Lisa Manfield presents Writing for the Web and SEO

Highlights from Lisa Manfield's presentation

Writing for the Web and Search Engine Optimization

Date: February 16, 2011
Time: 5:30-7:00 pm
Venue: Metropolitan Hotel

Part I--Writing for the Web

How do people view a web page?

• People scan a web page in under 10 seconds.


• They read what "pops out"--headings, subheadings, links and link anchor text.


• They usually don't go below the fold (the point at which they have to scroll.)


• The first two words in a heading or sentence are the most important.


• Jakob Nielsen's heat maps show that the eye tracks a web page in an F-pattern.


• Heat maps also show that the eye notices ads.
  

Conclusions

1. It's hard to grab people online.


2. You want your website to show up in the top 5 or 6 on a search list.

How do people read online?

People read online to find information. They want to see short overviews until they find what they need; then they want to quickly be able to get to the details.
A reader might arrive at your website through a "back door"--not your home page.

Keeping the above in mind, your copy must:

• Focus on what the reader is looking for, and offer it quickly.


• Make text scannable so the reader can easily spot what they want.


• Use headings and subheadings that are helpful rather than clever.


• Use bolding for emphasis.


• Use bulleted and numbered lists.


• Stick to one idea per paragraph.


• Use inverted pyramid style.


• Include calls to action: "register," "read more," "buy."


• Use half the word count of print writing. 400-600 words is optimal for a page.

Using Links

When you add links to other sites, you're providing a valuable service for your readers. If the linked sites are good ones related to your readers' needs, your readers will come to trust you.

• Put critical links above the fold, but not in the first sentence.
• Use links to keep people moving through your site.
• Links must look distinct.
• Don't write this: "Click here to read Tolkien's biography."
• Do write this: "Tolkien's biography is fascinating to read."

Microcontent
Microcontent is small pieces of text that describe what's coming next. It includes headlines, subtitles, intros, links and photo captions. A article should have a short "teaser" section describing its contents below the title.
Microcontent pointers:

• It's concise, descriptive, lively and inviting.


• It explains content.


• It uses plain language.


• It doesn't mislead people.


• The first two words in each "bite" are information-carrying.
  

Editing Tips

• Use shorter, simple words. Find them here.


• Use active sentences.


• Use microcontent format.


• Use the chunking principle. It says that most people can hold 7 items in their short-term memory. Apply this principle to the number of items you put in a numbered or bulleted list, or on your navigation bar, or on a drop-down menu.


• Your tone should be informal, conversation and direct. Use "you." Avoid bureaucratic or overly-promotional language.

Part II--Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How do Google and other sites rank your website for search results?

Their algorithms are top-secret. However, by experimenting, specialists can get a pretty good idea of what the key factors are. More than 200 factors may be used to rank a site, but the key factors are:

• Age of URL. Older sites rank higher.
• Size of site. A site with more content ranks higher.
• Frequency of site updates. Add a blog to a static website to improve its SEO value.
• The quality of your on-site SEO (see below.)
• How much competition you have in your niche.
• The number and quality of inbound links to your site. This is the #1 ranking factor, and it can't be manipulated.

Inbound links

• High-ranking sites that link to yours are good.
• Links from sites with similar content to yours are more valuable.
• Enternal links are better than internal links.
• Reciprocal links are useless for SEO.

On-page SEO

The following are parts of your website to consider for SEO:

• URL--make it describe your content if possible
• Browser title--this comes from metadata on the back end
• Page title and h1 tags are important. h2 and h3 tags are less important but still play a role.
• Introduction
• Subheadings
• Links
• Photo/video captions
  

What is a keyword (or phrase)?

• A word or phrase that describes what your content is about.
• The words that a reader might put it a search engine.
• Names of people, places, companies, publications.
• Avoid highly-competitive terms.
• Many searches start with the words "How to..."

Remember, 50% or more of your website's traffic comes from people using a search.

You can choose keywords intuitively or mathematically.

Choosing mathematically means using an online tool. More...

