Writing for online

•Most of your readers will not come to your site

•Social media and search provide most referrals

•Being talked about will get you traffic•Reading is different•79% of people scan the web•25% more slowly

I have made this letter longer than usual only because I have not had the time to make it shorter

Blaise Pascal, 17th century philosopher

•Clear•Concise•Legible•Active - Man bites dog•Grammar, Spelling and

Punctuation (Sp&g)

An end to click here

• Links•Sources •Avoid news stories and link to useful stuff –

analysis, explainers, Q&As, pic galleries etc•On external websites look beyond

homepage to pages of specific relevance• Inline linking in news stories is OK when it’s

to a primary source

Links

•Never use a long word a short word will do

• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out

•Never use the passive when you can use the active

•Never us a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent

Politics and the English language, Orwell

Value added•Headlines, subheads •Standfirst aka blurb, sell, excerpt,

write off•Short paragraphs•Visuals•Audio or video clips•Related links

Key elements• Subheadings: breaking an article every few

paragraphs with subheadings• Bullet or number lists: offer a clear simple tool

for your readers.• Indented quotes: users often look for direct

quotes. • Hyperlinks: the conventional blue, underlined

text screams ‘click me’.• Highlighted words: this is a good way of

highlighting key phrases or words in your piece

Wordpress tricks•Title•Permalink - you can style the title in

Wordpress•Alt-tags – links and images•Sub heads to make it easier to read•Categories•Tags

•'Click here'•Don't cite (http://www.don

't_expect_me_to_click.com)•Think about what you’re linking to

inverted pyramid

What would Google do?

Agree with your tutors!!!

A key piece of advice from Google on SEO is that the text needs to be accurate, spelled correctly and not written sloppily.

• One of the key points of understanding SEO is the use of key words – the words or terms that a searcher would use to be able to find the story you are augmenting.

• News stories are usually loaded with key words – who, what, where, when and how aka names, brand names, places are all very searchable and often stories which are about topics such as sport and crime are very easy to find.

•Some SEO advice suggests that search engines look at the first 500 words of a story while others reduce this figure to 200 words.

•This is sometimes used by magazine and newpaper sites to spread a longer story across a number of pages, each with a unique standfirst and headline which means it will be more visibile within search.

As with anything else within SEO for journalists, the copy needs to be written for the searcher and not the algorithm.

Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it

•http://bit.ly/brookerseo

•Clever headlines of the kind used by tabloid newspapers are not searchable

•Search engines and RSS cut headlines – some experts say this needs to be LESS than 60 characters. But the best advice is around 10 words•This is what sixty characters looks like,

it is actually a lot!

•Don't use any puncutation apart from | or -

•Super Cally Go Ballistic, Celtic are atrocious

A headline that wouldn't work

•Zip me up before you go go•Up Yours, Delors•Your Country Needs Roo