Don’t click here – avoid verbs?
The good folks at W3C offer lots of web tips and recommended practices.
Recently, we came across a QA Tip on the language of links. Naturally, as this relates to online copywriting, we thought we’d weigh in with some heavy thinking of our own.
In a nutshell, the advice regarding links is to:
- Provide some info if the link is read out of context (i.e. scanned by the reader)
- Explain what the link offers
- Don’t talk about mechanics
- Avoid verb phrases
Most of this seems like good advice. For example, it’s recommended that you say:
Get Amaya
instead of
To download W3C’s editor/browser Amaya, click here.
This is sensible. To a reader who is scanning the page, “click here” is pretty meaningless. And likewise, “Get Amaya” is just plain more concise and better copywriting that the second phrase.
But what about the advice to avoid verbs? For instance, on a page written in the first person, how should one handle Contact Me? Is it:
Contact Me?
or
Contact Me?
Here’s one more example: when we want to download something, we noticed that our usual habit is to scan the page for the word “download” in the body text (if there isn’t a big honking download button). So, we’d recommend:
Download Amaya
as opposed to:
Download Amaya
Our reasoning is that on a page that may have many “Amaya” links, the word “Download” will stand out and draw the viewers attention.In all fairness, this QA Tip from W3C was written in 2001 by Aaron Schwartz and descended from thinking by Tim Berners Lee back in 1992. Much respect to both!
Here at Online Copywriter, we’re sensing a sea change when it comes to links using verbs. Are verbs still verboten?
Tell us what you think. Or tell us what you think. Whatever.
Astroturfing
Jeff Bernoff writes in Groundswell about a new series of short documentaries from DuPont appearing across the internet.
The post talks about how DuPont took the high road – they paid for media space to run their shorts on places like Boing Boing instead of just uploading it to YouTube and pretending it was viral. He uses an interesting phrase: “they were smart enough not to take the astroturf route.”
We’d never heard that term before (being hideous Luddites), but it makes perfect sense. Astroturf is kind of the metaphoric opposite of home grown or grass roots – it’s a plastic, lifeless product, not something organic and natural.
Jeff’s story took us over to the New PR AntiAstroturfing homepage. Where have we been? This stuff is great reading for any online copywriter.
Mary Bellis at About.com informs us that Astroturf was rolled out in 1966 at the Astrodome, the new ballpark of the Houston Astros. Clever, huh? For a while, Astroturf was all the rage. But over the last decade, there has been a backlash in favor of natural turf. Newer stadiums like the re-furbished Camden Yards and the Durham Bulls Athletic Park have real grass on the playing field.
Turns out nobody like Astroturf.
Thanks, Jeff, for updating our vocabulary.
Hiding Your Email Address from Spambots
Ted Vaden, the Public Editor of the News & Observer, blogged last week about a Do-Not-Deliver registry for (junk) phone books akin to the Do-Not-Call registry for Spam Phone Calls.
How about junk email? The Washington Post estimated in 2003 that junk email cost U.S. businesses over $10 billion in wasted time, server space and bandwidth.
For every business that has a website, this problem is particularly acute. You want to post your email address so people can contact you. But if you do, the spambots will find you, harvest the address and sell it to data miners. You can expect an ever-increasing flow of junk to the listed email address.
We’ve just released a short, downloadable QA Tip “How to Hide your Email Address from Spambots” as it relates to business and personal websites.
Hiding your email address from spambots is quick, easy and doesn’t require any advanced web skills. Viewers won’t notice any difference – they’ll be able to see your address and contact you freely. But you’ll be invisible to the data harvesters.
We’ve also included a link to Enigma’s Email Obfuscator, a free tool that can help you baffle the ‘bots.
Now if only we could figure out what to do with those phone books.
Download the whitepaper:
How to hide your Email Address from Spambots
Woman vs. Female
Word-maven William Safire writes today on the subject of woman vs. female in contemporary usage.
We’re longtime Lexicographic Irregulars, but this column seems particularly important for copywriters. Not sure why, just a vague alarm bell going off somwhere that usually signals an impending trip to the couch with a blanket and pillow.
Safire’s always been a troublemaker.
Getting your blog indexed by Yahoo
Here’s a great tip from All About Google Adsense that tells you how to quickly and easily get your blog indexed by Yahoo.
No code, no programming – here at Online Copywriter, we love that!
Basically, you just need a My Yahoo account. Then you configure your homepage content to include your own feed. Presto! Yahoo is now indexing your blog.
Thanks to Andy Beal
Before we get too far along with this blogging thing, we need to thank Andy Beal, Marketing Pilgrim and blogging guru.
Andy generously spent the better part of an afternoon last autumn talking with our writer Hal Goodtree and others about the nuances and techniques of writing a successful blog.
It’s taken us a while to gestate the information. But, as Ann Landers used to say, it’s never too late to say thanks.
Great writing: Jim Shea
Jim Shea of the Hartford Courant is one of our favorite writers here at Online Copywriter.
Check out this article (printed in Saturday’s News & Observer) in which he handicaps the presidential contenders in the voice of sports announcer Dick Vitale.