Content Strategy

This is a from an internal doc I wrote in January of 2022 and shared with new writers and editors at Stone Press. It's pre-HCU, so I would offer slightly different guidance to writers today. . . but the spirit is still on point, and it speaks to how I think about search intent from a publisher's perspective.

Clicks in Context

If you lay awake at night aspiring to write for clicks, you were born at the right time.

For everyone else, the writing we do is unlikely to fulfill your sense of meaning in the universe, win esteem among your writing peers, or be fun to explain at parties. Not that you won’t be working hard for us as a writer. This is not easy. We are absolutely asking for the most imaginative, tactical, rhetorically aware writing you can compose—does it bother you that it’s all for clicks?

This is an oversimplification, but it’s true enough. And it’s been our experience that some writers walk in the door with moral and ethical anxieties about using their craft in this way, or discover them over time.

Much of what counts as “good writing” in our industry appears to newcomers as spammy, even deceitful. While there is a strong common sense basis for these concerns, a thicker understanding of where our business stands in the B2B ecosystem moots these as potential sources of moral anxiety.

It’s also true that conceptions of “good writing” which served you and your readers well in other contexts may not hold water here. Prior practices may get in the way rather than assist you. This is predictable, if uncomfortable. Writing in a new context is difficult, regardless of a writers’ ability.

Getting a lay of the land for B2B affiliate advertising will help you see that nothing scammy can survive, including our company. It will also help you deploy your prior experience effectively.

Let’s start at the beginning . . .

People have a problem, goal, or desire. They type it into Google looking for a path forward.

If that query is related to B2B, such as “payroll software”, “how to send a fax”, or “digital marketing strategy”, there’s a chance that our sites show up in the top search engine results page (SERP).

On the SERP, that person then reads our SEO title and (maybe) meta description, both of which relate explicitly what is on the page (e.g. “Top 10 Online Fax Services: Deals on the best fax products you can get right now....”).

The person has to click our linked SEO title knowing all of this, after searching specifically for “online fax services,” or something closely related.

No one stumbles across our site on their social feed, or catches a glimpse of our work on a bookshelf. Our Twitter was last active during the Obama administration. Virtually every visitor to our site arrives through search.

We are explicit about what this page is and what it is trying to do—readers who don’t want this will not come here.

There are certainly scammy ways to employ affiliate links, but in the context of how we position ourselves online, we’d be wasting our readers’ time if there weren’t links to brands.

Providing a list of 10 options above the fold is “good writing” in our context. While we do provide a lot of helpful topical information later in the post, the vast majority of our readers do not care to read. Those who want more information are used to digging a little, so what if they have to scroll by our store windows to get to the content?

We don’t have to welcome, “hook”, or entertain our readers. That’s not “good writing” in terms of helping the reader. Our readers had the freedom to search for “history of fax machines,” but didn’t. Our page would likely not have shown up had they searched that. Let’s respect the clear search intent. “Best payroll services”--they want options and perspective about current payroll services.

It’s like looking for good ramen on Yelp—most folks want to read as little as possible in order to make a decision based on their tastes, needs, and constraints. Few people want the history of ramen noodles, eye-popping stats about ramen consumption, or need to be welcomed into the current state of the ramen industry. . .

Want to read the full doc? Just ask.