Example: We deliver quality keyword research.

Example on the opposite: We deliver extremely high quality keyword research.

Explanation: Adverbs are words that modify the actions in a sentence, creating new ones, ex. If you run slowly you won’t finish the marathon. To understand better this example, try deleting the adverb and see how the meaning changes:

-If you run you won’t finish the marathon. Isn’t this a contradiction?

This example shows the right use of adverbs, however, adverbs tend to be overused and misused in the internet.

In web site writing people prefer common words, active verbs and exact information. Adverbs are frequently used with the intention of intensifying a certain action, but the result is usually different. They become an annoying repetition or exaggeration that lowers the quality of the text and the credibility of the web site.

How to control yourself and others: Revise the draft of your text and underline the adverbs you have used. Compare the effect you wanted to create with the real effect they have when you read the text out loud. If the adverbs don’t meet your expectations, try to replace them with other words that do or delete them if possible. Work on the text, re-reading it several times until you are happy with the results. Look for outsiders’ opinions too.

How to practice: Go to web sites that you find difficult or annoying to read. Notice if they use adverbs in the wrong way or if there’s too many of them. Take the repetitive adverbs away and find equivalent words for some of the other adverbs.

Read the text again. Does it improve with your corrections? Compare your new versions of the texts with the writing of web sites that you like. Have the difficult web sites come closer to the web sites you like? Can you find any elements in the web sites you like that can be used to improve the other difficult ones? Compare them with your own web site and see what you can borrow from them to improve it.

If you look at a keyword report (if you don’t have one, then download a free keyword report here) you see very few adverbs. It is possibly that you can improve the number of searchers coming to your web site from the search engines and the users experience by avoiding unnecessary adverbs.

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Example: We rationalize your keyword research project and give it added value. We can do it because we base our work on a time efficient scheme. Our global team of professionals uses the latest technology to provide you with quick feedback.

Example on the opposite: We rationalize your keyword research project and increase the return of your investment by ensuring instant feedback, using a professional work process based on a well-timed project management and the latest technology, and by relying on a global team of skilled professionals.

Explanation: Your customers want to access the information on your web site fast and easy. Short sentences are efficient tools to do this. They help you express one idea at the time and avoid confusion. Short sentences are especially helpful at points of big complexity in the text.

As the contents get more complex, shorten your sentences. Your readers will get more accurate information out of the short sentences and this will improve the overall quality of your web site.

How to control yourself and others: Write your text with this tool in mind, but don’t write all your text with short sentences only. Vary the length of the sentences to create an enjoyable reading.

Use the shortening of sentences especially when you find a part of text that is hard to understand. Try to put each idea in one sentence. Order them from most simple to most complex.

After the adjustments, read the text and notice how easy it is to understand and how good it sounds. If the text is easy to understand but it sounds boring and mechanical, maybe you have gone too far in the shortening of the sentences.

Revise it and see if there are any sentences that can be merged together without changing meaning but that could add some rhythm to the reading.

How to practice: Visit different kinds of web sites. Notice the difference in sentence length between different topics and sections. Compare how long are the sentences describing (ex. Technical features Vs. Testimonies or stories). See if you can find different sections in the same web site that change their sentence length according to the complexity of the subject.

You can try to improve unclear parts of the texts by shortening sentences in some parts. Try also to merge sentences where the reading is mechanical and boring. Practice the same with other kinds of texts ex. brochures, articles, short fiction stories, educational books, etc.
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Example: Our constant delivery of high quality throughout the years has made us leaders in the keyword market. Read the comments of our customers here.

Example on the opposite: We offer the best quality keyword reports in the market place, our high quality products give only superior quality shows. Customers all over the country prefer us for our quality! Consult our long history of quality delivery here.

Explanation: The way you use words in your text, has its own impact on your readers. A good text uses words because their meaning and function represent the information that needs to be delivered.

This kind of texts makes a good first impression, they are enjoyable to read and allow the reader to find information easily.

Your web site customers will appreciate the clever use of the language and that you make their search pleasant and productive. On the other hand, texts that misuse specific words and terms, be it by repetition (ex. quality), misunderstanding of their meaning (ex. shows as opposed to performances, marketplace as opposed to market), exaggeration, etc., have the opposite effect.

Readers and potential customers are discouraged by their poor quality and this is reflected on the image of the company and its products.

