7 Web Content Writing Rules Everyone Should Know

Web content writing has its own challenges. Good writing skills alone will not make you a good web content writer. Along with good content writing skills, one should also have reasonably good SEO backing. For those who are planning to venture into web content writing, here are seven important rules.
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#1 Write for the audience not just for the search engines

Most often beginners in their enthusiasm to make the content search engine friendly totally forget about the audience for whom they are writing. Google, the search giant continually emphasizes that you should write for the audience and not for the search engines. This does not mean that you should completely ignore the SEO basics such as incorporation of keywords and proper positioning of the keywords, etc. Whatever you are doing do it tactfully keeping the audience in mind. Keyword stuffing is an absolute no-no.

#2 Understand your audience

If you are going to write for the audience, obviously you first need to understand them and this should be a no-brainer. Yes, before you set out to write anything, make sure that you understand the audience that you targeting. You need to take into account factors such as the age group, geographic territory, gender, etc., to get started with. Your writing style and your vocabulary should connect with the audience.

#3 Understand the competition

The content that you post in your website virtually plays the role of a sales person and it has to sell your products, services, cause or the brand that you are trying to promote. When we say competition, we need to take into account two types of competition:

·         Search engine competition – Here you will be concerned about getting good traffic to your website. You deal with this factor by using industry’s best practices on creating search engine friendly content. This of course has to be handled without forgetting Rule #1.

·         Niche industry related competition – Here your task is to impress the visitors that you have managed to attract to your website. Tell your visitors how you are different from the hundreds of other competitors that are just a single click away.

#4 Keep it succinct

Internet users are the most impatient lot (no offense intended). Internet users have too many distractions and hence have a very short span of attention. You need to keep things short, including your sentences. Bulleted lists work the best if you want to get something across to your audience quickly.

#5 Never churn out off-hand statistics

Just to support your point do not present any off-hand statistics because today, readers can verify the authenticity of your statistics in just minutes. Any inauthentic data that you present will only act against your credibility, something that you could not possibly afford to risk especially when you are trying to fight stiff online competition.

#6 Challenge the readers to act immediately

Make sure to craft strong call to actions. The challenge here is that you have just one chance, if you fail to make your audience act immediately, then you are likely to lose them forever. Therefore, powerful call to actions should be an integral part of your web content. 

#7 Never upload anything before proofreading

Make sure that you have a proofreading checklist and some of the key factors to be included in your checklist include:

• Spelling mistakes
• Typographical errors
• Grammatical issues
• Redundancy of ideas

If you are just getting started with web content writing, give yourself enough time to learn the nuances of web content writing. Abiding by the above rules will take you long way in terms of making you a successful web content writer.