Associated Content Tip of the Day: Web Writing Ground Rules

Here’s today’s web writing tip/article. Web Writing: The Ground Rules that Make a Good Web Article
This is what makes a good web article be it for AC, Mashable, or even C-Net magazine.

Web content has rules. Let’s get right to this. The primary rules of web writing are:

Titles must be search-engine friendly
A well-constructed article title in cyberspace means the difference between 10 people stumbling on it and 10,000 people actively finding it. Good titles include key words and key phrases. They have low competition, but still use common terms that the average information seeker would type into a search engine. Don’t use Oryctolagus cuniculus when you can use “rabbit.”

This and at least five more rules for web articles. These are the rules. There are no exceptions. Give it a read.

Associated Content Officially Announces Daily Page View Updates

We enter a new epoch of the Associated Content page view beta era. Over the last two years, AC has steadily decreased the time between page view updates until it is now happening daily. Technically, it’s been happening daily for a couple of weeks now, but in a move very unlike AC, they waited to make the official announcement until they we’re sure they could pull it off.

Here is the message AC sent out Thursday, 5 March 2009:

Associated Content now updates every Content Producer’s estimated page views on a daily basis. This means you’ll have consistently up-to-date information about how your content is performing. This is something our Community has been requesting for a long time, and we’re thrilled to be able to offer it to you.

Keep in mind that these numbers are only estimations until we’ve had a chance to verify them. We verify all page views at the end of the month before processing Performance Payments, and adjust the numbers when necessary. If you have questions about changes made to your page views, please send a message to admin@associatedcontent.com. And if there is an issue that prevents page views from updating daily, we will resolve it as quickly as possible.

We hope you’ll enjoy receiving daily insight into the popularity of the content you publish on AC!

Now you can watch your article’s progress in near-real time. What will you do with this information? Make a graph? Put it in a spreadsheet? (You’d do that with the PV Report Converter, by the way.) Twitter it?

Honestly, I think it’s a nice feature/service. It shows that AC listened and responded to their CP community. I just don’t obsess over page view counts as much as some, I guess. I like that when I do check, I can be confident that I’m seeing yesterday’s numbers. I don’t have to look around for “date of last update” and do math in my head. That’s cool, but it doesn’t make a difference in what or when I’m paid for those views.

So, whether you’re a compulsive count checker or a slacker like me, we can both enjoy the new daily updates. Now if, after two years of having the page view program, AC could just stop calling it a beta, I’d be even happier.

Associated Content to Start User Verification

As is becoming standard practice on my sites, Associated Content will be offering, nay, insisting that you verify your account via phone or text message. Their blog post, User Verification Launching Next Week, says this will start next week. It also outlines some pretty stiff penalties for those who don’t verify their accounts. The stiffest is losing all your bonus money.

Don’t let this slide folks. Read the entire blog post and beat the rush.

Associated Content Tip of the Day 26 Feb 2000: Promotion Techniques

Carol Bengle Gilbert dropped a great resource today with her Tutorial: Guide to the Basics of Content Promotion. Not only are the contents of the article spot on, the construction of the article is a template for effective web writing. You could read just the first paragraph and walk away with important knowledge.

Content promotion starts with the first strike of the computer key. Write content that facilitates promotion, and it will promote itself. The guide will show you how to make sure your content is doing its own self-promotion as well as introduce you to some helpful content promotion
tools to give your article a boost.

You’ll have to click the link to read the rest of all her great tips. My recommendation is read it, bookmark it, and read it about once a month. This is the kind of advice that never gets old.

Blog Spring Cleaning: Maintenance and Other Things

I just completed some long over-due work on the blog. Nothing exciting, just stuff that needed doing. It’s getting a little busy on the sidebars so I wanted to take a moment and point out a few things.

