Top Five Tips for Writing Articles for the Web

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Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

Writing for the Web is different from writing for print, and as more publications move online, writing for the Web is a skill every writer must develop.

Since 80 per cent of a Web writer’s time is spend writing articles, here’s are my top five tips for writing articles for the Web.

1. Make the title inviting - include a benefit in every article title you write

Writing titles for your Web articles is a real challenge. You need to make your Web articles’ titles enticing for readers, while keeping the search engines, Web search, and indexing in mind - remember your keywords, in other words.

If you’re not au fait with keywords, here’s some info.

Your knowledge of keywords and their use will increase as you write for the Web; if you’re new to keywords, just remember that they’re important.

Vital: add a benefit to all your titles. Readers want benefits, and the benfit can be simple, but it must be there.

For example, look at the title of this article, “Top Five Tips for Writing Articles for the Web”. The benefit is the “five tips”. The article promises to make you a better Web writer with just five tips.

2. Know your audience - how will your article benefit them?

Since the article title mentions the benefit, you need to focus on the benefit in the article. This means that you must write with your audience in mind. What will help your typical reader?

Before you start writing, research your audience. If you’re writing for a client, ask the client about his readers: their level of experience in the topic, and their needs.

3. Keep your introduction short: one to five sentences

Over the past five years, print articles have become shorter. Readers want the meat of the article, they’re less interested in frills.

On the Web, this is even more true. Readers want fast, easy to consume information. Keep your article introductions short, and make them pithy. This is partly due to the search engines, where your article introduction appears under the title in the search engine results pages.

It’s also due to Web readers - they want information fast.

4. Outline the body of the article: jot down four points you want to make

Web articles vary in length between 200 words and 800 words. Generally speaking, around 500 words is optimal, 400 words is good, and 800 is the upper limit of what’s necessary.

If your article threatens to be longer than 800 words, split it up so that you’ve got Parts One and Two.

Since Web articles are short, you need to make solid points in the words you have - jot down the points you want to make before you start writing.

5. Revise to make reading easier

Reading a Web page is more difficult than reading print; it’s tiring.

Devote your article revision to making your text easy to read. Use short sentences, lots of white space, and bullet points.

Link to additional information. A point about links when you’re writing for clients - link to other pages on the client’s site, or to specific resources you check out with him or her. Links are the currency of the Web, and the way in which you distribute links is important.

So there you have it - five tips for writing articles for the Web which will boost your Web-writing expertise, and your Web-writing income.

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The writing world in general hasn’t caught up with the Web. Now, YOU can — and you can cash in. Freelance writers just don’t realize how much money there is to be made by writing for the Web: many writers use the Web as a research tool, they don’t see the Web as a mass of millions of markets. They don’t realize that Web sites are STARVED for good writers.

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[tags]Web writing, content, articles[/tags]