Writing for the web is quite restrictive. Not only must the writer demonstrate good writing skills, he must, through his content, find a way to move people and encourage their readers to take action.
Achieving all of these feats is more or less complex and you need to have a well-established process to optimize your chances of having excellent content each time. That’s why today I’m going to reveal the common mistakes that most web editors make.
If you don’t have an idea of these, this infographic can help you discover them.
Here are some common mistakes to avoid in web writing. I hope it will be useful to you. Good reading !
Infographics
The 11 common mistakes to avoid in web writing
1. Instantly seek to overcome writer’s block
Write block, better known as writing block blank page syndrome is a situation that happens to any web editor regardless of their expertise. But keep calm, this is only a fleeting circumstance????
Indeed, writer’s block is quite simply a lack of inspiration that happens when developing your ideas for writing the article. It generally results in a lack of enthusiasm on the part of the editor. Several factors may be responsible for this blockage. For example, it could be:
- you stress ;
- a theme that is unknown to you and that you are tackling for the first time;
- the environment in which you find yourself;
- fatigue or even exhaustion;
- the fear of disappointing.
In which case, it is often recommended to do not force writing. It is true that the customer has given you a deadline to respect and work ethics dictate that you quickly release the order. Except that in these conditions, you risk negatively affecting the quality of your content.
In fact, you will make grammatical mistakes that you have never made before or you will make spelling mistakes that you can easily avoid. Worse, the client will feel that you are not a professional and that you are pretending to master the subject they asked you to write about. However, it is nothing.
What you should do to avoid blocking is simply to stop writing content even for a short time. So give yourself a break, you deserve it. Listen to music, watch videos on YouTube or Tik Tok.
Either way, if you want to write your article well, avoid spontaneously overcoming your writer’s block. Finally, you have to understand that you are not an android, am I kidding ????.
In fact, just remember that you are first and foremost a human and in that, you may not be inspired every time. Here are five tips you can use to avoid writer’s block.
- Reread your old articles or reread what you’ve already written on your topic before you lose inspiration.
- Put back or put some order into your notes.
- You can also consider leaving writing the article for the moment and continuing your research on the topic in the meantime.
- You can also watch videos or films on the subject.
- Simply close everything and take a walk to get some fresh air.
In any case, a break of 30 minutes to 1 hour can never have a negative impact on the content, quite the contrary. And speaking of content, you should know that the stage of editing an article is a key element that the web editor must absolutely consider.
2. Skip the editing step
Editing by the web editor must be seen as art of showing the full extent of one’s writing skills. This ability is sometimes enough to distinguish the average web editor from the exceptional. This is why you absolutely must not skip the editing stage.
In my article on the anatomy of a web editor, you can see that writing ability is the first characteristic of a web content creator.
Thus, whether he is experienced or has a doctorate in Modern Literature, it sometimes happens that due to lack of inattention or simple dozing off, he makes small mistakes.
Therefore, it is very important to apply good writing practice. Indeed, good practice would be that the editor can allow some time to pass between the writing stage and the editing stage. All he will have to do is come back to his article to gain new perspectives.
So, if the latter has ideas to reformulate or small typos to correct, it will greatly improve the originality of its content. However, this is only the editing stage. So what about the proofreading stage?
3. Neglecting the proofreading stage
Proofreading your content may seem trivial to you. But by paying particular attention to this step, you will realize that the latter is by far the most important. You are probably wondering why?
Proofreading your content actually allows you to quickly detect small grammatical errors. In itself, the French language is quite complex because the same word in its vocabulary can be used in several contexts.
So, in your paragraphs or sentences, if you make syntactic or morphological errors, you will negatively affect the meaning you want to bring to your initial idea. This is when we realize the importance of proofreading.
In principle, the slightest mistake when typing the words in your content gives a bad impression of the writer that you are. However, this embarrassing situation can be easily avoided just by rereading.
You must read and reread your article, taking the time to ask yourself the right questions. Among others, here are the main ones:
- Did I provide a concrete response to the title of my article?
- Is my article well structured and harmonious?
- Are my sentences well formulated?
- What about the punctuation of my content?
- Does the reader understand the ideas I have developed?
- Are the rules of web writing (number of words per sentence, white space, line spacing, etc.) respected?
