Online Marketing

How We Write for the Web

The text on your site must address two entities simultaneously:

1. Website visitors – to keep them on your site and motivate them to contact you
2. Search engines – to make them rate your site highly enough to place it on the 1st page of search results when your keywords are used in the search

Visitors vs. Search Engines

Reading a website is different from reading a textbook or magazine article. Therefore we do not use academic or journalistic writing styles. In writing for our web designs, we use a web style which will facilitate initial scanning, give your main information quickly, and provide easy ways to contact you.

The Page 1 Solutions Search Engine Optimization (SEO) department stays current with how the various search engines are operating. When they change, we must change to keep up. What may have been effective for a couple of years, may now be ineffective.

Writing for Visitors

People who are using the internet to find something – a cosmetic dentist in their area, a local attorney who takes a particular type of case, a good LASIK surgeon, and so on - do not typically read a site when they first go to it - they scan it. If they pick up clues that your site might offer what they’re looking for, they may stay and start reading.

If they find the text easy to read - clear, relevant and informative - and if there is an obvious “Contact Us” feature on the page, they may use it and you may now have a new potential client.

Signposts for Scanning

Where book text is dense and differentiated only by paragraph breaks, good website text has visual features to facilitate scanning:

• Effective navigation – to quickly summarize what is on your site
• Main headings – to summarize each page
• Substantive first sentences – to give the page’s main point first and arouse visitor interest
• Sub-headings – to accurately summarize the paragraph to follow
• Lists – to lay out items without any empty connective text
• Links – to other pages on your site and to third party sites that give supplemental information but do not compete with you

Short Sentences and Paragraphs

Research has suggested that the average website visitor reads at an eighth-grade level. We will typically include no more than three or four ideas in each sentence and no more than two or three sentences in each paragraph. Industry terminology will be avoided or explained if used.

Writing for Search Engines

Writing features that please search engines are not necessarily the same ones that please visitors. In fact they sometimes displease our Page 1 Solutions clients at first, until we explain why they are necessary.

Use of Keywords

Writers will incorporate your keywords as often as possible, without overdoing it. Search engines are sophisticated and will demote a page that tries to spam it with too many keywords.

Keywords are used in prominent places such as headings, subheadings and link text, as well as in each page’s content. Examples:

1. Instead of “Your surgeon will first do a complete eye examination”, the sentence will say:
   • “Your LASIK surgeon will first do a complete eye examination.” LASIK surgeon (a keyword phrase) links to the site’s Meet Dr. XXX page.
2. Instead of “With over twenty years of experience, we can help you obtain fair compensation”, the sentence will say:
   • “With over twenty years of experience, our Denver personal injury lawyers can help you obtain fair compensation.” Both Denver and personal injury lawyer are keywords and the phrase links to the site’s About Our Firm page.

Heading One and Heading Two

Each page has a Heading One to give the page topic, phrasing it with a keyword for that page. Heading Two gives your location, which is also a keyword or several keywords. This puts your topic and location where search engines will find them easily.

Calls to Action

Each page will have at least one easy-to-see link to a contact form. There will be a sentence such as “Please call or email our Dallas, Texas cosmetic surgery clinic to schedule a complimentary consultation.” The contact form link is on location and industry keywords and complimentary consultation links to a page on What to Expect in Your Consultation, perhaps with downloadable forms.

• There may also be a mini-contact form on every page or a graphic that links to the Contact Us page.

For more information about how Page 1 Solutions will write your website, and why, please see Questions on writing for the Web or contact us (800-916-3886).