Writing for the Web

There are many rewards in online writing.

Writing content for the Internet has its own set of rules. Traditional writing is very forgiving of long sentences and complex paragraphs. Writing online is not. Aside from the right domains yahoo, writing correctly and precisely is the other best ingredient to enjoy heavy traffic for your website. Reading material on a screen is, for most readers, more difficult than following the printed page. For this reason, the material you write for the Internet needs to follow certain guidelines.



Keep Sentences Short

Conciseness is the key to successful online writing. A blog or article is not the place to demonstrate your mastery of complex sentence structure. Most sentences should make a single point. By keeping sentences clean and free of filler words, the main idea stands out and your message is clear.

Break Up Text

The eye has a difficult time following long paragraphs of text on a screen. Paragraphs to be viewed online should consist of no more than three or four sentences. Occasionally the optimum paragraph contains a single sentence.

Bulleted lists, subheadings and short blocks of text simplify the reading process. Because ideas are presented clearly, the reader can scan for the desired information.

Stay Tightly Focused

While print articles and reports can be thousands of words, most online articles and blogs are much shorter. While the optimum length varies by specific need, blog articles usually fall between 250-500 words, and articles run between 400-600 words.

This limited space means ideas must be tightly focused. Every sentence matters, and unnecessary words and descriptions should be eliminated. If a topic is too broad for a shorter article, a series of articles is better than an extremely long piece of text.