My Travels on the Net

The company that ranks #1 for “internet marketing articles” has quite a few articles on the subject. I’m sure it took a lot of work to write all those articles but I’d be willing to bet all that work hasn’t paid off. Why?

First, consider the words used buy people looking to buy a service versus people looking for information.

When people want to find a service provider, they use words like:
Consultant
Consulting
Strategy
Expert

When people are looking for information, they use words like:
Articles
Case studies
Examples
Information
Data

Second, the articles tell you how to do something but they don’t show you why you should hire this search engine optimization firm. The author could argue that the purpose of the articles is to build the perception of expertise. Providing good information is one way to do it but these articles aren’t particularly well written or all that helpful.

If you’re going to try to improve your website’s rankings with articles make sure your articles demonstrate your expertise AND subtly show the reader why they should hire you to do the job. Otherwise, you will just wind up with a bunch of looky-loos and no customers.

(*I’m giving them a link for “internet marketing articles” as a consolation prize for being my "how not to do it" example.)

Labels: internet marketing, seo, writing articles

Case studies are one of the bet selling tools a service business can use on their webiste. Unfortunately, they are often overlooked or just plain boring. Even when they follow the problem/solution/result format, they wind up leaving reader thinking "So what?"

I recently cam across an article, "The Secret To Writing Persuasive Case Studies" by Mark Levy that does an excellent job describing how to make your case studies stand out. He makes the case that the missing element is the "insight." Mark makes the case that "By highlighting an insight in a case study, you're underscoring how you think, create, strategize, and fix problems." which I think is an exxcellent point.

I strongly recommend readin this article and then reviewing your own case studies. Also, check out Mark's article "Two Strategies to Help Increase Your Fees by Up to 2,000%"

Labels: copy writing, website text, writing articles, writing case studies