Most of us journalists know that the internet is the future. In terms of communication and content, this particularly affects journalists who, even if they don’t feel really passion about it, must recognise its benefits and get involved in the digital world. Once this step has been taken, we need to talk about the relationship between the writer and the new world. But let’s be honest. Sometimes getting into the SEO scene isn’t easy, but the key thing to keep in mind is to forget for a while what you have learned during your days at the School of Journalism and try to think in a more simple way: What can you offer to the readers and how can you portray your message?

In order to not go crazy, it´s useful to follow some tips that will help the new SEO writer to adapt his content to the online world. And one more thing: it will also help journalists to put away the idea that SEO involves stuffing keywords into their articles at the expense of good writing.

1. The Inverted Pyramid: Emil Dovifat theory has been used by the classic School of Journalism in order to structure the information. It says that facts have to be displayed from most relevant to less important. In this sense, the online world works in the same way. We need to gain the reader but also the search engine. It’s because of that, we need to remind ourselves that the internet is the biggest information kiosk ever! If our article doesn’t catch people’s attention, there will be another that will.

2. The language: Writing for the online market is different from the way we would do in printed publications. We need to modify the way we work with the language and this means we have to avoid complicated language and expressions that maybe we would use while writing an article for a newspaper section (It doesn’t signify that we have to post a piece using colloquial language). People don’t really appreciate the writer’s style (Let’s leave the literature for the e-books) but they look for useful content, which must be offered through a clear language.

3. Titles and the body of the article: Anyone that wants to write a post needs to ask themselves: How do people look for the information I want to offer in my article? In this sense, it´s important to use titles such as “5 tips….”, “Top ten websites…” (Even if they start with a number, which can be a bit painful at first).  Another important tip is to organise the text by paragraphs and do not include more than one idea per each. Last thing but not less important is to write not very long posts. Leave 1,000 word articles for newspapers!

4. Hypertextuality: We understand by “hypertextuality” a text displayed on a computer display or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. In the digital world we have the chance to add relevant information to our message. This is achieved by “linking”, and this must be done in a specific way, as the engines discover how pages are related to each other and in which ways.

5. Social sharing: The good news for the online planet is how easy it is to spread the word. After writing a post you have the power to share it through social services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google + and many more. But it is also possible the other way round: Readers can also share and retweet your post, which can be a good way to get feedback on your content.

This is how journalists can benefit from the online world. Be smart, make people find you on the server and remember that relationship between Journalism and SEO doesn’t have to be unhappy.

Regardless of what industry you are in, what type of goods you sell or what services you offer, there is one rule every business should follow: tell the customers that you care. Let them know that you value their opinion—that they are more than just another e-commerce transaction that will be stored in the depths of your analytics. We are blessed to have the power of social media for customer feedback. A few years back, companies relied on focus groups, mailed surveys and other costly methods of communication.

Social media has opened a gateway for businesses to efficiently communicate with their customers. There has been an increase in frequency, volume and quality of customer feedback through every business sector of an ordinary company. Social media reports such as FB Likes and Re-tweets have started become an indicator of success, too. Analysing social media signals is a good way to judge whether a website is worth getting a link from. The main benefit of increased communication between a company and its customers is the influx of user-generated content. Businesses can finally say that “we value your opinion” and mean it.

Having weekly guest posts to fill in your blogs, product reviews for more on-page content and a wiki for user-generated FAQ’s sounds great, doesn’t it? All you have to do is sit back and watch your traffic peak as your website fills in with words from individuals all over the world. But we all know that nothing is that clear-cut. So how much is too much? When does user-generated content go too far?

1) When you have to scroll to find your name. If you are looking all over your blog to find the last time you posted something, then you have gone too far. It’s easy accepting guest posts left and right when all you have to do is copy, paste and hit publish. But is it really your blog anymore? Do your fans and readers control what you post now?

2) When you can’t locate your website name. Customers, fans and readers do not try to actively promote your brand. Your business/blog is your beloved significant-other that you have spent years building up to get to this point. But have you lost control of it? External content posters will hardly —if ever —mention your blog name or internally link to appropriate sections.