1. I joined Twitter. My five latest Tweets are on the left. I know you’re blown away. You can see my full profile/tweet-list by clicking the “I’m a Twit. Follow at Your Own Peril.” link on the left. I told Michy it was a bad idea for the world to be exposed to my unfiltered brain like this.
2. I joined Facebook. I didn’t include any sidebar links though.
3. I added RSS feeds for the blog to the right sidebar. Everyone wants a different option for following so, if you like RSS, there’s your monkey.
4. I changed the graphic for the subscribe feature. To the person who unsubscribed citing “Too many updates,” come on! I only post here 3 or 4 times a week. Compared to 99% of the blogs out there, I’m a pathetic loser. Won’t you come back? I have candy.
5. To my 3 new subscribers, “Welcome!”. You know who you are.
6. The Plagiarism Today link on the right is unchanged, but worth mentioning because it’s a great little blog.
7. The blogroll got a haircut. There were a lot of dead links in it and I added some blogs I found via Twitter. Note the links to John Cleese and Levar Burton. Burton is droning on about giving up smoking. I quit drinking last September and you don’t hear me pissing and moaning about it. Of course, you’ll probably pry my pipe out of my cold, dead, cancerous hands, but still, man up, Levar!
8. I shrank my RSS feed from Associated Content down to the last 5 article just because the blog layout is getting too busy. Still, I appreciate everyone who reads my rantings at AC. Y’all are the best. Rodney recently told me he like my off-the-cuff stuff the better than my polished pieces. When I pumped out Stupidity About Town and saw the comment responses, I had to agree with him.
9. I trimmed the Associated Content blog page down to just the add-on tools list and the tips articles. Give it a look because the new Payment Helper is there and it’s tax time. If you have a good tips article about AC, drop the URL in the comments of the AC page here and I’ll look into adding it to the list.
10. I put my new, cool AC badge on the left sidebar. Everyone at AC is calling this the udder badge, but I’m in the top 1000 again so I put it on the fridge.
11. I’ve noted that my HTML for Dummies series has been well received. Footnotes, Superscripts, and Hard Spaces is getting the lion’s share of the hits. If you have specific questions or would like to see a particular topic covered, just leave it in a comment.
12. For the person who asked about the top-right image and why it says, “Bob Says Slack Off,” You’ll just have to click the blessed head of Bob and explore. The Church of the Subgenius welcomes all. (Not for the faint of heart or anyone under 18.)

Other than adding a few new images, that’s the spring cleaning. Hope all is well on your street.

Stupid is as stupid does…

…And stupid does a lot this week.

My latest stupid offering to stupid Associated Content on a stupidly beautiful day where I’m wishing I could have my stupid self somewhere stupid else…

Stupidity About Town: The Real Life Adventures of a Smart Ass in a Dumb World. Come join me in spotting stupidity about town. Pictures encouraged.

One stupid thing that didn’t make the article was my recent forced upgrade to Internet Exploder 7. It was forced on me and my computer rebooted with no warning. Within 1 hour, I had security updates in the auto-update queue. Yar! Microsoft blows!

Stupidity for Dummies

Get your copy today and join the herd.

AC Back Peddles Like a One-legged Unicyclist

Yesterday, we were in a puzzlement trying to decipher Associated Contents criteria for their “Top 100 Producer’s of 2008″ list. The numbers weren’t adding up with the information we had. Today we have more details. AC says the list is for producers who had the highest page-views for articles published during calendar 2008. Now we have a higher confidence that the list is correct and we can say, “Congratulations,” to the winners.

These new facts also validate yesterday’s theory #3. Those who had #3 in the office pool can collect their winnings under the broken street lamp, the one near the big bushes, in the parking lot after work.

So today’s Footie^® award for “Plate spinning while riding a unicycle” goes to … Associated Content for their ability to explain their criteria after their awards were committed. Congratulations to AC on their Footie^® and congratulations to the recipients of AC’s Top 100 award.

For those who did not make the cut, good luck on the next awards cycle:

Just Kidding

AC Screws Award Pooch. Pooch Reportedly Unhappy.

Associated Content is gearing up for their 2008 awards. This is their third year awarding various achievements, but as with the two previous years, the awards have changed and the criteria for the awards remains a mystery until the presentation. It would be good to know what we’re shooting for before we win it, AC. But I’m shouting in the wind.

Within the last couple of days, 100 Associated Content contributors received an email which targeted them as “one of the top 100 producers of 2008.” After chasing down a few AC employees to clarify their selection criteria, it was stated the selections were based on pages viewed in 2008. Ah! The chase is afoot, Watson.

The problem is, those reporting they were tagged for this honor do not have the most pages viewed in 2008. Several contributors have come forward and stated they did not receive the coveted email, but their page-view numbers (this number being a matter of public record when you view their home page) are significantly higher than many of those who claim to have received the honor. Wild theories shall ensue.

Theory #1: AC didn’t do a very good analysis of their data.

Theory #2: AC didn’t do any data analysis whatsoever.

Theory #3: People within the AC organization don’t really talk to each other before sending out emails.

Theory #4: AC pulls these awards out of their uncollective asses each year with no basis in reality.

Theory #5: There is no AC and we are all just made of stars.

