Next week, I’m presenting to an advertising class at the University of Nevada, Reno on writing for the web. I’ve been building and marketing websites for almost eight years now so hopefully I’ve learned a thing or two. Here is a little of what plan to present. I would love some feedback.
Writing Web Copy In General
The most widely read and widely referenced piece of work regarding writing for the web was published by John Morkes and Jacob Nielsen in 1997. It’s a very logical paper that makes a lot of sense. It seems to be as relevant today as it was in 1997. Their major conclusion was that people don’t read, they scan. Therefore, make good use of bold tags, bulleted lists, short paragraphs and very concise writing.
Writing Marketing Copy
The worst copy on the web today is found on most company’s websites. It’s jargon filled and talks volumes without saying anything. You can fix this by determining the goal of your website and writing to achieve that goal. Each page of the site can address a different goal and there are no limits to the amount of pages your site can have.
Writing for Search Engines
This is often overlooked when penning copy. Today’s powerful search engines use spiders to crawl websites gobbling up each word they find. These words are used to index the sites content. Quite literally, the count of each interesting word (meaning not words like: and, if, the, etc) is stored in the search engines database and this is factored into your search engine ranking. Use too many key words and the search engine thinks your purposely stuffing the pages. Use to few, and the search engine doesn’t know what the page is about.
Another common copy mistake is linking useless words. Do a Google search for "click here" and see what comes up. I’ll give you a hint, it’s mostly download pages for plug-ins (Acrobat Reader, Flash, Media Player). This is because as long as sites have required plug-ins, they have linked to them as, "click here" to download. I share this because it showcases the importance that search engines put on the words between your link tags. The more descriptive you can be about where the link goes by linking the key words, the better your results are going to be.
So, to write effectively for the search engines, think what words your visitors might be searching on in order to find your site. Use these words in your copy and in your links. Don’t overdue it, but using it once or twice probably won’t be enough.
By the way, there are a ton more factors that go into search engine optimization; this is just one.
Writing For Blogs
Blogs are conversational in tone and manner. This makes them easier to write, which a good thing, because bloggers have to write a lot. Popular blogs post multiple times a day. If each post had to be formal and well vetted, this would be a full-time job (only a lucky few make enough to actually justify this as there full-time job).
The same formatting techniques described by Morkes and Nielson should be used in blogs. Also, using images to support blog posts is a good strategy. When possible, embed video from Google Video or YouTube.
Bloggers maintain a life of transparency and honesty. Don’t try and fool or lie to your readers. If you do, the best case scenario is they will stop reading your blog. The worst case, and often the most likely, is that they will expose your blog to the whole blogosphere as a farce.
Writing Emails
I don’t think much is usually said about writing emails. Unfortunately, reading and writing emails will be the largest single literary activity you’ll get to do on a day to day basis in most professional jobs. The biggest tip I can give is try and think of all the ways your email can be read. It’s easy to fire off a two or three sentence email in reply to a request or question. However, often this brevity comes at the price of mis-interpretation.
These are the top level topics I want to cover. Please feel free to comment or email me any other ideas or suggestions you may have.
