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Content and Optimization
By: Gene DeFazzio

Website Content Guidelines

Writing content for the web varies greatly from writing for a newspaper or magazine. The following guidelines are geared to the Internet and the visitors who will be reading your website content. Also, these tips for good text layout and structure will enhance your chances of being indexed by the search engines and aid in optimizing your website.

Use shorter sentences, words and paragraphs than you would use when writing for print.

Develop one idea in each paragraph of your copy. Don't try to cover more than one subject in a paragraph. Focus each paragraph on one topic or idea.

Create compact and brief text. Try to write your content in half the number of words you would use normally for a printed document.

Use simple words and phrases to make reading easy.

Incorporate numbered or bulleted lists when appropriate.

Highlight important text (e.g. make it bold, colored or use hyperlinks) to make it easy to scan.

Employ descriptive and brief headlines and subheadings. This will help to optimize your webpage content for the search engine spiders.

User Friendly Content

People read one quarter more slowly on the web than when they read printed material. Computer screens tire the eyes quickly and visitors tend to scan text more than they would items in printed documents. This is the reason that your paragraphs should be short and concise. Use half the words that you would normally use when composing printed text.

Content Scanability

Write and layout your content in an easy to scan format. Think of how you read a webpage and you will understand the importance of using scanability elements in your work. Use bold or colored headers and lead-ins for blocks of text so that the main points stick out like a sore thumb. The Web is not a place to be subtle. Scanability elements like these are picked up by search engine spiders and help your efforts at optimizing your website.

Content Presentation

People who surf the Web are usually short on patience. They want to find the information they are seeking quickly and without wading through a mass of text. Obscure and complicated text is not viewed favorably by the average website visitor or search engine spiders. Keep you text in blocks that can be scanned easily. Use white space to isolate these blocks of information from adjoining copy.

Visitors will leave your website if they can't find what they are looking for quickly. You must attract their attention and maintain their interest if you want to have a successful Internet presence. You will have about 10 seconds to grab a visitors interest and a little less than a minute to maintain that interest. Avoid the pitfalls associated with your own self interests and give your readers what they want. Optimize your content for your visitors.

Content Layout

This list covers the important aspects of content layout:

Put the most important information at the top of your webpage. Make it simple to comprehend and avoid boring, hard to digest dialogues.
Try to combat reader fatigue by using an easy to read font size and style.
Present each idea in an easy to absorb bite-size chunk. Use short sentences, short paragraphs and present only one idea per paragraph. Avoid information overload.
Write meaningful headlines and subheadings. Cute or promotional lines in your text mean that your visitors will have more to read and will find it harder to understand your content.

Designing Web Pages

Designing Web Pages

Designing good webpages begins with good webpage layout. So what do you want on this most important first screen?

Professional Webpage Layout

Examining the methods of professional webpage layout. The individual pages in your website must have a layout that allows the visitor to find out as much as possible about your webpage at a glance.

All About Design Principles and Elements

Basic website design elements to consider. A truly shocking number of web designers are unfamiliar with the basic principles and elements of design.

Designing your Homepage

Believe me, you want your visitors to stay as long as possible. This is the only way your site is going to succeed. Your site must be interesting, persuading, and easy to navigate.

The Best Page Layout and Design for Content Websites

To understand which layouts work you only need to look at the industry gorillas. These are the online content publishers who have been around for years, and who have tested just about every layout combination.

Writing for the Web

Writing for the Web is very different from traditional writing. The way website visitors read Web copy is unique and you must adjust your writing style to be effective.

An Easy Way to Choose Attractive Color Combinations

Lots of people struggle to come up with attractive color combinations when designing logos, banners or web sites. So, here's an easy technique that only takes a few minutes.

Professional Graphics

Graphic design is an intimidating subject for many Internet entrepreneurs. However, most of us must learn some basic design techniques to avoid the high costs of hiring a professional graphics designer.

9 Ways to Make Your Web Site Look Great

Learn how to design a website that gets attention every time. Avoid the mistakes most people making when creating their first web site. Take home some tricks that even the most advanced designers will enjoy.

Selection of Web Templates

An important part of website designing is selection of web templates. Here are a few points which will help you select the best web template for your website.

Creating a Basic Web Design Template

A "template" is simply a design format which you can apply to all (or most) of the pages in your web site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Website Optimization
Optimizing Your Website	It's no good having a website if no one can find it. That's the bottom line. But the good news is that there is plenty that you can do to increase your chances of the right people finding you.
Landing Pages - What You Need to Explain to your Website Design Company	The definition of a landing page is simply "the first page that visitors hit on your site," so it is not strictly a certain page but any page that a user "lands" on. All websites have landing pages, whether they like it or not, even if it was not specifically designed as such.
6 Website Redesign SEO Secrets Your Developer May Not Know	At the end of the year, many businesses start to think about redesigning their tired old website to breathe some new life into it. If so, the first thing is to make sure you hire a design and development company that knows how to build the infrastructure of the website in a search engine crawler–friendly manner.
Do-It-Yourself SEO - A Beginner's Checklist	It is becoming more important for webmasters to have an internal approach and awareness of search engine marketing.
For SEO Beginners - Twelve Definitions You Need To Know	This líst of twelve SEO-related definitions in alphabetical order serves as a great companion for your initial SEO reading.
Most Common SEO Mistakes	Here are the most common mistakes people make which keep their sites from being ranked well.
Keywords Are It! Seven Powerful and Useful Keyword Marketing Tools	After years of running websites and earning a full-time online income, I am constantly reminded that it all comes down to keywords.
How to Begin Keyword Research	Keyword research starts with the understanding that finding lots of related keywords that deliver targeted traffic is the ultimate goal of any keyword research.
Writing And Optimizing Your Website's Content	Content is the messages and information that accurately and significantly describe your business or purpose of your web site.
Link Popularity	Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first tool that potential customers use to find the products and services they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative.
Link Building Basics - 5 Easy Tips	Today building a website is so easy even a child could do it. The difficult part however is to get targeted traffic to your newly created website.
Content and Optimization	The content of your individual webpages determines how your visitors and the search engines se your website.
The Top 10 Tools for Monitoring the Success of Your Website	By monitoring your website you will be able to see how it is performing and how it can be improved.
The Search Engine Optimization Process - Beginners Guide

Content and OptimizationBy: Gene DeFazzio