Web writing: 12 essential tools to learn to write in 2022

Did you know that you have less than 3 seconds to convince users to stay on your page? Have you ever visited an online store and abandoned the shopping cart because of a few grammatical errors or a poor message? It happens every day and on many sites! This is one of the reasons why web writing is crucial for any business. Your message is the first thing your audience sees, it's the virtual handshake you give to anyone who arrives on your website. 

If you're reading this, you probably know that online, the content is important. However, this does not make you a writer, nor does it help you write perfectly, or develop your imagination to create relevant content. Writing for the web is the subject of a best practice that can be learned: inserting tags, structuring your texts, highlighting certain content, using bulleted or numbered lists... there are many web writing techniques!

Writing text for the web can be learned! The good news is that you can be accompanied throughout your web writing by numerous tools that will allow you to improve the quality of your writing ! 

In this article, we will see why content is an essential part of a good marketing strategy and what are best practices in web writing. Read on to learn how to write and discover the 12 writing toolsWe've got a lot of other things going on in the world of Chrome, software and extensions that we like to use on a daily basis to write great content.

The importance of a good text

Marketers consider that Text is as important as customer service or sales. He has the power to sell a product while being subtle. Any business, especially online, can benefit from a well-written, well-thought-out, quality text - it just needs work! Any text published by your brand must respect your voice, your identity, your values and be easily understood by the people you target with your content. 

According to the American advertising pioneer, about the text Leo Burnett Keep it simple. Make it memorable. Make it fun to look at. Make it fun to read."

Neville Medhora, owner of Kopywriting KourseWhen asked what skills copywriters should learn that will be useful in the next five or ten years, he said: Yes, it's an interesting discussion. 

"I think learning how to manipulate computers is the most important skill of the future. I think everything is becoming a little bit more automated and so learning to do at least a WordPress website is going to take you a long way. I always tell writers, 'If all you know how to do is produce text on a Google Docs, you're screwed because that skill is not as important anymore.'" 

A text well written is more likely to be read and appreciated by Internet users. On the other hand, an editorial web optimized both in the substance and in the form will be more easily readable and therefore indexable by search engines, which contributes to a better referencing. 

Your text is part of your brand image 

Any content you post on websites or social media should be consistent with the tone of your brand or business. Your tone should be consistent with your overall oral and written communication and the image you wish to convey. 

If you are used to addressing your audience in a formal way, your posts should be formal too; on the other hand, if you are a young and dynamic company that advocates promiscuity, you can easily address your readers in your content. You must therefore learn to write and communicate in a consistent manner.

Say no to jargon! Content must be understood by non-experts 

Think that you may be addressing an audience that does not know your product or offer in detail, or that does not have the vocabulary and all the associated jargon. It is therefore essential to be clear and simplify your messages. 

English speakers use two expressions that I really like: "dumb it down" and "keep it simple". In other words, simplify things! 

Your message must be clear so that every potential customer can understand it, regardless of their prior knowledge of your product or service. Using an overly technical lexical field is a common mistake. Do your research and make sure everyone understands your content, make it accessible and informative.

Keep your target audience in mind when writing for the web

Part of a writer's job is to researching the brand they are writing for, studying the audience is one of the most important things to do before you start writing. By getting to know the target audience, you will be able toadjust the content to the latter, making it more relevant and appropriate.

Why? 

Because in any communication, it is essential toaddress its audience in a way that is appropriate, understandable and in line with its values. 

Let me give you an example: 

You want to promote a new hearing device for the elderly and hard of hearing. You will need to adapt your tone to this audience. You should use a voice that is empathetic, supportive, understanding and respectful. 

Two possible versions of your message: 

• "Audioboost, hear when grandpa comes with his big clogs" (not adapted)
• "Find quality of life and small sound pleasures of everyday life with Audioboost, your partner in listening" 

On the other hand, you want to highlight the new pair of fashionable trainers sponsored by a well-known runner. You can then adopt a young, playful tone and play on the lexical field of sport: 

• "N*ke Tetra, the shoe you need for comfort and a look that goes everywhere" (not adapted)
• "N*ke Tetra, finally a sneaker that doesn't just kick ass"

Here, we play on the double meaning of the verb "to rip" which implies the idea of speed (sport, race) but also to rip in the sense of being at the top, it rocks!

It is therefore very important before writing to ask yourself the right questions: 

• Who is my audience? 
• What does she want?
• What value does my product or service provide? 

