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Writing Effectively for the Web

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For most of us, time is of the essence and we use the Internet to quickly find the information we need. Keeping your content relevant and to the point, without being either too vague or overly descriptive, is the key to writing effective web content. Either extreme in content length-too long or too short- often sends a reader in search of greener pastures

Keep Your Content Short and Relevant
Tailor your Content for Website Reading
Style for Your Writing
Don't Game the Search Engines; You'll Lose
Add Strong Calls to Action to Your Content
Authors

Important!

Keep Your Content Short and Relevant

Important!

Tailor your Content for Website Reading

Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase "the medium is the message"[*] . Today that phrase holds extra relevance for the website content writer. When we write for the web, it is essential to tailor our content for the reading habits of our website visitors. Understanding the differences between content written for print and that written for the web is critical to the success of a website.

Content written for print is linear, while web content might be described as modular. We sit down with a good book or read a newspaper over breakfast. The setting is relaxed. We have the time to read each page top to bottom and are content to allow the author to lead us through his story, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph.

When we browse the web, we usually do so with a purpose. We aren't content to read each page top to bottom. The very moment that a page comes into view, we begin scanning-looking for the information that will help us achieve our objective. We look for headings, bullet points, graphics: any clue that will quickly indicate we've clicked to the right place.

Another aspect of web reading is that, unlike reading print material, we don't have the luxury of paging back to cement an important point in our memories. On the other hand, though, print material doesn't allow us to quickly go forward to find details or supplementary information. The text link is a huge advantage to the web content writer. It not only allows writers to lead their visitors from page to page of their websites, it also gives visitors the opportunity to quickly find all of the details that are relevant to their goals.

Important!

Style for Your Writing

If you are familiar with creating web pages, you probably are familiar with css style sheets. However, an author guide is another type of style sheet that will make your web content glow with professionalism. The author guide can be an invaluable reference as well as a check list.

It can help you keep track of the way you want to do things. For instance, "Internet" can be either capitalized or in lower case. "Web site" can be two words or is sometimes written as a compound word "website". An author guide helps ensure that you have used the same version all through each document and throughout the pages of your website.

Keep track of how you want to space your text. For instance, will you use one or two spaces after a sentence? Will you add a space before, after, both before and after, or not at all to 'n' dashes and 'm' dashes?

Number conventions - will you write out numbers one to ten (the conventional method), one to twenty, or do you have a different idea?

Speaking of compound words, "cannot" is one, but do not is two words. You can make similar notations on an author guide.

We all have certain words that we constantly misspell. (Is it seperate or separate?) Your author guide is a handy place to list them.

Homonyms, words that sound the same but have different meanings, (e.g. it's-its, there-their, wait-weight) can be tricky. List the ones that give you trouble.

These are just a few of the benefits you get from an author guide. One last benefit is that an author guide can alert a guest blogger or article submitter as to how you want the content of your website presented.

Important!

Don't Game the Search Engines; You'll Lose

In the early days of the Internet, many web developers tried to play hardball with the search engines. Search robots relied on META data to discern the contents of web pages. Web developers misused the keyword meta data, stuffing it full of the words they believed would help their web pages become more visible in a search- whether or not the text of the page contained their keywords. Over the years, advancements in technology have enabled search engine programmers to write sophisticated algorithms that make the use of keyword meta data obsolete.

Search robots scour web pages for words and other attributes that describe the topic in the page url and title. Some of the attributes they consider are paragraph headings, italic and strong text, bulleted or numbered lists, and contextual links. They also look for (and devalue) pages that are "keyword stuffed".

The truth is that for web content to be effective, it must be written for the human that will ultimately read it. Along with several other controls, search engines also check page bounce rates to assess the value of a page. Bounce rates tell us how long a visitor stays on a particular page. If your visitors aren't happy with your page, the bottom line is that the search engines won't like it either.

Important!

Add Strong Calls to Action to Your Content

Write your web content with purpose. For instance, if your objective is to sell a product or service, make your content reflect that objective with strong calls to action. Besides selling products and services, calls to action may encourage users to review other pages or simply comment on a blog post . Directions like, "Contact us", "Buy now",and even those such as "click here" and "read more" work to involve the reader in your website as well as helping them to complete their objective in visiting your website.