I’m sick this week, so I’ve been surfing the web between naps (and sneezing). As a result, I’m reminded of how many websites have poorly structured content on their pages. Either the writing is bad or the content is too long and complicated.
My clients are always asking me for help with writing for the web. If you think back to your first English class in grade school, you’ll remember being taught that a paragraph is 5-7 sentences. You open with an introduction, spend 3-4 sentences with fact and then end with summary. When you’re writing for the web – throw this logic out the window! Less is more.
Studies show that people read web content very differently than print. Skimming is far more popular on the web and people look for keywords and bold points more than you think. Try to remember the last time you read something lengthy online in its entirety…
If you want to write good content for the web, here are some tips to encourage your website visitors to actually read your content (or at least skim the important parts):
- Headline your copy. Always tell your visitors what you’re going to say.
- Keep your paragraphs to 2-3 sentences max. Visually, longer paragraphs are ignored on a computer or cell phone screen because people don’t want to spend the time reading them. Instead, cut your copy into shorter paragraphs and keep their attention.
- Keep your sentences short. Long, continuing sentences make skimming more challenging.
- Fill your copy with rich keywords. While you’re writing to make sense, you’re also writing to be recognized by search engines. Good copy makes sense and has plenty of keywords that people may use to search for you or your business.
- Use small headlines. If you are writing more than 3 paragraphs for one webpage, create bold headlines for the various topic areas in your copy to break it up and make your writing easy to skim. If your visitor only reads your headlines, will they know what you are trying to say? They should.
- Avoid mixing italics, colors, sizes and fonts. Lots of people tackle the CHALLENGE of keeping your attention by stylizing their copy like this. Bad! Don’t do this. It’s messy, ugly and twice as hard to read. Put emphasis in your copy sparingly – otherwise you simply waste the effort.
- Hyperlink to more information. The beauty of the web is its interactivity. You can link words or phrases in your copy to definitions, longer explanations, other pages, references or anything else. Linking to other content increases the quality of your content – just be sure it’s legitimate and worthy linking.
- Overall, keep it short. If there’s one tip that you follow – do this one. The odds of a visitor scrolling down on your page are very low. So keep your most important copy on the top of the page and avoid having more than 5-6 short paragraphs on a page.
There you go. Use these helpful tips when writing your next webpage. Also, take this opportunity to pay attention to your own personal reading habits on the web. See what you learn about yourself and what you can assume about your visitors.
If you are reading this opening blog post, odds are you are one of my beloved clients. So, first let me thank you for your business and congratulate you for actually reading my email. Second, I’ll invite you to “subscribe” to my blog so that all future posts are sent to you via email. This ensures that I’m not just talking into white space on the internet (or in essence, to myself).
I’ve decided to start a blog in large part because I find myself constantly answering the same questions from various clients. “How do I start email marketing?” “Now that I have a logo, how should I use it?” “Is it really important if I use the colors you’ve created for my brand?” “Should I post my email address online?” And, funny enough, one of the biggest questions I get is about starting a blog and how to do it.
So it’s time I took some of my own advice and started my own blog. Truthfully, I’ve delayed this venture simply because I work too much. Who has time!? But in retrospect, I bet I’ve spent more time responding to the same questions over and over again. I’m determined to make better use of my time.
So here it is. I am going to use this blog to regularly post helpful tips to clients, small business owners, people who need help with marketing and pretty much anyone that is trying to build their own brand. I’ll post tips to maintaining your brand, ways to grow your social marketing, small tricks to improve your search ranking, keys to making your brand memorable and other helpful bits of information. If I know it, I’ll share it.
I also believe in a telling my clients what to expect from me when we start a new project, so here is what I promise:
- I will post at least weekly – hopefully more often.
- I will not use your names (or websites) in my posts without permission.
- I will respond to your comments – so please share!
- I will not make things complicated.
- I will sometimes post information from other sources of knowledge.
I also welcome comments that correct or disagree with me. I am, after all, human and some of my best lessons have come from someone pointing out my faulty logic or demonstrating a better way to do it. I am also not an amazing writer. Please don’t expect poetry or humor – I’m usually only charismatic or funny unintentionally. I also like “em” dashes – for this, I apologize in advance.
So, please enjoy the blog. Tell me what you think (or I won’t know what to talk about). Send me questions via this blog or drop an email to info@jg-originals.com. And remember to subscribe to this blog!
