Jamie Smith and Angie Albright outline strategies and best practices for effective online writing for anything from a business website to a personal blog.

1. July 28, 2012
Writing Online: Best Practices
and Effective Strategies
Presented By
Jamie Smith and
Angie Albright

2. What’s this about writing good?
(OK, we have to say it. It’s writing well. But anyway . . . )
Writing for the web includes:
•Considerations of SEO,
•People’s online reading habits, and
•Effective layout and styles for the online environment.
This session offers some up-to-date research about
online writing and reading, best practices and concrete
strategies for developing effective content for any
writing project, be it your business website or your
personal blog.

3. Your presenters
Jamie Smith Angie Albright
@JamiesThots @AngieAlbright
@JamiesNotes @AGrowingSeason
JamiesThots.com (coming soon) AGrowingSeason.co
1

4. Writing for spiders and people
• Traditional writing is for one audience: the
reader.
• Online writing is for two audiences: the reader
and the web spiders. By web spiders, we mean
search engines. This is where SEO (search-
engine optimization) becomes vital. It’s the
spider food.
• Without good spider food, the human readers
will never find your content.

5. What is SEO? How do I get it?
• Search-engine optimization is more than just a
subject of spam email you receive.
• SEO increases the search engine’s ability to
find your site and its content compared to all
the other “stuff” out there.
• Certain techniques both in your writing and
behind the scenes will improve your SEO, thus
meaning the chance for more people to see
your site.

6. Keywords
What are they?
Why do I care? Tips
• Keywords are the • Make a list of potential keywords before
words people writing.
might use to find • Use common sense first, then a program
something on your like Google Keyword Tools (AdWords).
topic. • During editing, add keywords where they
• Keywords can be make sense.
singular or phrases • Use keywords in the main copy, in the
(long-tail keywords) headlines, subheads and in the SEO plug-
• Keywords should in (we’ll get to that in a minute).
be used frequently,
but artfully. Don’t
just repeat it a
bunch of times.

7. Links (not the sausage type)
Tips:
Links are our friend • Link to the website of an organization
or company if you mention it.
• Hyperlinks provide • Link to your own blog posts or website
additional information pages if you refer to a topic you’ve
already written about.
for your reader on the • Use the hyperlink tool (looks like a
topic. sideways 8) instead of listing the actual
link.
• Hyperlinks enhance • Don’t feel the need to link to every
single thing. It is irritating to the
credibility. reader’s eyes and will tell the search
• Hyperlinks increase engines that you’re trying too hard.
SEO.

8. Behind the scenes
Plugins and formatting help! Tips:
• SEO in WordPress is • Use plug-ins like “All in One
easy because there are SEO Pack” and make sure you
built-in tools for keep it updated.
enhancing SEO. • Actually take the time to fill out
• Keywords are easily the information on every page
and every post for the plug-in.
seen but a few “tricks of
• Pay attention to character
the trade” help you get
limits (160 for description). Use
the most out of your
keywords in the description.
SEO.

9. A few formatting tricks
Format helps spiders and readers Tips:
• In each post, different tools • Break up the copy into
help increase SEO and make the
content easier for the human sections using subheads (use
eye to read. These tools are keywords!)
located at the top of the page.
• Remember the outlines you • Use bold print and at least one
had to do in high school? It’s of the headline options for
the same concept, but it’s
easier (and more fun). Using subheads. Don’t just increase
subheads and lists can help the font size and use bold.
you organize your writing.
• Features like the • Use number or bulleted lists
bulleted/number lists and instead of long sentences. Use
changing the format style make
great spider food. numbers when the order
• Using a picture increases SEO matters, bullets when it does
and makes the post more not.
interesting to look at.

10. The good, the bad, and the ugly (not necessarily in that order)
A FEW EXAMPLES

11. Which would you rather read?
This is an old blog I wrote before I understood about SEO and online readability. Good content, but poorly laid out
and hard to read. Notice long paragraphs, no subheads and no lists. Popular topic but this post got hardly any hits.

