Writing for the Web is Different

Writing for the web is different than writing for print materials, for a number of reasons.

You want to please your visitors, but you won't have any visitors at all if you don't implement some fundamental search engine optimization (SEO) techniques at the outset.

I strive to integrate both the user perspective and search engine optimization (SEO) into my web writing and editing services, depending on the client’s needs and budget.

Writing for the Web — Pleasing Your Visitors

Your website material itself may be very well-written, informative and engaging.

However, people read differently on the web than they read magazine and news articles and other print materials.

They scan quickly for the information they are looking for, and leave just as quickly if it doesn’t immediately grab them.

Aside from well-written, compelling content, writing for the web requires:

short sentences,
short paragraphs,
lots of white space on the page,
the use of descriptive headings and subheadings,
the use of bullets and other formatting techniques to separate and highlight content.

I integrate this kind of work into all of my web writing and editing.

Writing for the Web — Pleasing the Search Engines

Search Engine Optimization at its most basic level makes you visible to the search engines. The more SEO techniques you employ, and employ well, the higher your visibility, popularity and ranking will rise.

SEO techniques are applied both on your site (website optimization), and in other ways that raise your popularity in the world of the web and search engines.

Our focus here is on optimizing your site content.

Your budget or your inclination may have you considering engaging a Search Engine Optimization consultant or firm down the road. You want to just get the site launched and worry about optimizing later.

Reconsider. If budget is the holdback, you can do it yourself.

Investing the time to learn about SEO or to pay for SEO services now could save you from extensive re-writes later, as well as potentially gaining you faster and higher indexing and ranking in organic (free) search results at the outset.

A Search Engine Optimizer's approach to writing for the web will start with keyword research. They will:

Brainstorm and research keywords and phrases that potential visitors will use to find your site;
Do a competitive analysis of those keywords re: supply/demand and recommend those with the most potential;
Recommend full pages of content centred around each of those keywords.

The following is a basic primer on how you, or your web developer, web writer or SEO'er, will use the keyword research to optimize your web pages.

The page’s keyword or phrase will be in your html meta tags:

page title, description and keywords;
these do not show up on-page, but search engines use these tags to determine what the page is about, to index, and to rank the page in search results;
the page title and description will appear in the search engine results that web searchers see — so, again, write for the web: short, descriptive, informative titles and sentences.

The keyword or phrase should appear in your top level headings:

in html lingo, these are your H1 and H2 tags;
all pages should start with at least an H1;
the keyword/phrase and variations of them can be used in lower level headings as well where appropriate;

The keyword or phrase should be naturally ‘sprinkled’ throughout the on-page content:

there is a delicate balance to be attained for both your visitors and the search engines;
a basic rule of thumb is that it should appear at least once in the opening sentence/paragraph and in the closing sentence/paragraph;
throughout the rest of the page, the ratio, or ‘keyword density’ then depends on several things, such as total word count, code to text ratio, etc.

Other SEO tasks that may or may not include the use of the keyword:

image tag text;
link tag titles;
using descriptive phrases within your link text, rather than just “click here” or “read more”;

As you can see, the work involved in writing for the web is quite a bit more extensive than simply writing 'good copy' and editing and tweaking on-page content for the user’s perspective and accessibility. You will find many SEO guides and free keyword research and search engine optimization tools in the Resources section.

I strongly recommend setting out with the objective of quickly meeting both your visitors' needs and interests and the potential for faster and better search engine results.

Paying attention to these special requirements of writing for the web will save you money and time down the road.