Writing for the Internet is a special kind of writing with its own conventions. Because on the Internet people read content on a screen, on the fly, and in a head-to-head comparison with a gazillion other articles on the exact same topic, you’ve got to take particular care to get your writing noticed and to hold your readers’ attention until the end and for the future. Don’t waste your time by working hard to create worthwhile content and then ignoring the following five commandments for writing for the Internet.
1. Focus on Your Title
If you have a blah title that doesn’t draw interest, no one will read your stuff. If you have an inaccurate title, your readers will be irritated. If your title is too specific, no one will need to read your article because the title will give the content away. The key is to get it just right: Tell what your article is about without giving the content away and by making it sound interesting.
It’s not an easy thing to do. Here’s an example. Let’s say you’ve written an article about how and why to cook for your dog. Consider these potential titles and how each one does or does not work:
- Cooking for Your Dog: I have no idea what you are going to say about this topic so I have no idea if I’m interested. I don’t know if you’re going to show me how to do it, if you’re going to tell me why or why not to do it, or if you’re just going to describe what it’s like to do it.
- How and Why to Cook for Your Dog: This title tells me what your article is about but it has taxed my five-second attention span. I’m bored and I’m afraid your article is going to bore me further so I’m going to find a different article that interests me more.
- Four Reasons You Should Cook for Your Dog (and the Best Way to Do It): This title is long but I’m interested. I want to know what the four reasons are and then, after that, I’ll be happy to learn how. But the length of the title tells me that maybe you actually have two articles you’re trying to cram into one.
- Four Reasons You Should Cook for Your Dog: This is the perfect title for your now more focused article. Your second article will be entitled Five Keys to Cooking for Your Dog.
Notice that including a numbered list effectively garners attention. People are drawn to the idea of there being a specific number of must-know items of information. The specific number indicates a limit to my need to process so I know I’ll be able to absorb the information quickly and easily.
2. Include the Perfect Image
Secondary in importance to the title is the main image you include with your article. The purpose of the image is to give, at a glance, a sense of what your article is about and what the tone is. This is a tall order for a single image, but it is almost always achievable.
The sources for your image can be your own camera, open source libraries like Creative Commons, and membership-based photo libraries like Adobe Stock. Never use images for which you do not have permission.
In our dog article example, you might come across the following options:
This is an attractive photo. The problem with this image is it shows food that is not home cooked, so it is inaccurate.
This image is appealing but it doesn’t tell at a glance what the article is about. It could be about fine dining with your pets, for example.
This funny and appealing image conveys the idea of humans cooking for their dog. It’s the one I would choose for the article.
Remember: Never use a photo you don’t have permission to use and always give attribution for the photo if required.
3. Include Headings and Subheadings
Why does this matter? There are two reasons. One is for your reader and one is for you.
Your Reader
Headings help your reader follow your ideas and easily comprehend where you’re going. Next time you’re reading on the Internet, test yourself to see how much harder it is to digest a long piece without heads versus an article organized clearly by headings.
You
Headings also help you. I often recommend that writers title each of their paragraphs—not for publication; just during the writing process. If you can provide a concise title to your paragraph, then you have likely written a good paragraph, one that stays focused and isn’t actually a whole lot of paragraphs crammed together. And once you’ve titled your paragraphs, you can see if your overall piece makes any sense. For example, the following series of paragraph titles suggests a problem:
- Why You Need to Vote This Fall
- ¶ 1: Voting Makes You Pay Attention
- ¶ 2: Don’t Abstain Because You Don’t Like the Choice
- ¶ 3: Every Vote Has an Effect
- ¶ 4: A Democracy Fails with the Failure to Vote
Paragraph titles 1, 3, and 4 answer the overall question about why you need to vote. Paragraph title 2 instead tells you that you should vote. This indicates a problem because it breaks the pattern and strays from the overall theme. Maybe you simply need to rework that paragraph, resulting in a new title: Not Voting for Lack of Choice Gives You Less Choice. Now the title supports the overall concept.
When you’re done writing, delete the paragraph titles and add in headings and subheadings as appropriate. This should be easier to do once you’ve gone through the exercise of giving your paragraphs titles.
4. Add Keywords and Links
Keywords
A keyword is a phrase or single word that signals to robots the content of your article. If you do not identify the keyword, and/or if you fail to include it several times in your article, then robots will also not be able to identify your article as a good one for people who are searching for that keyword.
You want to include keywords that people search for fairly often but that aren’t used by so many people that you don’t have a chance to compete with all the other articles. How do you find those words and phrases? Simple: Go to one of the following keyword search tools and start typing in some possibilities to see how they’re ranked:
Look for keywords with high volume but low competition.
Links
A link is simply a URL to another page on your site (internal) or on another site (external). Links help robots understand your article’s theme. Internal links keep readers on your website longer and increase your SEO. External links that go to reputable sites with high SEO give your site an important SEO boost.
The Yoast SEO plugin helps in managing links and keywords. The plugin won’t greenlight your article until you take care of important pre-publishing steps like adding internal and external links, identifying a keyword, adding headings, including a featured image, and providing alt tags for all the images you use.
5. Share on Social Media
So you’ve gone to all this trouble to write a good article, provide a compelling title and featured image, clarify your content with headings and subheadings, and add a keyword and links to improve your SEO. But then you go and blow it by failing to share your article. If nobody sees what you’ve created, what is the point?
After you’ve published, make sure you share the article on your social media pages, the ones you’ve identified as ideal for your desired audience, whether they include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or LinkedIn.
This task does not have to hurt. Some plugins will automatically share your content when you hit publish. The Yoast SEO again helps with this step, as it allows you to provide different images for social media when the ones on your website might not fit the size specs of the social media platform.
Above All, to Thine Own Content Be True
The five commandments we just reviewed will mean absolutely not a thing if you don’t generate quality content. The first order of business is always to write something true, to make it interesting, and to be clear. Content matters—always has, always will. But if you’ve got the basic goods, following these five commandments will make your writing Internet ready.