This will allow you to tailor your message by adding user value (U value in English) and adapt your message finely. Adapting your writing to the person you are talking to will enrich your content. Moreover, this will have the effect of generating a engaging content andimprove the experience of the Internet user. 

Value is essential 

Once you've done your research and kept your target audience in mind, think about the value you bring to them by asking yourself some key questions.

The right questions to ask yourself to give value back to your content 

Writing a professional piece of writing is not enough, you must highlight in your web content, the value created by your offer for your audience. 

The value provided must be explicit!

• Is your text informative? 
• Is your text seductive? 
• Is your text catchy? 
• What is the objective of your text and does it achieve it? 
• What is your call to action? Is it clear? (click on a link, visit the website or buy a product...)
• How is your brand's service or product different from others? 
• What problem does your product or service solve? 
• What makes it unique?
• What is the benefit to the prospect of taking action?

Examples of highlighting value in your content 

In our first example, you want to sell accounting management software. What will be the value for the customer?

A bad communication would say "an ergonomic tool to manage your invoices" - But you have to push further! 

What will be the genuine added value for the prospect? 

• Make his life easier? 
• Save him time? 
• Allow him to collaborate with his service providers, employees and external accountant to facilitate his accounting at the end of the month? 
• Have uniform and beautiful quotes and invoices? 

Here, the value lies in the time saving and the ease of use of the tool, but also in the fact that by using it, the prospect will stop tearing his hair out by managing his accounting manually, tell him that! 

An example of a message could then be, "No more sleepless nights, with Comptatoi your compatibility is simple, intuitive, collaborative, controlled and fast!"

At each stage of writing, think about the value generated by your offer! 

The well-known example of Apple with the iPod

In this example Apple promoted its product the iPod. A revolutionary digital music player for its time. 

In practice, Apple could have promoted the revolutionary Walkman simply by highlighting its features (storage capacity, weight, battery life, design, innovation, etc.). 

However, the master of marketing has chosen to base all his communication on value and benefits: "1000 musics in your pocket! 

This advertisement as well as the product itself were very successful. Highlighting the value of induced is a great content strategy that works every day.

Becoming a good writer

As you can see, web writing is a very valuable skill that requires a good command of the French language, impeccable grammar, preliminary research and attention to detail. To write quality content that converts, you must also respect a certain number of rules content marketing codes structure, keyword research and optimization, optimized headings, rich lexical field, original and non-duplicated content, good readability and clarity, etc.

To meet the expectations of your readership, you must also anticipating expectations : 

• What questions does my audience have? What problems do they have that I can address through content marketing?
• What are the essential steps and tools for writing text that is both user-friendly and SEO-friendly? 
• How can I write clearly to reach my target(s)? 

A good writer has a set of preliminary questions that will define its editorial strategy, its writing and its approach to content creation. 

Whether or not you use a CMS such as WordPress, Wix, Prestashop or similar, you will need to have interesting content if you want it to help your website rank well in the search engine results. 

There are many mistakes that can discredit your text. To avoid the most trivial ones, we recommend that you always proofread your text. For many people, a grammatical or spelling mistake is a deal breaker when it comes to taking action to contact or make a purchase. Practice is the best part of being a good web writer: by writing daily and using the a plethora of writing tools you will gradually improve your professional writing.

To help you create quality content, we're unveiling twelve tools that we use regularly. Some of them will help you improve the user experience, others to ensure flawless spelling, to check the primacy of your writing or to enrich your articles. Read on to discover our checklist of the best web writing toolstheir advantages, disadvantages and roles to create higher value content! 

Writing tools to improve your web writing

1. THESAURUS 

Are you tired of being repetitive? How many times have you written the important word in your articles? If keywords are essential or important for SEO, - do you see what we did there? - There is no such thing as overuse of keywords. Nevertheless, you need to avoid frequent repetition of the same word. 

Using keywords helps improve your natural referencing. Diversifying them through synonyms is an excellent way to enrich the vocabulary of your writing. This will also make your text more pleasant to read and give it better visibility on search engines. 

The Thesaurus is a free online tool that will help you improve your writing. In addition to showing you lists of synonyms and antonyms for your words, it allows you to check in context. 

Benefits:

1. It's free. 
2. It is part of dictionary.comwhich is also available as a free mobile application for Android and iPhone.
3. The website has a Grammar 101 that you can learn as you write, as well as a grammar checker. 

Disadvantages:

1. The website is a bit old-fashioned and full of ads.
2. When looking for synonyms, there is no information on the word register, so be careful and check other sources to avoid your text sounding too formal or informal.

