There’s already lots of advice on the web about writing for search engine optimisation (SEO). How the right keywords in the right places will help your website get further up search engine results, that sort of thing.
But that’s only half the story – because sometimes words get in the way. It can be better to cut words and let some well-chosen links and buttons do all the work.
What you need to know first: people don’t read things on screen. They scan them.
So unless you printed this out, you probably aren’t reading it word-for-word. You’re scanning the words to get to the main points and the things you’re most interested in.
You can make readers’ lives easier by:
- highlighting the main points in lists
- writing paragraphs in short chunks
- adding subheadings
- writing a short summary of what’s coming up at the start.
Got all that? Good. Because there’s another mistake that many websites make: they over-explain everything.
WHAT NOT TO DO
1. Don’t say what a button is
Don’t say ‘Click the search button, this will give you a list of items that match your search’. (We know what a search button is.)
2. Don’t over-explain a link
Don’t say ‘Read our news pages for all the latest news stories and events’. (We’ve got a pretty good idea what a news page is.)
3. Don’t introduce every page and section
Don’t say ‘This page provides you with easy-to-understand and helpful information about oojamaflip’. (That’s what the title’s there to do.)
WHAT TO DO INSTEAD
Take off 99% of the words on pages that people use to find things. That’s usually the home page, a landing page, or at the start of a section. Search boxes, pull-down lists, buttons and links do the job just fine.
But what about keywords? The most useful ones should be in the links, titles and tags (search engines like Google rate those keywords higher anyway). And, of course, there’ll be keywords on the pages with the actual content on them.
So repeat after me. I don’t need to over-explain every… last… thing.
Save the words for where they’ll be useful – on the page your reader is looking for in the first place.