4. Failure to present evidence
According to the scribeur website, 69 907, is the number of searches carried out every second on Google. You will then understand with me that the web editor must sometimes provide statistically correct data that concretely illustrates the ideas it is trying to develop.
In principle, Internet users go to websites to find different solutions as quickly as possible. The latter are constantly looking for justified, well-illustrated and lie-free answers, but you already know that, I’m not telling you anything.
Thus, to satisfy the curiosity of Internet or mobile users, it is recommended to use key figures that come from authoritative sources. By working in this way, you give weight to your content and therefore a better bounce rate for the site.
The inability to properly provide said evidence is one of the recurring errors that web editors often make, calling into question the quality of their content. The other mistake is ignorance of your readers.
5. Not knowing who your readers are
Desires, convictions, apprehensions or difficulties of your audience, whether one or the other, the web editor must adapt to the profiles of his readers. Indeed, one of the missions of the content creator is to move their audience and encourage them to action.
In this sense, he becomes more or less a marketer. Eh, yes ! In fact, every web editor must know the interests, needs and preferences of their audience. If he can’t, he should at least try. This is professionalism.
The web editor must find a subtle way to get into the heads of his readers, just like how a marketer gets into the heads of his consumers to offer them suitable offers.
6. Omit the outlining step
Outlining is the act of drawing up a plan to properly structure the content of your article. Many web editors begin writing their content without defining a plan, especially when they are beginners.
What they forget is that the definition of a writing plan gives any web content the structure it needs to achieve its writing goals. It also gives him good points of reference for prioritizing the different subtitles which serve as a springboard.
Finally, outlining facilitates the Internet research stage and the writing process, allowing you to save time when creating content.
7. Not knowing your tempo is also a mistake in web writing
Between the pressure of delivery and the quality of content, web editors are often faced with a tempo problem which sometimes influences the entire work process.
Having a good tempo does not mean being fast enough. Even less, be slow enough. The right tempo is the fact of find the right balance between speed and slowness. In other words, the web editor must know his pace of development.
To do this, he must not give in to pressure, because the web content writer has enormous potential. As such, it is up to him to concentrate in order to find the cadence or rhythm that makes him more productive and better relaxed.
8. The almost abusive use of indefinite pronouns
Indefinite pronouns are one of the subcategories of the large class of pronouns. They are indefinite since they refer to an element of a vague, uncertain and imprecise nature. So logically, by using it in writing your content, you risk making your readers perplexed, confused and under-informed.
In any case, in web writing, the use of indefinite pronouns is not prohibited, you just have to learn to make good use of it in the creation of your content. The reason for this fact is very simple.
Indeed, it is absolutely necessary to understand that indefinite pronouns make your content less clear and less natural. These most often embarrass your audience. It is therefore better to avoid them as much as possible.
9. Favor quantity over quality
Writing a lot of content means absolutely nothing if the quality is not there. In absolute terms, the performance of a web editor is not demonstrated by the number of words written daily.
On the contrary, The effectiveness of the web editor is only felt by the quality of the content he has written. Quality content is simple, understandable, accessible, realistic and original. This is content that meets Google standards and meets visitor expectations.
In any case, it is better to write little, but well. And writing well also means that you have to work on your words when writing sales content.
10. Center your writing focus solely around advertising
Selling content is a special type of content that promotes and sells something.
Generally, it is either a service or a product on demand in a specific sector of activity. The writing of these types of content obeys a few writing rules that are sometimes different from those of simple writing of content such as that of a blog.
In any case, even if your writing intention is to advertise a product or service, you should not exclusively center your article around promotion. You must first seek to provide value to your audience. Moreover, regardless of the type of content, satisfying your audience must be your main objective.
11. Keyword stuffing
Overuse of keywords in any type of content is the ultimate mistake that must be avoided at all costs in writing your content.
Indeed, Hummingbird, the major update of Google’s algorithm in 2013, shows that excess keywords are not the solution to ranking better in your SERPs.
Instead, you must seek to absolutely write original content that focuses more on originality, writing ease, naturalness… But last but not least, put readers at the center of your SEO efforts.
In summary
This infographic has faithfully recalled the various common errors that we generally comment on as web editors. At the same time, it serves to provide advice to each of them. I hope that having an overview of common mistakes in web content writing will help you avoid them in your future writing. See you soon for other articles!
