Web Writing for Marketing Purposes

web formatting

Think anyone can write for the web? Think again.

Reading on the web is different than reading printed media.  In order to write effectively on the internet you will be required to re-learn some of the things your teachers taught you in high school and college.

For starters, here are a few important things you should understand before you write articles online:

1. Readers on the web scan content, they don’t read it thoroughly.
2. Online readers look at text BEFORE they look at images.
3. People reading a web page scan it in an “F Pattern” rather than simply reading it from left to right.
4. An average viewer will look at a web page they have found via search for ten seconds or less.

So it looks like people reading on the web seem to have low attention spans, and scan content in order to avoid wasting time on misguided lengthy searches.  How must a web writer compensate for these trends?  Here’s a guide to get you started.

Titles

Just like writing for any other format, your title is extremely important.   On the web, the content of your article is likely to be judged solely of the wording of your title.  This is even more truer if a reader has found your article by using a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN Live.

In order to avoid confusion, titles on the web should NEVER be underlined.  Underlined text on the Internet signifies a link, and as the title of your article should not link to itself, underlining it will only cause confusion.  An exception to this is when the title of the article is intended to be a link in a list or a menu elsewhere on site.

Blurbs

A blurb is a tool which, when combined with the title, provides the reader with a snapshot of your article’s content. Blurbs should be short and sweet.  All that is necessary is an excerpt of the text within your article or a one-line summary of it.

Subheads

People scan content on the web.  For this reason, using subheadings to break up the content of your article into easily identifiable chunks is essential.  If a reader has decided to continue reading your article after scanning the title and blurb, using subheads within the text will help them find the exact piece of content that they are searching for. Using a subheading every 50 to 100 words within your article is essential.

Lists

Using lists in order to summarize and large amounts of information is an extremely effective way of providing lots of content to readers in as few words as possible.  Keeping the word count down on the web is essential, and using lists enables an author to list their points as opposed to framing them within a verbose paragraph.

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