Content is the life blood of the online world. We all need to publish it, so getting it right the first time is important. Here’s a dozen tips, tricks, and techniques to that end.
- Know your readers. What they want, need, and will consume.
- Write with simple words, everyday language.
- Write short sentences; 12 to 15 words.
- Write short paragraphs; five or six sentences.
- Write descriptive titles that contain keywords and that accurately describe what your content talks about. See below for more on what
keywords are and how to choose them.
- Write titles, headers, and sub-headers that are descriptive, informative,
and that leave no doubt of what your content discusses. Titles that are
provocative, humorous, or a play on words can all be very effective.
- Us bold and italics to make important points easy to find and to attract the reader’s eye. Do not underline text as it is easily confused with a link.
- Pay attention to white space and make content that looks good. Do not publish densely packed documents that are intimidating to the eye. In this document we have intentionally increased the spacing between all numbered and unnumbered points.
- When using a graphic or photograph that is a click-able link be sure to
caption it. Search engines can’t read graphics. Captions can contain
keywords, graphics cannot.
- Write descriptive links that contain keywords. Never use ‘Click here,’
‘More,’ or other non-descriptive links. Don’t waste the opportunity to
include additional keywords in your links.
- Use listing whenever you have more than three items to include.
Bullets do not indicate precedence or order; numbered or alphabetic
lists do. Numeric or alpha listing indicates what comes first or what is more important.
Plus One – Edit Ruthlessly
Have someone read your work, wait a day then read it again, read it backwards, spell check it before it’s published. Look closely for words, though spelled correctly, are the wrong word for your meats. See what we mean? Meats is spelled correctly, but is not the word – needs – that you intended. That, my friend, is why we say, “Never trust your spell checker.”
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