How to control yourself and others: Revise your web site text trying to find words that play an important role in the message you want to communicate. Put them in a list of “words that may be repeated more than others”.

Read the text out loud and notice if these words are being used to give the right meaning and without repeating them by accident. What stays in your mind after reading: The actual words or the concept they represent? If the words are clearer in your mind than the message you wanted to communicate, try cutting down on some of them.

Does it make your massage clearer now? Are there any other expressions/words that appear too often in the text? Keep working on it until you are satisfied. You can also ask for the opinion of others, people outside the project can offer objective and creative advice.

How to practice: Read other web sites of your category. Underline their important words and notice how often they appear compared to your text. Is their message clear and inviting? Or, do you think you could modify their text and improve it? Do you think you can use the web site as a good writing example or the opposite?

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Example on the opposite: Our products have been known to achieve the highest quality recognition and they are enjoyed all over the world by happy customers.

Explanation: When you use verbs that denote a clear and immediate action, the message of the sentences becomes obvious and precise to your readers, it leaves no room for different interpretations and therefore, it builds trust in your company and in your products or services.

Web sites don’t inspire trust or seriousness to their readers when they use too many passive tenses (like ex. Our products have been known to achieve…) or expressions like: could, may, should, must have, etc.

Expressions like these don’t clarify who is directly responsible for the statements made, they are ambiguous and people won’t trust these companies with their money or to link to their web sites.

The same counts for superlatives like: best, highest, fastest, all, etc. Instead of using these words write the facts that make you the best or the cheapest. Real facts and confirmable data inspire more trust than big words.

How to control yourself and others: Revise your web site text and see if you have used any unclear passive expressions or superlatives. Change those sentences using strong verbs in their present tense and give the facts that proof your point instead of superlatives.

Ex. Replace “We are the best!” With facts that prove why you are the best.

Re-read the text continuously and continue your corrections until you feel comfortable with the results. When you are finished, have someone else read the first version and the one with your corrections. Which one will they buy from? And, which one will you buy from?

How to practice: Go to your favorite web site or one from where you buy frequently. Notice the use of verbs and other expressions that denote responsibility, trustworthiness, etc. Try to use those findings in your own website, or in any other texts: presentations, press releases, advertising material, etc.

Do the same revisions on websites that don’t give you a good feeling, the kind that you’d browse on for 5 second and then leave. Revise some of their text and try to rewrite it using the same strategy used on your web site. Don’t stop until you have turned them into the kind of web site text that you would trust.

Search engines use advanced algorithms to detect what the text is about and the quality of it. If they can find a pattern by analyzing the text, to separate good from bad quality web pages, they will use it. Therefore, it isn’t only for the benefit of your users, but also to increase the traffic coming from the search engines to use strong verbs and other textual improvements.

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Example: We deliver quality keyword research.

Example on the opposite: We deliver extremely high quality keyword research.

Explanation: Adverbs are words that modify the actions in a sentence, creating new ones, ex. If you run slowly you won’t finish the marathon. To understand better this example, try deleting the adverb and see how the meaning changes:

-If you run you won’t finish the marathon. Isn’t this a contradiction?

This example shows the right use of adverbs, however, adverbs tend to be overused and misused in the internet.

In web site writing people prefer common words, active verbs and exact information. Adverbs are frequently used with the intention of intensifying a certain action, but the result is usually different. They become an annoying repetition or exaggeration that lowers the quality of the text and the credibility of the web site.

How to control yourself and others: Revise the draft of your text and underline the adverbs you have used. Compare the effect you wanted to create with the real effect they have when you read the text out loud. If the adverbs don’t meet your expectations, try to replace them with other words that do or delete them if possible. Work on the text, re-reading it several times until you are happy with the results. Look for outsiders’ opinions too.

How to practice: Go to web sites that you find difficult or annoying to read. Notice if they use adverbs in the wrong way or if there’s too many of them. Take the repetitive adverbs away and find equivalent words for some of the other adverbs.

Read the text again. Does it improve with your corrections? Compare your new versions of the texts with the writing of web sites that you like. Have the difficult web sites come closer to the web sites you like? Can you find any elements in the web sites you like that can be used to improve the other difficult ones? Compare them with your own web site and see what you can borrow from them to improve it.