My comments about this CPRS event:

This was a relaxed event. Participants sat at tables of 8; there were perhaps 70 people at the event. It was a good way to meet people and network. A variety of beverages and snacks were provided during the 30-minute "socializing" period before the presentation. Lisa Manfield is an excellent speaker who clearly has expertise in web writing and is eager to share her knowledge.

My final comment:

I hope this post has been a useful example of writing for the web!

Comparison of Langara and Douglas Websites: Langara Wins!

Preparing a website for a college must be an intimidating task even for a seasoned website developer. There is a huge amount of information to be conveyed. Many decisions have to be made about how to structure the navigation so that people can find the information they want quickly and easily.

I have often found it difficult to find certain bits of information on the Douglas College website, but I assumed my own stupidity was the problem. However, after viewing Langara College's website, I think this site's organization makes it easier to find information quickly.

My initial reaction to Langara's home page was that it was plain and boring. However, the lack of clutter makes the site easier to use. The Langara site puts many, many links on the home page, but it is still very readable because of the white background and the small but easy-to-read font. The links are logically organized into sections. The all-important information about fields of study is in the upper right section of the page. Fields of study are divided into six groups, and these six links appear on the home page. Clicking on a link leads to a page that has its own distinctive colour and a beautiful photograph. Information within these pages is also organized very well.

Langara's home page has three columns of links divided into Study Options, For You and Learn More. It's easy to find the appropriate link to answer any question.

At the bottom of Langara's home page, there are three columns: News, Events, and a scrolling social networks section. I liked this latter feature, which allows the viewer to quickly see the most current comments and events, and to choose amongst a variety of social networking sites.

Langara's site maintains site consistency by having "LANGARA: THE COLLEGE OF HIGHER LEARNING" on every page, in their "brand" rust colour. The small font and plain white background stays the same throughout the site.

I initially thought the Douglas website was more attractive because the home page was more colourful and visually interesting. The revolving feature story banner at the top, with its headlines and photos, attracts interest. I like the way the Douglas login feature is near the top of the page and easy to see, as it appears in two of the website"s main colours, magenta and turquoise. The Douglas site maintains consistency with the use of the Douglas College logo on each page.

Like the Langara website, the Douglas website has many links on the home page. The difference is that they are not as well organized and overwhelm the viewer. I've spent a lot of time on the Douglas website over the past two years. I've been lost many times. It seems there are different routes to get to the information; either that or I can't remember how to access certain things from one time to the next.

The comparison between the two websites isn't entirely fair because many of the problems I've had with the Douglas website have been in the myDouglas section. Being an outsider, I can't get into the internal part of the Langara site to see how it compares.

Overall, I prefer the Langara College website because its visual simplicity and excellent organization make information retrieval quick and easy.

Tim Berners-Lee and his creation of the World Wide Web

Tim Berners-Lee was a software consultant at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) when he started working on a project that would allow any computer to communicate directly with any other computer in the world.
At that time, in the 1980s, the Internet existed but data couldn't be shared between individual computers. As Larry Greenemeier explains in his Scientific American article "The Day the Web was Born,", the Internet is "just a set of wires and a protocol for sending information over those wires."
The Web is an application that runs on the Internet. Berner-Lee's innovation was to create software that would allow any computer (or node) to connect to any other computer directly, eliminating the need for a central connection point. Berners-Lee designed and built the first Web browser (WorldWideWeb) and the first Web server (CERN HTTPd). On December 25, 1990, Berners-Lee, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a student at CERN, accomplished the first communication between a Web browser and a server using the Internet.
Greenemeier writes that Berner-Lee's creation involved three basic innovations:

1. HTTP (hpertext transfer protocol) This allows you to click on a link and be brought to a document or a web page.


2. URIs or URLs (universal resource indicator/locator) This is the address of a web page or document.


3. HTML (hypertext markup language) This enables links to be put in documents and pages so they connect.

The first website, built at CERN in 1991, was named Info.cern.ch. It explained the WWW and outlined how one could use a browser and set up a web server.

