Writing for the Web – 15 Steps to Create Better Content

When it comes to marketing your company online, content is king. Writing for the web is not easy to do, even if it seems effortless. It’s a skill that requires you to make content that can be picked up by search engines while also providing engaging, valuable information to readers.

Writing for the web, you need to choose a good keyword, write engaging content and format it using meta descriptions, headings and white space. Using an active voice, short sentences, calls to action, white space, and formatting choices such as bulleted lists can also be helpful.

The question is, how do you write content for the web that gets peoples’ attention? It involves using principles of SEO, focusing on keywords, and writing for people. While it’s always best to hire a copywriter with a background in SEO, there are some tips you can use.

Want to learn more about website writing? Take a look at what the pros have to say.

What does writing for the web mean?

Writing for website content purposes means that you are trying to accomplish several things with your work. It means that you want your content to:

• Rank on search engines for related keywords
• Get and keep your readers’ attention
• Make it shareable
• Convey important information to readers
• Create content that is trustworthy and professional
• Potentially convert readers into paying customers

Why is website writing different from general writing?

When you’re writing for a commercial website, you aren’t just writing for people. You also have to keep in mind the algorithms and tech portions of writing. In other words, you have to write in a way that search engines can pick your site up.

Most people can, with help, write for other people. Website writing is part of content marketing and it often plays a pivotal role in your SEO. Since it can be a complex issue, we encourage you to consider contacting Mediaboom for help.

How to write optimized content for the web in 15 Steps

Now that we’ve discussed website optimized content, it’s important to actually talk about how to make it happen.

1. Choose a keyword to focus on

Writing for the web always starts with the right keyword and topic. Your keyword will have to be something related to your website. Ideally, you’ll pick keywords that people search for but don’t have much competition for other sites. These keywords aren’t always just words. Sometimes, they can be phrases, too.

2. Create a compelling and relevant title

Did you ever see a news article that just grabbed your attention with a catchy title? Moz noted that a title can change the amount of traffic a site gets by as much as 500 percent. The same set of statistics also revealed that 80 percent of readers never make it past the title.

Your goal is to create an interesting title that gives people a genuine idea of what the words inside will contain.

3. Craft a meta description that entices clicks

It’s often best to think of a meta description as a “mini title.” It’s the description that people see in search results. For example when we worked with Runway Growth Capital, we made sure to create meta descriptions that spelled out the site contents clearly.

4. Use headers (H1, H2, H3) to structure your content

Headers do two very important things to your writing. First, it breaks up the writing into bite-sized sections. That makes it visually appealing and easy to

5. Uses the Inverted Pyramid Structure

The Inverted Pyramid Structure is writing style that places the most important information at the top of the article, followed up by smaller details. At the end of the article, you should have the least important nuances to the topic.

6. Use an active voice

Believe it or not, search engines don’t like passive voice. Search engines view passive voice as unprofessional and overly wordy. Try to keep your passive voice sentences down to under 10 percent of your article. It may sound clunky at first, but that’s because you’re not writing for fiction. You’re writing for the web.

7. Include some whitespaces

Whitespace is a term for the blank part of a blog post or website. It’s the spacing and page breaks you see. People greatly dislike seeing the dreaded “wall of text.” If you want them to keep reading, you’ll use space to give their eyes a break.

8. Create short sentences

Sentences that are increasingly wordy can make people lose focus. Short, simple, and direct sentences work better. They’re faster to read and are also less likely to confuse people.

9. Include calls to action

You wrote all that great verbiage, but what do you want the reader to do? In most cases, readers want to be told what to do.

Whether it’s telling them to buy something or just share your content doesn’t matter. Just include a call to action! It’s content marketing at its simplest.

10. Use bulleted and numbered lists

When it comes to writing for the web, structure matters. It doesn’t just help guide readers or make things easier for them to take in.

It’s also a matter of getting better search engine rankings. Bulleted lists are great for SEO, especially if they are done in headers.

11. Avoid consecutive sentences

Did you ever notice how awkward it is to hear someone start a sentence with the same word over and over again? It makes writing boring, monotonous, and a little unnatural. Unsurprisingly, this can also cause your writing to get dinged by Google.

12. Include transitional words

Transition words are words like “first,” “then,” “while,” or “finally.” While you can have a paragraph without them, the truth is that they help your writing flow smoothly. People love transition words.

13. Attract and keep readers’ attention

Your first focal point should always be the reader. Algorithms and SEO preferences can come and go, but readers always stay steady. If you aren’t writing engaging and valuable to people who read it, it’s not worth posting.

14. Include visual elements

People are visual creatures. If you check out Mediaboom’s work with Aspen Concierge, you’ll notice that the SEO writing is also peppered with breathtaking photographs. That’s by design. Some people need visuals in order to resonate with a concept.

15. Include internal and external links

Content creation is not just about writing good stuff. You need to be able to link back to important, relevant sites that bolster your authority and improve your rank. It’s a cornerstone of SEO content writing.

Additional best practices for writing on the web

Now that we’ve gone over the basics, it’s important to look into the other details that make content website-friendly.

• Add the name of the author. It humanizes the post, encourages accountability, and also makes it more likely to rank on Google News.
• Optimize your content for SEO. It’s often best to hire an SEO expert to help you do this. They can help with everything from keyword planning to title choice.
• Add social sharing buttons. Social media is a part of any good SEO content writing strategy. Frequently-shared content gets better rankings.
• Avoid AI and plagiarized content. AI content is low-quality content that will not get the reads you want. Plagiarized content can actually get your site banned off search engines. AI is best used to enhance content or give you a good idea of what to outline—if you even use it at all. It should never be the be-all, end-all of your writing.

How to check the quality of content written for the web

If you are looking to edit content or just want to see how well-written your site content is, never fear. Companies are well aware of how tricky it can be to start writing for the web, especially with all those rules. There are tools and processes that you can use to ensure every piece of content works well for your site. Here’s how:

1. First, run it through a plagiarism checker. This is one of the first things any SEO content marketing firm will tell you to do. A good choice for this is Grammarly or Duplichecker. Discard any articles with a high plagiarism rating.
2. Then, run it through an AI detector. AI is technically not banned from Google, but it doesn’t exactly help you rank. GPTZero is a great choice, but you can find others too. It’s important to note that AI detectors are not always accurate. Per SearchEngineJournal, they’re only accurate around 28 percent of the time.
3. Check your article’s readability. Yoast and other plug-ins can give you a good rating on how readable your content is. Of course, you can also have an editor look over it to see if it needs tweaking.
4. Check your keyword density. Search engine optimization requires you to use keywords from time to time, but it shouldn’t be jammed in there. Writing content for the web still requires you to write smoothly. Too many keywords can harm your ranking.
5. Finally, fact-check your work. It’s easy to accidentally misconstrue something in your writing. If you want to be an authority in your field and deliver great content, you’re going to have to fact-check your writing.

Remember, SEO is a must for website writing. Mediaboom has an excellent SEO checklist and a guide for mastering technical SEO for those who want to give it a shot on their own.

Conclusion

Are you ready to take your writing to the next level? Writing for the web is a complex yet necessary part of any major marketing campaign. If you’re ready to take that next step, ask Mediaboom for help.