If you look at a keyword report (if you don’t have one, then download a free keyword report here) you see very few adverbs. It is possibly that you can improve the number of searchers coming to your web site from the search engines and the users experience by avoiding unnecessary adverbs.

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Example: All our products include a 25% energy saving device.

Example on the opposite: All of these splendid commodities utilise a bare minimum of electrical energy.

Explanation: Use simple expressions when you are writing for a broad group of customers, use more technical terms when you are writing for a smaller group of well-informed customers.

Concentrate on giving facts and information, avoiding any kind of excess and imprecision at all levels. This makes a difference in how long time people decide to spend looking through your web site.

If the language is too difficult, unclear or using too much technical data, they’ll leave after a few seconds. Most likely they will never find your web site because you use other words than the words they use to search for information.

Search engines only show result that has all the keywords on the web page that the searchers have used.

How to control yourself and others: Write your texts with simplicity in mind. Once finished, read through the whole text and underline the words that you think some people might find complicated. Remember you are writing for a wide audience and not everybody has the same skills or knowledge to understand difficult words.

Go through those difficult words and think of similar words that are used more often in everyday language. In Microsoft Word you can also right click on the word and choose “synonyms”, it will show you other options that might help you. At the bottom of this menu you can also click on the “synonym dictionary” option and check the synonyms of all the related words to get even more choices.

A keyword report is a great tool to find normal used words. In a way it is a list of the most used and important words within you business. A great bonus is that you optimize your web page for the search engine at the same time as you are making it more readable for your users.

Change the difficult words for more common ones and read the text again, does it sound better now? Beware that the new words don’t change the meaning of the text.

Keep on finding common words and expressions until you are happy with the results. Reading the text to trustworthy people that haven’t been involved in the web site can give you good insight. Ask for their opinion, do they understand your message? Do they have any suggestions?

How to practice: Read through a group of websites you find difficult to understand. After reading them, think if the words and expressions they use are one of the reasons why you can’t follow the text. Are they too technical, too pretentious, too old fashioned? If so, try to replace some of the passages that you find odd with more common terms. Does it improve? Do the new words make the text more friendly, more accessible? Do you think you can still improve some words of your own web site to make it easier to read?

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Description: Sentences that have clear subjects and active verbs at the beginning, plus important words right before the full stop, are easier to read.

Example: We deliver high quality keyword reports through the internet since 2001. In its 90th issue, WWW Magazine rates our keyword report as “the best keyword reports in the market”.

Example on the opposite: The internet has been our canal to deliver our great quality keyword reports for many years. We have been awarded a very flattering review of our services by WWW Magazine in its 90th issue.

Explanation: When you put subject and verb at the beginning of your sentences, it’s easy for your readers to understand what you will be talking about from the start of each sentence.

This structure also makes it easy for them to scan through your text and find the information they need fast.

Words written at the end of your sentences are immediately emphasized. They complete the sense of your sentences and, contrary to the words in the middle, they stay clearer in the reader’s mind.

To deliver a clear message and to attract special attention to a specific topic, place subject and actions at the beginning of the sentences and the words you want your customers to remember at the end. The same counts for the overall structure of paragraphs and articles.

How to control yourself and others: Write the texts of your web site with this in mind or have someone doing it for you. As the work progresses, read through it and notice how easy is the reading flow. Do you think it can be improved? Read it out loud to others. What is the reaction of your “audience”, do they understand it clearly? Or do they ask you for explanations?

If you find sentences that are hard to understand or that lack strength and precision, change their structure, locate the subject and verb as early in the sentence as you can and your essential words next to the full stops.

Keep on modifying it until the order of the words gives the clarity and force that you want to communicate. You can also copy the text into a text editor program and colour the subjects red, the verbs green and the important words blue. Print it out and see if you have red and green at the beginning of the sentences and blue at the end.

How to practice: Every time you find a text in a web site that is interesting and easy to understand, mark the position of subject, verb and essential words in its sentences. Do the same with other websites that you find boring or difficult to read.

Observe the location of the verbs and subjects in the sentences and underline them. Look at the overall structure of the sentences in the text. Are the underlined words mostly in the right positions at the beginning and at the end? Rewrite the sentences that you find difficult using this method. You will see the difference.

Use of the right keywords will improve the searchers experience, but remember to deliver your messages in a way that is easy to understand.

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Example: Our 30 products are approved by the ISO 2000 quality certificate.

