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Once web content is written, a few more steps exist to polish it and prepare it for its target audience.
Whether your next step is to send an article to an editor or you’re self-editing something you’ve written, these best practices will make your content shine and ensure it’s ready to engage readers.
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If you are reading someone else’s content, the initial read is the first time you are setting eyes on the writing. Rather than try to write and edit at the same time, just read it through and try to experience it as your audience would without making changes.
Don’t stop reading to take notes or make edits. Read the piece from start to finish and gather your overall impression. To keep yourself from editing, read it aloud.
When the writing is your own, your eyes are all too familiar with the content. The best way to create some distance for an initial read is by reading it aloud. Speaking the written words slows you down and forces you to read what is there — not what your writer’s mind thinks should be there.
Review the content brief after you read the content and before you edit. Whether you are a self-editing writer or an editor assigned to the piece, studying the content brief acquaints you with the key messaging, target audience, quality standards, and detailed expectations of the content. This will be essential for the content editing step.
Don’t try to edit everything at once. It’s easy to miss big-picture edits when scrutinizing for subject-verb agreement and word choice, just as it’s hard to catch grammatical errors when focused on overall content organization.
Even if you are performing all the duties of writer and editor on your own, break the process down into content edits (big-picture) and copy edits (mechanics).
Splitting the work into separate rounds allows you to review different things each time to catch something you might otherwise miss if you overload yourself by cramming the whole process into one step.
Learn more about copy editing vs. content editing.
The first round of editing web content is called content editing. This high-level review addresses how well the content is hitting the mark.
Content edits examine the substance of the content itself. Start looking at the following aspects of the web content and evaluating whether edits might make the piece more successful.
If you were given a comprehensive content brief, that can be your guide to help judge where the content is hitting the target and where edits might help.
Specific areas might include:
These aspects of writing relate to the soundness of the content and how well it delivers the messaging to the intended audience.
Create a content editing checklist to ensure you check for all the important quality standards. Make comments along the way to note recommendations and suggestions for the writer (even if the writer is you).
Before shifting over to the next phase of editing, the content edits should be made. If you are the editor, this is when you turn the web content back to the writer for revision. If you are self-editing, this is the phase where you take off your editor’s hat and go back to writing.
For example, if it has been noted that the voice and tone aren’t on brand or the organization doesn’t follow a logical flow, these adjustments must be made before the content is reviewed for copy edits.
After the content edits have been made, read the piece aloud with the target audience in mind. If further edits are needed, work on them until the piece's substance is sound.
Copy editing is a phase of web content review focusing on technical aspects of the writing, like checking for grammar such as punctuation, spelling, and word choice. It should only be performed once the content edits are done.
Otherwise, you may spend too much time correcting grammar and punctuation when the substance of the content isn’t finalized yet, and you’ll need to start copy editing all over again.
In addition to looking for grammar and syntax, the copy-editing phase concentrates on:
This is a more detailed web content review of typos, inaccuracies, and other mistakes. A copy editor may also act as a fact-checker and content optimizer.
Where a content edit looks for the logical flow of the information, a copy edit will ensure the language flows well as written and the diction and word choice are polished.
Getting an outside perspective on your freshly edited web content is essential to learning how a reader will experience it. As a final quality-control step, have someone read it through. Mistakes are more easily caught by someone not involved in the other editing rounds.
If you are self-editing, step away from the writing before this final step. Read something else or do something completely unrelated to the content so you can return to it with a little distance.
Then, read it aloud again with your audience in mind and see if anything jumps out at you that you may not have noticed before.
Applying best practices for web content editing is essential to preparing an article or landing page for publication. It can help you catch spelling errors and check for grammar during the copy editing step, optimize content for SEO so it ranks better, and improve the overall readability of the piece.
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