A Brief Comparison between AP Style and SEO Writing (Pt. I)
I know what you’re thinking.
“Hey, SamRam. How will learning anything about AP style help me with SEO content writing?”
Because they’re inherently the same in structure.
For starters, put your most relevant information in the first paragraph. Doesn’t mean you have to talk about what your client or company does, so long as you mention who they are first. In AP style, you write four of the five Ws (the “who”, “what”, “where” and “when”) in the lead paragraph. This talks about what’s about to be written about, who’s doing it and whom it affects.
This is the same as what you do with your SEO content: Tell your reader who the company is, what they do and what sort of person the client’s good or services affects.
By the second paragraph, you should be writing more on the fifth W: “Why” (and “how”, as that’s lumped in with “why”). Relevance to the content is key here. The more relevant content should go first, then each paragraph after can have less connected information if need be.
The other thing that make AP style and SEO writing similar is brief statements. Don’t go all out on each paragraph. Try to keep each idea confined to paragraphs of only a few sentences long to keep the reader’s attention. Sentences and paragraphs that are too long can scare off your readers. They want the information in small, digestible nuggets.
Keeping these two ideas in mind (relevance and brief writing) will make your content that much stronger. More later, lads and lassies.
