universalmagician

Hello Friends,

I am a web content writer and would like to have some tips on improving my web content writing skills.

What do you think are the ultimate qualities of a web content writer?

What kind of article will you call as a great article?.. I mean how do you write a great article? can you show some samples that you think makes it great to the reader..?

More importantly, do you know any places where I can build some clientele?

Awaiting your responses.

Regards,
Ron S.

Mike C

Make it short, snappy and informative, and make your point above the fold.

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SeattleCPA

My one tip is this: Realize that you're not just writing for humans, but for the spiders.

I know, I know. This means your prose gets a little goofy at times. But I think for most web content, the trade-off is worth it.

Examples: As hard as this is to do, I know that people will sometimes intentionally use common misspellings in an article so the article will be presented on a search engine results page (SERP) when people search on the misspelling.

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Mike C

Good point - like sometimes our forum sigs aren't there for the benefit of other forum users quite so much as for the spiders, eh, CPA?

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Mustafa

I work in this field, not as a writer but as a programmer. You must try to understand the medium which you are writing. A novel or short story is generally read for digestion of the subject or story. The author can use much more of his or her skill in taking the reader places/conclusions/etc.

Magazines and newspapers are generally more like essays where you must tell the reader what you are going to say - then say it - then tell the reader what you said. This form us much shorter, but still has the ability to hold the reader for some span of time.

The web medium is far harder to hold a readers attention. You must give far more weight to such things as appearance, ease of read, etc. It is much harder than just brevity. You must use the medium for your advantage. For instance, do not have any long blocks of text. You should break up the text like you would a paragraph; only use hyper-links to move the reader. Also, change the color in a subtle manner when the reader follows you this will increase the likelihood they will continue reading.

Just remember you are working in a medium that is extremely fast and has no patience for working up to a point.

Just my .02

Joe Moore

Spend some time roaming around the CNN.com website. Read a few articles while observing the layout of the components: paragraph lengths, white space, teasers, graphics, headings, titles, etc. Yes, there are advertisements, but the human brain quickly learns to tune them out just like background noise when we watch TV or film weave and jitter in the movie theater. Most of the major news organizations' websites are great examples of the new economy of writing web content and presentation.

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SeattleCPA

Exactly.

And to give just another example, I noticed that one of the web sites that my sites compete with has forgotten about the use of Ibid in their sites footnotes. Instead, they provide 30 to 40 footnotes to a book that uses in its title a keyword phrase they want the page optimized for.

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limited liability corporation, forming an s corp and incorporating a business