
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Writing for online
Ways to make your writing clearer and more accessible
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- Write so people can scan
- Keep your writing simple
- Use “chunking” to group pieces of content – it helps to give readers relief from intimidating walls of text
- Keep sentences short
- Keep paragraphs short – a one-sentence paragraph is ok! Two sentences are fine too
- Break up paragraphs with white space
- Use subheadings to lead your reader through your story (also makes the story more scannable)
- Think visually: use photos, videos, infographics, and maps to break up text
- Use bullet points to summarise information
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Write in 3D
Think about your stories not as two-dimensional pages, but as spaces your readers can move around, dive into, and navigate in the ways they choose.
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- Use links to related articles (on your site, or someone else’s)
- Use links to original sources (documents, data, people you quote in your story)
- Use links to credit visual material
- Embed your links in key-word phrases – don’t use the full URL
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SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
The most popular search engine by a long way is Google, though there are others. Search engines look for a few key things when they’re ranking a page:
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- the page HTML header
- the headline
- body text
- keyword tags
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TIP: When you’re writing your story, think about the keywords you might use if you were looking for the story
Good things to read for more online writing tips:
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- BASIC Principles: B is for Brevity (on the really good Online Journalism Blog)
- Writing Style for Print vs Web
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Try this:
- Find an example of a good online article that uses all the techniques for good online writing and SEO
- Rewrite and post on your WordPress site one of your own stories or pieces of content using the techniques above and optimise it for reading and SEO.