Good, dense text is the perfect material for a Web site. Automated search tools will locate and index your keyword-rich text, improving your page's ‘findability’ and search rank accordingly – a great compliment to your online advertising efforts.
In the first installment, I mercilessly hacked a perfectly good paragraph into shape, reducing it to 41 percent of its original word count.
Though an extreme example, it shows that I can put the same information into a smaller space, or put more information into the original space. Since you have about half a minute to draw your visitor in, this is very useful time.
Below are some observations of the edit process, for good or bad:
• Struck a number of very useful and informative sentences to minimize the word count.
• Lost some useless information, and some valuable information.
• Removed all traces of conversational style in favor of a terse information-dense format.
• Readability goes down as density increases; sometimes, looser text is more effective.
• Absolutely eliminated any florid or 'purple' prose.
• Sharpened the content so every sentence was a combination of valuable items previously discarded.
• Reorganized to group like content.
• Considered the flow of the paragraph, and put content in its best possible order.
• Didn't get attached to any sentence ─ if you really need to say it, go ahead, but do you really need to say it?
Below are some favorite techniques when writing for density:
• Avoid metadiscourse: "You can see that..." and "I think that..."
• Say it once only (unless summarizing a longer text).
• Convert passive voice to active.
• Use vivid mental imagery.
• Exact word choice matters enormously!
• You can always add it back later, but only if you remove it first.
• Write to concrete word count goals. This really strengthens your skills at deleting text while retaining its meaning via rewrites.
Remember: good writing is the cornerstone of both search engine optimization and effective Internet advertising for small businesses.
-- Contributed by Dan Lozano
In the first installment, I mercilessly hacked a perfectly good paragraph into shape, reducing it to 41 percent of its original word count.
Though an extreme example, it shows that I can put the same information into a smaller space, or put more information into the original space. Since you have about half a minute to draw your visitor in, this is very useful time.
Below are some observations of the edit process, for good or bad:
• Struck a number of very useful and informative sentences to minimize the word count.
• Lost some useless information, and some valuable information.
• Removed all traces of conversational style in favor of a terse information-dense format.
• Readability goes down as density increases; sometimes, looser text is more effective.
• Absolutely eliminated any florid or 'purple' prose.
• Sharpened the content so every sentence was a combination of valuable items previously discarded.
• Reorganized to group like content.
• Considered the flow of the paragraph, and put content in its best possible order.
• Didn't get attached to any sentence ─ if you really need to say it, go ahead, but do you really need to say it?
Below are some favorite techniques when writing for density:
• Avoid metadiscourse: "You can see that..." and "I think that..."
• Say it once only (unless summarizing a longer text).
• Convert passive voice to active.
• Use vivid mental imagery.
• Exact word choice matters enormously!
• You can always add it back later, but only if you remove it first.
• Write to concrete word count goals. This really strengthens your skills at deleting text while retaining its meaning via rewrites.
Remember: good writing is the cornerstone of both search engine optimization and effective Internet advertising for small businesses.
-- Contributed by Dan Lozano
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