Website Words and Writing
The information highway is more crowded than ever. According to Internet Live Stats, there are more than 4.6 BILLION internet users in the world, creating close to 5 BILLION Google searches every day, in order to look at 1.9 BILLION websites.
In order to stand out from all that competition, you must capture the reader’s attention within a few seconds. Good website writing is the key to beating these statistics. Well-written content that’s optimized for the web rises to the top of search results.
So, you must decide on the purpose of your website, determine the correct keywords to target your desired audience, and use those words in a clear, conversational way to attract and keep the reader’s interest.
The Purpose of Your Website
- Do you wish to sell goods or services?
- Do you want your readers to take some particular action, like contributing to a charity?
- Perhaps you just want to give the reader information.
Knowing exactly why you built the website and what you want viewers to do will determine your target audience.
Your Audience and SEO
For instance, if you are a doctor, your primary audience will be people who need the kind of medicine you specialize in. Your secondary audience might be former patients, other physicians, or journalists who report on medicine. A good writer will create content that is informative, interesting, and optimized for search.
Without SEO (Search Engine Optimization), the best writing on earth will not produce the results you want.
The doctor might want to use ‘Dermatologist’ as a keyword. This word would not be likely to produce a good result because there are so many dermatologists using that word. Too much competition.
If the readers are looking for a certain type of dermatologist, then ‘Pediatric dermatologist’ would be better.
The best choice is always the most specific, as it most likely to convert viewers into patients. In this case, the writer would use a long-tailed phrase like ‘Pediatric Dermatologist in Lansing, Michigan’ to make the doctor stand out from the crowd.
The professional writer will always imagine what the viewer might type into the search box and incorporate those terms into the headlines, sub-heads, and Calls-to-Action (CTAs) of the website content.
Most Important Info Goes On Top…But Don’t Forget the Bottom
Today’s viewers have short attention spans. The writer must get their attention immediately or they will ‘bounce’ to another website in a matter of seconds. So, the strongest, most important message must go first, followed by specific supporting points. Tangential details come last.
Some people don’t really read the whole website. They scan for details – like subheads and bullet points – before going directly to the CTA at the bottom to see what to do next, like…
- Buy Now
- Discover More
- Donate
The skillful writer makes the CTA clear and gives the reader another compelling reason to take action.
The Words Themselves
The writing should be interesting, yet approachable. Even people with advanced college degrees don’t want to read long, windy essays. The text should be easy for the average high-school kid to comprehend. You can check the readability level of your own writing by copying and pasting it into the Test Tool here.
The professional writer will get to the point and always use familiar words. For internet writing, ‘dog’ is better than ‘canine.’ Mix it up, though. Rather than saying ‘dog’ frequently, the skillful web writer might say ‘doggie’, ‘fur baby’, or ‘pooch’ to keep things interesting.
Use the active – not passive – voice, and skip the jargon. Always define an acronym or abbreviation. White space is good too. Rather than being a waste of digital real estate, a certain amount of visual looseness or white space makes the individual sentences stand out.
So, there you have it – the basics of professional web writing. If you feel that the writing on your website is not performing the way you would like, the professional writers at Big Rig Xpress can help. The right words can move your website up the SEO ladder to success.
