Morning Sean, 5.20 in the am. Awake at three. Yea, sleep issues, oh well. I love stories. A story may have once saved my life. I was backpacking in the Mountains above Los Angeles. There were wildfires in the mountain chain behind the mountains I was hiking in, but I wanted to get in one last overnighter. Besides, the local stations said they were under control. Around 2 am, I was suddenly awakened by a violent fit of coughing. It was all I could do to get my breath. After a minute or so, when I was able to breathe again, I realized the small canyon I was in was filling up with greyish smoke. I could see the color, even at 2am by the reddish orange, white light of the wildfire racing down the ridge towards me. My mind went blank after I thought, 'I'm trapped, I'm going to burn to death'. In a few moments, I thought I could submerge myself in the stream next to my campsite. Getting up, I realized, the stream was about a foot deep. That wouldn't work. Then I remembered a story told by a Vietnam Vet POW about how he escaped sand evaded capture for two days while making it back to friendly lines. He said, he got through each day by ignoring the unknown/uncertainty and' just keep moving'. I grabbed my pack, began running down the trail next to the stream. I made it to a fire road, ran down it until I reached my vehicle and drove down the mountain. Yes, maybe, I might have survived without the story, but remembering the story of overcoming impossible odds gave me a strength I did not know I had.
So I have a specific audience, and I’m a “creative“ writer so I pretty much know how to attract attention and write good personal opening lines. How does this mesh with the idea that we need to use “snippets“ at the top of our posts in order to win Google searches? Should I just ignore this advice? I don’t like writing click-baity kind of stuff.
Good question, Maria! So generally speaking there's a difference between content writing and copywriting. What you are referring to, I consider content writing. You're not looking to persuade. You're looking to inform, educate, entertain - and hoping to get search traffic through doing it. Generally those content posts will follow a more strict SEO template if you're looking to do something like rank in Google snippets. Understanding SEO structure and how to get a page to rank is a bit of a different topic. That said, the more you can use these three elements in your content writing the more compelling it's going to be and the more time people will spend reading it, and ultimately that will help with your search rankings.
@@Lulu-kt6gr It's worth noting that Google is pretty smart. You often don't have to format it in a specific way to get them to pick it up. The key there is just to try and answer questions in a concise manner. I'll often post a question in an H2 or H3 tag, give the short/immediate answer into 1-2 sentences right after, and then elaborate from there.
@@LocationRebel yes great thought thanks. I also just had the thought: what if I did the snippet-type lines in the Yoast description? I wonder if that would work.
Great vid, subscribed! Only suggestion I would recommend is looking at the camera rather than reading off the paper when giving your example. Apart from that, keep it up! :)
I prefer the way he did it. It makes the rest of the time when he's not specifically reading from an example look like he's got it all coming off the top of his head. Conversely, if he had spoken directly to camera what was supposed to be exact copy we'd think he was a bit of a weirdo.
Morning Sean, 5.20 in the am. Awake at three. Yea, sleep issues, oh well. I love stories. A story may have once saved my life.
I was backpacking in the Mountains above Los Angeles. There were wildfires in the mountain chain behind the mountains I was hiking in, but I wanted to get in one last overnighter. Besides, the local stations said they were under control.
Around 2 am, I was suddenly awakened by a violent fit of coughing. It was all I could do to get my breath. After a minute or so, when I was able to breathe again, I realized the small canyon I was in was filling up with greyish smoke. I could see the color, even at 2am by the reddish orange, white light of the wildfire racing down the ridge towards me. My mind went blank after I thought, 'I'm trapped, I'm going to burn to death'. In a few moments, I thought I could submerge myself in the stream next to my campsite. Getting up, I realized, the stream was about a foot deep. That wouldn't work.
Then I remembered a story told by a Vietnam Vet POW about how he escaped sand evaded capture for two days while making it back to friendly lines. He said, he got through each day by ignoring the unknown/uncertainty and' just keep moving'.
I grabbed my pack, began running down the trail next to the stream. I made it to a fire road, ran down it until I reached my vehicle and drove down the mountain. Yes, maybe, I might have survived without the story, but remembering the story of overcoming impossible odds gave me a strength I did not know I had.
Hi, thank you for this very informative video! Definitely benefitted from it, and best of luck to your channel. Keep up the good work :)
This is gold!
So I have a specific audience, and I’m a “creative“ writer so I pretty much know how to attract attention and write good personal opening lines. How does this mesh with the idea that we need to use “snippets“ at the top of our posts in order to win Google searches? Should I just ignore this advice? I don’t like writing click-baity kind of stuff.
Good question, Maria! So generally speaking there's a difference between content writing and copywriting. What you are referring to, I consider content writing. You're not looking to persuade. You're looking to inform, educate, entertain - and hoping to get search traffic through doing it. Generally those content posts will follow a more strict SEO template if you're looking to do something like rank in Google snippets.
Understanding SEO structure and how to get a page to rank is a bit of a different topic. That said, the more you can use these three elements in your content writing the more compelling it's going to be and the more time people will spend reading it, and ultimately that will help with your search rankings.
@@LocationRebel yeah I can’t reconcile writing the way I write, with adding snippets. It just doesn’t work. Thank you.
@@Lulu-kt6gr It's worth noting that Google is pretty smart. You often don't have to format it in a specific way to get them to pick it up. The key there is just to try and answer questions in a concise manner. I'll often post a question in an H2 or H3 tag, give the short/immediate answer into 1-2 sentences right after, and then elaborate from there.
@@LocationRebel yes great thought thanks. I also just had the thought: what if I did the snippet-type lines in the Yoast description? I wonder if that would work.
Fab Sean......thank you :-)
I thought it was going to be "it's totally cool" 😎
Great video
Great video, Sean
Wow!
👍👍🙏
Great vid, subscribed! Only suggestion I would recommend is looking at the camera rather than reading off the paper when giving your example. Apart from that, keep it up! :)
I prefer the way he did it. It makes the rest of the time when he's not specifically reading from an example look like he's got it all coming off the top of his head. Conversely, if he had spoken directly to camera what was supposed to be exact copy we'd think he was a bit of a weirdo.