Use narrative structure for long-form content

Narrative structure is common in reports, books and technical writing. It generally works better for long-form content than it does for digital content in HTML. This structure is used with some success in long-form blogs.

Narrative structure starts with general statements about the topic. The middle explains or discusses new ideas. The conclusion summarises the main ideas and makes recommendations.

This structure can cause people to miss important ideas:

Show how categories relate to one another

Hierarchies structure content by category. They show how different categories relate to each other, and how they relate to the main idea or theme.

This structure is the basis for the information architecture of many websites. It also suits organisational charts and other visual content that ranks items in a hierarchy of relationships.

To structure content hierarchically:

Use a sequential structure to explain steps or a specific order

A sequential structure shows a process, a series of steps or an order of events.

Use a sequential structure for:

• instructions – such as how-to guides, recipes and directions
• step-by-step content formats – such as forms
• reports of events – such as incident reports, histories and case studies.

This type of structure helps users understand how items in the sequence relate to each other.

Use the inverted pyramid for most content

The basic structure of the inverted pyramid is:

• a heading
• details in order, from the most to the least important.

The most important idea comes first or ‘above the fold’. This is the top part of a screen or a newspaper, where people can see the main idea at a glance.

This structure helps users scan content on any device. It also helps optimise the page for search engines.

Create content that meets a real need

Only design and write content that meets a real person’s need. 

People using government services usually don’t have a choice to go somewhere else to meet their need. They don’t read government content for fun. They are using it to get something done.

Find out about users and their needs through user research.

User research helps you:

Structure content to help the user to navigate and understand

Structure helps people find information. It helps people to understand and use content by:

• preparing them for what they will read
• helping them navigate and scan content
• helping them remember what they’ve read.

Structure also helps search engines. They use structure to find and rank content in a search results listing.

Learn how users search for information

Do user research so you can work out how content will:

• be found using different search strategies
• answer the questions users ask
• present the way users think it will
• use everyday language – many search queries are voice search.

Include the main words and phrases that people search for. This is part of search engine optimisation (SEO).

Match keywords to the search terms people use

Using keywords helps people find content that meets their search intention. Keywords help people:

• find government services – for example, ‘myGov login’
• discover information – for example, ‘can I get paid maternity leave?’
• define a task – for example, ‘import wine to Australia’.

Government content should help users find information and achieve what they need to do.

To write for users and search engines, you need to understand:

Optimise content for users first

Help people find the content they need using optimisation techniques.

On-page optimisation includes using keywords, metadata and links in the page content. Website analytics tools can also help you optimise pages for search engines.

Focus on making the page for users first, and for search engines second.

Search engines help users find content

Search engines:

• index websites (using algorithms)
• search the index
• organise the results.

Examples include Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo.

Search engines use a process called indexing to look for content. Algorithms (automated procedural instructions) do the indexing.

To index the content, algorithms use keywords in titles and metadata. The HTML <title> element is the heading that most search engines display in search results.