Web Content Writing - The Summary

By Celeste Stewart

Summaries and Web Content

Writing content for the Web has become a writing style in its own right with short articles, bullet points and headings, brief paragraphs, and a friendly "voice" - all while conveying useful information to the reader. While many articles destined for the Web end up as standalone pieces on landing pages, others are buried within a site and introduced on other pages which link to the complete article. When this happens, a short summary is used to introduce the article and entice the reader to "read more."

Summaries are also used when an article is shared by others, such as when bloggers link to articles found on other blogs. In addition, depending on how you have your Web site set up, you can also use a summary in the page's meta description field. When the article appears in a search engine's results page, the summary will appear in the description area, enticing searchers to click the link.

Summaries on the Web are also known as "abstracts," "excerpts," "teaser copy," and similar terms. Regardless of the term used, summaries must prepare the reader for what's to come and whet the reader's appetite for more.

Web Summary Length

Web summaries, by design, are short and to the point. While different Web sites may have individual requirements, two or three sentences should be sufficient. The idea is to introduce the article and generate interest, not detail everything that the article covers.

Writing Web Summaries

As tempting as it may be to write "This article is about..." or "This Web site is about...," doing so is boring to the reader. If the reader is bored reading the summary, it's doubtful that he'll click the "read more" link. You may also be tempted to copy and paste the first paragraph into the summary field. This too will bore you reader. While your first paragraph may be interesting, relevant, and fresh, by the time your reader gets to your article, it will be old, redundant, and boring because he just finished reading the same text before clicking the "read more" link.

A better approach is to write a completely original summary for your article or blog post. You just wrote an entire article, so coming up with a few sentences describing it shouldn't be difficult. Try to mimic the tone of the article so that the voice of the summary matches the voice of the article. For example, if your article is humorous and light, so should the summary. On the other hand, if your article discusses a serious topic, you'd want the summary to have a more serious tone.

Twitter Summaries

In addition to writing a summary that introduces the article, consider writing a summary with Twitter in mind. Twitter's limit of 140 characters must be kept in mind as you write the summary as well as the length of the article's link. If you use a URL shortener such as Bitly which uses 20 characters, the longest your Twitter summary can be is 120 characters.

Writing compelling summaries for your Web content is a crucial skill that can lead to improved page views. Don't just copy and paste, write fresh, original content and make an excellent first impression.

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Celeste Stewart is a successful freelance writer and top-selling author at Constant-Content.com. These short summary tips can also be applied when writing short summaries for Constant-Content article submissions. For more Web content and specific Constant-Content writing tips, check out her Freelance Writing Tips eBook titled, Celeste Stewart's Secrets to Success on Constant-Content.com or visit Celeste Stewart's Web site.

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