Content Writing Advice, Blogs Vs Brochures

Recently I’ve been talking a lot with Jon Henshaw of Raven SEO, and he has kindly agreed to write up a guest post on a topic I’ve been juggling for the past year. I’ve been thinking about how writing for a blog differs from a static website, and Jon was kind enough to tackle this subject and offer some excellent content writing advice and a handy guide on how to write brochure type information for static websites and how to alter your approach when you change over to your blog.

Optimizing Blog and Brochure Content for Search Engines and People

If you’re like most online copywriters, you spend your time writing copy for static marketing pages and also stay busy keeping blogs up-to-date. As you already know, the content for brochure pages and blog entries is usually very different. Whereas brochure copy usually resides on static pages that rarely change, blog entries are created more frequently, take a different tone, and can be subject to frequent updates.

Optimizing Brochure Content

The part of the site that focuses on the marketing message and rarely changes is generally called the brochure. An online brochure is essentially a series of static pages that rarely change. It’s also the first place potential customers go to learn about products and services.

Brochures require a well thought out information architecture (IA) with lots of attention given to how the navigation and URL naming scheme will be configured. The content for those pages should then be highly focused on the area of the website and the keywords specified in the page URL. When writing for brochure pages, it’s important to consider the following optimization methods:

• Page titles should be concise and keyword centric.
• Hierarchal headers should be used liberally and there should be less focus on lists.
• A keyword analysis tool, like Raven’s Keyword Analyzer, should be used to make sure copy is properly saturated with targeted terms for search engines.
• Focus should be more on internal linking and less on external linking.
• Copy length for pages should exceed 400 words.

Optimizing Blog Content

Unlike brochure pages, blogs provide an extension of a company’s personality to the public. It can also serve as an excellent source of frequent and targeted traffic. However, similar to brochure pages, attention to keywords is important.

Blogs provide the opportunity to capture long-tail search traffic that typical brochure pages can’t. Entries should range from industry opinion pieces to tutorials on how to do a particular task. Less emphasis should be placed on the perfect keyword saturation, while more emphasis should be placed on making the content fresh and interesting to the target audience. When writing blog entries, it’s important to consider the following optimization methods:

• Focus should be put on incorporating words like “How to” and “Review” in entry titles.
• Hierarchal headers and lists should be used liberally, because it helps blog readers scan and skim.
• You should write frequent entries with less words or less frequent entries with more words. Both approaches will instill a sense of expertise and passion about your blog’s subject.
• Target keywords should be incorporated within the title and copy of an entry, but don’t worry about keyword saturation. Instead, focus more on making the title and copy interesting.
• Images should be used as often as possible. They can make an entry more visually pleasing and interesting to a reader.
• You should blog about other bloggers and link to them liberally within your copy.

Quick Reference Guide for Blog and Brochure Optimization

About Jon Henshaw

Jon Henshaw is the Product Manager and Chief Socializer for Raven’s Internet Marketing Tools. Before focusing solely on Raven, he was an Internet Strategist for Sitening, a performance based Internet marketing firm.