MALE SPEAKER: Today's question
comes from Phoenix, Arizona.
Ben Holland asks--
"Should I write
content that is easier to
read or more scientific?
Will I rank better if I
write for 6th graders?"
This is a really
interesting question.
I spent more time
thinking about it
than I did a lot of
other questions today.
I really feel like
the clarity of what
you write matters a lot.
And so there's
some great content
that you can read
about Richard Feynman
where someone asked
him to explain
why spin one-half particles
obey Fermi Dirac statistics.
And he said, Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I'll prepare a
freshman lecture on it.
But he came back a few days
later to say I couldn't do it.
I couldn't reduce it
to the freshman level.
That means we don't
really understand it.
And I thought that was a really
nice way to think about it,
you know.
People say the best
way to understand
something is to teach it.
And if you can't teach it,
if you can't explain it well,
you don't really understand it.
So I don't if you guys
have ever had this happen,
but you land on
Wikipedia and you're
searching for
information-- background
information about a topic--
and it's way too technical.
It uses all the
scientific terms or it's
talking about a
muscle or whatever.
And it's really
hyper-scientific,
but it's not all
that understandable.
And so you see this
sort of revival
of people who are interested
in things like-- explain it
to me like I'm a five-year-old.
Right?
And you don't have to
dumb it down that much.
But if you are erring
on the side of clarity
and on the side of
something that's
going to be understandable,
you'll be in much better shape
because regular
people can get it.
And then, if you want
to, feel free to include
the scientific terms or the
industry jargon, the lingo,
whatever it is.
But if somebody
lands on your page
and it's just an opaque
wall of scientific stuff,
you need to find some
way to pull people in,
to get them interested,
to get them enticed
in trying to pick up
whatever concept it is you
want to explain.
So I would argue,
first and foremost,
you need to explain it well.
And then, if you
can manage to do
that while talking about the
science or being scientific,
that's great.
But the clarity of what you do
and how you explain it often
matters almost as much as
what you're actually saying.
Because if you're saying
something important
but you can't get it
across, then sometimes you
never got it across
in the first place.
And it ends up
falling on deaf ears.
So it varies.
If you're talking to only
industry professionals--
terminators who are talking
about the scientific names
of bugs and your
audience is only bugs,
terminator, exterminator
experts, sure.
Then that might make sense.
But in general, I
would try to make
things as natural
sounding as possible.
Even to the degree where--
when I'm writing a blog post,
I'll sometimes read
it out loud to try
to catch what the
snags are, where
things are going to be unclear.
Anything you do
like that, you'll
end up with more
polished writing.
And that's more likely
to stand the test of time
than something that's just a
few scientific mumbo jumbo stuff
that you kind of spit out
really, really quickly.
Anyway, that's my
take, but it's not
going to make that much of a
difference as far as ranking.
I would think about
the words that the user
is going to type,
which is typically
going to be the layman's
terms-- the regular words
rather than the
super-scientific stuff.
You can find ways to
include both of them,
but I would try to err on the
side of clarity if you can.
