Either way, I try to give my content a certain look before I even put it up on my webpage. That’s right! I’m not writing this content on the webpage where it will show up, I’m writing it in MS Word, either right before I post it, or perhaps even days or weeks in advance.
You have a lot more power and freedom when you aren’t writing on your webpage, and some great tools. Let’s look at some ways to write content off-page, and touch upon all of the small things in the process.
- Bullets: Don’t bother with bullets when you’re writing your website content in MS Word. Lots of times when you go to copy/paste the content onto your webpage, the bullets won’t transfer well. I always just separate the bulleted information with a few returns. I also know all of the bulleted points before hand, usually because I have one main word at the start of each bullet block.
- Copy/Paste: When you write your website content pages in MS Word, or any other word processing application, you have the power to just copy and paste it right onto your webpage. This is great when you’ve got a lot of ideas for your content one day, but you might not want to put it up right away.
- Saving: You can save your content in MS Word, and you can also get the exact word count. A good rule of thumb for website SEO content is to have a minimum of 500 words. If you can continually check where you’re at, it will make a big difference in how much, and how fast you can write.
- Retrieval: When you write your website content off-site, you’re saving it on your computer. It’s a lot easier to go back and look at old posts if you don’t have to scroll through them all, or follow the links. Believe me, when you get up past 100 posts, you’ll appreciate seeing them all in a Windows folder.
- Pictures: I wouldn’t even focus on pictures when you’re writing your website’s content pages. I always have an idea of what pictures I’ll use when I’m writing, but I won’t go and retrieve those, either through finding them on the internet or getting them from my computer, until I’ve completely finished writing. And then I’ll put the writing up first before I insert the pictures.
- Captions: Another thing that I often see missing from website content pages are captions. When I see a picture, I want to know what it is right away; I don’t wan to have to dig through the text for a description. Put up a simple, to-the-point caption, and make sure it’s only a few words, or at most a very short sentence.