A single web page addresses a single topic. As the amount of information on your site grows, each page’s ability to walk this fine line grows more important.

Include the right amount of information—no more—and give the visitor a clear set of next steps. (You may have heard of these next steps referred to as “calls to action.”)

Even as a writer, you are also a designer.

Technorati Tags: ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, Design, design, glass case, ia, indexed, information architecture, information design, jessica hagy, Writing

If you only had 11 characters to describe your content, what would your message say? As it turns out, sometimes that’s all that you can get people to “see” when they’re scanning for links to click. This puts importance on how you’re using those first couple words in your page titles, but it also has a ton of implications for things like your headlines, headers, and how you start paragraphs.

I had an experience with this when I received an email summary from StumbleUpon.

First, I was annoyed that I couldn’t hover over the shortened links to see the full title. But then I just based my clicks on the information I had about each item: a photo and about 30 characters of text. Some good stuff may have gotten ignored because of shoddy page titles. For example, “Dailymotion – Part 6 – 3D” didn’t mean a lot to me, so I skipped over it.

More examples of where this limited information has quite a bit of influence:

• Search results
• Digg
• Delicious
• Shared links on Facebook
• Browser bookmarks
• Links from other sites and blogs

It’s interesting because this is hint about why “top 10 list” articles do so well (e.g. “10 photo editors to consider buying”). Including a number early in your title packs a lot of info into a minimal amount of text.

If you take this info to heart, it could really change the way you write. And it could lead to more exposure for your web content.

Technorati Tags: chris peters, clear crystal media, content, glass case, headlines, internet marketing, jakob nielsen, stumbleupon, usability, web content, Writing

My favorite sentence:

Many SEO consultants offer more SEO services than just content so if you already have a professional SEO writer you should ask that writer if he or she also does SEO consultations or provides other SEO services.

Your SEO consultant when providing their SEO service should never SEO consultant write just for the SEO search engines, but your SEO consultant should provide SEO consultations on providing SEO services to write for people. SEO services.

Technorati Tags: blooper, bloopers, ccm, chris peters, clear crystal media, funny, glass case, search engine optimization, Search Marketing, seo, Writing

As HTML knowledge is becoming more and more important for marketing in general, it would behoove you to know some of the ins and outs of HTML.

That said, here’s a little trick. It involves keeping some of your words together, even if they span across more than one line. This is done by using non-breaking spaces.

The secret code

This is pretty simple, actually, To force a web browser to treat 2 separate words as if they were 1, use the code   instead of a space, like so:

These two words are like one.

A practical example

You may have noticed that I added my most recent Twitter entry to this blog’s main page under What I’m Doing. I used a WordPress plugin called Simple Twitter.

When I first added this functionality to the sidebar, I noticed a little boo-boo when the words “(via Twitter)” ended up spanning more than a single line.

Here’s what it looked like:

Notice how “via” and “Twitter” span 2 lines. This makes it a tad less scannable. The 2 words belong together!

So I changed my code to read as such:

(via&nbsp;<a href="http://www.twitter.com/ccmedia">Twitter</a>)

Now the words will stay together, no matter where they end up on the line:

Another good use: your brand

Another good place to use the non-breaking space is in your brand. Keep all the words together so that it doesn’t end up all fragmented:

Clear Crystal Media

This is truly a nit, but paying attention to the small details often makes a big difference in your design and content.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, design, html, internet marketing, marketing, web writing, Writing

Aaron Wall made a great point about the difference between articles and blog posts. Also some interesting discussion in the comments. (Especially the link to an article about the same subject by Jakob Nielsen, which I read at the time and then promptly did not apply to my situation.)

I’m sure that there are some industries that still need new blogs. But I currently sit in an industry with too many. Internet Marketing is probably one of the wortst industries to be a blogger in because there is so much noise and so many echoes about the same topics.

I don’t fancy myself as a top blogger, but I do enjoy it. I also feel that I have important stuff to say, so I’m going to treat that stuff differently than a blog post. This blog should be for bite-sized ideas, not lengthy articles.

For those of you who have been following along, that means that my mini-series about running an AdWords campaign is not going to be a series of blog entries, but rather a series of articles. Something didn’t feel right about the idea of the mini-series. I’m glad that I could figure it out.

Technorati Tags: aaron wall, alertbox, Blogging, internet, internet marketing, jakob nielsen, marketing, seo book, usability, Writing

Think about it: tabloid headlines must grab your attention immediately to get you to make that impulse buy. Sound anything like internet marketing? Hmm…

The post lists 54 headline templates that you should try using in your email blasts, search ads, and blog entries. Here’s a sample of the first 5:

• 100% of _______ you need
• How to ______ in ___ easy steps
• ________ on demand
• ________ from anywhere
• ________ from your home

The idea is that your headline will grab people’s attention on sites like Digg and Technorati. Attention equals good, grasshopper.

