When writing for the Internet, you are actually writing for two different audiences: human visitors who have come to your page following a link, and search spiders or bots who are looking for content to include in their search engine results. Writing effective copy is a balancing act between writing for both humans and search engines.

In this article we’ll look at some of the ways you should be writing to best appeal to your human visitors. To learn how to best write for search engines, click here.

Concise Writing is Best

You can be breezy in your diary, artful and eloquent in your novel, but when you’re writing for the Internet, shoot for short. Stick to one topic per page, and keep the pages themselves a lean 500 words or less. If a page is running longer than that, think about breaking it into two pages. Keep all titles and headers short and descriptive as well.

Think of every piece you write for the Internet as being the answer to a specific question or problem your visitor has. By all means make it interesting and fun, but don’t lose track of the fact that people are reading you to learn something.

Titles Are Important

Don’t scrimp on the time you spend crafting the perfect title for your online article. Titles appeal to both search engines through the use of keywords, and your visitors by being descriptive enough that they are drawn in to read more. Remember that your page title in most cases will be listed among other results in a search engine query. You should make every effort to help yours stand out.

Titles should be 50-75 characters long (including spaces). Forget the whimsy and concentrate on very specific wording, using whatever keywords you’ve assigned to the article (see Writing For Search Engines). If your article runs more than a page, use a unique title for each page.

Page Headings Are Important

Think of headings as sort of sub-titles; less important than the page’s title, but still carrying a fair amount of weight. They should stand out from the article text, catching both human and search bot eyes. Place relevant keywords in all headings, and use H1, H2, etc. coding appropriately. Main headings should be coded H1, allowing them to stand out more than subheadings further down the page.

Writing the First Paragraph (And More)

Make your article’s main point early on, and repeat it throughout the article. Be clear what you’re going to be discussing in the first paragraph, and people will be drawn in to read the rest of your article. You should write in a more relaxed style (as opposed to a literary, or scientific journal, style), with a “bullet point” approach in mind. Use short paragraphs to make your points, and then…

Ending The Article

To sum up the article, return to the beginning and restate the main point. This is just a good way to wrap up any informative article, and helps to cement your point in the mind of the reader.

A few stray thoughts on writing for the Internet, human edition:

· Use good grammar and correct spelling. Nothing turns off a reader as much as sloppy sentence structure and horendus speling. Don’t put all your trust in a spell checker, though. Re-read all articles you write for errors before posting them online.
· Write often. Content truly is king, both for your human visitors and the search engine spiders. Post fresh content regularly and you’ll make them both happy.
· Crosslink. One of the main benefits of the Internet is the ability to direct your readers instantly to additional information, either on other sites, or your own. For example, if you’d like an idea of the many different kinds of articles you can write for your site, check out our article 12 Types of Online Content You Can Write. Part II of this article series, Writing for Search Engines, is also a must read.