The internet hosts a surge of personal blogs and websites on virtually any topic one can imagine of. Getting published on the cyber platform nowadays is possible for anyone who wishes to do so. The trend in creating blogs may have begun on a more casual side of the spectrum. It has however, gradually evolved into a highly competitive and refined form of media that people can turn to for instant news and updates. What this means to a serious blogger or a web designer is that with so many competition around, one has to produce high quality work in order to get any recognition. The characteristics of a good website varies from one style to another but there are certain traits that are shared by all popular websites.
A good website not lonely caters to the aesthetic tastes of an audience, but also to its intellectual demands. A well laid out website with an easily accessible network of interconnected links makes surfing easier while well presented text and multimedia is essential for quality content. Accessibility of information is a commonly shared trait of highly viewed websites. One cannot expect flooding traffic into their website if the content is not driven towards a particular niche. It is important to specialize content, at least in the initial stages of the website, in order to exhibit the strengths of your website and of yourself as an author. Building a good website requires viewers to realize that you, as an author, work on presenting a well-defined genre that you are knowledgeable about. One cannot simply be writing all over the place.
It would be safe to assume that you would not keep going back to a restaurant where the services are inconsistent and service hours completely random and unspecified. Likewise, if a website is seldom updated and that too at the whim of the author, regular visitors to the website will be few, if any. When writing an article for a website, or otherwise, the processes of writing and thought generation should complement each other. One should not come in the way of another. Peter Rorabaugh of Hybrid Pedagogy refers to writing as an organic process that ‘develops in non-linear clusters’ and the ‘compositions move through particular stages with a goal in mind, but the process takes precedence over the product.’ And this corresponds to the idea of free writing – writing continuously without stopping to check any mistakes – presented by author David Rossenwasser in his book “Writing Analyically”. Allowing yourself to write whatever comes to your mind without a filter often lets you come up with new ideas and connections that might not have occurred otherwise.
Sean Michael Morris emphasizes on the importance of the opening sentence to capture the intrigue of the readers. Apart from that it also allows the reader to preconceive the contents of a piece and then decide for themselves if they want to continue reading or not. Rossenwasser identifies brevity, communication, organization, credibility, transparency, accountability, readability and scan-ability as some of the principles of good writing, as well as that of a good blog or a website. Since blogs allow room for more personal input than other traditional media like the newspaper, passion and knowledgeable opinion if articulated well can have a strong impact on the audience. It is always a good idea, especially if you plan on creating a large following for your website, to keep your writing simple. Simplicity allows one to convey a message to larger audiences with less chances of confusion, and thus to get your point across.