Internet Research

Learn the research requirements that writers must follow to complete WordAgents projects successfully.

Please note that the only research writers are required to do is online. We do not expect (or want) you to contact businesses, pay for access to sources, interview anyone, or do anything other than visit websites and gather information.

Know Your Audience

Your first step is to identify who you are writing for and what questions they have (that you can answer). Starting with an internet search — looking for what your reader will be searching up — can help shed light on the audience's wants and needs.

The idea is to find and address your reader's pain points. You should also understand what the audience already knows so that you don’t waste words reiterating common knowledge. We want to offer something the reader isn’t going to find everywhere else. We want to capture their attention and pique their interest.

Avoid being vague whenever possible. Always prioritize detail and specifics that offer value.

Tip: Craft your outline first — come up with sections and build the skeleton of your article. Then, research each section and fill them in accordingly. Creating your article this way will keep it organized and help you reach the appropriate word count. See the Creating Your Article section for more.

Keep in mind that unless a client requests otherwise, all sources should be US-based.

Research Basics

Each project needs to include factually correct, up-to-date information. We trust our writers to thoroughly fact-check everything they write.

The research you do will also help you with the hyperlink requirements for the project. Most of the below sources (save for competing content or any competitor of the client site) are excellent linking opportunities.

Primary Research Sources

For research, stick to using primary sources of information only. Primary sources include:

• Government sites (.gov)

• Education sites (.edu)

• “Big Data” websites

• Studies & Clinical Trials

• Authoritative websites on the topic (that don’t compete with our client)

• Recent News

• Competing content's sources (go to their original source)

• Books* If the entire contents of the book are available for public review for free. No Amazon previews/etc.

Refining Your Search: Operators

Searching on Google will offer tons of information on any topic. Finding what you need requires some knowledge of how to search. First, you can refine your web searches by adding operators.

Operators are punctuation and 'commands' that tell Google more about what you're looking for. You can narrow your search by various parameters like specific site types (IE .gov or .edu), search social media sites, and even find related sites.

Google offers some basic information about refining web searches, but you can also check out Google Advanced Search Operators, a document created by a senior Google research scientist.

Research Sources Walk-Through

Let’s illustrate with a sample topic: “student loan debt.”

.Gov/.Edu Research on Google

To find information on .gov and .edu websites, visit Google.com and search for your topic using the “site:” operator.

Examples:

• “student loan debt” site:.gov

• “student loan debt” site:.edu

Using this type of search query will give you results from .gov or .edu sites only. You may want to vary the search term you use to try to find different results.

Big Data Sites

Big data sites are websites that offer accurate statistics, numbers, graphs, and other types of data on a given topic.

To find these resources, try a few search terms like:

• “student loan debt” + data

• “student loan debt” + statistics

• “student loan debt” + stats

You'll likely find many helpful information sources. Just make sure that they’re the primary source of information. If they're not, you can follow the information back to its source by clicking on external links or checking the site's reference list.

Studies & Clinical Trials

Use these search queries for official information on your topic:

• “student loan debt” + case study

• “student loan debt” + study

• “student loan debt” + clinical study

• “student loan debt” + white paper

• “student loan debt” + research

These studies can be pretty long-winded, so we don't expect you to read them thoroughly. However, any source you link to must be on-topic and add value for the reader.

Authoritative, Non-Competing Websites

The initial results you find when doing this search will most likely not include primary sources of info. But most authoritative and non-competing websites will use primary sources. You can track their links to the original information.

To find authoritative websites, simply search for the topic in quotes:

“student loan debt”

The results will include what Google thinks are the most relevant pages for that term. Explore those results and the sources they link to; this can be a goldmine for your research and external linking.

Recent News Sources

Very little of what we do is timely news content. We generally create content that is timeless and will be relevant no matter when you read it. BUT… we can use recent news to help us with our research.

Just visit http://news.google.com and search for your topic. The resulting new stories may link to primary sources of data that will be great for your research.

Competing Content Sources

The majority of projects assigned to you will involve a single target keyword for each article. If you search for this target keyword on Google, the top 5 to 10 results from that search will be what we consider to be “competing content.”

In short, the article you’re writing aims to “outrank” these top 5 to 10 results.

You may use these competing articles as a guideline for your research. However, you may *never* take the information from these competing articles as fact. Dive deeper, explore primary sources, and don't take any opinion or judgment at face value.