Learn To Use Yahoo, Google and Other Search Results To Write Compelling Copy
– Search your way to the top of search queries
Did you arrive into this world with the ability to craft a string of single distinct meaningful elements of speech or writing into an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment or new? Or do you struggle to write good well?
Crafting compelling stories, sentences and or content isn’t easy. Those that are good at it make it look real easy and I am saying that after nearly 700 posts on this blog. Being a great writer is a skill that takes time, dedication and practice. You have to do it over and over and over and over and learn from your mistakes and your victories.
Now that we are in the age of the internet and trackable data, it’s much easier to understand what is or is not compelling copy and by compelling copy, I specifically mean it’s search relevant. In the modern world of search, it’s not about SEO, it’s about back links. The more people that link to, share or mention your content, the higher you will come up in search rankings. In other words the best SEO practice is to have relevant and useful content.
You can use tools like Google Analytics, Twitter Ads, Facebook insights to help you to understand which pieces of your content get the most engagement. But what tools can you use to help craft more compelling content? I use search.
Let me explain. I’ll get an idea on something I would like to write about, in this case, compelling headlines. I’ll then run a number of Google searches on topics and related topics to the subject. As I am running the searches, I take note of the number of results. Based on the number of results that come up, I’ll craft up a headline that I think will most relevantly draw the traffic I am looking to get by helping people to find what they are searching for.
Let’s use this post as an example. To come up with the headline; “How To Use Yahoo Google and Other Search Results To Write Compelling Copy,” I ran a number of Google searches to see what people want to know about compelling headlines.
Notice that “learn” earned nearly 5 million more results than “how. This tells you that there are more people looking to “learn” than for a “how to.”
Now look what happens when you use “headlines” instead of “copy.”
There are far less people looking to learn how to write “headlines” than there are people who need help writing “copy.”
Now that I know this, I can take my search to the next level. I knew I wanted to write about using search to write better headlines so I started to introduce “search” into my query. Look at the difference in results between the word “use” and the word “using.”
Almost 10x more searches with the word “use” than “using.”
Let’s go back to headlines for a moment just so I can demonstrate a point. Check out the results by merely using a plural.
By leaving off 1 letter, you increase your query delivers 10x more results.
Specifically I wanted this post to be about utilizing the power of search engines to help you write better headlines. Let’s measure the generic “search” against the 3 of the biggest search engines.
Both the words “search” and “Google” come up with about the same results, about 1.7 million. But the using “yahoo” or “bing” show almost 16x more queries. Apparently those people who are looking for help in writing compelling copy are looking for it on Yahoo and Bing but not so much Google.
Let’s break all that down to a TL;DR.
In terms of search query results:
- Learn > How To
- Copy > Headlines
- Use > Using
- Headline > Headlines
- Yahoo > Bing > Google > Search
When I first set out to write this post, I was thinking about using the title “How to use Google to Write Better Headlines.” Mainly because when you search in Google, it gives you the number of search results which Yahoo does not. But after searching through a number of Google searches, I can see that there is a clear path to a better headline even if it’s not totally correct;
Learn To Use Yahoo Google and Other Search Results To Write Compelling Copy
At the time of writing this blog, that query resulted in 1.02 million results. Click the image above to see how many it has since publishing.
Is this going to guarantee more hits? Time will tell. What it will do is help you to understand what kinds of information people are searching for. If you’re looking to get really granular and learn how to use organic key words to specifically reach your audience through your blog, check out my post on Hittail.
