consider this – when you write for your web site
You have come up with a fantastic design for your web site, and the layout
isn't bad either. All you need to do now is to put a little bit of content on there, and you are ready to launch. Shouldn't take too long, after all it is only text and images. More importantly, unlike your printed material, it doesn't cost to put text on your web site.
WRONG! You may not literally be paying per word you put on a web page, but get the content wrong on your web site, and you will be attending its funeral sooner than you can say "launch".
In this article I am hoping to give you a few points to consider, when you write for your web site. The article is by no means to be seen as a comprehensive guide on how to write for the web. However, it should hopefully tackle some of the more common mistakes people make when writing for the web. These people include, now burning with shame, the author herself.
WRITE SHORT, PRECISE SENTENCES
E.g.
"There were 50 people at the meeting, which was held on 5 June, in the clubhouse at the football club, in support of raising money for new jerseys for the youth teams."
could also read
"50 people attended the meeting on 5 June at the football club. It was held to raise money for new jerseys for the youth teams."
Most people find it hard to read from a screen. In particular, if a sentence runs over more than one line. So use short sentences, and try to keep it to one message per sentence.
Your web site visitors will be expecting to find the information they are looking for within seconds. Few will be surfing the net for long school essays. So say what you have to say, but leave out unnecessary words.
USE ACTIVE, NOT PASSIVE LANGUAGE
E.g.
"It was put to a vote and decided by the majority that the new jerseys should be bought with the money received from local businesses."
could also read
"The majority voted that the new jerseys should be bought with the money donated by local businesses."
You only have a few seconds to get your visitors interested, or they leave your site. So it is important that you use active, engaging language.
WRITE SO EVERYBODY UNDERSTANDS, NOT JUST THE PEOPLE IN THE KNOW
Think of the people you are trying to reach with your message. They are unlikely all to be experts in your subject. But it is important that everybody understands your message. You will not get a medal for using long, unusual words, but you will lose a big part of your potential audience. Don't use language that only people in the know will understand.
BE CONSISTENT IN STYLE AND FORMAT
You will make your article much easier to read, if you are consistent in the style and format you use. Decide on a particular style and format for dates, times, headlines, sub-headlines and body text and stick to it throughout your site.
Make sure you use plenty of paragraphs. White space helps us read from a screen, and paragraphs help the reader digest your message.
A LITTLE LESS BOLD, PLEASE
Most people scan a web page instead of reading the entire page. You can help your visitor scan a page by e.g. using bold text for headlines and important points.
However many web writers get carried away and make almost everything in bold writing. This annuls the effect of bold text, as the reader is no longer able to quickly scan for the really important points.
As the author of an article you will most likely find everything in the article important, but do try to only use bold for key parts such as headlines and key messages.
Once you have finished the article, you can quickly test, if you have used bold correctly by reading only the parts in bold. If the key messages are conveyed by only reading the text in bold, you will most likely have used bold correctly.
PUT YOURSELF IN THE READERS' SHOES
Think of the people you are trying to reach and try to imagine what they may want to get out of your article. It is not enough just to think of the message you want to deliver.
You may identify areas that your reader will expect to be covered, which for various reasons you will not cover. In that case clearly state at the beginning of your article that these areas will not be covered. You may also want to provide links to articles that do cover these areas either on your own site or external web sites.
SPRINKLE THE TEXT WITH KEYWORDS
Search engines play a key part in the delivery of your article. A large portion of the readers will get to your article after having searched for certain keywords in one of the many search engines.
Make sure you use relevant keywords regularly throughout your article. This should happen automatically, afterall an article about tractors is likely to mention the word tractor quite a few times.
Do not be tempted to try and get search engines to list your article under keywords that are not relevant to your article. Even if you do trick the engines into listing your article, readers will not be fooled, but they will be annoyed and will probably punish you by not visiting your site again.
KEEP THE PAGES UP TO DATE
Keep your article up to date. Most readers are not interested in old news. Assess on a regular basis if an article is still relevant. If it is no longer relevant, consider if it can be updated, so it becomes relevant. If it cannot be updated, then do everyone a favour and take the article off your web site.
If you have included links to external sites, make sure you check on a regular basis that these links are still correct.
Some articles such as press releases you should naturally not update. However, make sure these articles are clearly marked with the date of publication.
It can also be a good idea to include the date that an article was last updated. Do not be tempted to try and trick search engines into thinking your article is updated every day. Many people will be filtering search results by date and will probably be very annoyed to find out your article is in fact 2 years old instead of 1hour.
Show respect for your readers and print the true date. What good is thousands of visitors to your article, if they don't stay long enough to read it. Unless, of course, you are in the business of bending statistics in order to sell advertising space.
USE ONLY A FEW, GOOD IMAGES
Yes, a picture can say more than a thousand words, and if I had a penny for every time I have heard that cliché... But you still pay a price when you include images in your article.
Admittedly, fewer people are using dial-up connections, so the download speed is less of an issue nowadays. Nevertheless some are still on slow connections and even broadband connections can be slow with high-resolution images.
I have seen many web sites use poor quality, meaningless images purely for the sake of using images. So decide if an image is really serving a purpose before you include it in your article.
DON'T KEEP YOUR WEB SITE A SECRET
Ok, so this is not so much about your content itself. But it would be a shame to go through all this trouble with your content, if nobody reads it.
Naturally, you should submit your web site to all major search engines. Usually you do not need to submit individual web pages. Search engines should pick them up when crawling your site, provided there is a link of course. However, search engines alone are not going to drive thousands of visitors to your site.
Remember to include your web site address in all your printed material, promotional material and ads. Ask other people to link to your web site. If possible get your individual articles listed on relevant specialist sites. Make sure to mention the web site address at meetings and other events.
A web site is not worth anything if nobody visits!
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