As a business owner, the aim of the words you write is to guide customers toward using your product or service. Effective communication requires keeping your goal in mind. At the same time your business builds an online presence, you want to make sure your content is clear and accessible to search engines.
The key to combining a guide to customer action and optimizing content for search is not as complex as it first seems. As David Amerland suggests in SEO Help: 20 Semantic Search Steps That Will Help Your Business Grow, a guide for businesses to approach search engine optimization:
The key to everything is as simple to detail as it is hard to do well:
Careful planning beforehand
Consistency in the style of execution
Sustainability in the overall execution[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="yes" overflow="visible"][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="no" center_content="no" min_height="none"]
SEO Help, p. 102
Clarity About Your Business
Each piece you write guides your customer with knowledge about your business and ways your product or service will impact their life.
Choose one topic--an aspect of your business--and focus on that. Briefly describe that product or segment of your service, then expand on how the customer will benefit.
Keep the four goals for your finished text in mind:
Natural language for reader comprehension
Context related to the business
Readability related to target market sophistication ( between grade levels 6-12)
Entity clarification to distinguish the business from all other businesses in the same category (bakeries, motor shops, travel service, etc.)
Your Business Voice
Your business voice is the tone you use to talk to your customers. Write as though you are having a conversation with a potential customer. Balance your business knowledge with easy to understand words, short sentences, and a focus on what problem your business solves.
As you write in a conversational mode, your distinct voice emerges. Creating and using your business voice helps to differentiate your business from competitors. Your voice, or tone, is a component of the consistency you build on separate pages on your website and each article you publish either on your blog or anywhere else on the web.
Case Example
I work with a business owner who decided to stop hiring content creators and write from the heart about his business. His business revolves around pain management, focusing on back pain.
In our consultation hour, we talked about the need for clear expression in articles. His concern was that he tends to “go off topic” within an article.
Here is my feedback on his first article.
You are off to a good start. You don’t seem to have any trouble staying on topic. :)
Use subheadings to break up text. They help readers get to the point of each section. I used example subheads. Change them at will.
Write the way you speak. Imagine you are talking to a friend. That will eliminate some of the stilted language, like “as opposed to.”
Use links each time to refer to a specific product. In this example it is the book. This is the perfect opportunity to implement your link to make money from any sales.
The Call To Action
Embedding links in your text to your product, is a way of guiding customers toward making a purchase. The links prepare your reader for your Call To Action (CTA) at the end of your article.
The call to action is a stated message asking the reader to take action. You can use a statement with a link:
Get in touch to schedule an appointment: telephone number or email address or both
Use the contact form (with link to form) to schedule your consultation
To order (the product) just go to the (product page with link)
If you’ve been on the Internet at all, you are familiar with calls to action. They work. Always end your piece with a linked call to action.
Tools You Can Use
Before you publish your text, you can use tools to check spelling and grammar, help tighten your prose, and measure the readability.
Grammarly - use the free version to spot check typos and gross misspellings. Grammar recommendations are not always correct, so use them with care.
Hemingway Editor - check sentence length and readability level of your text
ProWritingAid - sophisticated editing tool checks grammar, spelling, and readability as well as a variety of other measurements like cliches, words you don’t need, and other writing facets.
If you use WordPress for your site, WordLift will help you set up basic SEO based on the text on your page. Based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) the plugin finds keywords, topics, sets up metadata, and even suggests images.
You and Your Customer
If you envision the exact person who will benefit from your business and talk to them in a personal manner, your own writing will be well on the way to growing your business.
Some entrepreneurs, liked Randy Milanovic of Kayak Online Marketing strike a balance. He uses his own words and then has the content reviewed by editors.
I wrote my first post about 6 years ago. It was horrific. I learned very quickly that being my own writer wasn't the same as being my own copy editor. While my writing has improved a lot, I still run my articles and books through a pair of trusted editors. Doing so allows me to write freely about the topics that motivate me while they handle the technical aspects.
Whatever you decide--create the entire text yourself or use an editor before publishing--the first step is creating your content. Your voice is the clearest way to represent your business.
If you are a business owner who wants to try your hand at writing for your business, get in touch to schedule a free 20-minute chat. zara@actationnow.com or +1 503 468 7008.
Zara Altair
Zara writes semantic web content and ghostwrites books. As a ghostwriter, Zara has created both fiction and non-fiction books. Specializing in the research, planning, and creation of digital content, Zara is responsible for delivering written material for both national and international clients.