Core guidelines for seic.com content
Ensure that your web pages are professional, consistent, easy to understand and successful by following these governing principles.
Brand and style
- Use clear, natural, easy-to-understand language.
- Use brief but powerful titles. Google search results typically display only 70 characters of your title.
- All titles and subheads are sentence case.
- Use our Footnote guide.
- Consult the SEI Writer’s Workshop for any grammatical questions.
Credibility and trust
- Keep page content updated.
- Remove outdated content from the site, including PDFs.
- Be truthful, factual and straightforward.
Professional quality and consistency
- All images must be created by our Design team.
- All content must be proofread.
- Adhere to brand guidelines on writing.
- Choose best practices over subjective opinions.
Writing for your audience
- Identify your audience and their needs for each page. What are they looking for at their stage of the funnel?
- What should they see first? You have 5.59 seconds to engage the average web reader.
- Give them a clear path through your content.
- Don’t allow them to become confused or distracted.
- Give them opportunities to contact you or fill in a form.
Working with the needs of digital readers
- Understand and meet the needs of digital readers: Digital writers guide.
- Enable skimming: Allow white space, use subheads and clear, simple language
- Avoid unexpected behavior (except where it deliberately improves the experience)
Accessibility
- Understand basic accessibility and adhere to it
- Create positive experiences for visitors with all types of disabilities – physical, emotional, or cognitive
- Remember that everyone can be affected by disability at some time in their lives
Search engine effectiveness (SEO)
- Understand the basics of SEO, and adhere to them
- Include meta content in your content development plan
- Employ cross-linking on every page. Give readers links to more reading; do not allow pages to be “dead ends.”