R is for Making it Relevant - Web Writing and Web Success

Success on the web means making your web content relevant to the reader. Relevancy is such an obvious concept that it is often overlooked by web writers who tend to over think their topic selection. I have been thinking about relevancy and web writing a lot lately. When I first started writing for the web I struggled with writing what I want vs. writing what people want to read. I see other writers struggling with this same issue. Web writing does not have to involve an inner duel each time you sit down at your computer.

I discovered the secret. You don't have to write about celebrities to get page views and find success with web writing (although this type of writing does get both PVs now and later, oddly enough).

Web writing just has to be relevant to what people seek.

Relevant

Make it relevant. You've heard in on Project Runway for three seasons, and now American Idol has picked up on it as well.

How do you make your interests relevant? It's easy.

Making Your True Interests Relevant to Web Writing

For example, perhaps you like to write about history. Can someone who likes to write about history find success writing for the web? Absolutely, by, you guessed it, making it relevant. On any given day, students of all ages are conducting searches online.

Not a day goes by that I do not see at least one historical search. Historical searches are prompted by holidays, anniversaries of historic events, birthdays of famous people, and even by TV shows. This is where you can turn an interest in writing about history into a topic that is relevant to today.

This works for other topics as well. If you are an expert in something, and want to write about it, make it relevant. You could write a deep and technical scientific paper and it could contain earth shattering insights and news, but if you don't make it relevant to people's everyday lives, nobody will read it.

Show readers, don't tell them that it is relevant.

Relevancy and What People Search

Relevancy can also be defined as content which contains information which people seek. You may want to write about the Parthenon, but then you see that the one of the search words in the top 20 searches on Google is the Temple of Isis. Right now the Temple of Isis is a hot search. It's up to you to pick Isis over the Parthenon, because it is more relevant right now.

You may not know why something is relevant right now, but it doesn't always matter. Use the topics as a keyword phrase, find other related keywords phrases that people seek, and then write.

Consider Your Body of Work

Another way to make web content relevant is to take your entire body of web work into consideration. Will you compromise and write on an occasional popular topic that is relevant if it means that readers will read the content that you find more important?