Berners-Lee's initial philosophy about how the Web should be used has been critical to the evolution of the Web, which in turn has revolutionized global communication. Berners-Lee has always believed that the technology for connectivity should be free and available to everyone around the world. He never patented his software and ideas or collected any royalties for them. His central concept about the Web was that "any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere".

Berners-Lee sees the Web as a public resource. Our businesses, communities and governments are now dependent on it. Moreover, as he writes in his 2010 Scientific American article "Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality," "The Web is more critical to free speech than any other medium...It is vital to democracy."

In this article, Berners-Lee gives a simple analogy to explain the distinction between the Internet and the Web. That is, the Internet is "an electronic network that transmits packets of information among millions of computers" while the Web is like a household appliance that runs on this electronic network. It works as long as it follows standard protocols, just as appliances work on electricity as long as they follow standard protocols, such as operating at 120 volts and 60 hertz in North America.

In 1994 Berners-Lee founded the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) at MIT. This organization is made up of companies that create standards for the Web and recommendations for improving and monitoring the quality of its use.

Berners-Lee's first browser, the WorldWideWeb, was actually both a browser and an editor. It allowed people to create pages and put them up online as well as the ability to edit pages posted by others. Commercial browsers that were developed subsequently didn't include editing capabilities. Berners-Lee originally envisioned the Web's being used not just to view content, but to publish it. It took many years for this to start happening in a widespread way, but it has taken off now with blogs and sites like Wikepedia and Facebook.

Berners-Lee is a professor of engineering at MIT and a professor of electronics and computer science at the University of Southamption in England. He was knighted in 1994. He continues to be active and concerned about the ethics of Web use; issues such as "snooping" on people's personal information via the Web or attempts to restrict Web access by certain governments or corporations.

Info bites about Jakob Nielsen and W3C for Assignment #2

Jakob Nielsen is a leading web usability consultant. He has published several books about web design, owns 79 US patents (mostly to do with ways to make the Web easier to use) and co-founded usability consulting company Nielsen Norman Group with Donald Norman.

According to Nielsen, there are five quality components of usability goals: Learnability, Efficiency, Memorability, Errors (the fewer the better) and Satisfaction.

Nielson has been criticized for not considering the visual aspect of the user's experience. He offers explanations for his minimal use of visual elements on his website. Nielsen's website has a biography page that includes a list of names given to him by the media and even links to parodies of him. Another article that could be helpful for a PRFU 2340 class assignment is his 10 Best Intranets of 2011.

Nielsen writes about "heuristic evaluation"--a quick, cheap and easy evaluation of user interface design. It is the most popular usability inspection method. "Heuristics "are recognized usability principles. See Nielsen's Top Ten Usability Heuristics here.


W3C stands for World Wide Web Consortium. This group has developed a markup validation service for web pages. The markup validator allows a web page author to check documents written in computer languages like HTML, XHTML, MathML and CSS to see if their syntax is correct. In other words, is the document following the rules for the computer language it's written in?

The validator looks for handcoding errors--some common ones would be missing opening or closing tags or missing quotation marks. The validator produces a list of errors.

The markup validator is a free tool and service. One simple way to use it is to paste a web page address into the text area on the validator's home page and press the "Check" button.

Meeting Ian Weir, screenwriter and author of the novel "Daniel O'Thunder"

Last night I emerged from the Alliance for the Arts & Culture in downtown Vancouver (938 Howe St.), my head bursting with the intellectual stimulation of the past two hours. Ian Weir, a multi-award winning writer of screenplays, television shows and stage plays, had just given an animated presentation at the January meeting of the Canadian Authors Association.

Ian's vast experience in screenwriting has given him skills that apply to any kind of creative writing. His thoughts about "what is a story?" were fascinating. Telling a good story can be summarized very simply, but that doesn't mean being able to do the actual writing is easy. Basically, in any story, there is one main protagonist, who is trying to reach a goal and encounters obstacles along the way.
This protagonist "is the heart and soul" of the story, no matter how many other characters may be involved. How do you decide who the main protagonist is if a novel has many main characters? Ask "Who is holding the centre in this story? Who is most purely reflecting the core themes? Who is facing the most difficult decision or dilemma?"