My personal favorite is #4. AC seems to change, back-peddle, and apply circular reasoning to their moving target awards each year. Sure it’s great to be recognized, but it would be fabulous to know in advance what you’re shooting for. It would also make the recipient feel more confident in the award they receive. To those who got the email, no congratulations are in order. It’s nothing personal. It’s just, I think AC pulled a list of names at random because the available data just doesn’t add up.

I think I’ll start my own awards. This year’s recipient of theBarefoot (I’m hoping “The Footies” catch on) award for organization with the most mysterious ass to pull things out of goes to … Associated Content! The Footie for most creative application of math goes to … Associated Content for their inability to sort a numeric list. The Footie for the web site with poorest communications, both with their members and internally, goes to … Associated Content for having a Denver and New York office which don’t share email and don’t even follow each other on Twitter.

Stay tuned for more of the 1st annual Footie awards as the season progresses.

HTML For Dummies: Lists with a Bullet

HTML lists come in several flavors. The two most useful are the ordered list and the unordered list. Both are easy to create with the <OL> and <UL> tags. Both types of lists use the same secondary tag, <LI>, to define the individual bullet points. One of the nice things about the ordered list is that if you need to add a bullet in the middle of the list, the numbers will update automatically because they are not really there until the file is opened in a browser. Here is how you put it all together.

This is my ordered list. The bullets will be numbers. <ol> <li>One is the loneliest number</li> <li>Two can be as lonely as one</li> <li>Three Dog Night was a good band</li> </ol>	This is my ordered list. The bullets will be numbers. One is the loneliest number Two can be as lonely as one Three Dog Night was a good band
This is my unordered list. The bullets will be dots. <ul> <li>In no particular order</li> <li>Here are the points</li> <li>I'd like to make</li> </ul>	This is my unordered list. The bullets will be dots. In no particular order Here are the points I’d like to make

 
 
You can even nest the list. This allows you to make lists within lists and each indent gets a new style of bullet. Two things to remember. The indentations here are only for your readability. The browser doesn’t care about returns and tabs. Also, if you nest your list, be very careful to close your tags correctly. Otherwise, the browser won’t understand what you’re trying to do. Here are two unordered lists inside an ordered list.

<ol> <li>The Simpsons</li> <ul> <li>Homer</li> <li>Marge</li> <li>Bart</li> <li>Lisa</li> <li>Maggie</li> </ul> <li>The Flintstones</li> <ul> <li>Fred</li> <li>Wilma</li> <li>Pebbles</li> </ul> </ol>

The Simpsons Homer Marge Bart Lisa Maggie The Flintstones Fred Wilma Pebbles

 
 
I hope your read the prequel
To truly not be frustrated by lists, you must understand how a site’s style sheet (CSS) can affect how your list is displayed. Take a minute and read “It’s out of control!” for a brief synopsis of style sheets.

A web master may have defined lists in their CSS to display a non-standard bullet. It could be any character. Sometimes it’s the &rsaquo; (›) character or the &rarr; (→) character. It can be any character the CSS says it will be, but the default (no definition) character is what everyone expects, a bullet dot (·).

A word of caution. Submitting lists to other sites is always a crap shoot. What looks good today can look like garbage in six months if the site decides to change their CSS.

For more about lists and to practice building your own lists go to W3School.

HTML For Dummies: De-Mystifying Line Breaks

To human eyes it all runs together, but to a browser, it’s very distinct

Let’s talk about line breaks and spacing. Most writing sites try to do some sort of text parsing when you submit an article. Their software scans your submission and tries to do some minimal formatting. The most common thing these sites do is look for double returns (you pressed “Enter” twice) and convert those into paragraph breaks. In HTML a paragraph is enclosed in the <p> tag.

You type:

          ... blah, blah, end of paragraph one

          start of paragraph two, blee, blee ...

After parsing the text, if the site translated into strict HTML, it looks like:

     <p>... blah, blah, end of paragraph one</p><p>start of paragraph two, blee, blee ...</p>

Notice that your double return was translated into </p><p> with corresponding open and close tags.

Not all sites will create strict HTML. Some will take advantage of the browser’s built-in correction capabilities. Proper HTML is “<p>text text text</p>”. However, if you just use <p> and never close it, most browsers will fill-in the closing </p> when they encounter another open-paragraph tag (<p>).

At AC, you can see what they did to your article if it’s still in the submission queue or if it’s a display-only submission, by putting it back in edit mode and looking at step two of the submission template. Here’s what my last article looked like when AC got done with it. I’ve added the bold to emphasize all the HTML tags. AC added the <p> and I supplied all the rest.

