Stephen King isn’t the only writer who taught me the importance of editing, something I mentioned in my last post. William Zinsser’s acclaimed book On Writing Well made a huge impact. The main takeaway when I read the treasured volume is always: Write simply and concisely. Zinsser says, “Can any thought be expressed with more economy?”
Especially when it comes to blog posts, articles, and web
pages for the Internet, writing should be done with economy. People have the world at their fingertips; they
don’t have to put up with websites that have rambling or garbled communication.
Writers like me are hired because businesses want to be
at the top of search results. What do
search engines look for when deciding which websites to place there? Google is looking for “high-quality sites
that users will want to use and share.”
Since the inception of the Internet,
site builders have used every sneaky tactic possible to get around the search
engine analytics and land at the top.
These illegitimate schemes are almost always found out, and the websites
are penalized – they are dropped from search engines altogether.
Good writers are hired by businesses willing
to play by the rules and build excellent websites. What is needed, when it all comes down to it,
is well written, engaging, and informative material. Awesome graphics are nice, but that’s not usually
enough to keep people coming back for more.
The words a good web writer chooses include keywords but
without keyword stuffing. The words a
good writer cuts are those which are unnecessary or bombastic.
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