In my previous article, I questioned – a bit harshly – the current outreach of EU blogs. It triggers quite a few comments as expected. Though a friend of mine, Cédric, said that I was right in some of my statements, he also argued that I could have been more constructive. And he was right.
My intention was not to offend EU bloggers. What I felt is that when everyone is thinking alike, there is no room anymore for creativity. In other words, what simply happens is the death of the critical thinking. So, for those who feel offended, please accept my apologies.
Search Engine Optimize your Online Communications
My humble contribution on the debate regarding how one could improve the online communication would be to make a better use of SEO techniques. For your information, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be defined as the process of increasing the number of qualified Internet visitors to a website via organic traffic over time.
Whether talking about the EU institutions or the stakeholders – which also include the EU bloggers – I am often surprised to see that very few web copywriter use the power of SEO. It simply begins with the use of keywords in the title of web pages.
A guess. Admiting you’re writing an article in English about online public services. Is there more Internet users looking for “egovernment” or “online government” on Google.com in the UK? Google External Keywords Tool can give you this information. Click a button and make the image below bigger:
While you should certainly think about varying your keywords and expressions in all the part of your article, you should preferably use “egovernment” (global monthly search: 550,000) in the HTML title of your page rather than “online government” (global monthly search: 165,000). Of course, you should find a subtle alchemy between your editorial policy and SEO purposes.
Lesson learned
What is the lesson learned? If you want to talk to your audience, use their own words / expressions. Base your copywriting not on your perceptions but on the actual trends and needs of your target group. As a result, your content will be more easily findable by relevant Internet visitors.
This is only the beginning of SEO but it can help to a lot of issues. Additionally, it has be used in conjunction with Web Analytics in order to assess your current Internet traffic. If you want more advices on how to better reach your audience online, simply leave a comment below this article.
By the way, Stuart – the current director of Blogactiv.eu – has done a great job trying to train Blogactiv bloggers the basics of SEO. Please carry on!