Web Resources
Writing for the Web and Optimization

When creating web content, remember these important ideas:

  • Make your webpages easy to scan. Visitors are generally looking to find the information they need quickly and move on.
  • Make your webpages easy for search engines to find. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Jump to a Section

Optimize Your Copy

  • Make your page copy simple and concise.
  • Break it into more numerous small paragraphs.
  • Use bullet points, headings, subheadings, lists, and captions whenever possible.
  • Include links to related content or information.

Return to Top

Link Frequently and Use Keywords

If you mention a page or document in your text, link to that page or document, particularly if it’s necessary to complete the task your visitor is trying to accomplish.

When choosing what words to activate as your link, link to the keywords in that sentence, not the entire sentence. Also, avoid writing “click here” as your link. For more on creating accessible links, visit our Accessibility page. 

Return to Top

Optimize System Names

In Cascade, the names of the actual files and folders are called System Names. System Names also become part of the webpage's URL that is visible in the address bar of web browsers. It's important that they're consistent and optimized for search engines.

System Names should always be:

  • Made up of keywords relating to the content
  • Formatted as lowercase
  • Separated by hyphens.

Do not use spaces or capital letters.

For example, "research-laboratory-staff" and "guidelines-for-faculty-publications.pdf" follow best practices for System Names.

It's also best to avoid using dates in System Names. This prevents you from having to create a new file or change the system name if you need to update that information. For example, "student-handbook.pdf" is better and easier to maintain than "student-handbook-feb-2013.pdf." This also saves you the trouble of having to recreate the links to that document on your webpages.

Return to Top

Use Descriptive Page Titles

The page title is the phrase that appears at the top of the web browser bar while a user views a page. Search engines weigh page titles heavily when determining search results. This information also appears as the page title at the top of your webpage’s content area.

In Cascade, you can edit the title of your page under the Edit tab, in the “Inline Metadata” section, where it says “Title.”

Return to Top

Include Metadata

In Cascade’s page editor, below the Display Name and Title fields in the "Inline Metadata" area, you will see fields for Keywords and Description.

In the Description field, type a descriptive, concise sentence explaining the contents of the page you’re working on. This description will appear on Google’s search results pages.

Include relevant search terms in the Keywords field. This will also help search engines find your webpages.