I have to say that I would also avoid many marketing types (I am one of those I’ afraid), most have no concept of why the web is different to traditional brochure copy. This is changing, but very slowly.

It is worth reading some of Jakob Nielsen’s post on copy, as things like front loading keywords are useful. They help both scannability and search engines correctly characterise the information. For example this article might have been titled “Web Copy – a roundup of recent posts”. The critical information is therefore in the eye path of the reader rather than them having to read the whole title, which many of them will not.

BBC news is also a great example of how to write a good headlines. Their few words manage to convey all the necessary information into a short space that conveys what the person will read in an article.

If you are wondering why this is important, remember the story of the $30M button. That was essentially a copy change. Even a well designed site you can often double or more click through rates by optimising the copy. That makes a huge difference to a companies bottom line and that is really hard to ignore.

btw – Still love this podcast! I have been listening since episode 1 and have learned a lot from it. Can’t believe you are passed episode 150 and I am still listening. Well done!

“I have continually tried to encourage others to take their copy more seriously and tried to provide basic advice about writing f0r the web.”

Instead of f0r it should be for!!!

Thanks for the great post don’t mind what I wrote above. Just playing!

• Efrain