This does not mean that user-generated content is bad.

If you play your cards right and aren’t a complete idiot about it, user-generated content can be quite useful. Here are a few guidelines you should keep in mind if you plan on making the most out of it.

1) Research – go to the source of your content and make sure it’s credible and authentic. Take some time to research the authors of your guest posts. Are they legit writers or is it written by someone outsourced in the Philippines for 50p/article? Do they credit images? Do they cite their sources? Is it unique content?

2) Have a content schedule – user-generated content can be addictive but you have to concentrate on your initial brand strategy. Having a community that interacts, shares and comments without your help can tempt you to take your foot off the gas. Use external resources only to improve your already-existing content.

3) Exclusivity – making something VIP and for ‘special occasions’ gives it value. If you’re publishing guest posts day in, day out then your blog will seem spammy, repetitive and unappealing. Keeping it exclusive will also raise the quality of the content you’re receiving.

There’s no going wrong if you plan carefully and manage a blog/website that has a good balance of external and internal content. I can’t give you a percentage, or tell you how many posts to publish per week—all that changes from blog to blog. Be smart about your approach to show your readers, fans and customers that you care, but at the same time maintain a strong brand presence.

Twitter was 7 years old yesterday.

I’ve personally been on Twitter for almost all that time. As I write, I’ve been on there (as @maxormark) for 6 years, 3 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 59 minutes, 22 seconds!

I got on to it after another SEO colleague mentioned it, and thought it was going to be big. Well, it seems he was right.

There are lots of facts an figures about Twitter and how best to use it, but on a Friday afternoon it more a case of a little light-hearted look at the joys and japes of everyone’s favourite micro-blogging web site.

So, here are seven random highlights for seven years of Twitter.

1. Before she died, Amy Winehouse was no stranger to controversy. When producer Mark Ronson (@iamMarkRonson) said in an interview that he had “created the tracks” on Amy’s 2007 Back To Black album, she hit back, via Twitter: “Ronson you’re dead to me. One album I write and you take half the credit – make a career out of it? Don’t think so BRUV.”

2. When septuagenarian acid-tongued comedienne Joan Rivers (@Joan_Rivers) took to Twitter to poke fun at Lindsay Lohan, LiLo’s former girlfriend Samantha Ronson hit back: “Hey Joan Rivers – you have collagen older than Lindsay, pick on someone your own age, oh wait, I guess people that old can’t hear.”

3. In Feb 2009 celebrity blogger Perez Hilton (@PerezHilton)tweeted that he should be cast in Lily Allen’s next video. Allen’s reply was in the negative, telling her followers that she’d “already cast the jealous and bitter lonely old queen role”. Perez retorted: “If I wanted to be a f***ed up Brit, I’d rather be Amy Winehouse – whose got talent.”

4. Possibly the worse for wear, meltdown actor Charlie Sheen (@CharlieSheen) tweeted a message to pop wild child Justin Bieber containing his personal mobile number. But instead of sending it as a Direct Message, he tweeted it publicly to his 5 million followers. The number has since been disconnected and the Tweet deleted. #winning!

5. Paris Hilton (@ParisHilton) is not famous for her intellect but the Tweetscape certainly got the measure when she posted: “No, I didn’t go to England; I went to London.”

6. When marketing types at Skittles decided to save money by redirecting skittles.com to a Twitter search result page – instead of building a website – they got more than they bargained for. Tweets posted on the site included: “Skittles got stuck in my mouth while I was driving, forced me to slam into orphanage, killing hundreds. I’ll never eat them again.”

7. When would-be employee Connor Riley (@theconnor) received an offer from IT giant Cisco, she tweeted: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” The job offer was withdrawn.

You’ve spent hours slaving away to create your content: redrafting paragraphs, rephrasing sentences and, if you’re anything like me, hesitating over the placement of a comma. So why is nobody reading your article? Or worse still, why is no-one commenting on it, Tweeting it or Facebook sharing it?