Photo credit: Tabloid by editorb. Some rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: adwords, Blogging, digg, Email Marketing, internet marketing, ppc, Search Marketing, technorati, web writing, Writing

If you’re anything like me, then it’s a good idea to write your posts when you have time and inspiration. Before publishing, set your blog to release your new entry in the future. And set the schedule so that your posts are being published at even intervals.

Blog readers feel more at ease when new entries are published at a consistent interval. The rhythm just feels good. And we don’t want a bunch of stressed-out readers now, do we?

If your goal is to write a post a day and Saturday is your only free day, then write 5 posts on Saturday. Then set your blog to release the stories while everyone’s at work. Your coworkers will wonder how you did so much great work on Tuesday and still released a high quality blog entry. I promise I’ll keep your secret if you keep mine.

So go get your magic flowing on your time. Any other tips for those of us trying to enhance our businesses with blogs? I love comments, and they don’t take much time for you to crank out, faithful readers!

Image credit: Writing words… by _StaR DusT_. Some rights reserved.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, internet, web, Writing

Here’s what the widget would look like if you installed it on your Mac:

The joke is that some people really do write this way. Do you? Maybe it’s time to trim out some unnecessary words on your website.

Technorati Tags: copy, copywriting, Design, marketing, web, web writing, Writing

Most web designers and web developers ignore accessibility

If you cater to those with visual impairments, then you will also reap benefits from the world’s most famous blind user: Google. I kid you not.

HTML, the document format of web pages, was designed to be consumed by those with vision impairments, not just by those of us with good eyesight. Once again, everyone has gotten lazy and hasn’t learned how to truly use HTML for this purpose. I’m going to point out a few things that should be done to help improve your site’s accessibility.

Hear it for yourself in a screen reader

A lot of visually impaired people use programs called screen readers. Because they cannot see the screen, they must have the computer read the content to them, which is what screen readers do. Most of us are removed from this because we don’t need to worry about it in our daily lives. But trying out a screen reader will change your views on how the Web really works.

There is a great simulation of a screen reader on a fake website called University of the Antarctic. (Shockwave plugin required.) This site emulates the experience of using a screen reader to navigate a fictitious university site. There’s no chance for you to cheat because they don’t show you what the site looks like. It even gives you sample tasks to complete to see how hard it really is to find what you’re looking for if you must use a screen reader.

The most popular screen reader out there is called JAWS. You can download a trial of JAWS here and try browsing your site. To really get a feel for using JAWS as it was intended, turn off your monitor.

“Legal compliance” and “good experience” are not the same thing

Most people that are aware of web accessibility will immediately rattle off that you must comply with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines. Fair enough. But there’s a huge difference between complying with standards and providing a good experience.

Especially with the WAI, the standards were designed to be computer-validated. This makes sense from a time-savings perspective, but not from a human perspective. Will a computer know whether or not your web site is confusing to the vision impaired? Heck no. That’s why you should do spot checks of your site’s most important sections using JAWS.

Best practices for improving accessibility

When writing for the Web, most experts recommend that you do the following:

• Use plenty of descriptive headers to mark what each section of your content is about
• Use descriptive words in your links, which exludes the usage of the ever-vague “click here”
• Avoid use of text in images; use regular text for text!
• Use proper alternative texts for images, especially ones that must contain text in them
• Don’t be too verbose in your wording: keep it simple

Some scenarios worth considering

These writing best practices are also intended to improve accessibility. If you do get a chance to play around with JAWS or the University of the Antarctic simulation, you’ll notice that there are options for just jumping around between different key page elements.

• A blind person often chooses to just jump to each link on the page. Imagine the usefulness of the screen reader reading this: “Click here.” Out of context, does that really tell you where that link leads?
• Another option is to just have the screen reader read page headers. The more descriptive you are in your headers, the more you’re helping someone figure out if they want to read that section of the page.

Accessibility best practices are for everyone

Those of us with full vision use the web very similarly to those who must use screen readers. Our eyes are drawn to the same elements that screen reader users choose to scan. We automatically gravitate towards links and headers because we’re in a hurry. The only difference is that we don’t have to hit a key on our keyboards to have these elements read to us.

So your accessibility improvements help everyone out, not just the blind.

Practicing what I preach

Notice that all blog entries on Glass Case use descriptive link texts and headers where appropriate. I also try to use descriptive alternative texts on all of my images where appropriate. Those of you using Internet Explorer can check it out by hovering over the images and seeing what the tooltip says.

How about you? How are you ensuring that you’re meeting everyone’s needs? How can you improve? Need specific advice from moi? Leave it in the comments!

Technorati Tags: accessibility, best practices, compliance, design, google, html, jaws, screen readers, section 508, seo, shockwave, target, w3c, wai, web, web accessibility, web writing, Writing

A key takeaway from the presentation:

Stop bragging. It’s disgusting.

Craft every element of your marketing campaigns around the value that you bring to your customers. Don’t brag about yourself. Nobody wants to hear it.

Technorati Tags: internet marketing, marketing, Social Media, web 2.0