Writing Basics: Purpose and Audience

Recently there's been a lot of debate over content writing and developing some standards for this genre of writing. There's also been recent speculation and reports that Google will be changing how and why they index websites. Google has opened their eyes to their role in bad website content due to PPC and Adsense campaigns.

Where do we start setting standards for website content and writing?

I began writing fiction. Some of the same principals can be applied to content writing. But we should also apply the basic rules of writing taught in high school English class.

Google is not totally to blame for bad content; although it's possible they set the ball in motion. People got money hungry and let dollar signs take the place of good, quality content. Now Google may be retracting its initial plans and revising its search engine algorithms, as well as having humans check the content of websites to make sure they are up to par. Maybe "old" standards should be the "new" standards.

Let's begin with one basic rule of writing.

This rule is taken from a 12^th grade English book by D.C. Heath and Company, copyright 1992. Old yes, but the basics have withstood the test of time.

Consider Your Purpose and Audience

What is your purpose for writing? Beyond the passion and the need to write, there is a purpose to all writing.

We write to share our feelings, as is common in a lot of blog posts.
We write to persuade people to our way of thinking or to compel them to make a purchase, as is common in sales copy.
We write to describe things, as is common in fiction.
We write to create, as is common in poetry and short stories.
We write to inform others of something, as is common in content writing or educational writing.

Sometimes the purpose for writing can be a mixture of two or more of these reasons, but it still stands that we are writing for a purpose.

Let's look at writing to inform. The Internet used to be full of useful information. Everywhere you went on the net you found things that informed you. Most of the stuff is still there, sitting in an archive, waiting for someone to rediscover it.

Along came search engine optimization and money hungry information whore mongers who either, a) stole a lot of content, or b) put up a lot of bad content.

Fast forward to now and you have disgruntled professional writers, search engines back tracking to fix the mistakes, and many unhappy readers because, unfortunately, they can't find useful information anymore without going several pages deep in a search query.

This brings us to who your audience is. Who is your audience? Is it a search engine or one of those little spiders constantly crawling around indexing garbage?

No, your audience is the reader. Plain and simple. The reader doesn't care about how many times you can get a keyword into an article, or how fast your article was indexed. Your reader cares about the information they will receive. If you aren't giving to that reader-he's out of there and he's not returning.

ll too often when you're looking for information, you find articles that aren't as clear cut and informative as they should be. How does this affect your reader?

The reader is either going to keep looking for good information or he's going to give up and go to the library, where good, quality information is readily available to all who seek it.

And in a way, that's a good thing, the library is way underused these days. In these times though, people need information fast and the Internet is supposed to give it to them fast. It's also supposed to give them real information, not watered down spider food.

Pages used to be indexed by the content that was contained on them, and it wasn't keyword rich. It was just informative. Now it's a popularity contest. In the movies, it's usually the popular kids who end up with egg on their face. This isn't the movies, but the popularity contest may soon be coming to an end.

If search engines go through the changes they are planning and writers throw out these "new" rules of SEO and keyword density-they could be better off for it.

What will be the affects of these changes? The content buyers will be forced to replace their old keyword material with quality, informative writing. The writers who set these "old" standards of writing for themselves-will be that much ahead and once again the writing profession will be a respectable career. Those who are "worth their weight in salt", will be a few steps ahead because today's writing won't "cut the mustard".

If you want to be in the new ballgame, it could be wise to relearn the basics of writing. Remember your purpose and remember your audience. They are, after all, what matters most.
Ann King runs Main Edition Network, a site dedicated to freelance writers.