6 World Education Blog

In today’s uber-competitive worldwide marketplace, you cannot rightly say, “a writer is a writer is a writer”.  A writer may very well be a writer, but that does not mean that they are a web content writer, at least when you are looking at the overall effectiveness of the end-result of their work.  There are a lot of “for print” writers trying to transition themselves into the web content writing game, and at the end of the day, they may be qualified, but they do not have the education they need to create effective web copy.

Web content writing vs. “for print” writing is like the difference between the shady looking, but effective, used car salesman versus the dolled-up, suit-wearing, manager-in-training, yet completely ineffective photo-shoot prop that purports to sell used cars.  Writing for print does not “translate” well to the down and dirty needs of today’s website content — it’s more than just words on a page, it’s engagement on several fronts that is needed.

This is not to say that traditional print writers cannot make good-to-excellent web content writers, because there are many who fill these roles and excel on all fronts.  However, just because somebody has a college degree, or even extensive training in the general writing industry, does not mean that they will be able to create effective content for your website’s needs. 

Writing for the web is so much more than just placing flowery, yet flowing, words on a page, being sure that all the Ts are crossed and all the Is are dotted — it’s about creating content that is effective for its purpose. Effective web content writing must excel on several fronts:

1. Web content must be “attractive” to search engines - search engines do not only use “exact-phrase-matching” to determine the relevancy of a web page — they also use context.  For example, if this article were about “article writing”, it would be natural to include terms like, “writer”, “content”, “seo”, “quality”, “marketing”, “services”, etc.   

2. Web content must engage the reader - Even if continue reading