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Web Writing Essential: Embrace The Space!

Ever heard of letting the eyes breathe?  Sure, it sounds like an oxymoron, but when you think about it, there’s definitely some truth behind the idea.  Overwhelmed or stressed eyes—especially when they belong to the visitors of your website—almost always equate to a click away from the site to something less overwhelming.

Here are 7 tips we at WSpider encourage you to use in order to embrace the space when writing for the web and keep those ever-weary eyes focused on your content:

One:  Keep sentences short and to the point.

Rule of thumb here is to use the shortest sentences possible.  Break long sentences in to two or more parts.  When writing for the web, keep the lines short and to the point.

Two:  Use short paragraphs.

Same goes for paragraphs.  Even though traditional writing puts standards on paragraphs, creating whitespace overrules with web writing.  Keep them as short as possible.  Using 3 sentences is good—2 if they’re long, 4 if they’re short.

Three:  Use sub-headlines.

Break up your content or article into sub topics and create sub-headlines or subtitles for each part.  This helps readers that are scanning the page get to the information they want to read.  It also creates vitally important whitespace on the page.

Four:  Use bullet points.

Another popular tactic for web writing is using bullet points to keep to the facts.  After all, this is what readers want to see—precise information presented in bite sized pieces.

Five:  Use numbered lists.

Numbered lists are also a great way to embrace the space while organizing and presenting relevant information to website visitors.  Almost every visitor likes lists.  Plus, they can even make it easier to write for those new to web writing.

Six:  Make sure there is proper spacing between paragraphs.

Always ensure that there’s a full line break between paragraphs.  Indenting the beginning of a new paragraph alone just doesn’t cut it (and isn’t necessary on the web).  If you really want to embrace the space, it’s even fair game to use 2 line breaks between different sections of the written content.

Seven:  Once article is complete, be sure to preview for whitespace test.

Look at the writing in the same way your visitors will see it.  Where do your eyes land…does it seem too bulky?  You can almost think of a body of written text the same as you would an eye-pleasing picture—make sure it looks right as a whole.

Just one more thing:  Did you notice that this article uses almost all of the concepts presented above?  Please feel free to print this one off and use it as a reference for good web writing practices.

What Makes Web Writing Different From Print?

It’s a good question—and a really common one too—what does make writing for the web different than writing for print?  Let’s dig right in and take a look at the major obvious differences…

Web Writing Utilizes Keywords

Writing for the web successfully must take full advantage of keywords and keyword phrases.  This means each article or page of online content to be written should take into account a specific theme that fits well and use appropriate keywords strategically in order to help improve optimization for those specific search terms.

Writing for print might use catchphrases or buzzwords, but this is quite a bit different than using web keywords.  We’ll tackle keywords in depth very soon in their own upcoming article.

Web Writing Is Focused, Short & Sweet

Rule number one of writing for the web:  Get to the point and keep it there.  Say what you need to say, but don’t add layers of fluff.  And keep sentences and paragraphs as brief as possible…like this one.

While this same strategy is often utilized in print writing to a certain degree, it’s vital to use it on the web—while print writing can often get away with more traditional structure.

Web Writing Can Be Effectively Conversational

Now the degree that you’ll want to deploy this tactic to your website will differ depending on your theme and audience—but more often than not, it’s perfectly safe to be conversational with web writing.  Just talk naturally to your web audience through your written words.  It’s that simple.

On the other hand, writing traditionally for print often means de-personalizing as much as possible.  Why not take advantage of the web to be conversational?  After all, proof shows that it keeps the attention of the majority of readers more so than writing “just the facts.”

Web Writing Must Be Easy To Scan

Web visitors naturally visually scan a page quickly before they devote their full attention to taking in the message conveyed through the writing.  Because of this, web writing must include plenty of methods to catch the eye and grab attention.  These methods include using sub-headings, whitespace, lists, and more.

Now compare this to traditional print—newspapers for example.  What do we do first when looking at a newspaper?  We scan the headlines for articles we might want to read in depth, but the articles themselves are not necessarily “scan-able.”  While writing for the web, we can take the liberty to change this idea and make it easier for the reader to find what they’re interested in.

