What makes great content? Is it simply finding the right words and phrases to make something clever that will get an audience’s attention? Or, is it something more intimate? Is it a matter of understanding their needs and connecting to them on a personal level? I tend to favor the latter. In all writing, the audience has to come first. While that mantra was always a part of my previous endeavors, it wasn’t always clear what the audience was looking for, or if they were even still looking for it. I spent over a year as a freelance feature writer for an entertainment website. It was fun at first, but the fun didn’t last. My “beat” was movies and television – especially genre entertainment – and as you can imagine, it all started to feel a little pointless after a while. To their credit, the site I wrote for took a chance on me, and I’m grateful I had the opportunity to write about a subject that I often go on and on about for free with my friends and family. It got considerably harder to think of topics when my subject list became limited to one area – Star Trek: The Original Series and The Next Generation. If you’re going to limit an author who’s already stuck for ideas, the least you can do is suggest some article ideas they can build on, or else, give them a purpose beyond getting eyes on your articles and links to others to increase traffic. This leads me to the main point of this post, how to get people to read your work in the first place.
You Can’t Become an SEO Expert on the Fly
The main focus of feature writing for an entertainment reporting website seems to be bringing traffic to the site. Not only did this mean getting people to read my articles, but other features as well. The first step, however, was always getting people to come to my articles first. That’s where SEO came in.
Getting my start as a feature writer, I had no idea what SEO was. Fortunately, my new employers had an entire section of my training devoted to Search Engine Optimization. Unfortunately, the training I received on the topic was fairly vague. As time went on, they coached me on how to look up topics people were searching for on the web and how to craft the titles and my articles to get more views.
Yet, something seemed off about the way I was trained to use SEO. I had the tools to work with, but the experience of writing about already trending topics felt extremely limiting. Worse, writing the articles according to the editorial guidelines I was given didn’t afford me the opportunity to add anything new to the conversation that was already ongoing, and chasing popular searches only allowed me to join an existing discussion rather than start a new one. As my frustration mounted – and my job went away – I looked for a new creative outlet…and found the answers to what had been bothering me about SEO all along.
Knowing Your Audience is Tricky, Especially without Purpose
Writing feature articles for an online publication isn’t so much about good writing or exploring interesting topics. There’s an ever-increasing sense of competition on the web when it comes to getting eyeballs on your site. And since things move exceedingly fast in Internet Land, there isn’t much time to promote work to gain attention. The fastest way to gain readers is to find out what they’re looking for. The only problem is, once I found out what folks were searching for, the conversation hadn’t just started, but nearly everything that could be said about it had already been covered…by several other writers on multiple websites. I wasn’t contributing anything to the conversation because it had already taken place. Because of that, I wasn’t really bringing anything of value to my audience.
I’ll never say I don’t enjoy writing. I’ve never not enjoyed expressing myself through the written word, but there has to be a purpose behind it, eventually. If the point is to entertain, that’s perfectly valid, but when it comes to film and television, the audience has already been entertained, and if they haven’t, there’s no point belaboring the issue. Features can lend context to an ongoing storyline or be used as a critique or commentary on how well a story was told, but it’s just another diversion. Who does it really help? What difference does it really make? When I left my feature writing job, I found myself at the proverbial crossroads of my career. Knowing that if I looked for other work making pop culture commentary I’d just be doing more of the same, I looked into copywriting. While taking an online course from Coursera, UC Davis, and the fine people at Copyblogger, I learned some things about myself, copywriting (naturally), and the immensely different role SEO plays in copy and content marketing versus feature writing.
SEO was Intended to Keep Websites Honest
When I first started studying copywriting, I learned much about the critical role that content and copy play in commerce. What struck me more, however, were the contrasts between how different it is from the world I’d just left. Content marketing, unlike features, has a purpose, an endgame. A content marketer identifies a problem people share, starts or joins the conversation, and leads people to a potential solution. Of course, one major difference between content creation and features is the role Search Engine Optimization plays in the former versus the latter.
When I was writing features, I was encouraged to use Google Trends to find out what people were talking about, but the objective was always to get more people reading my articles by whatever means necessary. Essentially, it seemed like we wanted to trick readers into getting on the site. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t making false promises about the article content, it just seemed like the first step was always to trick the algorithm into leading readers to my work and ultimately, the website with flashy titles that didn’t wholly reflect the meaning behind every piece. It seemed wrong…like I was trying to game the system. What’s more, I started to think that was how the game was played. Working my way to a new career opened my eyes to another POV about SEO.
Google has faced a lot of criticism recently because they constantly rewrite their search engine algorithm. It seems that as soon as creators crack the proverbial code on optimization, the search engine changes their operating procedure all over again, prioritizing advertisers at the expense of the lone voice on the internet. I can’t speak for every creator on the web, but I can say that a major thing I learned in my content creation course is the intent of Google’s ever-changing standards was initially a way to avoid having websites trick their audience onto their sites with clickbait titles and descriptions, as well as other unsavory tactics. If that sounds familiar, then you’ve probably been duped into sacrificing some of your precious free time to read something that didn’t deliver what it promised. If one of my articles fits this description, then I apologize sincerely. I’d like to think that everyone who read one of my articles did so because they either like my prose style or they shared my interests, but I’m not that optimistic. Content writers, on the other hand, have to have a better understanding of the role of SEO. We have to craft the entire concept of our articles to not only fit what the readers are searching for, but to bring value to the time they devote to reading our work. It’s why we’re here, and I can’t wait to get started.
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