Video transcription
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 know 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.
Quick Answer: Clarity, but also include jargon.