Help ‘Em Get Your Business Writing Out of the Package

"Frustrate me at your peril!" is the unspoken message from online searchers to blog content writers and web designers. It’s a message I find bears repeating to business owners who use my business blogging services as part of company marketing.

Sure, as a freelance SEO copywriter, I create blog posts with an eye to making them readable, informative, and engaging.  But, whether I’m the author or providing training to others in corporate blog writing, the writing itself and the page on which the blog content writer’s work appears both need to be "easy to open", in other words, navigable.

The December 20-26 issue of the Indianapolis Business Journal drove home this very point in an editorial cartoon: "It’s not that I don’t like the product," explains the harried lady returning a gadget at a merchant’s "Returns" window. "I can’t get it out of the package!"

A fact of life in corporate blog writing is that a search engine’s delivering a potential customer to the "door" of your blog guarantees absolutely nothing – if that reader suffers inconvenience at your hands. Pay attention to these possible "My bad" pitfalls:

• Poor match between the SEO marketing blog post title and the content of the first paragraph of the blog post itself.
• Difficult to find – and harder to follow – Calls to Action in the post or on the blog page.
• Links that lead nowhere.

Remember, online readers don’t need to come to a "Returns" window.  If it isn’t convenient for them to "get the package open" (to get the information they came to find out of your corporate blog content), then to follow the "map" to take the next step – they’ll click away, leaving you with a half-opened package and tears of frustration in your eyes!