WSpider Can Help You!

Need assistance writing for the web (or just don’t have the time or desire to do it yourself)?  If this is the case, please just contact us.  WSpider is a full-service search engine marketing firm located in San Jose, CA.  Our goal is your success!

Intro: Your Complete Guide To Web Writing

Welcome to the first installment of the WSpider complete guide to web writing!  Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be tackling the subject of web writing head-on with the intention of helping all the new and upcoming website owners and developers out there produce compelling and successful copy for all aspects of the web.

We’ll be taking a deep look into questions like these:

•    What is web writing?
•    How is web writing different from other types of writing?
•    What are the methods of writing effectively for the web?

Plus, we’ll be covering many more web writing topics like headlines, writing for your blog, and even how to write more professional emails for daily correspondence.

Why Is Knowing How To Write For The Web So Important?

Well, for starters—written content is what makes up the substance of the web.  It’s what people search for.  It’s how your website is found through search engines.  It helps you sell your products and services.  It provides essential information.  Like it or not, the written word really does rule the web.

Sure, great graphic design and easy to navigate websites are essential to any business or organization with a strong web presence.  But if you want to think about it this way, these components are really just a structure to hold actual content—of which written content makes up a huge percentage of on the web.

It’s easy to see that knowing how to write effectively for the web is indeed vitally important!

•    Better web writing reaches through to targeted visitors.
•    Better writing on your website drives an increase in conversions.
•    Better writing for the web actually makes writing easier to do—not more difficult.

So stay tuned and be ready for the next installment.  The goal is that by the time we’re done with the series, anyone who follows along from start to finish will have much better idea on how web writing works…and most importantly, how to put it to work for your website.

That’s it for this little introduction.  Our next post will identify several key reasons why writing for the web differs from other types of writing and what you need to do to make the change.  Talk to you soon!

5 Basic Tips For Putting Twitter To Work For Your Site

Twitter has certainly become the big buzzword this summer.  Actually, it’s been in heavy use by tech “geeks” for the last couple of years now, but the big flurry of activity lately has mostly been average, normal people jumping on the bandwagon…you know, the same people that you would really like to visit your website.  We are not claiming that this article is the end all, be all when it comes to Twitter for your site, these 5 tips to putting Twitter to work for your site might just help get the ball rolling.

1.    Use Twitter to announce your website’s new content.  This is a perfect way to spread the word about your site’s new features.  Proof: Almost all professional bloggers use the social media service to let their followers know there’s a new post ready to read.

2.    Answer questions relating to your niche.  Twitter was practically designed to create an open dialogue between folks who would otherwise just be complete strangers.  By doing a quick search on the service with a keyword related to your area of expertise, you’ll find all kinds of community members asking questions that you can help with.  No need to be overly self-promotional—this good karma kind of tactic works best when done naturally.

3.    Post tips and advice of your own.  Why wait until someone asks a question to give the answer?  If you have something insightful and related to your website that might be worth sharing, then by all means, tweet it.  Everyone loves to read a good, practical tip or two on topics they find interesting.

4.    Connect with people that have similar interests.  No matter how unique your organization’s website is, there’s going to be a group of people out there that it pertains to exactly.  In a pre-Twitter world, it was probably easy enough for them to find you (through search), but not quite so easy for you to find and interact with them.  Twitter opens doors like never before—it’s the ultimate networking tool!

5.    Get your questions answered.  We’ve talked about answering the questions of others, but what about your own questions?  Need some feedback about an article on your website you’ve been working on?  Can’t seem to decide between one strategy or another?  In these situations and many others, asking a question via Twitter can be a huge help…there are tons of experts out there just waiting to share their thoughts with you.

Putting Twitter to work for your site is worth the effort.  WSpider can even custom integrate your Twitter feed right into your website—just ask us about it for more info.

SEO Questions & Answers

Today we’re going to tackle a few questions about SEO and some related techniques.  Remember, it’s a complex topic and it you were to ask 100 professionals the exact same question, you’re highly likely to receive about 99 completely different answers.  In other words—there is no best way.

