 Catholic Web Content Development Articles Series (3 of 7) - Developing
Content on Church History and the Lives of the Saints
Introduction
Another form and content in writing on the Web is to write Catholic articles
and blog posts on Church history and the lives of the saints. These two
general topics have a range of information that is easy to organise, since
both are generally presented in the form of a narration - a basic form of
writing that describes a subject in a chronologically linear form (from
beginning to end). As narrations, the history of the Church and the lives of
the saints, can be transformed into a more effective form of writing when we
include descriptive details. According to authors Lynn Kelsch and Thomas
Kelsch, in the book "Writing Effectively: A Practical Guide", narrations
can be presented "powerfully, if you set the scene with description".
SEO (search engine optimization) techniques in developing this kind of
content
One effective technique in writing this kind of content, is to use key words
that are popularly used in current news items. For example, if a current
news item includes a particular historical place in its news event, we can
get the key words of this historical place, research on how this place
played a signficant role in Church history, and write about it. With the
right timing, we can develop content using these popular key words, get
this content on Church history indexed in the search engines, and then
benefit from the traffic that is generated by the popularity of the key
words. The important things to consider in this technique are: timing,
speed in writing, good research, and efficiently optimizing the content.
Effectively writing for a specific audience
The specific audience for this form and content in writing are English-literate
peoples on the internet. With this in mind, it would be an advantage to develop
web content about the history of Church, where English is a primary language or
a secondary language. Writing how the Catholic Church was born in English-speaking
nations like the U.S.A., England and the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Philippines
and other select countries where English is spoken as an international language, will
harvest visitor traffic to your Catholic web site or blog. (English-literate people
on the Net will have a natural interest in how the Catholic Church was born and
grew in their own native country). Also, there is an advantage to using the
British (Oxford) spellings of words: like organisation, instead of
organization. There are more people using this British spelling when they
use a search query in the search engines.
Organising your web content on Church history
Since the history of the Catholic Church now spans two millenia of historical
events, we can be guided by established authors who use a simple way to divide
Church history into a few major divisions. One book that can give us an idea
how to divide the history of the Church into few essential divisions, is the
book "The Catholic Church in the 21st Century: Finding Hope for its Future
in the Wisdom of the Past". This book divides Church history into just
six historical divisions:
- The New Testament eras
- The First Millenium
- The Medieval Church
- The Tridentine and Baroque Church
- The Nineteenth Century Catholic Church
- Vatican II and post-Vatican II years
These six major historical divisions can be a simple and easy guide in
organising our content when we want to write on specific and important
events in the history of the Church.
Developing content on biographical sketches of the saints
To make a difference from the already many written sources on the Web
on the lives of the saints, we can add in our biographical sketch how
the spirituality of a saint helped in the growth of the Church at the
time. We can include direct quotes from the saint's writings, letters,
prayers, or poems which express his spirituality. Aside from this,
we can achieve a greater impact upon our readers if we also highlight
that special charism which a saint has been gifted with to contribute
to the growth and expansion of the universal Church. This content
development especially applies to a select group of saints: founders of
religious orders and congregations; writers of mystical works; miracle
workers and healers; and visionaries.
Using anchor text optimization in writing on the saints
As we write more and more about the lives of the saints, we can take
advantage of anchor text optimization - a search engine optimization
technique which can obtain higher rankings for our web content in the
search engines results pages. Many saints in the history of our Church,
worked together or have influenced one another in the Church's universal
mission. Therefore, when we develop web content on the life of one
specific saint, we also have to mention other saints who have been a
part of the life and work of the saint we are writing about. Each
time therefore, that other saints are mentioned in the biography of
a saint we are writing about, we can create anchor text links which
lead to other web pages where content on their own life and work can
be found.
Summary and conclusion
Developing content on the history of the Church and the lives
of the saints can be a very enriching experience, both for the
writer and the reader. For the reader in search of information,
he will obtain the comprehensive presentations we have produced
on the history of the Church and the lives of the saints. On the
part of the web content developer, he will be enriched spiritually
by his writing activity, and also obtain more opportunities to link
with other small Catholic web site developers and bloggers on the internet.
An important thing to always consider in web content development
is to avoid producing duplicate content. By including unique information
and rich details in developing content, we can produce quite a
comprehensive Catholic article or blog post. And to create a positive
difference and impact, we can create some spaces in our writing to
help the reader do some reflective thinking.
If you want to search for ideas in developing content on Church
history and the lives of the saints, you might discover something
you like in the Librarything.com list of books given below:
Related resources
Dennis Emmanuel Cabrera
Web Developer Methods for Catholics
www.c-web-developer.net
My Main Catholic Blog
www.c-internet-mission.net
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