Just as a business report demands a very different writing style from an article in a girlie mag, so writing for websites has developed into a writing 'genre', complete with a certain style and formula for success. Below are some pointers I use when copywriting for the web.

Know your audience A very important starting point when writing for a website is to know who your audience is, and then write in a style which will appeal to them. Tone, structure, choice of language and even punctuation will be affected by your audience.

Relax One of the reasons I enjoy copywriting for websites so much is that this genre of writing allows more freedom and creativity than, say, writing for a company brochure. The tone of web writing is generally more informal, as though your reader is closer to you through the computer screen. This friendly approach can be used to good effect in building relationships with visitors to your site, especially if your site is commercial. Having said that, it's important to maintain a level of professionalism within your copywriting, and not overstep the mark.

Keep it simple Nowhere is it more important to simplify your writing than on a website. Web copywriting should be short and to the point. No long sentences, no long paragraphs, and not too much text on each page. If you need to convey a lot of information, break it down into more pages. You will lose your reader's interest if their eyes are overloaded with a mass of weighty text, or if they have to scroll down and down to reach the bottom of your page.

Keywords If you're writing for a website and it's important that the site be popular in search engines, you need to keep your keywords in mind. The trick is to cleverly weave these words into your text. Don't just plonk them anywhere and everywhere so that your reader is assaulted by a barrage of keywords (very obvious and off-putting) - work on the text to integrate them. So, if my keyword is 'copywriting', I wouldn't overdo it as in: My copywriting business involves copywriting for charities and copywriting for corporates. Instead, I would try to work 'copywriting' in every few sentences, but only where it made sense to include it (have a look back over this article now and you'll see what I mean).

Get it 'perfectly write' There's nothing more off-putting to a reader than typos. Proofread your text several times. You may find it hard to notice typos on a screen, so print off the copy, take a break, then read it through on paper.