Writing for Websites
If you’re a website owner you’ll need to know about writing for websites.
A good website has plenty of content. It’s not just got the 10 or so basic pages that the vast majority of sites on the net have. A good site has a 100 or more pages of content.
And not just any content, high quality, original, useful and targeted content that people who visit your site will want to read.
Each page or article should be at least 400 words long but over 500 is better.
So, if you need a 100 pages of 500 words each, you’ll need to write 50,000 words for your site. That’s not much less than some short books.
Where to Get Content?
There are two places you can get all this content from:
- Someone else
- Yourself
So now you need to decide how much money you’ve got to spend on developing the content for your site. If the answer is, 'not much', it basically rules out option one, leaving you option two – yourself.
Yes it’s best if you write and develop the content for your site yourself.
- You’ll save a lot of money.
- You’ll have control over the quality of the work.
- It’ll all be written in your voice and so sound true and authentic to the readers.
- It’ll be written by an expert (that’s you).
With some practice it’s not hard to learn how to write for your site.
If you’ve done any writing recently, for your job or otherwise, you’ve got the skills; you just need to practice them and refine them so you become an expert website writer. See the pages about website writing techniques and writing tips for your website.
If you’ve not had to write anything for a long time (since you were at school, possibly) don’t worry. You can also become an expert website writer. It’ll just take a bit longer and a bit more practice, but don’t worry. The style of writing you use for websites is easy and informal so you won’t need to be ‘academic’ in your writing style. Just write as if you were talking to a friend.
The more that you write the better your writing will become and the easier you’ll find it to write faster and more fluently. Write the first few pages for your site and make them the best you can; but, be ready to come back to them later and rewrite them using all the skills you’ve learnt from writing the rest of your site.
Website Writing Process
The process for writing for websites is the same as that used in all other writing, such as the academic writing process or ESL writing process. It is:
- Plan – Write – Finalize
In the planning stage you think about what you want to say, how you’ll say it and then look up any information you might need. Form your ideas make notes if it’ll help. This stage is important as if you plan properly the writing stage will be much easier.
When you start to write you should have everything ready so that you can just sit down, open the word processor and write. I write this way and many other writers do as well. They write and let the words, sentences and paragraphs flow out of them. This is the stage for getting the main points of the article down on paper. It can be finalized, polished and proofread in the next stage.
The finalizing stage is where you go back to your writing and make it perfect. You proofread it. This is where you correct any mistakes in grammar, style or formatting. You make sure you’ve used the best possible words. This is the stage that many writers skimp on and so their writing isn’t as good as it could be.
For help and advice about proofreading your writing for websites, go to the website proofreading page or the Englsih proofreading section.
If you’d like a professional proofreader to help you with your writing for websites, see the page about my proofreading service or if you’d like to ask me some questions either use the contact me form or go to the Excellent Proofreading and Writing Facebook page.
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By Jolyon Dodgson, copyright © 2011-2020.
Excellent-Proofreading-and-Writing.com - Proofreading and writing help for excellent first impressions.
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