The effective ways to write for online audience

Content is king for SEO and blogs are a major contributor to regular visitation to a website. Internet writing differs from traditional writing in many ways. Using tactics that are common for traditional writing may instead turn off readers. Then, of course, there are the major mistakes the inexperienced may make that seem inconsequential. In truth, there are a number of contributors that can help you build or lose your reader base.

Original Content

A website or blog needs to feature original content. First, let’s set aside the obvious moral ramifications of stealing another person’s work. The page will end up penalized by search engines when they sniff out the similarities (and they will!). Should a person researching the subject matter stumble on your post and the borrowed material, they will write both off since they know one is untrustworthy. It is fine to use a piece of work as inspiration or even as a guideline, just ensure that the final piece is original.

Length and Organization

Concise writing is the key to capturing and keeping readers. Get to the point as efficiently as you can with the supporting evidence needed. In most cases, an optimal word count is going to come in between 500-600 words. A subject that requires more attention than that on a blog is better split up into a pair of 300-400 word posts rather than one 800 word post. Be certain to use sub-headers in longer text so the reader can skim the material for what they are looking for.

Speak Plainly

Many professional websites make the mistake of using technical speak to try and communicate with their audience. That’s a great approach if your audience is other professionals that understand it. Customers, on the other hand, come from all walks of life and areas of education. Avoid using jargon or technical speak in your content. Communication is vitally important to establishing a bond of trust with a reader (or a potential customer!).

Build Credibility

Producing writing for a business blog or website is a different endeavor than a personal one. A personal website can be representative of your quirks, interests, and beliefs. A business website needs to stay purely objective in approach unless it is clearly stated to be opinion. Stick with writing that is factually relevant and backed by 3rd party resources. Attempting to pass off an opinion as fact will eventually backfire when someone points out that the text was wrong or dishonest.

Quality Control

Spelling and grammar are two areas that are often overlooked on the internet. Disruptions such as these in the text will take the mind of the reader off of what they’re processing and instead focus it on the mistake. Ideally, have a second person read through the piece to look for any errors before publishing it. Reading the work out loud to yourself is an excellent way to pick up on problems in the flow or construction of the work. Either you, or another, must read it through again to look for errors. Spell check will not pick up misused words such as “their/they’re/there”. A reader finding those mistakes will assume you do not care about detail.

Quality Not Quantity

Do not speed your way through the creation process or research. The content you post will be on the internet for a very long time. Put together a good, fact-driven piece once a week and after a few months you’ll have the platform for an authoritative presentation. Those posts will still be providing benefit several years down the road. You lose that with rushed or botched work.
Creating quality, effective writing that people want to read is work. It is no different than building a bookshelf in using the right tools and materials to create something useful. A busy business owner or webmaster may not be able to devote the kind of time required to producing that work. If you cannot dedicate that time to the writing, it is more prudent to take a look at some of the affordable ghostwriting services on the internet that can create original work catered to your website or industry.

Author’s Bio
Jeff has been blogging since 2007 & contributing on many websites since that time. He is a professional internet marketing and blogging consultant. In his spare time he guest lectures for business and marketing students at various colleges in New York. Currently, he is writing for a real estate company in queens that offers Queens NY Homes.