by Amanda Evans

Created on: November 13, 2008

If you decide that you want to write for the web there are a number of terms that you will have to be familiar with. The first thing that you should know is that web writing is completely different from print writing.

Most people when reading anything on the web tend to scan through the document more so than taking the time to fully read it. This is why when writing for the web lots of headings and bullet points are used.

When looking for writing jobs relating to internet writing the following terms are bound to show up.

SEO:
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is a vital part of any website content and is what helps to get websites indexed by search engines. The main thing that you will need to know about search engine optimization is "keywords" are a necessity. You will find a lot of freelance writing jobs that require you to write keyword articles.
These articles may have primary and secondary keywords where you will have to have the primary keyword listed in the title, first paragraph, last paragraph, and once again throughout the article. The secondary keyword will need to be inserted in the second paragraph and again a number of times throughout the article.

Niche is another word that you might come across. Basically niche internet writing is writing about a particular subject.
It could be health, beauty, internet marketing, or weddings. Whatever the specialist subject is it will be called a niche.

Copywriting: Copywriting in terms of internet writing usually refers to writing sales letters.
These are usually about 6 10 pages long and are written in such a way as to sell a product or service.

Blogger:
A blogger is someone who writes for internet blogs. Blogs are similar to online journals and are written in the first person, usually very conversational.

Press Release: Press releases are another form of internet writing. These one page documents are written to attract media attention. When writing these you need to create a news worthy story about whatever it is you are offering and the 5 W's must be incorporated. These are, who, what, when, where, and why.

Article Spinning: Article spinning is a relatively new term when it comes to internet writing.
Basically this is where you use software to take a written article and transform it into a number of different articles whilst eliminating duplicate content.

Copyscape is another word that you will see a lot when it comes to internet writing.
Copyscape is a website where you can insert the URL of an article and it will check to ensure that this article is not featured anywhere else on the web. It also checks to see if parts of the article are featured elsewhere. Most people use copyscape to ensure that articles have not been plagiarized.

There maybe more internet writing terms out there but these are the most common terms that you will come across.

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