Best Practices
We’ve compiled these best practices to help you maximize our website’s design system and create beautiful, engaging content.
Web Editor Best Practices Review
In this Section
General Tips for Success
Keep pages succinct and to the point.
- People visit your website for information, not to read for pleasure. Keep paragraphs and sentences brief and to the point.
Put the most important information at the top.
- Start pages with a short introductory statement that previews what a visitor will find on a page or in a section of the site. This helps visitors determine whether they have arrived on a page that’s helpful and relevant to them. Keep this text to one or two sentences.
Make your page actionable.
- Who are you writing for? What do you want visitors to know or do as a result of visiting the page? Place important calls to action immediately after introductory copy.
Add structure to longer pages.
- Have a lengthy page? First, eliminate all unnecessary words or phrases. Second, use subheadings and bulleted lists to help visitors find the information most relevant to them at a glance. Finally, consider using page components such as accordions and tabs to organize and group less critical content or content that’s only relevant to a small portion of your audience.
Text Formatting
Text formatting, including bolding, italics and all-caps, can pose legibility issues and should be used sparingly, if at all. Special formatting can only be applied to “plain” text. Headlines, buttons, bullets and other formatted text should not be altered.
Do NOT alter the HTML code.
- Even if you have HTML knowledge, please do NOT alter the HTML code in the text display. Using built-in styles is the best way to ensure we maintain a consistent, high-quality website for the long term.
SEO Best Practices
Use plain language
- To help visitors find your page, think about the words they might use. Avoid jargon, abbreviations or labels that only PNW insiders would know. Spell out all acronyms on first reference.
Avoid keyword stuffing
- 90% of good SEO is writing clear, well-structured pages for humans, not search engines. Repeating words and phrases over and over again because you think a search engine would like them will annoy your visitors and hurt your page rankings.
Don’t forget the meta description
- This is the text that appears under a page title on a search engine results page (SERP). It helps visitors decide whether or not they should click on a link to visit a page.
- Keep meta descriptions to 150 characters or fewer.
- A one-sentence description is best.
- Each page should have a unique description.
- Do not use quotation marks. This causes Google to truncate your description.
How to update the meta description
- In the Purdue Northwest site, the meta description is managed by the Yoast SEO plugin. To update the meta description, find the Yoast SEO section on the page edit screen. Select the “Edit snippet” button and then enter the page’s meta description into the “Meta Description” field It is important to remember to click the “Update” button on the page edit screen after making this (or any) change to the page.
Accessibility Best Practices
Writing Alt Text
- Alt text is brief, descriptive text that describes the meaning of an image on a webpage or other digital content. It serves as a text equivalent for users who are unable to see the image or when the image fails to load.
Write descriptive links
- This is helpful for all website visitors, but especially those with screen readers who are trying to find the most relevant link on a page. “Click here” is not useful, but “Learn more about applying” is.
Use heading tags in hierarchical order
- Heading tags (H1-H6) tell screen readers how your page is organized. They allow visitors who are using screen readers to scan your page and find what’s most relevant to them. Using headings out of order creates confusion.
Learn More About Heading Styles
Training and Resources
Explore workshops, trainings, books and additional resources related to web communications and digital marketing.