News article about moving house written by Bold Type for Liza McKilliam's real estate website

When writing for the web – indeed, for any particular website – it’s important to consider what will interest the visitors to that website. For those interested in buying and selling homes, moving house is inevitable. That’s why a recent article written by Bold Type for Liza McKilliam’s real estate website is all about moving house.

It’s apparently true that 43 per cent of households in Australia have moved at least once in the last five years and 49 per cent had moved more than three times so, for many Australians, finding out how to take the stress out of moving is of interest.

Writing content for the web for different businesses is one of the services we offer at Bold Type. We can also manage your Email Marketing System, writing and sending regular emails to clients.

Contact Bold Type to discuss how we can help you.

Visit Liza McKilliam’s real estate website – a website designed and developed by Bold Type.

Clear writing is essential for webpage content

Writing content on a webpage? Check your text against these 12 tips.

1. Content needs to be clear, concise and easy to read – that’s it.
2. Headings and sub-headings need to be clear and mean something – avoid puns and other attempts at humour and forget clever – just make sure that headings explain the text that follows.
3. More important information should be at the top of the page.
4. Use simple sentence structures. More full stops rather than lots of connective words in any sentence. That’s it. You’ve got it.
5. Paragraphs should also be concise – try to limit to 50 words.
6. As with any good writing – one paragraph, one concept.
7. Think about the fold line on a webpage. Keeping content above the fold line avoids having to scroll down, down, down.
8. Bullet point lists should be used – short, concise, easy to read (see no. 2)
9. Include keywords and phrases and keep the content on the page focused on the main topic (don’t introduce five different topics on the one page unless it’s a landing page linking to other pages).
10. Here’s another thing: add links to other webpages that relate to the same subject matter.
11. Direct the language to the user. Write about features and benefits to the audience. Avoid brag-speak but keep it conversational.
12. Add an image or two to break up text into easy to find ‘chunks’.

More articles about creating websites

Make your website work for you

Writing news for the web

Engineer Your Career website

Converting text from a traditional print format to a web-style format requires more than a traditional structural (substantive) edit and copy edit. The flow of a print document is linear. The same content on-screen requires a completely different navigational system.

Recently, I was given the job to edit an Engineering Careers Manual which had been written in the traditional print format and to rearrange the content for publishing online.

The project was undertaken in two phases: firstly, the development of a web-based template that included all the headings and content as it will be presented for on-screen reading, secondly, transferring content from the manuscript to the appropriate webpage of the newly-created web template. For example, website references in the printed manuscript were often repeated on several pages (very appropriate for printed documents). In the web template, these appear on one page called ‘Links’ and hyperlinks were created from different content pages to this one page. The creation of navigation bars, menus and hyperlinks to ensure easy navigation by visitors was also a significant part of this project.

A webpage from Engineer Your Career website

Phase two included a complete structural edit followed by a copy edit. Whether print or online content, the editor’s role is much the same including:

• checking consistency of the heading/text organisation and suggesting any restructuring to improve readability and navigation
• eliminating any duplicated or repetitive text and modification of style: for example, table to prose, prose to bullet list, converting text to pull quotes (break out boxes
  making sure that the language is consistent and applicable to the target audience and  checking for gender, ethnicity, age biases
• making changes to sentence construction, grammar, syntax, and ensuring the consistent usage of punctuation, numbers, abbreviations, use of bold, italics and other publishing devices.

And finally, as part of the Bold Type service, a project style sheet and an editorial checklist of significant issues was submitted with the newly-transformed web-ready content.

Contact Sue Stevens at Bold Type for a quote editing print manuscripts, online content or converting text from print to the web.

Writing for the web – it helps to have the right equipment

Adding content to a website on a regular basis is not just about writing any old stuff as we sometimes see on Facebook and Twitter. If you are a business, the content should be about your niche market and appeal to the people you want to attract as customers. It should also be focused on one aspect of the business.

If the new webpage of content is about, say, ‘writing for the web’, stick to the topic. Adding content on that page that is about other things will do you no favours in terms of search engine optimisation.

Google searching robots become confused if they can’t get a handle on what the webpage is about. And your audience will probably turn off too.

A ‘news’ section on your website is good for business

Having a news section on your website allows you to highlight aspects of your business, write about special deals, talk about new products and services and give your clients the latest industry news. Websites that are current and have content added regularly are perceived as influential. Companies that have dynamic websites are perceived themselves as dynamic companies of influence.

While you focus on business, we can write content for your website

Bold Type writes news updates and other web content for our clients. While Bold-Type websites are easy to use (add and modify content), some clients want to focus on what they do best – manage their business – so they outsource the writing and editing to us. Regularly added new web content improves the website and helps improve the site’s search engine rankings. This means more visitors and more potential clients coming from the Internet.

Read about the 12 tips for writing great web content.

Glitterbox website is a unique design that captures the essence of this hair salon in Newtown Sydney

The Bold Type team – web designer, developer, content editor and project manager – have just completed the unique and quite wonderful website for Glitterbox, a unique and quite wonderful hair salon in Newtown.

Sue Stevens, who managed the project, researched hairdressing websites from salons all over the world including New York, San Fransisco and London, not to mention others in Sydney and Melbourne too. Not that we wanted to copy any, but it was good to see what is happening in the world of hair salon websites. Not much was the verdict!

Armed with the belief that we could set a new standard in devising a uniquely designed hair salon website using the open source software, Wordpress, the design team went to town – Newtown to be exact.

The result is a website that reflects the energy of the salon itself. It is also SEO friendly so that more visitors are finding the salon when searching for a hair salon. Also, it can be managed easily by the team at Glitterbox without having to pay ongoing costs to a web expert. It’s a win-win-win situation. We, at Bold Type, just love to see our clients happy. And we’re thrilled to be able to give them exactly what they want – a website that is uniquely theirs.

Link to Glitterbox hair salon, Newtown

Contact Sue for a free consultation about your website needs.

• Project managed the development of affordable, individualised, dynamic websites that give proprietors complete control over their primary marketing asset: their website. See website portfolio for recently developed websites.
• Produced a non-fiction list from conception to market – series of 45 full-colour illustrated books
• Developed a business website with 3000 pages of quality online content that had exceptional search engine optimisation (SEO) – keyword search results that consistently appear on page one of Google (the world) – the website included an online directory, resource centre, ecommerce shopping facility and Web 2.0 community interactivity
• Project managed the development of online policies, processes and procedures for a state government department – included training sessions for writers, and structural and copy editing of online content
• Produced educational books, CD-ROMs and webpages for students and teachers from K–12 for Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australian education departments and educational publishing houses
• Written publishing style manuals that incorporated print and online publishing standards to ensure consistency across all business communications and publishing products
• Production management of print and electronic resources including substantive editing and copy editing, and developing art briefs, copyright schedules and print specifications

Publishing network

Bold Type has an established network of publishing professionals including writers (online and print), editors, graphic designers, illustrators, indexers, typesetters and proofreaders.

If you need someone to manage a team of publishing professionals to meet your website or print publishing needs, contact Sue at Bold Type.

Academic record

• 2005 Doctor of Philosophy, University of Sydney
• 1997 Bachelor of Arts Humanities, first-class honours, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
• 1994 Bachelor of Arts, Australian and Comparative Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

Sue’s academic career includes tutoring in the sociology department at Sydney University, writing academic papers and presenting papers at academic conferences.

On completion of her undergraduate degree, Sue won one of six Griffith University Scholarships for Women which enabled her to complete her Honours program with first-class Honours.

For a free consultation and quote for your next web publishing or print publishing job, contact Sue Stevens.