Your web content (and everything else you write for business) is treated as data. Therefore:
- Write headlines and page titles that describe the document or give its key message.
- Write a summary of the document straight after the headline.
- In link-text, put key information about the page people will jump to (not “Click here”).
Virtually every time you write a business or professional document, it exists in electronic form. That electronic document is electronically labelled and stored in various electronic ways—not in a metal filing cabinet. And it will be treated as data, so that other people can find the document when they search.
The internet is hyperspace, with multiple dimensions, and that’s where your document lives.
- Entire web pages are lump of data that can be re-used in many places.
- Headlines and summaries are crucial bits of data that can appear in many places.
- Other data that’s obviously re-usable: contact details, share prices, corporate information, news items, photographs, slides, information… I could go on all day.
That data can be used and found in 1,000 places simultaneously (not just on the original piece of paper). For example, it could pop up in Google search results, on other web sites, in spreadsheets and PDFs, in Google Docs, online newspapers, on FaceBook and Twitter.
Writers, these fundamental facts about modern communication mean we need to write in a particular way. Picture your words in hyerspace—or at least in a different context: they should still make sense.
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