We have reason to be annoyed with them (and we’ll get to that), but both of these infographics won their mentions on their merits. It’s all broad, scattershot copywriting advice, but it’s good advice just the same.
MarketingProfs: 15 Writing Lessons from Successful Authors
Hubspot: How to Stop Procrastinating and Become a Joyful Writer
First annoyance: Hubspot’s headline. Like… c’mon. No serious reader believes that an article will teach them how to become a “joyful” anything (they reached a little too high for the emotional bonus). Honestly, that was a turn-off and we probably wouldn’t have clicked the headline if not for the nagging voice in our heads reminding us to be diligent curators.
The second annoyance is an aesthetic gripe with both graphics, which we’d phrase as your audience is adults, not public-school students. The MarketingProfs graphic looks like a classroom poster produced by Houghton Mifflin and the Hubspot graphic has a Diary of a Wimpy Kid sort of look. Neither aesthetic is poorly executed, but we’d argue that both were poorly matched to their audience(s).
Anyways, let’s finish this compliment sandwich, shall we? The content was good, but the style was a bit juvenile… but the content was good.
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📰 Does Google Give Preference to Content Above the Fold? First, and to catch everyone up: above the fold refers to page content which is visible before visitors scroll down (it originally referred to the top half of a newspaper’s front page).
Now we return to the question. Google’s John Mueller did answer it, and his response boils down to this two-part clarification:
1️⃣ No, Google doesn’t evaluate content differently above vs. below the fold. In other words, Google doesn’t “give more weight” to content at the top than it does to the rest of the content below. But at the same time…
2️⃣ Yes, Google does prefer to see some content above the fold, as opposed to no content above the fold. In other words, Google would prefer that your pages give visitors some kind of relevant info and/or context without having to scroll.
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🖍 What Editors Want from Guest Contributors in 2021. Pretty decent headline, but we wish they’d positioned this article more like “A 4-Point Checklist for Making Your Guest Post Stand Out.” Not trying to be pompous; actually, we’re trying to say that it’s well-produced content whose merits just weren’t framed quite right.
Because when we first skimmed, the train of thought was something like “editors want… on-topic pitches? Multimedia? Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
Once we sat and read it, we realized that this article is a useful big-picture sanity check for people writing guest posts. (Further proof that writing copy for the skimmers is tricky!)
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