The best thing about Inauguration Day 2009 is … I went to work. The traffic lights all functioned. The other drivers were courteous. There were no blazing tire fires on the sides of the road. No barricades. Besides work matters, people in the office discussed their holiday weekend and their favorite television shows. And that’s how it should be.<p>The best part about Inauguration Day is seeing a parade of High School bands instead of tanks in the streets of Washington, D.C. It does the soul good to know the people standing on the sidewalks are waving flags and not throwing Molotov cocktails. The best thing about Inauguration Day is it was a peaceful transition of power.<p>Now, I don’t want to detract from those who made the pilgrimage to D.C. to participate in the festivities. Attending the event is a perfectly acceptable choice. Some feel it was a historic event. Some just happened to be near by. Others have been unable to orgasm in the intervening months since election night and needed some release. Who am I to judge? That’s the great thing about Inauguration Day. We can all celebrate in our own, peaceful way.<p>Even now, in the twenty-first century, dictatorships and despots still rule much of our globe. Just yesterday, Taliban <strike>wackjobs</strike> fundamentalist bombed five schools in Pakistan¹ because they think educating girls is a <strike>sin</strike> crime. A peaceful transition of government is almost something rare. One that is mandated by the will of the populous through their uninhibited vote, is something rarer still.<p>Whether you relished Obama’s inauguration speech or took snide pot-shots at it, is unimportant. That you had the freedom to do either or neither is. I had the freedom to work in peace and safety. I didn’t have to take up arms. I didn’t have to hide my family in the basement. I didn’t have to stare down tanks and shoot guerrillas. My most difficult decision was where to have lunch because all the restaurants were open. I chose a burger at my desk so I could listen to the speech on my computer. Then I went back to my daily routine, safe in the knowledge that bombs would not fall on the building. Not because of the speech, but because of our Constitution, every citizen who defends it, and those who participate in the process.<p>Some of the world hates the United States of America, but most of the world just envies the fact that we can sleep in peace tonight. When you climb into bed tonight, think about those poor Canadian children in war-torn Qu&eacute;bec² who are going to bed hungry and frightened. The best part about Inauguration Day 2009 is … this isn’t Canada.<p>¹<a href=”http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD95Q9ULG0″>School bombings in Pakistan, AP</a><br>²Qu&eacute;bec is not really war-torn, it just looks that way to those snobs in Ontario.

It’s very difficult for a human to read that continuous block, but a browser has no trouble seeing all the tags and spacing the text accordingly. You can see the final output & format of the article on the AC site. Notice how the <p> tags tell your browser to display a blank line between the paragraphs? That’s the magic of HTML. If you ever need to edit an article, putting it back with the tags intact will save you a lot of heartburn.

Deconstruction
A concrete example is always worth a thousands words. You have the HTML of the article above and the final results at AC to compare. We’ve discuss here what the <p> tag is doing. Let’s take a look at the other tags. Most of these tags were presented in the first five articles of this series.

Here I used the <strike> tag to make it look like there are leftover edits in the article:
<strike>wackjobs</strike> = wackjobs
<strike>sin</strike> = sin

Here is a footnote that leads to the AP article about the school bombings:
schools in Pakistan¹ = schools in Pakistan¹

Here is the actual footnote at the end of the article:
<a href=”http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hkiMxbHNH0BqgpWA2ZG6VD6wVTmAD95Q9ULG0″>School bombings in Pakistan, AP</a> = School bombings in Pakistan, AP

Here is a combination of the French é character and 2^nd footnote:
Qu&eacute;bec² = Québec²

And this last one allowed me to control the single spacing between the footnotes:
</a><br><sup> =
Well it doesn’t equal anything by itself, but the <br> caused the browser to make a one line return so the superscript for 2 starts on a new line.

Find and replace
This brings me back to a point I made in this installment. Invest in a decent HTML and/or text editor. It is so easy to mark-up your text with a decent piece of software. It’s also just as easy to unmark the same text. A global find & replace from tags to text or the reverse will change your unreadable HTML into something legible. Another trick is to save your HTML document and open it in your browser (File > Open File). You can then see exactly how it will look on the web. Without a decent find & replace function, I would have spent much more time writing today’s article. I was able to grab the HTML of the AC article, paste it here, and do a global replacement on the < and > characters to their equivalent escape characters so you could read the HTML and not have it translated by your browser.

My momma didn’t raise no fool.

More resources @ W3schools