A Publisher's Rant - Why I Hate Your First Paragraph
I'm a publisher for numerous sites. I HATE many of your
articles. Here's why I hate your first paragraph and what you
can do about it.
A Biggie
First paragraphs are a huge issue with me. Better to have died a
small child than get this one wrong. If you can get just this
one thing right, your publication rates will go through the
roof. Unfortunately, almost nobody does it correctly.
The entire issue comes down to meta tagging. When I create a
page on a site for an article, I have to enter the meta title
and meta description. Your headline is the meta title and your
first paragraph should be the meta description. If your first
paragraph doesn't fit my meta description needs, I will blow by
your articles like a debutante on Rodeo Drive with a new credit
card. I don't have time to re-write your masterpiece. Don't make
me.
Here is what I want:
1. No more than 38 words.
2. Preferably two sentences.
3. Your keywords in the first sentence.
Now, that seems easy enough, but none of you do it. Instead, you
charge right into the body of your article and write these truly
horrific 10 line first paragraphs. I HATE these. I will not
publish you. I may decide to never look at your articles again.
Writing articles can be a challenge. Often, the best way is to
just start writing. I have no problem with this approach. All I
ask is that you write a two-sentence introduction after you have
finished the article.
Scroll back up to the first paragraph of this article. What do
you see? Three short sentences totaling 26 words. The keywords,
"publisher" and "first paragraph" are contained within the three
sentences. When I publish this article, I will copy the first
paragraph and slam it into my meta description.
Wham! Bamn! I'm off to the next article.
This approach has a huge benefit for you as well. When I publish
articles in this format on sites, the articles will appear high
in the search rankings for Google, Yahoo and MSN. Put another
way, you will be able to piggyback my high ranking sites and get
your article in front of your target audience. This means
traffic for both you and me, which should make us both happy.
The first paragraph is extremely important. I will look past
crappy headlines and ungodly spelling errors if you write a good
first paragraph. I am a lazy person. Make my job easy and you
will benefit.