Writing For The Web

Slide 1: Writing for the Web Seven key ideas for writing killer web content Courtney Johnston Web Editor National Library of New Zealand

Slide 2: The long and the short of it • Long page title / headline (4-10 words) • Long link-text • Short summary • Short words • Short sentences • Short paragraphs • Short pages Adapted from Rachel McAlpine www.contented.com/

Slide 3: Say it after me: KEYWORDS • Help yourself: identifying the keywords for a page of content will help you sort and structure the information you present there. • Help your reader: skim readers are looking for the keywords that match the thing they’re looking for. • Help the search engines: search engines like Google ‘read’ the words in your URLs, page titles, headings; if your keywords appear here, they will help you page on search results.

Slide 4: Keyword tools • Think: what is my visitor coming to this page to find out about / do? • Look at server logs and web statistics if you can – what words are your visitors searching on? (e.g. ‘family history’ or ‘genealogy’?) • Use Google Trends to test synonymous keywords and see which is more popular with web searchers. www.google .com/trends

Slide 5: F-shaped skim readers Web readers are: • Searching for the keywords they’re interested in • Reading twice as fast as they read print • Skimming headlines, the first words in paragraphs, link text, anything in bold or italics. Image from Jakob Neilson www.useit.com/

Slide 6: Omit the extra words in your copy • Edit edit edit. • Half the length of what you’d write for print. • Most important information first. Committed readers will scroll. • Use ‘I’ and ‘you’. • Active sentences. • Look for the usual culprits: of, because, which was, who is. These usually indicate extra words that can be deleted.

Slide 7: Special offer! This week only! • Be specific. You never know when you’ll get around to updating a page or removing content, so let your reader know if dates and such like are still relevant to them • Not ‘this week’ but ‘12-16 November’. Not ‘in the central city’ but ‘in Wellington’. Not ‘last year’ but ‘2006’. • Date all documents, events, deadlines, and include the year. • Get consistent with the way you refer to your organisation, location, staff positions, how you format contact details.

Slide 8: Click here • Descriptive link text: tell readers where they’re going or what they’re doing. It’s also good for search engines. Download the registration form Go to Te Ara Website standards – State Services Commission website • Warn readers about PDFs • Have consistent ways of writing link text on your site • A blog post on link text is available on LibraryTechNZ.

Slide 9: Formatting for success • White space • Headings and subheadings • Bulletted and numbered lists. [NB: up to 7 items. Remember – each item you add to the list makes the other items harder to find.] • Useful pictures (with alt text) • Avoid bold and italics – they interrupt the flow of reading, and sometiems draw undue attention to phrases. • Numbers as numerals (13, not thirteen) are easier to read online.

Slide 10: Ignoring the rules • Blog writing should be funny, punny, impassioned, informal, irate, tangential – whatever. • But: if you want to help people find your blog posts, use keywords in your post titles, and use descriptive text in your links. • And: keep spell checking.

Slide 11: Steal my ideas http://ma.gnolia.com/people/best-of-3/tags Tags: web writing, web content, blog writing advice, search engine optimization, user-centred design.

Slide 12: Steal other people’s ideas … • Rachel McAlpine www.contented.com • Image from Jakob Neilson www.useit.com • Copyblogger www.copyblogger.com • ProBlogger www.problogger.net • Skelliewag www.skelliewag.org • SEOmoz (search engine optimisation) www.seomoz.org/blog … with a feedreader RSS and feedreader background – National Library website

Slide 13: Random bits of advice • Use your e-calendar to set reminders to remove content with a use-by date. • Use a bookmarking site to collect and annotate useful articles. See the CommonCraft Bookmarking video for an introduction. I use http://ma.gnolia.com. • Use the Readability Statistics in word (under ‘Spelling and Grammar’) to get a feel for the length of words, sentences, paragraphs, and number of passive sentences. • I blog about writing for the web and related matters on http://librarytechnz.natlib.govt.nz