I was astonished to learn that Ian usually doesn't even know who the protagonist of his story is until he is working on his third draft. He said that he often misidentifies the protagonist, and it is only by the third draft that he fully understands what his own story is about. I questioned this. "Do you mean you start out writing a story without even knowing what your main idea is?" His answer was "If I know from the get-go what my story is about, it's probably a very thin idea or a cliched idea...Learning how to tell a story is a long process--you go to subterranean depths--you can't learn that from a three-day seminar on how to write a screenplay or a novel."

According to Ian, writing for the stage has been invaluable to him because it exposes any weaknesses in characterization. In a rehearsal hall, actors are charged with bringing the characters to life. They have to work with what the playwright gives them, so if there are gaps, they will be exposed. Ian commented, "With every scene you write, you need to be inside the head of every character in the scene." It's the same when writing a novel. Ian added that it's especially difficult for most writers to get inside the head of a character of the opposite sex.

Ian talked about a "writer's block" situation that often occurs, a moment when a character refuses to do or say what the author expects. Ian said this is a very difficult moment--the plot can be wrecked, large amounts of rewriting may have to be done--but he says it's a good moment, because this is when a character changes from being the author's "mouthpiece" to becoming a real, three-dimensional character. In any good story, said Ian, "all characters must have a transformative arc over the course of the story--they must change from beginning to end." He noted that one of his common pitfalls as a writer is to let his protagonist "go passive--stop actively moving towards a goal."

Ian was one of the fortunate few writers who was actively commissioned by an editor to write a novel. Chris Labonte at Douglas & McIntyre was keen about Daniel O'Thunder from the moment he saw the first one-paragraph description of it. Ian has only praise for Chris's support and guidance, and for the help of his editor, Ramsay Derry.

As a writer hoping to get work in the editing field, I asked Ian a few questions about how his five-draft writing process worked, with the help of Chris and Ramsay. Ian commented, "It's a marriage--the writer-editor relationship...When I was younger I need a much more hands-on editor, but as I've gotten older, I've got better at predicted my own pitfalls and digging myself out of them." As he wrote Daniel O'Thunder, Chris provided overall feedback after each draft was completed. Ramsay, who was Robertson Davies's editor, provided more constant help, particularly with the first draft. Most of the editing back-and-forth was done by long Skype phone calls.

Ian's presentation was not only valuable for his insights into the writing process and the basics of good storytelling. He was a great entertainer, reading parts of his novel with great relish. He responded to audience questions effortlessly and with enthusiasm. I couldn't resist buying an autographed copy of his book (only $15 for a high-quality trade paperback!)

I would highly recommend these monthly Canadian Authors Association Vancouver meetings to any students or writers for networking, support and education. Last night, there were about 40 people packed into a small room. Most were writers, either published or aspiring to be published. The atmosphere was casual and friendly. Admission for non-members is only $5 (or $2 for students.)

It started with fairy tales

The days of lugging home six volumes of fairy tales from the library are decades ago, now. In the 1960s, being able to create my own blog and publish it for all the world to see would have seemed as fantastical as anything from the Brothers Grimm.

But now, faced with the task of passing on my favourite blog and explaining why I follow it, I have to admit that I'm not a regular follower of any blogs. I've glanced at friends' running blogs but haven't found them compelling. So I chose to look for a blog that would review, discuss, critique or otherwise dissect books since they are still my favourite love.

After persusing a few literary blogs, I've chosen LiteraryMinded by Angela Meyer as my favourite. I like Angela's sassy, entertaining tone. She is a hyper-busy person from Melbourne, Australia who participates in many writerly activities and posts about them on her blog. She goes to literary festivals, does interviews and public readings, writes for magazines and teaches. Her blog includes book reviews as well as reports on some of the above-mentioned activities. She also includes guest bloggers. LiteraryMinded is visually attractive with its many photos and videos. Also, it is a useful writer's resource with many links related to writing and publishing.