Chapter 6: Writing Online
Section 6.1 Writing Online and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Writing for Online Spaces
Writing for online spaces, such as company websites, requires a different style of writing than academic writing or even journalistic prose. The writing style is somewhat similar to writing in Plain Language, but requires understanding of visual design and usability for user interfaces. Below are several things to remember when writing in online environments:
- Write clear, simple, and effective content
- Adhere to active voice and subject-verb agreement
- All content needs to be written in an easy to read style
- Keep the rhetorical situation in mind to meet your audience needs
- Put the most important content to the front
- Make sure what is important to the reader/user is visible and easy to find. Sometimes this means having it in the first paragraph or section of online content.
- Chunk your information
- No user online wants to encounter large chunks for text, so be sure to chunk your information using headings, subheadings, and elements of design, such as textboxes, to make information clearer.
- Be concise
- Maintain short paragraphs and eliminate unnecessary words.
- When possible, list information
- Lists, such as bulleted lists, are easier for your user or reader to quickly scan.
- Write for Search-Engine Optimization
- Write content using searchable keywords or terms to make your content easily found by users
Search-Engine Optimized (SEO) Writing
Most users visit a web page for briefly and often skim for information, meaning they are not reading your content word for word. Therefore, before you create content, it’s important to understand your audience and anticipate what content and keywords they’re trying to find.
When a user conducts a search on a search engine, the database is queried to identify all the pages that include those words on the page and/or in the links pointing to that page. If your page does not include the words the user was searching for, it is unlikely that your page will rank well, if at all.
The same is true when none of the links to that page include the words that the user used in their search.
Once pages have been identified, search engines order the results according to relevance. Relevance can be determined based on dozens and dozens of criteria, such as keyword prominence (how often your keywords appear on a page, and where they appear). Resources such as Google Analytics can help you with SEO writing standards.
Resource: Microsoft Style Guide
Most companies will use a Style Guide for all their internal and external communications, much like you may use the MLA or APA style guide for writing academic papers. Learning and using the Microsoft Style Guide will not only help your writing in online spaces, but is also often adapted by companies as the foundation of their own style guides. Even Google’s Style Guide is adapted from the Microsoft Style Guide.
