The 3 Fundamentals Skills of Web Writing
Gerry McGovern is “widely regarded as the number one worldwide authority on managing web content as a business asset” and I've been reading his weekly newsletter New Thinking for a good 5 years now. In a recent issue he writes about the core skills in writing content for the web:
1. Writing using words for how people search
We need to use the words that [people] use, rather than the words that we might like to use.
I have found this to be ever more relevant in my work in improving sites' visibility on the Internet. Here's my tip: you can find out the words people search for by the free service Yahoo Search Marketing's Keyword Selector Tool. That way you get a pretty good idea of how many times a day a certain keyphrase is searched for.
2. Making your copy reader-friendly
People scan-read your webpages, and scan-reading is actually another type of search, where people are searching on the page for the words that they care about.
That means a lot of self-explanatory sub headings, italics, and bold text to facilitate scanning.
3. Writing quality links
Your links are signposts. Your readers are asking you directions and they are following your signposts.
In other words, using links to describe the destination such as “Testimonials of people who have used our product X” rather than just using “click here”.
If you are at all involved with web content creation, Gerry's newsletter is a must.