Writing for the Web

Writing for blogs and the web is not the same as writing elsewhere. Why?

As Jacob Nielsen showed a decade ago, reading on computer a screen is not as easy and comfortable as reading from paper. Besides, the web is an active medium and web users have allot of choice. They have a tendency to be fickle and easily go elsewhere.

The result is that users scan web pages, and that when writing for the web one has to write in such a way as to make scanning and reading easy by:

• Using the inverted pyramid: Writing what’s important first;
• Breaking up text into short paragraphs;
• Highlighting key concepts;
• Using bulleted lists;
• Using short punchy sentences;

Search engine audience

There is another crucial audience that web writers should bear in mind, the search engines.

Knowing which keywords your desired audience is likely to use is crucial. Including these keywords regularly in the relevant posts is paramount in helping a search engine decide to make your page part of its results returned for these words.

Should you be dogmatic about audience and SEO writing?

No, these are just guidelines.

How you write will also depend on the topic of your site. There are three reasons why one should not be too dogmatic in following these rules.

You have to be creative and enjoy writing. Writing is hard work, and to keep on doing it, it has to be rewarding.

Secondly, to distiguish your site or blog from the rest it has to have a distinctive voice or personality. It’s hard to embody a voice in a bulleted list.

Thirdly. If breaking the rules above means that fewer people initially read your post, BUT you get important inbound links from quality web sites as a result. Then, in the long run, it will have been worth it.

Getting link juice, or the distribution of PageRank via links to you, is almost always the most powerful way to increase
your websites viewers.

Therefore, anything that increases the likelihood of other users linking to your posts is the best thing you can do.

That means either:

• Be first (Beat the rest to a story or an insight);
• Be best (Have the best information, or the best prose);
• Be unique (Have something that the rest don’t have);