Five Steps to the Perfect Online Text

Author: Kurt Schauer

Writing online texts is an art defined by exact rules. Before you write your next blog post, a product description, a CV or a cover letter to your customers, it is therefore best to follow the rules below. They guarantee that your texts on the internet are not only found but also positively rated by your customers.

Five Steps:

Defining Goals and Style
Keyword Planning
Creating a Structure
Also Important: SEO
Perfection as a Goal

1. Defining Goals and Style

What do you want to achieve with your text? Are you writing for serious business clients or for a target audience you treat more informally? If you fail to address your target audience correctly, you will not reach them, regardless of the rest of your text’s content. You will not reach young people with a formal „Sie“ style, just as you won’t reach seasoned lawyers with an informal „Du“ tone. Plan what goal you want to achieve and what type of text is best suited for the intended content. Trust us when we say that efficient planning will save you a lot of time – even if you’d prefer to start writing immediately.

2. Keyword Planning

While pure keyword stuffing has not led to good rankings with established search engines for many years, you should still define some keywords (or keyword groups) around which your text revolves. Explore synonyms and thematically related terms, and analyze which keyword has the greatest potential with your target audience. It is advisable to establish your own niche and use less frequently searched keywords. There, the competition is much smaller, and your share of the pie grows. Young companies, in fact, have no chance against the established heavyweights of the industry for very common keywords.

3. Creating a Structure

The plan is in place, but not the structure: Either at the beginning or at the very end, develop a heading that accurately reflects the content of the text in as few words as possible. Start with an introduction of perhaps 30 words, in which you pose an interesting question to the reader. Structure the text with subheadings so that the reader can follow a clear thread. Depending on the type of text, also use bullet points and lists, for example, to present facts about technical products. Once the content of the text is complete, you should consider enhancing it visually with images. This makes it easier for the reader to visualize a described product.

4. Also important: SEO

Many simple SEO measures continue to lead to success: Distribute the keywords identified in step 2 and thematically similar terms throughout the text. Remember image captions and subheadings from step 3. Do not forget the meta description and under no circumstances exceed the maximum character length of 155 words. Also, create a short, catchy headline for your website that summarizes the core content in 50 to 60 characters. You should also include links to other relevant pages – preferably on text passages that are meaningful. Combine all the mentioned measures, and you will reward Google, Bing, and other search engines.

5. Perfection as a Goal

Finally, read the entire text again. Remove any spelling and punctuation errors, as these indicate a lack of professionalism. Consider expression and comprehensibility: write in simple, understandable sentences and avoid convoluted trains of thought. If necessary, have a neutral third party proofread the text. Furthermore, spell-check programs are helpful, but they are rarely error-free. Ideally, you are either „proficient“ in spelling yourself, or you entrust the text to a person who can complete the task without errors. Do not hesitate to pay this person if necessary. Professionalism has its price.

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Eliana Gramer

Head of Web/Digital