1. Check (and doublecheck) your spelling and grammar: Everyone makes typos every now and again, but no one wants to see poorly edited material. It looks unprofessional and can confuse your potential clients. Go beyond Spell Check and edit your own writing carefully. Or better yet, get an outside editor to go over your work.
2. Write for your audience: If you’re selling widgets to the average widget buyer, don’t throw them off with technical jargon. Make sure you express the benefits of your product in a language they’ll understand. Above all, be helpful and be sure to express yourself clearly.
3. Less is more: Sure, the search engines demand content for rankings and this is the “information” superhighway, but don’t overload your visitors with page after page of text. Be concise, to the point and if you go into detail break it out using headings or bullet points.
4. Remember it all comes down to coding: Web writing is different than other classic forms of writing because the underlying foundation is actually code. Make sure to view your webpages, articles and other web writing in multiple browsers to make sure there are no errors in the coding, i.e. funny characters or lack of spacing. This goes for websites that use content management systems, like Wordpress or Joomla, too
5. Use keywords but don’t abuse them: SEO is important to get high rankings in the engines, but don’t forget that while Google may be responsible for showing your website to your potential clients, it is still a human that will be making the final decision. It’s good to use your keywords in your writing, but overuse of them won’t get you anywhere.
6. Ads can kill your writing: Nowadays it’s commonplace to see ads interspersed within articles or web text. And while studies show that this improves ad clicks, keep in mind that the more ads you use in your writing, the more distracted your visitors will be. Keep ads to a minimum and carefully placed, so as not to interrupt your web page flow. (The same goes for link ads).
7. Stay on topic: Web writing has to be impactful, so run-on sentences and trailing from one topic to another just won’t do. Try to keep each paragraph or page to one or two topics. Use a classic brainstorming spider to map out your website writing, e.g. if your website is about cats, your pages could be: cat training, cat breeding, cat food, etc.).
8. Don’t use cliches: This is almost a blanket tip for all writing (unless your website is about cliches of course). Overuse of cliches can blanche your writing and make it less effective. Keep them to a minimum, or when in doubt - leave ‘em out.
9. Be consistent: If a word has two different accepted spellings, pick one and stick with it. Going back and forth from “e-mail” to “email” may seem like a small slip, but it gets noticed by your visitors and can lessen the professionalism of your website.
10. Be confident: Make sure you believe what you’re saying. There’s no sales pitch in the world that is better than when your own confidence in what you’re saying and/or selling comes across in your words.
Good luck in all your writing endeavours!
If you need writing help, email us today for a free writing consultation: info@paperkitepress.com