But just remember this easy rule of thumb…the most effective ways to optimize a website involve common sense that provides some notable benefit to your visitors—not just for the search engines.

Is blogging software like WordPress considered to be SEO friendly?

The answer to this one is kind of a gray area.  In its most basic form, most of the time a professionally-developed blog platform like this will be naturally SEO friendly.  The catch comes when users install themes and plug-ins that can really mess up the basics (even though they might look great).  However, moving into professionally developed and optimized premium blog themes, many times they are built from the ground up to be incredibly SEO effective.  The bottom line is that it really comes down to the theme and the theme developer’s knowledge of optimization—the blog software itself is really just method to run the theme.

What is the most important part of a web page when it comes to search optimization?

Tough question—but to get right to the point, the single most component of a web page when it comes to search optimization is the Title tag.  The page’s title (it’s in the code and also what you see at the very top left corner of your web browser’s screen for any given web page) is heavily relied upon by search engines in both the indexing and listing of your web pages.  Unfortunately though, this is only one practically thousands of intricacies and guidelines when it comes to SEO—using an effective Title alone really won’t get you far.

I’ve been told that reciprocal linking is the best way to increase my link popularity…is this true?

Sure, it can help.  Many out there insist that reciprocal linking is worthless because by linking back to the site that’s linking to you, you’re technically giving away just as much link popularity as you’re giving.  Technically this might be so, but there’s much more to the story—and exchanging links with strong sites that are related to your own site in some way is a good thing for many reasons!  Now is the reciprocal link the best way to increase link popularity?  From a strict standpoint, one-way incoming links are better at this single-task.  WSpider believes in a healthy, balanced approach to linking.

Web Design For The Masses: A Few Things To Discuss With Your Designer

What else can we say, the web is just not universal.  It’s getting better all the time with progressive design and code standards becoming more focused and their use becoming more widespread.  But in most cases, one web browser is not created equal to the next.

Did you know that there are at least 5 popular web browsers in use these days?  It’s true, while everyone has their favorite the list includes Internet Explorer from Microsoft, Firefox from Mozilla, Safari from Apple, Google’s Chrome, Opera, and a host of additional lesser used web browsers.  And then there are the previous versions of all of these programs still in use out there.  And the mobile renditions of a couple of them.

Get the point?  There’s a whole heck of a lot of different browser that must be considered when designing a website—and each of these web browsers works just a little bit differently from the next one.

This means that your web designer must know how to design websites that are compatible for the masses.  Not only to design sites that work with each of the major browsers out there in use, but to design the sites to work correctly on all of them at once.  Needless to say, this is no easy feat…but it can be done!

Here are a few talking points you might want to review with the web design team you’re considering contracting with before moving forward…

• How will my design be created to be display fluidly on multiple browsers?
• What is your team’s definition of cross-browser compatibility?
• Will it be a good idea to create a mobile-friendly version of my site?
• What standards do you strive to comply with when designing a new website?
• Do you expect my site to continue to be compatible with all of these browsers in the future?
• Can you talk a bit about a few of the little quirks that might be experienced from one browser to the next on my design?

Now, this is not to suggest that you must put your designer through a painful interview process or anything, but it certainly does help to have a few talking points in hand to spur a valid discussion on such an important topic.  It’s also a good way to see if the designer you’re thinking about hiring knows their stuff.

And it’s also the case that they might not be able to explain every tiny detail when it comes to all of this stuff—and that’s probably fine too, as long as they’re open about how the process works and how your site will be compatible.

Sure, the crew here at WSpider wishes that there was just one definitive standard when it came to creating cross-browser compatibility.  It’d make things so much easier!  But for now, we’re just obliged to work with what’s out there and hope progress towards a unified solution happens in due time.

Looking To Gain Website Authority? Try These Tips!

Here on the WSpider blog, we’ve talked plenty about building links and increasing your site’s link popularity.  This is a major factor in how well your site ranks for its intended keyword terms and topics on the search engines—and building quality links is also a big part of the search optimization strategies we recommend (and our SEO team is proficient at expertly implementing).

