20 Jun 11 Do’s and Don’ts of Web Content Writing

Written by: bikram

Web content writing is picking up very fast. Even big corporates these days get their website content written by content writers. Web content writing requires different sets of skills and expertise, knowledge and understanding of the medium. Here are some do’s and don’ts of web content writing.

Do always keep it short and divide into parts

Web content is not like book writing or article writing. People on Internet have limited attention and concentration level. People prefer to scan than reading long paragraphs. Thus, write short and crispy matter. More importantly, divide long paragraphs into short parts with help of bullets, headers, sub-headers, tables, charts. Write short sentences.

Do not put all in a page

Many website owners think of saving money and ask webpage designer to make a single home page and furnish all desired content in the same page, which can be read by scrolling down. Little does he understand that at the cost of saving few bucks he is making a major mistake and losing many prospective readers. If a viewer visits a webpage and finds its home page is too long, and he has to scroll down and down to read everything about the same, it naturally puts him off. Reader loses concentration and interest and soon leaves the webpage. First, decide what all you want to convey in your webpage and under what all headings. Now create separate pages for each heading like – Home (which is a general introduction), About Us/Me (about the company/person/place/object), Services/Products (if it’s a commercial site) or Collection/Archive, Picture and video gallery, History/background(how it started off), contact us/me, sitemap, career page etc. Put relevant content under each of these pages.

Do use simple language

Web content writing is written for the common traffic to your website. Don’t bombard with heavy vocabularies that people need to refer to dictionary to make sense of it. Keep language simple, yet captivating. Power packed quotations, headers will help you to draw immediate attention of the viewer.

Don’t copy others

Many websites commit this grave mistake of copying content from other sites. You may refer other websites, get motivated; but never copy their content. You may not only get into copyright issues, you will also lose credibility among viewers.

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