HOW TO WRITE FOR THE WEB

There are four critical factors that you must keep in mind when writing for the web:

1. THE MESSAGE — Your message should be conveyed in a brief, simple, easy-to-understand manner.

2. KEYWORD PLACEMENT — Your text must incorporate all of the “keywords” related to your product or service that a prospective customer might use when performing a search on a search engine.

3. CONTENT LENGTH — Your home page — and succeeding pages — should have a minimum of 250 words of copy as this proves to be a count that is most search-engine friendly.

4. THE CALL TO ACTION — A call to action must be easily evident throughout your site.

THE MESSAGE

Writing for the web is completely different than any other type of writing — including advertising. Web visitors have very short attention spans and you need to capture them and communicate your message as quickly as possible. There’s no time for long-winded sales pitches on the web. You need to immediately identify the need that your target audience has, communicate that you understand their problem/challenge, show why your product or service meets that need (e.g., the benefits), and then provide a call to action for more information or to make a purchase.

Most companies make the mistake of talking about who they are on their home page as if they have already created a relationship with the visitor and gotten their interest — you haven’t and that’s a big mistake. You need to quickly create a relationship in seconds by first showing the visitor that you understand what their problem/need is and then demonstrating that you have the solution for it.

Copy must be short, clever, catchy, and a quick read. Visitors must be able to easily navigate their way around your site and find what they need fast. If they have to click-through a lot of pages or read through paragraphs and paragraphs of information in order to find what they need, you will lose them. Use subheads to break up long blocks of copy and direct the reader to the information they want to know.

Unlike your college term papers, important business proposals, and printed brochure copy, website copy doesn’t need to have perfect sentence structure. One-word sentences, bullet points, and quick, verb-less descriptions are fine. Catch their attention and if you want to share more detail on something specific, include a “click here” or “more information” link and they can delve deeper into the site for more details.

KEYWORD PLACEMENT

There are two primary reasons for having copy on your website. The first is obvious: to sell your product or service to the visitor. The second is not so obvious: so that your website pages will place well in the search engines (Google Yahoo, etc.). This is of paramount importance for the visitors who will come to your site via a search engine and not directly through your URL.

The way in which your site will place well in the search engines has to do with keywords — the terms that a web surfer will use when searching for a product or service. It is easy to identify the keywords that pertain to your product or service (there are websites that also offer recommendations on the most frequently used keywords for particular products and services) and these should be used prominently and frequently throughout your site.

For example, if you are a hotel in Orlando, Florida, you don’t want to start off on the home page talking about the number of rooms you have, that you offer three-star service, etc. You need to speak to the visitor who is searching for a hotel in Orlando or who might be visiting Disney World and is therefore looking for “lodging near Disney World” or “accommodations in Kissimmee” or even “discount accommodations in Orlando.” These are all keywords that the visitor will probably use in a search engine to locate a property that meets their needs and you should be incorporating this information on your home page and on subsequent pages.

A general rule of thumb is to use two to three keywords per page and to place them as high up in the copy as possible, keeping in mind that your copy should flow naturally and make sense. It is also important to use these keywords once in the title and once in the description tag as well.

THE CALL TO ACTION

Every page on your website should have a “call to action” line or button enabling your visitor to contact you for more information or make a purchase. They should not have to surf through pages of content to find out how they can contact you to learn more or how to go about making a purchase. Make it as easy as possible for them to go to the next step and make a purchase through your site or gather more information.

It is also wise to incorporate additional information on your site that may not directly tie-in to the sale of your product. This helps to make your site more content rich, place well in the search engines, and is of service to your visitor. Going back to the Orlando hotel scenario, providing detailed information on the theme parks and restaurants in the area is a very user-friendly service to provide to the visitor. Additionally, many people search for a hotel via destination, so having some generic Orlando city information on the site is useful as well.

In conclusion, it is strongly recommended that you try to update your home page copy and other copy on the site on a pretty regular fashion — or even incorporate a “News” or “Specials” section so that the copy is not continuously static and changes, giving the visitor the impression that this is a site they need to visit more regularly.