But there’s more than just building link popularity, for each time you create a new link to your site, you’re also increasing your “authority” on the web.  With that in mind, here are several practical tips to help you build links, gain authority for your website, and in the end, be a more significant player online...

Establish A Knol

Knol is part of the Google portfolio of services and in a nutshell, it’s designed to enable you to create a page full of information on something you’re knowledgeable about.  Now, to put this tip to use, you’ll have to play by the service’s guidelines and really dig in to create something useful, reader friendly, and accurate—but by doing so, you’ll establish a high-authority page that can help lead to your website and enhance your reputation.

Create A Squidoo Lens

Kind of like the tip above, using Squidoo to create what they call a “Lens” is a fantastic way to enhance your online reputation (and create some additional exposure for your own website in doing so).  With this popular service, you create an entire one-sheet that includes an overview and important highlights of everything someone should know about any one particular niche topic…ideally, one that you’re both an expert and truly passionate about.  Within this space, you’ll have ample opportunity to give a shout out to your website as well.

Actively Participate On A Blog That’s Important To Your Site

If you don’t have the time or resources to actively participate in the communities of the top blogs in your field, then just pick the best one and immerse yourself in its culture.  Share your relevant insight on new posts and participate in ongoing commentary with enthusiasm.  Don’t worry about promoting your link so much—think more about promoting your knowledge and expertise on the field of focus involved. The authority you build over time will naturally lead back to your website!

You’ll probably see some be overly critical of services like this that only allow “no-follow” links.  In other words, you’re allowed to include links pointing to your website within the content (as long as you play by the rules)—but these links include a special disclaimer within the code that tells search engines not to use them towards building your site’s link popularity.  Technically speaking, this is a factor—but from a practical stand point, these links are still relevant and quite valuable towards building authority.  Don’t let this discourage you from pursuing quality link and authority building tools!

5 Ways To Scare Your Visitors Away

Looking for a few great ways to scare your visitors away?  Well, the first taste of autumn might be in the air, but it’s not even close to Halloween yet.  Which means…You don’t actually want to scare your visitors away from your site, do you?

Of course not!

So think of this as a list of what to avoid.  Here are the 5 ways to scare your visitors away:

One:  Advertise that your site is “Under Construction.”

Never…ever…do this!  Even though it’s been a tradition to announce that a website is under construction, the truth of the matter is that it’s already evident anyway.  Your site is what your visitors see—if there’s any good content there, let it stand on its own instead of placing a negative preconception in the visitors’ mind by telling them it’s incomplete.

Two:  Design a really flash website.

We all like to show off a little every now and then, but when it comes to web design, showing off is a major turn-off.  Your visitors are looking for information or to learn more about your organization—that’s it.  By adding too many flashy graphics or other over-the-top “features,” you’ll only be distracting them from finding the meaning in your message.

Three:  Make your content appear intelligent.

Okay, it’s a good thing to be intelligent and to come across that way on your website.  But the average visitor to your site is probably most comfortable reading at about a 4th grade level (it’s true…that’s really the average).  Presenting them with intimidating academic style written content will send them zooming to the back button.

Four:  Use a S-L-O-W web hosting service.

This is a great way to scare your visitors away!  After all, who wants to sit around and wait for a website to load at a painfully slow pace when there are plenty of other competitor sites out there just waiting to be displayed in a flash?

Five:  Break your promises.

Whether you realize it or not, many different components of your website are used to tell search engine users what your site’s message is as a preview.  It’s not just what you write on a web page—it’s also the Meta data, page images, and beyond.  By deceptively optimizing to “bait and hook” visitors from the search engines, you’re not only breaking your promise to the visitor, you're making them run away as fast as they can!

Sure, we could go on and on about all of the really bad things that a website developer can knowingly—and unknowingly—do to keep visitors away.  But instead, let’s focus on the good things you can do to attract more visitors by building a better quality website.  This is what we’re all about at WSpider!