5 best practices in web writing - how to write online
Updated: 22nd September 2022
Reading time: 6 min
Content marketing is one of the biggest trends in modern business.
Among its most important advantages, you can find an amazing influence of regularly shared good quality content on website position in internet searches.
One of the steps when working on a good text is selecting adequate keywords, which will positively affect positioning.
Depending on your company's branch, key phrases can either contain the most popular keywords or belong to a certain niche.
At this point, you could ask a (very) important question - how to web write well?
How to both fulfill readers' expectations and satisfy robots indexing your text?
The answer to this question might feel obvious. After all, internet searches are one of the most basic search tools these days.
Wrong website optimization can cause that even the best-written text will not be red.
Does it mean that we can adjust web written text to indexing robots only?
Unfortunately, no.
What doesn't change the fact, that well written online text needs to satisfy a few conditions.
Consider the viewer
Content marketing builds a bridge between the viewers (customers) and a company. Receivers are looking for solutions to particular problems, which can be solved by the company.
Some of web writing challenges might have just come to your mind:
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reaching the target group
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displaying content in a way, that it will reach a target group members
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receiving information back.
It is possible to go around them by getting to know your viewers.
Every company gathers information about customers - thanks to data from CRM (customer relationship management), chat or mailing history and even product demand data. CRM pricing can make or break your company, so check it before you decide to go for one option (for example a free CRM) or another. When it comes to CRM, businesses often use Keap as their go-to platform, but it’s essential to explore other Keap alternatives to ensure that you’re using the best platform for your business needs.
Knowledge about customers should be a base for creating a content marketing strategy. It will help to better adjust content to the viewers.
I am sure this information will allow you to answer questions such as:
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what customer is looking for?
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what problems does he face? how can you help?
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where the customer found out about your services?
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how can you convince him that your company offers the best solution to his problem?
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It is worth to mention that answering these questions is not easy. You can observe it on the example of newspapers market.
Different content aims to young mothers, business and teenagers.
What's more, each of these groups can sense, which one is "one of them" and which is just personating.
To make things worse, creating content becomes even more difficult when it aims to reach a hermetic group: niche branch, subculture etc.
Whether your content will reach a target group depends on many elements such as:
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whether the language is truly used by the targeted group
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whether the content is credible
Only after thinking these elements through should you continue your work.
Title – between SEO and catchy
In most cases, a title is the first (or last) thing viewer sees. In order to encourage him to keep reading, it should be catchy and intriguing.
On the other hand, you might be tempted to use, well known from poor quality websites, click baits - wording, which aims to draw reader's attention, often appealing to his emotions and lacking suggestions about article content.
What's also challenging is adding an SEO sensitive phrase - keywords, under which your text will be displayed in Google search.
A title should stress out how the reader will benefit from reading the text. If it is possible, put there a number (7 best practices..., 5 hints on...)
Content - meat, meat, and a few veggies
It takes just a few mouse clicks to enter another web page on the same topic. The fight for users' attention is real and it's among others between bloggers, influencers and traditionalists.
This is exactly the reason why it is necessary to design content which will keep the reader's attention. To achieve that, you can use:
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expressive headers;
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numbered lists and dotted lists;
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quotes, bold and italic;
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multimedia (check how Impexium uses various forms of multimedia on their homepage!)
Caused by easy content access, users expect to find out what the text is about after just a quick scan. When the article isn't properly organized, readers drop it and look for the answers elsewhere.
Between storytelling and inverted pyramid
Nowadays, in web writing you can see two totally different concepts:
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inverted pyramid;
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storytelling.
The first one derives from news journalism and displays all the most important information at the beginning of the article and then extend them.
Storytelling uses narration and builds a history through dynamic facts revealing and encouraging the reader to follow through in order to explore all news.
Web writing style depends on the target group, article topic, and writer's skills.
Most importantly - correct
Regardless of web writing style you choose, narration and language, an online text should above all be written correctly.
Even if the target readers use slang or a language characteristic for a particular working group, using this kind of wording can make understanding the text difficult.
Vulgarisms, slang, and specialistic wording should be used as an ingredient - with a dose of moderation and caution.
What's also important, viewers should not be forced to read a text with orthographic or punctuational mistakes - they do not show the author's easy-going attitude but lack of respect to the reader.
Summary
Web writing, even though the overall content quality online is poor, undoubtedly is challenging. Your goal should be to introduce content which is better than competitors, not just some other medium-quality article.
Maybe you will build a website with outstanding content?
Authors: Weronika Wawrzyniak & Konrad Budek
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