Example on the opposite: All of our extensive arrays of products have been distinguished with the approval of the renowned quality certificate ISO 2000.

Explanation: Excess words, descriptions and explanations distract your reader from the point you want to make with your text. Excess words make your web site inefficient, because when potential customers enter a site with too many unimportant pieces of text, they can’t find easily what they want and end up switching to another web site.

On the other hand, when your text has been cleared up of unnecessary words, it contributes directly to the success of your website.

This web site will allow your customers to read clearly, to get to the information they need fast and to use more features of the site, like online buying, signing up for newsletter or updates, etc.

How to control yourself and others: Take the last version of your web site, revise it and find words that can be deleted from the text without affecting its meaning. Look particularly for articles, possessive pronouns, outdated words of Latin origin, excess adjectives and adverbs, among others.

The text should be skimmed down to its simplest version without loosing character and meaning. Make a habit out of repeating this process every time something is written for your web site or your company in general. You can also ask someone else to do it for you.

How to practice: Read through different web sites and see if there are any words that you could remove without changing the message. Try to identify which particular words make the text heavy or boring. Compare your new version of the texts with the originals and then with your own web site. Are they better in quality now? Would you feel more comfortable reading these web sites if they had the new version of the text? Would you buy from them or recommend them? Keep your text to the core of the subject and avoid excess words.

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This article describes in a short way what you have to bear in mind in your web site beyond SEO.

Websites are viewed in a different way from other kinds of media. When browsing a web site, people tend to “scan” the web site more than reading it. If the information they are looking for is not in sight, they will go to the next web site. The way you present the contents of your web sites has great impact in how many potential customers stay and eventually buy your product or services.

Search engines measure the time a searcher stays in you site.

Search engines think that if a searcher stays a long time in one site, it’s because the Search engine has found the site the searcher was looking for.

For example, imagine a site that is no. 1 for a popular keyword because of other factors, but most searchers stay in the web site for less than 5 seconds. Then, the search engine can lower the ranking of the page or exclude it from the search results for that particular keyword. On the other hand, a web page that is ranked no.200 in the search results can be moved up in ranking because searchers stay in it for a long time or never go back to the search results.

Your best tactic to keep the searchers in your site is to give them what they are looking for, but also choosing a text layout that is appealing and that doesn’t scare your potential customers away.

No style
The first principle in writing and organizing web site text is simplicity. People appreciate texts that are easy to read and to understand. Stay away from pompous writing styles that will make your readers flip quickly to your competitors.

The main characteristic of a good text is that its style is invisible. The readers don’t notice the way the text is written, they only notice how easy it is to find what they are looking for.
Think of the kind of language your potential customers use but also think that if you want to appeal to a wider group of people, you must write in a way that most people like and understand. In simple words, write for your customers and not for yourself.

Components of web site text
The writing style is not the only thing that must be simple, but also the way it is displayed in the web page. Fonts, colours, spacing, size of text, balance between text and blank spaces all contribute to a display that is easy to read and that makes your web site look good. Let’s go through them one by one.

Simple fonts
The fonts are the style of letters you use to write any kind of text. This text for example, is written in an Arial font. You can choose from many different fonts available these days.

Whatever you choose, remember to keep it simple. Some fonts may look very pretty or catchy when you look at the text, but trying to read a small piece of text with an unusual font is often more annoying than pretty.

A web site using a strange font or a combination of them will send most viewers away from your site. Once again, make sure that your customers notice the information in the text and not how “funky” the fonts are.

Colours
Colours can be used differently in the text of your web site. The most basic use is the colour of the font and the colour of the background where the text is viewed. As you may have guessed the simplest combination of these two is: black letters over white background. It is the easiest way for your viewers to read your text and unsurprisingly the most used in the web.

If you change the black over white standard, make sure you have a good reason.

However, other combinations that offer high contrast and that are comfortable to the reader’s eye can also work dark blue on white, dark red on white or light cream, etc.

But by all means, avoid extreme combinations like orange letters on a bright blue background or vice versa. It is true they are opposite colours in the spectrum, and logic says they offer high contrast, but they don’t when you are reading.

For some this may sound boring or an under use of the possibilities of the Internet. But people in general use the Internet to find the right information quickly; they are attracted by the efficiency of a web site and by the way it looks when it is balanced and easy to remember.

