections and delayed expectations which will increase the the level of resonance with your visitors.

The Three Most Important Writing Factors

1. Organization
2. Clear Intention
3. Empathy

God knows that rambling is a perfectly acceptable writing style on a blog and I indulge in the practice regularly, but when it comes to business you would be best to dig out your lessons from grade school, because your 10th Grade teacher had it right. A good essay, sales letter, magazine article, or an effective online article has a clear structure. The first paragraph introduces what is to come, the paragraphs flow into one another and at the end is a summary. There is a reason for this; our brains like this structure. It corresponds to the cycle of life; being lead along it by a skillfully written article or story is satisfying on many levels.

Getting Organized

How to achieve an organized writing style varies from writer to writer. The first method I use is to start with paper and pencil to scribble notes or even draw pictures of the story outline (pictures can be great for stimulating the writer’s imagination…they are like gasoline on the creative process).

The other method I use it to just start writing and pour every thought out onto the page without much concern for quality or organization. Then I’ll print out a couple copies double spaced and get away from the computer (don’t worry you’ll survive!). Heading to a café or some other place of refuge and with a pair of scissors and some tape and lots of markers, I’ll read and reread the article until I start to recognize the best structure for the material.

The best part of this method is that you can relax and really let it all hang out when you write the first draft. You can take risks and express things in creative ways and experiment with styles and even syntax; knowing that you’re going to thoroughly go over it before any other humans ever get to see it. By letting it all hang out you’ll often find a more powerful writing style that will be more compelling to your readers. And you can always tone it down a bit if necessary . On the flip side, there is a danger with this method and that is that when you do the first draft, you’ll get lazy and think you’re done, or half way through the first draft you’ll shift into final draft mode and call it done. Neither of these shortcuts will likely produce an effective article.

Your Intention Matters

Hand in hand with being organized is to have a clear intention when you are creating an article. If you are writing an article to submit to eZine sites then the intention might be to have it re-published on as many websites as possible, in which case you are writing to eZine publishers to get them interested in your article. If you also want get the eZine article readers to read the article all the way through and then get to the resource box and click through to your site, now you have a more complex intention: part one to attract the publisher and part two to seduce their readers away from the eZine and to your site.

Another possible intention would be to have someone click on an affiliate link from your site and go to the merchant site and make a sale. This style of writing is called pre-selling. It is like having a hungry person in your house, as an affiliate you don’t feed them, you just have a bunch of food on the stove so the delicious aromas whet their taste buds, then you send them to your friend’s restaurant and hope they will spend money because of the excellent job you did in stimulating their appetite.

The sales letter page or product sales pitch’s intention is to cultivate a need or want and to simultaneously remove the prospect’s resistance to commit. These pages have become a pretty standard formulas with the only real difference being how small the vertical scroll bar can become (shorter pages work better by the way).

One of the best research tools for this type of writing is the Clickbank product directory. Since it is organized according to performance you can see examples of effective sales pitches just by looking at the top products on any category. Read through a few and notice the intention as you go. They usually include: stress the benefits that the purchaser can expect (stats work great here: “Lose 10 pounds in 7 days!”), the testimonials to prove that others liked the product and so you will too. Then there’s the money back guarantee to remove the possibility that you’re getting ripped off. The last element is the email grab which allows those who aren’t ready to purchase yet to let you know that they’re willing to possibly convinced in the future.

Whatever the intention you are working on, having it clearly defined before you begin writing is fairly necessary. It doesn’t mean that you have to be obvious in directing your reader towards the intention, but taking the time to craft a strategy and understanding the elements the will affect your intention will increase your likelihood of achieving your goal dramatically.

Get in to Their Skin

By far the most important skill of a writer is the ability to get inside the head of her reader. It is to be able to march in lockstep with the experience of your reader as they make their way through your copy. You are writing for them after all. You can write solely to express yourself, but if you want to make money in your business you will need to write for an audience.

To know how to create a response in a reader by really understanding them is the most powerful form of writing. The further you’ll move into understanding and satisfying your readers wants and needs and imagination not only will your writing improve, but your business will improve in general. The key elements of this skill are to respect you reader, put their needs above your own agendas and to anticipate their experiences within your words.

The Business of Writing

Writing is a craft, you get better at it by paying attention, trying new things and practice and following the three guidelines above. There are not really any shortcuts, with the possible exception of paying a professional to write your business copy for you.

I’d be bold enough to say that if you’re doing business online, you’re in the writing business, no matter what your product, service or business model. Writing is about connecting with your customer or site visitor and building their trust in you by demonstrating to them that you care about them. It is this expression of concern that will really draw people in to your writing and your business in general. I’m hoping that you’ll join me in taking SEO off of your list of writing concerns and focusing your efforts on respectful communication with your visitors.

Jon Symons is a full-time Internet Entrepreneur blogging his brains out on Art of Money.