Writing an article for your website or a blog post is a great way to share what you have learned with others. This guide can be used to prepare a news item, article, or blog post for your website or your organisation’s website.

You should always keep your audience in mind when writing for the web (or for social media for that matter).

Here’s some advice to help you get started.

Title

• Keep it short (< 10 words)
• Make it catchy, intriguing, easy to read, ask a question (if possible)
• Goal: Focus on the main message of the article, catch the attention of the reader, define the question that the article will address
• Use the main keyword

Tags

• List the keywords that the article is about
• List any page(s) on the website that the article refers to

Teasing sentence(s)

• Goal: Create interest, encourage the reader to read the article
• Use your main keywords
• Short and active sentences (100-200 words max)

Content

Introduction

• Right after the teaser sentence(s), this explains what the article will address
• Use keywords

Subheadings

• Break up the content into different parts
• Use your keywords
• Help the reader understand what this part of the text is about
• Help the reader skip to the most relevant part(s) for them

Paragraphs

• Make it easy for the reader to read the article
• Use paragraphs with 6–12 sentences max (50-100 words)

Quotes

• Use a strong quote which makes a clear point
• 10–30 words max

Conclusions/recommendations

• Sum up the main takeaway messages from the article
• Add one or two recommendations for future work on the topic of the article

CTA (Call to Action)

• Explain simply to the reader what you would like them to do now

Length

• An article for the website should be between 500 and 1000 words max (shorter is possible too)
• Longer articles may be published on a LinkedIn profile and a shortened version shared on your website

Illustrations and links

• Suggest a picture or graphic to accompany your article
• The image should refer to the keywords or core takeaway messages
• You can use Unsplash for freely-usable images (use attribution provided, e.g. Photo by … on Unsplash)
• Link to other relevant pages referred to in the article

Want to know more?

Drop us a line at syper@syper.eu. We'll be happy to hear your thoughts and help you.