Price: free 

2. THE HEMINGWAY APPLICATION 

We've talked about not being repetitive and exploring synonyms, but you need to do this while keeping your copy clear and concise. 

No one has time for complicated sentences and words, so try to keep your sentences short and easy to understand. 

The application Hemingwayas stated on its website, " makes your writing bold and clear" . This software will allow you to structure your writing by assessing its clarity and readability. 

Benefits:

1. Text editor that allows you to format your content as you wish. 
2. Evaluates the readability and clarity of your text. 
3. Gives an indication of how easy or difficult it is to read your sentences.
4. Analyzes your use of passive forms and adverbs. 

Disadvantages:

1. Does not always show alternatives, as other tools do. 
2. Filling your text with adverbs is not good, but sometimes they help to improve the message and it seems that for the Hemingway application, all adverbs are unnecessary.

Price : € 19.99

3. HEADLINE ANALYSER / COSCHEDULE

You're afraid you won't be able to write the perfect title for your blog post? Say no more! 

Headline Analyser will give you all the useful tips to choose and learn how to write the best headlines and main titles (H1, H2) for your content. 

A good grip is an essential element of any content! The titles of an SEO article are crucial for SEO: they must contain your main keyword and summarize in a few words the topics of each section, but above all, they must make you want to continue reading!

In addition to being structured and logically constructedYour headlines must be informative, original and attractive. CoSchedule's Headline Analyser software will allow you to verify the relevance of your headlines based on the paragraph that precedes it and the keywords chosen.

Benefits:

1. With the free trial, your title receives a score to evaluate the SEO relevance and suggestions to change keywords. 
2. It has a word bank for words intended to express emotions. It offers both common and uncommon words. It is an excellent tool for improving your vocabulary.
3. It also analyzes the sentiment, clarity and visibility of your keywords in the title.

Disadvantages:

1. The free trial only allows you to analyze three titles. 
2. You must register for the free version. 
3. Subscription offers have a limited amount of titles that you can analyze.

Price :

 9$/ month for 5 titles

29$/month for 20 titles

49$/month for 60 titles

4. DUPLI CHECKER 

Do you need to check your content for plagiarism? It happens a lot, and there's nothing more disheartening than writing an amazing article and finding out that someone has taken it and made it their own. 

Perhaps you write yourself and want to make sure you haven't been *too* inspired by what you've read? Taking inspiration from others is more than encouraged and acceptable, but plagiarism is not! 

Using someone else's beautifully written content and copying it identically is not in your interest. For search engines it is not acceptable: 

• This is original work theft 
• You risk legal problems 
• This is very, very bad for SEO

Indeed, if the search engine detects that your texts or images already exist on the web, then you will be strongly penalized in terms of web referencing. This action aims to promote the writing of unique and original content. 

Some topics have been widely covered on the web, so it can be difficult to create content without existing phrases.  

Dupli checker helps you find plagiarized content - text and even images! - It also offers a tool to generate paraphrases for free. This is a the perfect tool to learn how to write unique content. 

Benefits:

1. You can paste a text, upload a file or check a website directly. 
2. It includes a reverse image checker: upload an image and you will get a list of websites with similar images of different sizes. 
3. The tool gives you the results as a percentage, so you can assess for yourself whether it is really a pure copy or just a coincidence. Exclusive content is yours!

Disadvantages:

1. The free version only allows you to check up to 1000 words.
2. The paraphrasing tool is mainly a word replacement tool, so you will have to be careful that your text does not look completely different. 

The price: from 10 to 200 $ per month, depending on the number of words and searches. They also offer customised packages. 

5. GRAMMARLY

Grammarly is one of the spelling and grammar checkers the most popular, perhaps because it is extremely easy to use. You can install it on your laptop or mobile or as an extension on your browser so that you always have a grammar checker at hand.

It's the perfect tool for quickly spotting spelling and grammatical errors so you can focus on other aspects of your writing.

Benefits:

1. Easy to use and intuitive, with applications for iPhone, Macbook and also Pc. 
2. It has an extension for Chrome so that everything you write is checked in real time. 
3. The free version only checks for grammatical errors, for style and more complex sentences you will need the premium version. 

Disadvantages:

1. It only works in English. 
2. While it's an amazing tool, you'll probably disagree with Grammarly when it comes to synonyms and other replacement suggestions.

Price: 

Free or premium version 12 $ / month (paid annually)

12,50 $ / month and member (paid annually) for companies

Paying an annual membership is much cheaper than a monthly membership.

