Writing for the Web

1.  Select what keywords you will write web pages for

For instance, this web page is written for "writing for the web."  More than 33,000 people in the U.S. search for these terms.  Using Google's free AdWords tools, you "guess" what terms someone might be searching for and their tool tells you what people are searching for for those terms and related terms to help you choose what keywords you want to write for.

Here's the search demand for keywords related to writing for websites.  Local in this example is searches made in the U.S.  Competition is for people wanting to buy Google AdWords, not competition for the number of web pages written for these keywords.  To learn that, you need to go to Google search and see how many search results there are for those terms. 

Choose the keywords that you think you have the best chance to rank highly for on Google search results.

That involves evaluating how much search demand there is and comparing that to how much supply (the number of articles there are on that topic) there is for those terms.  Then you need to guess how well your website or blog may rank against those other sites.  The most credible websites like The New York Times will always rank first if they have an article that is written for those keywords, even if it's older and outdated. 

• How to do:  Keyword Research

2.  Writing for the web:  writing the article for the keywords you've chosen

Write an article on a specific web page with relevant advice using that keyword.  This must be unique content that isn't on other areas of your site or taken from a manufacturer or other source.  The article needs to be at least five paragraphs of text. 

Use the keyword in the title, subtitles and throughout the article so it appears 2% to 10% of the time.  This percentage is called "keyword density."

Know this about writing for the web using keywords:
 

• If you use the keyword too much, you'll get penalized by the search engines. That's called "keyword stuffing." 

• If you don't use the keyword often enough, your article may not be considered to be relevant by the search engines because it doesn't use the key terms people are searching for enough in the article.

• Google's search robots, the software that "reads" web pages, are set up to look for objective information like how often the keywords are used as a proxy to determine if the article is relevant for someone searching for those terms.

• You can check for keyword density by visiting www.keyworddensity.com;  it's a free tool.

Below the first two or three paragraphs include links to relevant pages on your website.  These can be things like:

• reviews
• how-to guides
• buyer's guides
• videos
• product specifications
• any other relevant content

TIP:  think of these links as if you were a librarian recommending relevant other articles based on what the person was interested in.  This is called cross-selling in marketing.  This technique can be used for writing web pages as well.  You want someone to stay on your website and find the information they need.  What else can you offer them? 

Know this:  any pages you create for specific keywords need to be linked somewhere into your site.  They can't be isolated pages.  That's something else the search engine robots check for. 

3.  Writing for people on laptops, tablets and mobile phones

People read web pages differently than printed pages.  They generally scan web pages so it's important that they can get the key information from reading headlines and subheads. 

People on tablets may want a more "magazine-like" web page that has graphics and images.  The challenge with that is that Google's search engines like (and reward) text pages, not graphic pages. 

People on web-enabled mobile phones also will be accessing web pages but they'll have a very small screen and probably just want key information. 

• Learn about Mobile Marketing and mobile websites

4.  Make sure your web page is set up properly for the search engines

Think of Google like a huge filing system. If you want anyone to find your article on Google, you need to index it so Google can find it and recommend it in search results for someone searching for those terms. 

If you're writing for the web, you want to have a basic understanding of SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization.  Here's a How-to Guide on SEO

Know this:  just because you write a web page for particular keywords, doesn't mean it will get listed high enough on Google and the search engines to attract any type of meaningful website traffic.  You'll need to market your website and your web pages (articles) to attract visitors to them.  Article marketing used to be an effective way to do that but those sites have been downgraded by Google so that strategy isn't working very well any more.  Article Marketing explains more about what's happened. 

From our experience:  you have the most likelihood of being listed in search results, if you label everything using the exact keywords you want to attract people for.  That means using those exact keywords in:

• The title of the article
• The web page address
• The subheads

Look at this article for "writing for the web".  Everything is set up to tell Google (and people looking for this information) what this article is about.