If you decide to use different colours in your fonts for functional purposes, may be to distinguish between article and title, then use the same combinations throughout the web page. This will allow your readers to identify the important information faster and it will make your web site look more organized and attractive.

Hyperlinks
Another good reason to change the black on white is the identification of Hyperlinks, which are the parts of the contents that lead you to a different page of the web site by clicking on them. Text hyperlinks are usually words in blue and sometimes they are also underlined. You can choose any colour to identify your text hyperlinks, as long as you use the same colour throughout the web site. However, blue text hyperlinks have become a standard and having the same in your web site would make it easier on your customers.

Remember that if you decide to have text hyperlinks in blue, your titles and other text must have a different colour.

Bold
The use of bold is another tool to direct your readers attention to specific parts of the text, simply choose those words you want to pinpoint and select the bold option, but don’t over do it or you will get the opposite effect and your web site will look unprofessional.

Spacing
Spacing between letters, words and paragraphs must make your text easy to read and to scan. Justifying your main text creates uneven spaces between the words and that can distract the attention of the reader away from the information in the text. The same happens when you choose to put the letters too close together or too wide apart.

Instead, try to put your text in a column that doesn’t occupy all the space available for text. These kinds of columns make the reading of the text much easier. Keep your text aligned to the left and make subtle adjustments to the spacing between letters or words when needed.

If you are using Microsoft word, select the part of the text that needs modifications, right click on it and select “Text”. Here you can choose between different levels of “tracking”, which changes letter and word space, “kerning” used to balance specific spaces when levels are inappropriate, and “leading” which controls line spacing.

You can also reform the spacing between lines to emphasize on a specific part of text, modifying a paragraph with shorter spacing and smaller font size can attract special attention to it, it can be used for testimonials, quotes or explanative remarks, for example. Regarding text spacing you have many different tools to achieve different effects, but make sure whatever solution you find is directed at making the reading easier and effective.

Size of the text
Changing the size of different parts of the text can help your customers identify the important information easily. Go from big to small, guide your readers by writing titles or headlines in a bigger size than the captions, and the captions slightly bigger than the contents, so they will know what is more important to read first. Big letters are what people read first; include the most relevant information in the titles to keep the reader interested.

For the caption, change the font size, widen the information about the text and interest the reader to continue. The body of the text must give out facts and be written in a neutral but friendly way. Remember that the work you put in creating interesting titles in the right size and mid sized captions will make the readers want to look at your text and browse further in your web site.

Balance between written space and blank space
Enough blank spaces in your web site make it easy to read, they make it look organized, pleasant and professional. Relations of up to 50% blank – 50% contents are successful, so don’t be afraid to leave empty spaces.

Blank space is not a waste of space to put information; it is an element that draws attention to the written space and relaxes the reading task. As seen in the text spacing, reduced columns of text are easier to read for most people, including those with learning disabilities or dyslexia.

Maintain the layout in all pages
All the web site pages must keep the same design. This makes the web site browsing efficient and gives it a professional look. Keep the space for text always in the same spot of the page, as well as the space for all the other components of the web site (Menu bar, name of the company, logo, links, contact details, etc).

When you apply any of the tools above, keep applying it for the same case in all the pages. Any deliberate change to the layout must be done for a reason, if you have one, try to find a layout similar to the rest of your web page. If done otherwise, you might confuse your customers to the point they might think they have entered a completely different web site.

Keywords
Relevant keywords are the words that people type in the search engines when looking for your kind of web site. Take the time to find the relevant keywords for your products or services before you start writing or have someone else do a keyword report for you.

Remember to use the relevant keywords in the title, in the first 200 characters, continuously throughout the text and in the end. Don’t use the keywords where it doesn’t make sense for the user.

Learn from your competitors
Finally, when you are designing your page, do a little research on your competitors’ web sites and on best practice web sites in other industries. Look for good features and ideas that are worth using in your site.

At the same time, make your web site stands out from the competition by choosing colours and layouts that are different form theirs. A simple change in the colour and font of your company’s name or a clever logo can make the difference.

Use these tools as guidelines to experiment and to find the right features for your web site. A good layout is the result of various trials and changes. Work on it until you feel happy with the results and don’t be afraid of comparing and testing several times.

The goal is to create a web site where your customers will have no trouble finding what they want and which they will certainly remember for its effective and nice design.

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