Pretty Lady on Delta Flight Mw4
Posted by Guest Writer in 
Today we offer a guest post from Rebecca Beckum, who thinks more SEO writers should take after Craigslist Missed Connections.
I enjoy spending my mornings with a good cup of coffee (all right several) and the Craigslist Missed Connections. It is a guilty pleasure, but everyone has their lame rituals and reading about people searching for someone is mine. I like the idea that some of these connections never spoke to each other but rather just exchanged brief glances and felt a protracted longing to see this person again. I scan the lists from various cities and open the posts with the most captivating headlines, as there are hundreds posted daily from people that missed connections at nondescript venues across the globe.
I relate this idea to one of the key points of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). We read and listen to headlines in countless sessions all day long. Through the dying media we see this in newspapers, news on TV, commercials, billboards, magazine headlines at the checkout of the grocery store and so forth; but predominantly we are briefed and thus influenced by the Internet where innumerable headlines encourage us to hit their site and read further. Not unlike one-liners from great movies that we will never disregard; when writing for the Internet and in general, a writer has to choose his words wisely. The bottom line is that we are a generation with short attention spans and dually little free time and so this consideration has to be taken in account for writers.
For example, I had to put an end to a one-sided connection last night. It was a precarious situation to contend with. I had to search for just the right words. I also had to tailor my words to suit him and deliver my disinterest with sensitivity yet assertion while avoiding cliché:
“You’re a great somebody for someone but it’s just not looking like you’re that somebody for me. Sadly… “
This was my headline followed by supporting information.
It was effective.
There is an art and science to SEO. I like to look at it as a game. It’s almost like a way of figuring out the mindset of people through their verbiage. Subsequently you are cultivating in SEO writing a tapestry of well-woven attraction, like a thoughtful and meticulously executed spider’s web.
For the World Wide Web, your creation needs updating additionally to refresh and reiterate your presence.
I am relishing my archaic sensibility for a little while longer by prolonging my Kindle purchase. However, whether we download information or digest it by pages turned, it comes down to what we are going to buy. Book titles that grab our attention then lead us to read further the jacket on the back followed by consuming its entirety is the fundamental idea behind effective SEO writing.
Despite our detachment from Bob, the clerk at the bookstore, writers must always remember that we are still writing for people and not search engines.
I think I will have another cup of coffee and return to my search for people searching for others as a prequel to the major headlines that will unfold this week.
Rebecca Beckum is a writer and artist and graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and images from her expatriate work done from 2007-2011 in Japan, South America, Mexico and the Caribbean and her lifelong experiences in the South. She is also writing a novella about online dating adventures and is a columnist for a lifestyle publication based out of Charlotte, NC. She is 100% Southern and madly liberal.