“Location, location, location.”
Isn’t that what they always say, those retail gurus. Location. Location. Location. I t’s where you are. A street address, a mall storefront, a search-engine position. Those are all locations and whether they’re good locations or bad ones will have a major impact on the success or failure of your business.
When it comes to putting articles on your website, the equivalent of “location, location, location” is “subject, subject, subject.” The importance of selecting the right subject for your article is critical regardless of whether the article is informative, technical, intended to appeal to your existing customers or simply a piece of linkbait. Even if, for some inexplicable (or explicable, for that matter) reason you decide to put fiction on your site, the fantasies had better be about an appropriate, relevant subject.
What’s a good subject for an article? Let’s back up a step. First, let’s think about what an article is. Think … think … dum, dah, dum, dum… OK, enough thinking, we’re done. A article is a story. That’s it, that’s all. A story.
– A surgeon selling a patient on a bit of unnecessary spinal-fusing to finance a romantic Paris junket with an insignificantly transitory-but-cuddly other not his or her spouse is telling a fiction story.
– A member of the New York City Fire Department writing an article about 9/11 Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the International Association of Fire Fighters house organ is telling a story that is all too tragically true.
– General Dynamics submitting a 496-page proposal for a new weapons system to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is telling a story — usually compounded of both truth and fiction — about its superior research, development and manufacturing capability.
What’s your story? What is your website really about? Which of its elements would make a good article?
In conjuring article topics, having an overabundance of ideas can be as almost bad as having none at all.
Consider a breeder of pedigreed dogs. Aside from a full slate of articles about the physical and emotional care of high-strung animals genetically shrunken to teacup size (Miniature Poodle) or generationally brainwashed to trade a full life in the wild and free moors for a twilight existence in a Manhattan condo (Irish Wolfhound), one could post a separate article on every one of the AKC’s 157 recognized breeds.
Yes, one could. But would doing so be a good idea? Until recently, the standard answer would be “no.” Articles about breeds you don’t raise and sell might steer your customers in the direction of different dogs and other vendors.
Today, however, that unequivocal “no” might not be the best answer. An ever increasing number of marketers — spurred by such giants as Amazon.com, which posts both negative and positive reviews of the products it sells — are opting for what the buzz-word wizards have labeled transparency — a policy of letting customers and potential customers see all a company’s glory and at least a couple of its warts. Applying the rule of transparency to our dog breeding site we can — in theory — justify a separate article for every breed of dog.
Theory and practice are far different things, however. Assuming you raise three or four breeds, putting articles about a 150 or so other breeds on your site may not terminally irritate customers seeking info on your breeds, but it will almost certainly dilute your message to search-engine bots.
Here, as in so many facets of life, moderation and compromise are the keys to success. Instead of limiting your articles section to stories about your breeds or opening it up to all breeds, why not go halfway and fill it with information about your breeds and related breeds?
If you breed Scotties, you could include articles on other terriers. If your breed, like the Bernese Mountain Dog, is based on stock from several ancient breeds — some of which have been extinct for a century or more — include articles about those honored ancestors.
If there’s a point to all this canine chit chat, it’s this: In selecting article topics for your site it’s OK, even desirable, to get outside the box (or, in this example, the kennel) as long as you remain close enough to reach out and touch it.
Stray too far from the box and your articles may be judged irrelevant. And too much irrelevance, in any form on any web page, is a surefire way to put your site in the doghouse.
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