How to write a minimalist content
Writing for the Web is a parallel between the journalism. The inverted pyramid, main points highlighted with compelling headlines etc. work on the Internet.
There are plenty of reasons, why to think through seriously journalistic principle. In this article I emphasize two of them, a human factor and search engines.
It’s a human nature of searching meaningful clues
As you know from your own experiences, we tend to scan webpages in a hurry. What the headline and subheadings will tell? Are they relevant links?
We have a very short attention span and desire to get main points quickly.
Provided that it’s a quality written content that triggers us stop. If we consider it as a valuable, a change reading through, printing out, sharing or downloading the article/content is higher.
Messy and chaotic content distracts and drive us away within the seconds.
Journalism, inverted pyramid and SEO
Search engines welcome the structured (semantically) and well-written and concise content.
Spiders that used to crawl and index the content of web services from the top to the bottom focus on mainly headlines, descriptions, subheadings and keywords.
It’s the relevance and technical accessibility, what matters in the case of search engines.
On the other hand the inverted pyramid means that the main points has been structurally displayed the first. Readers can easily read headlines and first paragraphs and understand the main point of the article.
That’s why the content and SEO go together hand in hand. Both are trying to make sense and get clues of usefulness of the content.
Some tips for web-editing texts
When you are web-editing and shortening the text, the following points tips might be handy.
It’s worth remembering that the simpler content, more work must be done.
Like a journalist, as web-editor you could do the following:
- Sketching. Take a piece of paper and sketch out your thoughts. Try to find 2-3 points by keeping your audience in your mind.
- Drafting. Write down the 1st version without worrying about how the text flows.
- Revising. Now is time to revise and get the second opinion on draft. Concentrate on the structure and grammar by simplifying text into small readable chunks.
- Publishing. When the text has been finished, it’s easier to use headlines, summaries and main keywords for optimizing it for search engines.
Use downloadable PDFs/documents
If you must deliver detailed articles on the Internet, provide e.g. downloadable PDFs. They are easier to print out.