6. NATURAL READERS 

The content is not limited to the text. Video is the most consumed online medium today. Captions and subtitles on videos are good for inclusion and SEO. However, text-to-speech is necessary if you want to increase reach and visibility. Natural Readers you allows you to easily convert your written text into speech with different voices and save the audio as an mp3 which you can then use on YouTube or other platforms. It's the perfect tool to diversify and energize your web writing content. 

Benefits:

1. The free version allows you to convert up to 20 minutes per day. 
2. It operates in 27 languages, including regional variations. 
3. You can choose from a wide variety of voices and speakers, even in the free version. This allows you to integrate a dialogue between several speakers, for example. 

Disadvantages:

1. It has already been used a lot on YouTube.
2. Some voices sound a bit artificial. Don't hesitate to try several, until you find the one that suits you.

Price:

Premium Plan 59.88 $/month - billed annually

Plan Plus 110 $/month - annual billing 

7. YOUR TEXT GURU 

You have difficulty in take into account both your writing style and SEO when you create a text? Then Your Text Guru is the tool you need. Whether you write in French or English, using this tool will help you to be more SEO compliant and save time. 

The time saving is due to the fact that the analysis is done directly while you are writing your text, and not afterwards. It also allows for competitive and audience research. This practice is very common and allows an analysis of best practices to inspire you from the competition. The analysis of the audience is also an excellent way to write a text directly dedicated to it. 

This analysis will allow you to better structure your communication and to know their interests and the tone to use. Your Text Guru offers a free trial, several monthly options and no long-term commitment.

Benefits:

1. It analyzes your texts while giving you advice on how to improve your ranking in Google. 
2. You can use it for competitive and audience research. 
3. They offer membership without obligation. 

Disadvantages:

1. It works on a per-token basis, which can be a bit confusing.
2. The one-time membership fee is €90 for 200 tokens, but it does not include the Question Explorer, which is a very useful tool for finding out what your audience is looking for online. 

Price : 

90 € for 200 tokens (5 tokens are needed per guide)

80 €/month for one user 

300 €/month for an API subscription

8. 1.EN

It is very important to research and write your text with SEO in mind. You may not have done this before and now you want to correct the content you have published. Don't worry, it's never too late! No matter what stage of the content creation process you are in, 1.en will help you. 

This tool allows you to identify the most relevant keywords to write your article and ensure that you are highlighted by search engines. A word key is the query for which you want search engines to reference your content. It is also what you want users to type in to get to your page. Indeed, the analysis of keywords is essential to guarantee a good web referencing. 

1.fr suggests, according to your target query, keywords to integrate as well as questions to ask your audience. It also gives an overview of the competition on these keywords to help you in your writing choices. More than a writing tool in itself, it allows you to analyze your texts to know the related subjects and thus treat them in depth. 

Benefits:

1. It shows you the missing keywords. 
2. It optimizes your text for Google or Bing. 
3. The paid version includes a text optimization tool, an SEO tool and reports on audience queries.

Disadvantages:

1. The price is a bit high for a simple keyword optimization. 
2. The free version only allows you to analyze your text and does not allow you to see the missing keywords.

Price :

60 €/month or 45 €/month if paid annually 

Here is a short video presentation of the tool so that you can get an idea of how it works: 

https://youtu.be/WvM1sXAie64 

9. LANGUAGE TOOL

Just like GRAMMARLY, this tool will save you time by quickly spotting your spelling or grammar mistakes. The main difference is the number of languages available. If you are looking for a free online language checker in English, Spanish, French and many other languages, LanguageTool is what you need. 

Not only will your grammar be impeccable, but your writing style will be too. It also suggests synonyms and the site is very easy to use. You can also write your text directly on the editor to check it on the way.

It has become a must-have for Flowr: the Chrome extension can be installed in a few clicks and allows a fine analysis of texts, even in Google Doc. Language Tool is also more accurate than Grammarly, having tested both of them for a long time! 

Benefits:

1. The pro version includes Chrome, Google Docs and Word add-ons. 
2. It supports over 30 languages. 
3. The free version checks for grammar, punctuation and basic style.

Disadvantages:

1. I haven't found any yet!

Price :

59 €/year for 1 user 

84,94 €/year for 2 users 

10. GRAMMARLY PLAGIARISM CHECKER

The anti-plagiarism tool from Grammarly deserves a mention on its own. Aside from being one of the most reliable content writing assistants for the reasons we mentioned above, they've gotten better at controlling plagiarism. 

