the web you want to establish credibility so you'll gain readership and trust. If any, or all, of your information comes from another source, be sure and link the source to give credit where credit is due. Taking the ideas and/or words of others is copyright infringement and in many countries, illegal, not to mention unethical.

*Link Sensibly

When you link other articles this is a great way to add value to your work if you can link information to further offer information to your reader. Be sure and choose your links appropriately to the topic you are discussing.

It is a good idea to link a relevant word or two which describes the topic you want to link. For instance if you are writing about how to build a website, but another work you've done talks about the best ways to give a dog a bath, this would be a non-relevant and bad link. However, if you linked to writing code or something else which relates to your article, this would make sense.

The key to successful linking is to offer the reader something of value and additional content that is appealing.

*Think SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization. This part is a little tricky and contains a bit of a mix between art and science, but writing with strong SEO concepts in mind is an important component of web writing.

The tricky part comes in because the last thing on your mind is probably going to be SEO when you're writing, but if you want to be seen, this is a skill worth mastering. The general idea is to think of key words people would type into a search engine.

How would you type a phrase into Google, or another popular search engine? As you think about this, add those key words throughout your article, but be careful not to overdo it, this is where the science part comes in. Keyword density is an important facet to consider when writing for the web.

Writing with SEO in mind takes a bit of practice, but to increase visibility, it is a good idea to brush up on some techniques on how to write good SEO. There are other more technical facets to consider such as conversion rates, page rank and viable links to your work.

The bottom line is if even if you master the art of writing for the web and get the structure correct, if you don't rank well in search engines, there is little chance your written work will be seen. Getting a good feel for strong SEO is a good start.

*Watch word count

Web readers generally prefer succinct articles, so you want to carefully choose an optimum length for your articles. The objective is for your article to be lengthy enough to offer enough information, but short enough to hold your reader's attention; 400-800 words is a good estimation, but this may vary slightly depending on your topic.

Writing website articles has its challenges, but once you catch the drift of how web readers search and read information, the transition from print is not all that difficult. Once you find your voice, stick with it, use an active tone and craft articles on topics which will be interesting and appealing to your target audience.

Learn more about this author, Leigh Goessl.
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