Whether you’ve experience this dilemma first-hand or the mere thought of it is enough to send a shiver down your spine, there are actually a few things you can do to prevent your content from being forever condemned to cyber space anonymity. It can take minutes to turn your beautifully written copy into a highly readable, shareable article. Here are five ways!

1.      Consider Your Layout

The first thing to remember when writing your content is that when it comes to the internet, people will often scan pages rather than read them. This is an unavoidable fact and sadly, must influence the way you write – you’ve got to keep things snappy! Think about your layout and break your writing up into short, manageable paragraphs – big chunks of text can be intimidating. Make line breaks your friend and your nicely-spaced article will be pleasing on the eye, enticing readers to continue.

Think about sentence length, trying to keep them short and to the point. Cut out pointless filler words that drag away from your point – is something that’s ‘very unique’ any more so than something that’s already ‘unique’?

2.       Make Use of Formatting

Be strategic with your formatting, for example by bolding important concepts to add emphasis to them. This means that at a glance, the reader is drawn straight to the most important things that you have to say. However, don’t fall into the trap of thinking everything you have to say is important (difficult, I know) and over-highlighting everything, drawing attention to nothing.

Bullet points are easy to scan and provide a visual break from large chunks of text or a lengthy paragraph, presenting ideas in an easily digestible way. It’s even better if you can keep your bullet points symmetrical with similar line lengths and the same grammatical form. It’s easier on the eye which means, of course, it’s easier on the reader.

3.      Plan Your Subtitles

Everyone loves a subtitle! A great technique to help you plan out your article is to write all your subtitles first, filling in the content later. Well-written subtitles make your ideas concise, easy to understand and highly impacting on the reader. It also means you can review your content from a distance – can you make sense of your article just from reading the subtitles? That’s the aim of the game here.

4.      Use Numbers

Much like subtitles, numbered lists ensure that the points that you’re making are crystal clear. Using a numbered list also gives an idea of how long your article is (and how far from the end you are!) which is great for hitting points home and making them memorable. It will also give the impression that you know what you’re talking about and that you can articulate it accurately. Try numbering your main points and see if it makes your article more compelling and powerful, just like this one.

5.      ‘Write drunk; edit sober’ – Ernest Hemingway

Take this one as literally as you like! What our friend Hemingway was trying to say here is that your personality needs to shine through in your writing – it’s always better to edit it out later than to not have any to begin with. By writing in a way that is real and genuine as opposed to a faceless, anonymous drone, readers will naturally listen to what you have to say and what’s more, they’ll trust whatever it is that you’re saying. And trust breeds authority. How many times has someone’s enthusiasm rubbed off on you without even trying? Enthusiasm is infectious, so let yours shine through in your writing and your involvement and connection with your reader will be sky high.

So next time you’ve got a great article that just doesn’t seem to be hitting the spot, give these tips a try and watch your popularity soar.

Writing Meta tags and Titles is one job that normally gets given to the most junior member of an agency team. It’s a ball-ache and too menial to be carried out by someone senior, and besides, it’s good practice for SEO newbies to get to know all about keywords and how to pack them in to pages like sardines.

And after all, it doesn’t really make much difference does it? Only Titles count to the page’s keywords . The search engines don’t count descriptions in the value of the page. Crikey! They’re not part of the algorithm.

All these are valid points — well most of them — and I can understand why bog-standard SEOs, offering services at £100 a page, treat them so.

But we’re all about SEO for grown-ups. We know that everything plays it’s part. And we know that SEO is not about optimising for Search Engines any more — it’s about optimising for people.

So let’s go back to first principles here: what do Titles and Meta descriptions actually do?

For starters, the Title tag appears on the tab of the browser, or the browser window itself. These days, tabs are so small that less than 30 characters appear there, although hovering over the tab will usually display the full title. But the maximum length of a Title tag is given as between 60 and 70 characters (including spaces). This is because Titles are displayed not on character count but on space limitations and pixels.

The Title tag maximum is around 70 characters if lots of thin letters or figures are used — i, j, l, 1, etc. — but closer to 60 if fatter ones predominate — w, m, 8, etc.

