Web content writing & SEO guidance

(Other source related to Writing for the web and SEO)

When it comes to the impact convergence has on distribution stage of content, it is necessary to look at the basics of starting point proactively on how people read online content, why and how to write for the web.

How people read content on the web

Writing for the web is largely differ from content written in printed matter and other media in rushed modern life. Currently, people get used to scanning through content on the web quickly rather than reading word-for-word (saying nothing of the whole article).

Besides, Jakob Nielsen's study shows that people read only 20%~28% of an individual web page averagely, the more word count contains the smaller the percentage it gets. It’s all about people tending to optimize online behavior by being productive and active, indeed, they are likely to skip over the unworthy page and look for information foraging. Unless they found the attractive content meet their needs, or they might continue seeking other worthy sites through search engines.

Why writing web content

As a result of this user-driven cyberspace, in order to speed up web users' reading, grab their attention and build users base in a proper way etc, it has been being of crucial importance to write and present the SEO-friendly (say, scannable, concise and objective) content for web users towards boosting site's traffic and optimizing your site's usability.

University of Oxford highlighted the relevant guides when writing for the web on its website:

• Place important content at the top of the page.
• Include words and phrases.
• Use short paragraphs, keep your pages short
• Written and proof-read before being published
• Use headings to summaries paragraphs and sub-sections

Trenton Moss, the founder of an industry-leading user experience consultancy--Webcredible, concluded 8 tips of his study on the aspects of content & usability as well, in his article he suggested that we could make best of limited but clear and plain language, worthy hyperlink text and lists, only put one idea in single paragraph, bolden the vital words to help achieve the ultimate aim of web content writing.

Guidance on writing SEO-friendly content on the web

As people now often browse particular sites via search engine more preferably than visiting the individual site, how to make the content can be more easily found and attractive to the search engine has become a subject to explore. Here are the core aspects need weighing and considering:

• Key words (words or phrases describe content)
• Headlines (Standout and prominent ‘3W’: Who-names, Where-places, What-things of a story)
• Links (link to extra source of information, similar to the context stage of Paul Bradshaw’s 21st Century Newsroom model)
• Audience (based on '3W', serves interest)

Apart from the essential ways above what will be the other ways to write and present content so that it can be found on search engines? Except something has been told in lecture, there is some other guidance we might try to follow conducted by some universities, industrial specialists or scholars found online:

A SEO Specialist Shannon O’Brien also lists the guidance on web-writing in her blog post ‘Writing for the Web is Good SEO’:

• Write concisely, focus on user benefit
• Begin with your most important ideas; follow with supporting content
• Use bulleted lists to clean up text
• Use headers & subheaders to organize
• Include informative keywords/phrases within the beginning of each header (do NOT use “click here”)

Other resource about ‘Top 10 Tips to write SEO friendly article’ by Amit Jain also can be found at: http://blog.girnarsoft.com/2008/04/top-10-tips-to-write-seo-friendly.html

Furthermore, Google has launched its user-friendly Google Website Optimizer, which enable us to test the site content by listening to the visitors, increasing conversions and eliminate guesswork etc.

Reference

• Moss, T. (2005). ‘Content & usability: Writing for the web’. Available at: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-usability/web-content.shtml. Accessed 17th October 2009
• O’Brien, S. (2009). ‘Writing for the Web is Good SEO’. Available at: http://www.fluencymedia.com/articles/seo-writing-for-web/. Accessed 17th October 2009
• University of Oxford. (2009). ‘Writing for the Web’. Available at: http://www.ox.ac.uk/web/guides/writing_for_the_web.html. Accessed 17th October 2009

• This post was written by Zhong Min. You can contact me at MZhong1@uclan.ac.uk