12. Good use of links
This example from Angie’s blog A Growing Season shows a
good use of links. Notice they are informative but not
overwhelming.

13. Bulleted and numbered lists
This excerpt from the blog Jamie wrote for the Arkansas
Women Bloggers site shows a good use of links, bulleted lists
and numbered lists. The numbered lists are only used when an
order is needed. Otherwise, bullets are more appropriate.

14. Use varying subheads
This blog from Jim Westergren (ironically, about SEO and WordPress)
shows good use of varying headline styles. Tells the reader that
certain important topics fit under a category but it also tells the
spiders that this blog talks about those topics.

15. Who am I online?
• In other words, what is the appropriate voice
for writing online?
– Consider audience - consider age, demographic,
subject matter
– Consider genre – consider personal blog, business
blog, company website
– Be careful of being too cute or too formal
– Be consistent!
• Stay in first, second, or third person
• Use consistent tone throughout

16. How do we read online?
• The standard for understanding how people
read and see online content is Jakob Nielsen’s
2006 study.
• He formulated the oft-cited theory that we
read in an F-pattern online.

17. What do we read online?
• Apparently we read • Readers use hyperlinks
very little! Studies most frequently,
indicate that viewers followed by buttons,
read approximately 18- and then the “back”
28% of web page button.
content.
• Much of that “reading”
is actually just
skimming.

18. So what’s a writer to do?
• Use strong, active sentences
– Cut out “there are” and “it is.”
– Make sure the subject of the sentence is a noun
doing the action indicated in the verb. (This forces
the writer to find interesting verbs!)
For example:
Okay: There are very few people in this room.
Better: Few people attended the session.

19. So what’s a writer to do? (cont.)
• Cut out wordiness, which is sometimes hard
to spot.
For example:
Okay: The website content writers are accustomed to
writing for search engines and robots.
Better: Content developers often write for search
engines.

20. What’s a writer to do? (cont.)
• Get rid of the passive voice
– Passive voice construction pushes the subject to
the end of the sentence.
– Active voice keeps the subject at the beginning of
the sentence.
For example:
Passive: The website was monitored by the tech
company.
Active: The tech company monitored the website.

21. What’s a writer to do? (cont.)
• Ditch the qualifiers! Be assertive!
– Consider the difference between these three
statements:
• We believe that customer service is our most
important value.
• Customer service is our most important value.
• Our company values customer service.

22. So what’s a writer to do? (cont.)
• Punctuate effectively
– Do not use semi-colons (this one hurts)
– Journalism rule of commas applies online: do not
use a comma before the last item in a series
• For example: I like trees, butterflies and flowers.
– Exclamation points – perhaps the most overused
punctuation mark online. Very few occasions
actually call for an exclamation point.
– Contractions: not acceptable in formal writing;
acceptable for less formal, especially in a personal
blog or writing that sounds personal

23. So why bother if no one is reading?
• So you stay out of trouble:
• Avoid plagiarism (even copying and
pasting your own work)
• Represent yourself or your company
professionally
• Avoid vague or false claims

24. So why bother if no one is reading?
• Good writing still matters!
– Good writing should go relatively unnoticed.
– Bad writing stands out and diminishes the
company’s/writer’s credibility.
– A few people will read a good bit of the content.
– Google recently changed its algorithms to make
legitimate content rank higher in its search
results.
– To save our society from complete devolution into
monosyllabic utterances.

25. Resources
• The Grammarist – www.grammarist.com
• “Lazy Eyes. How we read online.” By Michael Agger, June 13,
2008. Slate:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/the_browser/200
8/06/lazy_eyes.html
• Grammar Goddess – www.grammargoddess.com
• “Writing Online: Best Practices.” Groundwire:
http://groundwire.org/resources/articles/writing-online-best-
practices
• “SEO for WordPress – The Complete Guide.” By Jim
Westergren, March 17, 2007:
http://www.jimwestergren.com/seo-for-wordpress-blogs/