Web Writing — Part Four, Setting up a page or site
Welcome to the fourth article of this series. In Part One we looked at writing content for other people’s sites, and Part Three focused on American sites. Now let’s look at what to put on your own site, remembering the lessons of Part Two about writing detail. Unless you have your own webspace, you’ll probably start on an established platform like WordPress, Wix, Blogger.
Title
Titles are deemed to be too short for copyright. But you should search for your proposed title. See how many sites of that name exist and what the content is like. Be original. If you directly copy a famous name, this will look like a scam site. If you are an author, do not call the site after your book. Call it by your own name. You will write other books but there is only one of you.
Structure
The founders of Google as a web indexing engine, decided that Google would prefer, or rank, sites and pages which were well structured. They chose the layout of high school essays. Headline, sub-headings. Clear paragraphs and an introduction, middle and an end. Labelled and alt-text photos or graphs.
Paragraphs should be short. News sites often have two or three lines in immediate news, and longer paragraphs in a feature article. Put everything on one topic into the same paragraph.
Generally, put the most important items at the top. Unless this is a personal blog column, where you might wander in to the serious content. If you don’t catch people at once they go away. Never underestimate the short attention span of the tweeting public.
Contents
Use active sentences, not passive. Today I saw, “There has been a huge rise in the demand for vintage or second-hand items, whether it is a fashion statement, from an environmental point of view or simply a love of old things.” On RTE.ie. This is a passive line. Active form could read, “Demand has soared for vintage…” or “Customers now demand vintage…” First, this is more dynamic, so the reader gets carried along, and second, it’s shorter.
No long or foreign words — certainly not near the top. Nothing more than three syllables unless you are explaining the chemicals polluting groundwater. Most people would rather read DDT than the full name of a pesticide, dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane.
If you are not sure how to spell something, ask Google. If you don’t have connection, put a marker like [ beside anything that needs to be checked. When you can, do a find for [. Dictionaries work just as well.
Be consistent. Don’t change fonts or put a movie title in italics in one place and not another.
Don’t make the text too small, as people often read on phones. The site should be responsive to screen size as Google favours responsive sites now.
Images
Images grab the eye. You need a top or main image for your article, or it won’t get read. A lot of stock shots are available, but I can generally look at them and know they are stock shots. Take your own images if possible. This also gives you another credit.
Credit images and any graphs you didn’t make yourself, to avoid copyright issues, and take these only from places that specify the image is free to use. Unsplash is one, or your platform like WordPress or Wix may offer stock shots. Add the alt-text (the caption behind the image, read by web crawlers) right away, which should be the same as the caption and credit. A later post in this series will address copyright.
Use inline links in a helpful way, such as for further reading. Make sure they open in a new tab, so you are not sending people away from your site completely.
Accessibility
You can check how accessible your site is, using a web-based accessibility tool. Text on a plain background is much easier for someone who is dyslexic than text on top of a photo. No flashing buttons. If you create a table, embedding it as an image means Dragon and other text to speech programs read ‘an image’, not knowing the contents of the table. The alt-text behind an image is read for this reason.
Reasons to blog
Blogging is a good way to post helpful content, to get your name out to the world, and to learn your craft. Smile while you write! While everyone has a different style, I don’t recommend posting anything too personal, and if you can’t think of anything to say today, don’t post rubbish.
Some young people are the victims of cyber bullying, and this is more distressing because school age teens have little control over their lives, such as which school they attend. While this bullying may start as a juvenile prank, sometimes the Facebook pages or other posts don’t get taken down and remain visible to a net search. Any negative content may have a poor effect on the victim, because employers check Facebook pages before hiring. The best approach is actually not to hunker down and stay off the web. Post lots of positive content, a charity run, activities with the Students’ Union, and so on. Every new blog post forces the old material further down the line of search. Nobody looks at the eighth page on Google.
If you are setting up a blog for a society, remember that someone else may take the work on after you, so don’t do anything complicated.
The next post will look at Search Engine Optimisation, or, what makes Google rank your site or post higher. I have also invited guest posters.
Clare O’Beara
Originally published at http://insidedbs.wordpress.com on January 25, 2021.