The theoretical upper limit on the description Meta tag is about 150 characters. That’s a Tweet plus 10, so you can use your favourite Twitter client to compose a full-length description tag.

As far as the page goes, this tag does nothing. It’s hidden in the <head> code of your page and does not count to keywords and, as previously hinted does not — says Google itself — feature in the algorithm either. So what’s it there for?

Well, if you’re anything other than extremely unlucky, the description tag will form the body of the snippet: the lump of text that appears in a search result for your page.

Look for Bing Search on Google and you get this  …

Of course it may not appear, either because you have not written a Description for the page — and most WordPress pages do not automatically feature a description tag — or perhaps because in the view of the search engine, your description is not relevant to the search query.

The fact that Description tags do not feature in the Google algorithm is an interesting one since it is clear from this observation that Google actively assess the quality of the Description to determine if it needs to be replaced.

But the snippet is not just the Description tag, it is a combination of the Title and the Description tag. In Bing’s case this looks like …

Only now does the real purpose of the Title and Description actually spring into view. The snippet is akin to a short news story or advertisement, which sells the idea to the user. Peak their interest with a well-written snippet and they will click through to your site.

In Bing’s case this doesn’t work quite so well because their Title tag is of almost the very worst kind — one word — and their thinking on what makes a good Description tag leaves something to be desired too.

It is important when composing Meta tags to have this in mind. There are plenty of JavaScript-based snippet optimising tools out there: the best ones I’ve come across are at  snippetoptimizer.net and the one at seomofo.com but there are several points to remember when writing that killer text.

 1. Make it work as a whole

That means treat Title and Description as two equal parts of the story. The Title is the “headline”, trying to grab people’s attention, the Description is the “story”, explaining the headline and teasing the reader to go further (and click through to the page). And keep below the limits. Anything over 150 characters for a description will get cut off with an ellipsis — “…” — which looks like you got something wrong.

2. Don’t get obsessed with keywords

Okay, so we don’t talk about keyword densities any longer but every word in the Snippet has a keyword density of more than 1% so repeating any of them is a waste of time; not because it will displease Google but because, in such a short passage of text, repeating words makes the words harder to read and digest. And indigestion only sells antacid tablets.

3. Don’t get obsessed with keywords

Yes, I know it’s the same headline as before (see what I mean about repeated words?) but it’s a different point about keywords. While it’s excellent to have your chosen keywords in your Title tag, it’s not essential to make it show up in the SERPs. If you don’t believe me, search for something like “discount holidays to the Caribbean” and spot how many times the word “Discount” appears in the Snippet titles. Not many. That’s because the pages have the keywords which are appropriate to the search result and that’s where most of the keyword value lies, not simply in the Title tags.

4. Get active!

If you’re going to make your Snippet sell your search result, it has to really sell. Use active verbs — “Go”, “Explore”, Experience”, Try” — and calls to action — “Book now”, “Buy online”, “See the full range” — in your text. And use synonyms for your keywords too, all the search engines now use similar words to find the best match for any search term.

5. Do the last Bus Test

Imagine you are rushing for your last bus home and you see a friend between you and the stop. You have something vital to tell her but you can’t miss that bus. How do you get your message across in a friendly, direct and assertive way, including all the most important points that you know will interest her? Your snippet will be glimpsed for less than a second, so if you can write yours — Titles and Description tags — like that, then they will sell their click over and above the others appearing in that same search result, even if they appear higher than you.

Of course, putting all this into practice will teach you one thing. Writing good Titles and Meta Description tags is hard work which should not necessarily be left to the lowliest creature in the office, however good it may be for their character.

Getting it right takes skill, intelligence, talent and sheer hard graft, and it will leave you with a headache after several days of intensive study.

And here is one last tip: there will be pages where it is difficult to find anything to write which will sell the contents. Most likely this will be on a page which is of so low a value as to be of little importance. Realise this and accept a helping hand from the search engines and don’t write a Description tag: let the algorithm do it for you.