Until last year, it was only possible to check for duplicate texts online, but it has since partnered with ProQuest, a database of print content, and you can now check for plagiarism offline. 

Benefits: 

1. French or English 
2. 100% free in its simple version
3. Single link to the report for collaborative sharing

Disadvantages: 

1. Don't say where in the text is the plagiarism found in the free version 
2. 12$ per month for premium

Price : free in basic

12$ / month for premium

11. ANSWER THE PUBLIC 

"What writing tools work best for you?" That's one of the questions people are looking for online right now. Answer The Public is the connection between content writers and content consumers and it is a incredible tool to find ideas and know what is searched on Google. 

No more testing to know what will work or not in terms of web content. This software gives you the keys to understand, reach your target and answer its needs. Indeed, you just have to write the name of a product or service and the software generates a list of questions regularly asked on the internet. It allows you to know the main concerns related to a product or service. It has never been so easy to learn how to write for the web!

Benefits:

1. The free version allows you to use it twice a day.
2. It gives you the best results, so you don't have to search for the best questions. 
3. It's very easy to use, just type a keyword and hit enter. 

Disadvantages:

1. Two searches a day are clearly not enough.
2. The data displayed is quite limited, no demographic data is displayed.
3. Professional subscriptions are a bit expensive. 

Price :

99 $/month 

78 $/month in case of annual payment (total price of 948 $)

199 $/month for teams 

12. WEB FX READABILITY TEST TOOL

One of the things you can do to improve your SEO ranking is to make your content readable. The more readable a text is, the more likely it is to be shared and appreciated by your audience. We've already told you that it's good to check grammar, spelling and style, but you should also check the readability of your text. 

The free tool of WebFX readability test is ideal for write content that is easily understood by all. It will help you identify overly technical wording and suggest more readable ones.  

Benefits:

1. You can check the readability of a website or paste the text. 
2. It gives you results for 6 different scores, including the Flesch score. 
3. Flesch-Kincaid readability tests are readability tests designed to assess the difficulty of understanding of a passage in English.
4. Its use is completely free. 

Disadvantages:

1. Apart from Flesch's score, there is not much information on the other five scores.

Price: free 

13. SURFER SEO

Surfing SEO is a tool that helps optimize the content of a website to improve its ranking on search engines, especially Google. Here is how Surfer works:

• Generate the perfect content strategy : Save hours by using Surfer to prepare an optimized plan for your domain, niche and audience. Then dominate your niche with dozens of strategic ideas.
• Create an article outline in minutes : Get optimized content, single paragraphs categorized in the appropriate headers that you can customize to match your tone and voice. Then copy and paste into your article, saving time and energy.
• Get content suggestions that will boost your ranking Get guidelines based on performing pages. Get valuable information on the ideal word count for your content. Learn what keywords to use, article structure, number of images and more. Apply the suggestions to dramatically improve the quality of your content and your chances of getting high rankings.
• Audit : Learn to dominate your niche with a comprehensive audit: learn how to get on the first page of Google with Surfer's quick and easy audit tool. Identify content gaps and get easy-to-implement fixes that increase organic traffic in days. Surfer SEO ranking software makes it easy.
• Get and keep your content on the first page of Google : Once you've optimized your content, build internal links with the help of auditing and enjoy all the traffic from top rankings. Your professional life will be better than ever. Your boss or clients will think you are a genius. Surfer is the best on-page SEO software according to this SEO Surfing Notice.

Conclusion:

Web writing can be intimidating, if you're not prepared or don't have the right tools. It's also a very rewarding job and a great way to constantly learn. 

As we explained to you, writing for the web is the subject of a best practice that can be learned: insertions of title tagsstructuring your texts, highlighting certain content, using bulleted or numbered lists... there are many good web writing practices!

These writing codes can be easily implemented thanks to the many tools we have presented that can accompany you throughout your web writing to significantly improve the quality of your writing.

Don't forget that the performance of your pages depends on many criteria influencing your positioning on search engines. A well optimized site will be faster, therefore seen as more qualitative by Google and therefore better positioned. We share our optimization tips in an article dedicated to Toolkit for Elementora powerful optimization tool.

Now that you understand both the importance of a good text and that and the role that content plays in your brand imageYou know what you have to do: write! Don't forget the dangers of using overly technical jargon and the importance of good readability when you get down to it! Also, don't forget keep your target audience in mind and remember that it is important to Focus on the value generated for your prospect or customer. 

You now have all the cards to become a good writer!

Have you tried any of these tools? Do you know of any others? Let us know in the comments!