The aim of our Writing for the Web course is to give your staff the skills to create website and intranet content that is clear and engaging.
The course begins by encouraging participants to consider what makes good web writing and involves them in developing criteria for effective content. It then provides detailed guidelines for meeting those criteria, covering issues such as structuring content and writing in a focused, reader-friendly style.
The essential skills for optimising content for search engines are also covered. These can help to improve your site’s rankings, but also tend to improve the user experience.
The course manual covers all the topics in detail and includes quick-reference sections and helpful checklists. Your staff will also benefit from a year of support from the tutor, giving them access to additional help and advice on all aspect of writing for the web.
Learning objectives
By the end of this course your staff will be able to:
identify what makes good online content
define what users want and provide it for them
structure and organise content to make it findable and useable
write clear, crisp content that keeps users involved
use links, summaries and attachments effectively
translate print material for the screen
match the tone of their content to your brand values
use keywords, headings and meta tags for search engine optimisation.
Morning session
Introduction
Understanding online readers
Identifying the challenges of online writing
Techniques to capture readers’ attention
What is good web writing?
Identifying good websites
Learning from the world’s best websites
Analysing good web writing
Taking Google’s advice
Agreeing the criteria for good web writing
Planning
The importance of planning
Being clear about why you are writing
Thinking about your visitors and what they want to know
Structuring web content
Key principles
How to structure material for a website or intranet
The differences between reading on screen and reading print
Using links, summaries and attachments effectively
Writing meaningful headlines
What makes a good headline?
Headline-writing techniques
Getting the style right
The global audience for websites
Being clear and concise
Rewriting print material for the web
Creating a style guide for web content
Afternoon session
Choosing the best words
Making words work for you
Guidelines for choosing words
Applying a tone of voice
What we mean by tone of voice
What the tone of your content says about your organisation
Matching your tone to your organisation’s brand values
Writing as part of search engine optimisation
How search engines work
Getting Google to work for you
The importance of keywords
Using keyword tools
Keyword relevance
Avoiding black-hat techniques
Creating effective crosslinks
Editing your content
Ensuring your visitors’ needs have been met
Reviewing the structure
Checking the content is clear and easy to read
Correcting errors in grammar, spelling and consistency
User testing
The value of testing your content on a group of intended users
How to get the most out of user testing
Further development
Reference sources
Post-course support
More information
The Writing for the Web course is available as an in-house course, which we would run at your premises. For more information,
click here.
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“The feedback I have received from the team has been extremely positive. We all felt the delivery, structure and content were just right.”
David Lindsay Intranet Content Manager Euroclear Bank
“The course has helped me to write more effectively for my target audience. The exercises and group discussions were particularly useful.”
Website Editor Eurostar
“The training was great and all the feedback was very positive. When we wrote some sample web pages at the end of the session I was amazed at the improvement. We’d definitely like to run the course again.”
Helen Grindley Information Manager Test Valley Borough Council
Running the Writing for the Web course in-house
The Writing for the Web course can be run as in-house training anywhere in the world. If you have a group of staff who need the same skills, this option is cost-effective and convenient.
Tailored to your needs
The length and content of this course can be tailored to match your needs. In addition to covering some
or all of the topics given in the
example programme, you may want to add topics that are particularly relevant to your
organisation.
Flexibility
An in-house course is fully flexible. Tell us what you want to achieve and we will work with you to design a course to match. Tell us when you would like to run it and we will find a date that suits you.
Free support
Every course we run comes with a year of free support for each participant. We recognise that people do not think of every question on the day of the training. Our support service gives them the opportunity to ask their tutor an unlimited number of questions in the year following the course. In this way they continue to build their skills and confidence.
Ask us for a quotation
The cost of an in-house course depends on a number of things, including its length, its location and how much preparation we need to do. We can readily give you a quotation, so please contact us to discuss your needs.
The aim of our Writing for the Web course is to give your staff the skills to create website and intranet content that is clear and engaging.
Learning objectives
Introduction