How Do You Write Great Web Content?
1. Define Your Purpose
What do you stand to achieve by writing this content?
Are you seeking to inform, educate or entertain your readers?
Or do you want to get them to buy a product or service?
Defining the purpose of your content is essential in your writing process. It helps you write content that clearly and accurately answers a searcher’s query.
The purpose of your content aligns with the theme of your website.
2. Get To Know Your Audience
Any writing should start with analyzing your users.
Because you are writing for them, you have to know the kind of audience you are hoping to drive to your content.
The best way to do this is by developing your user persona.
Persona development means creating a representative of your ideal target users.
Things like their age group, interests, the kind of content they find helpful, their demographics, the kind of device they are likely to use to search for you, and other information
Building a persona for your target audience helps you better understand your user’s needs and create content that can address those needs.
3. Carry Out Keyword Research
What is a keyword in your content?
Keywords are words or phrases people use to find what they are looking for on search engines.
For example, if I, were looking to buy moisturizing cream, I would probably use words like “best moisturizing cream for my skin” to search for it.
It’s important to know what words people are using to find your kind of content and infuse them in your writing, so they are quickly discovered.
Keyword research also helps you come up with content ideas for your business.
You can quickly know the questions readers are asking and write content to answer them.
How to do keyword research for your content
4. Use an Eye-Catching Headline
Remember when I said you only have 15 seconds to hook your users in?
In that 15 seconds, your headline is the first thing your visitors will see and read. Good headlines play a significant role in determining whether visitors will click on your content or move on.
It is necessary to choose a headline that will compel readers to give your content the attention it deserves, the headline should follow the four U’s rules for writing a good headline. The rules are
Your headline should be ULTRA-SPECIFIC: Don’t beat around the bush.
Go straight to the point. Let them know what they stand to gain from reading your content.
A UNIQUE headline: Make your headline stand out from the rest. Develop your unique way of writing
Think about how you might be able to add new information or present your information differently from other websites.
Make it USEFUL: Make sure your content answers every reader’s question of ‘what do I stand to gain from this?’
Nobody wants to waste a minute on something that has no usefulness for them.
Your headline and content must serve a particular purpose for your audience.
Relay a sense of URGENCY
People sometimes put off reading content they find helpful and say ‘I will get back to it later. And that might never happen.
You want to make sure they open your content at that moment by infusing your headline with words that convey urgency.
Tell them why they must read your content now and not later.
Use words such as ‘now,’ ‘today,’
You can also convey a sense of urgency in your headline by letting readers know what they stand to lose if they don’t read your content at that moment.
A good and catchy headline ;
IS about 60-65 characters i.e. 10-11 words
SUMMARIZES the whole content. Imagine you have to explain your whole content in 10 words; how would you say it?
CONTAINS relevant keywords that your visitors will use to find your content
IS relevant to the content. Don’t make your headline about something completely different from what is in your content.
IS concise and useful
5. Use a Conversational Tone
Most people think that using big grammar in writing will give their contents more authority and make them sound cool.
But don’t do that.
You clearly understand the meaning of your words, and you know what you are saying, but most of your users do not.
That’s what your content is meant to do. Your job is to explain to them in the simplest way possible, not further confuse them.
As a reader, If I stumble on content that has lots of big words and terms, I wouldn’t want to read it.
Why should I when there are other contents written in much simpler terms?
Use a simple conversational tone that can be easily understood, the kind of tone you would use while talking to a friend.
Do not
use significant industrial terms and jargon
make use of long sentences and paragraphs. 2-3 lines per paragraph is enough
write in the passive voice.
Say ‘our company provides the best services’ rather than ‘best services are provided by our company’.
Sounds weird, right?
You can read your words aloud or ask a friend to read them to ensure you used the right tone.
6. Put Your Readers First
I know we all want to write content that has the potential to rank well on google. But ultimately, the users are the most important.
You want to write content that your users will find helpful and make them come back for more. Keep their interests in mind and the intent behind their query.
7. Put Your Readers First
People mostly scan over words to look for what they want to see, not read.
Lists are easy to scan and also make your content more visually appealing.
Lists help;
Emphasize key points
Readers get the information they need quickly
Simplify long sentences and paragraphs
Keep readers engaged
8. Add Visuals
Research has shown that 65% of the population are visual learners, i.e they need to see what they are learning.
Adding visuals such as videos, images, infographics, and maps makes your content more appealing.
Why you should use visuals in your writing
1. Visuals convey your messages faster and better than texts.
2. Images increase user experience
3. It increases the time users spend on your content, also known as the dwell time
4. Messages conveyed using visuals are better understood and easily remembered
Learn more about why Visuals are essential in your content
9. Include a call to action
What action do you want visitors to take on your content? Is it to click on a link, subscribe to your newsletter, buy a product, leave a review, share the content e.t.c
Slowly encourage your readers to take the actions you want them to take in your content by including a clear and concise call to action.
Check out these good examples of calls to action.
10. Make your content trustworthy
How do you make readers trust that your content is genuine and read it? It’s by building trust.
People naturally tend to be biased towards well-known brands. So are search engines.
Contents from well-known brands are shown high up on the first page when you search for a particular topic.
Ever wondered why?
It’s because these brands have gained their user’s trust. People talk about them on social media, and they get tons of social shares and likes.
When it comes to choosing between content from big brands and lesser-known ones, people will mostly choose big brands
And search engines put these factors into consideration
You want to make sure that your content maintains trust and authority
How Do You Do This?
1. Making thorough research and finding data to back up your points
2. By linking to other pages on your website that are relevant to your content.
3. By linking out to highly relevant and authoritative content from other websites
4. By getting relevant sites to link back to your content.
Link building is very essential in good web content but you must be careful.
Don’t just link to any site and don’t pay other websites to link back to your content.
These practices are highly considered spammy by search engines and your content or website as a whole can get penalized.
Also, make sure you are linking to content that is highly relevant to your content.
For example, if your content is about fish, don’t link to content about puppies.
Think about what content could answer any other questions your readers may have that are relevant to your content and link to those contents.
11. Check for Punctuation and Grammatical Errors
Error in spelling and grammar reduces credibility and trust. You want to make sure your content is free of errors of any kind.
Adequately proofread your content before uploading it on your website.
12. Optimize for SEO
Though your user comes first, it’s also important not to forget that users will mostly discover your content through search engines.
If you are looking to drive the right amount of traffic to your content, you need to optimize it to rank well in search engines.
A study has shown that the first result in Google’s organic search gets an average of 27.6% clicks
This percentage reduces as you move down the rankings
Users mostly click on search results on the top pages
And your ultimate goal should be to get on the top 10 search result pages
You can achieve this by optimizing your content using SEO.
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Your headline should be ULTRA-SPECIFIC
