language learning tools on the Web

I’ve personally worked for some companies in Malaysia hiring me to write for them – And I charge them based on the project scope. But there’s a problem: Web copywriters aren’t the old-fashioned pay-to-play thing only for human beings. It isn’t just a personal review of a product or informative digest for a company’s audience anymore. Writing for the web is more than that.

Five or six projects give and take, is how many writing jobs in a set a web copywriter should perform just to get a hang of what it takes to write for both humans and robots. Companies should understand that this applies to part/full time and contract jobs. Still confused? Let me explain a little further.

When you’re hiring a Web Writer…
I do a lot of experiments online to test search engines, aggregator robots and user behaviors. In my last three experiments, I’ve tested for word and character sensitivity towards Googlebot ONLY. I don’t have the time to crunch down secondary and tertiary data to compile evidence from different analysis tools. Therefore, I would say these are not merely presumptions, but partially proven statistics that test both my skills in web copywriting, research and knowledge.

Through a simple analysis, I’ve managed to prove the following hypothesis’. Note that these hypothesis’ are governed by many other factors and I did not test them in all manners such as (Trust, Size, Linkage, Recency, Design, Human Behaviors, etc).

1. Google has a filter called the QDF (Query Deserve Freshness), in which favors search results (test for impressions on keywords) to updated blogs and websites.
2. Over-optimization of article leads to possible spam. Googlebot may have different levels of spam alerts, in which triggers alerts based on the level of offence. Common ones are usually historical bad practices done over time. (If you need to read more on bad techniques for SEO, you can google it)
3. Placement of articles deep in the website architecture may delay crawling frequency and time, if there are no primary to secondary pages (with good crawling times) linking to it, including HTML or XML sitemaps.
4. Untargeted keyword terms used in the entire article may lead to Googlebot translating your article into a different meaning. For example, an article on finance banking with complicated or mixed business and regular financial terms will trigger Googlebot’s understanding, throwing you unrelated keyword visits through the web.
5. Google’s AI wiki/dictionary is still very shabby when it comes to relating the real meaning of an article (not always) to its search queries or ads, leaving unrelevant visits to your website (which then increases bounce rates and decreases time on site in average).
6. Articles that are written messy (with combined substances of more than 10) in a single page can call for irrelevant search results for visitors using Google search.
7. Article headers (or titles) that are unique to the human mind may not necessarily be perfectly parsed by Googlebot, leaving irrelevant hikes of impressions on search results.
8. The way articles are placed in a site architecture (for small sites) plays an important ‘first impression’ role for Googlebot. A proper article should be defined in both coding and the copy different sections of an article.
9. Writing conversation-style articles should be done in moderation.
10. Content is not king. Communication is. Google may index your article page today for relevant search queries, but you may drop off scarily to the bottom if there are no communication responses such as Pingbacks, comments, reviews, revisits and updated follow ups.

Basically, a web copywriter need to know how to:

1. Write to entice users. The writer has creatively use different words to make the article exciting to read, moderately apply emphasis, understand the flow of thought, beef up a brilliant summary and convey a “WANT” message rather than “JUST”.
2. Abide by business rules. Writing certain articles can be hard – For marketing/advertising articles, flow of thought is extremely important especially when it comes to advertorials. Also, the writer must know how to “Set Article Goals” in accordance with the website’s business goals, satisfy certain marketing objectives and create conversion value in the article itself.
3. Write for robots, too. This is the difficult part for newbies. Keyword research is not only difficult if a writer has no base knowledge on site architecture, it’ll be worse if a writer tries to pick up these skills by themselves. Picking keyword research skills through wrong practice of article optimization will not be disastrous, but it’ll not ‘excite’ search robots.
4. Write and understand basic programming languages. HTML, PHP and XML knowledge is important, although not extensively required. To understand the big picture, however, one must not only know these languages: They should also pick up various physical web marketing skills.
5. Ignore commons and learn through experiments. One of the best way to prove theories would be experiments. Sometimes, experiments can take up to 2 months, 6 months or more. When it comes to certain premium research, it may also cost you money. But what good will you be if you merely talk people’s talk? Common knowledge is a dangerous thing – Especially on the web. Learning proper web copywriting MUST be done through experiments, professional training/advisory and practice.

Of course, there are a few more things a web copywriter should know, least they expect a fat pay by doing a good job.

Elioe.com is the only organization in Malaysia that integrates human behavioral sciences, psychological criterion and disciplines into web marketing practices in an extensive manner. They’ve advised a large number of notable Malaysian corporations in many areas including organic & paid marketing, strategic conversion, conceptual technologies and forecasting.