1. Be Brief
This is important: everyone online has Internet-ADD, so grab your reader’s attention and get to the point quickly.
2. Keep It Simple
This goes hand-in-hand with brevity. Your English teacher isn’t grading your business blog, so don’t get overly complicated with your terminology or punctuation. Know your audience and keep it conversational. That means avoid buzzwords and jargon (unless maybe you’re writing for propeller-heads and need to demonstrate jargon fluency).
3. More Short Paragraphs
It’s okay to have a one- or two-sentence paragraph. “Chunking” paragraphs make reading easier for busy readers who mostly skim over content.
4. Use Subheads
See what we just did there? Break up big blocks of text with brief bold-face subheads that allow your article to be scanned by readers in a rush, who may be deciding whether your story is worth returning to later.
5. Incorporate Keywords
Understand which keywords you want your post to rank for and use them in key places without “overstuffing”. You can strategically optimize your post for search engines by using keywords or keyword phrases in your main headline, subheads, first paragraph of copy, photo captions and photo titles.
6. Link to Yourself
Cross-reference your web articles by including at least one internal link back to an earlier, related post. This will help promote your other content and enhance your search engine optimization efforts.
7. Avoid Common Mistakes
You don’t have to be a professional writer to write professionally. Know the difference between “its”/“it’s,” “then”/“than,” and “there”/“their”/“they’re” and the like. Spell check and grammar check can’t catch everything. Proofread with your eyes. Then get someone else to proof it as well if you don’t trust yourself.
8. Only One Space, Period
If you’re old enough to have learned the QWERTY keyboard on a typewriter, you were probably taught to use two spaces after a period. However the habit started, it’s time to unlearn it. The computer adjusts the spacing for you, so using two spaces after the end of a sentence is unnecessary and looks wrong.
9. End With Next Steps
In marketing jargon, this is known as a “call to action.” What do you want to happen after someone finishes reading your website or blog post?
Don’t assume your Dear Reader knows. Say what you’d like someone to do after reading, whether it’s to share, comment or make a purchase. With that said, if you found this story helpful, share the love by tweeting it, or check out our earlier posts for other helpful writing tips.
