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5 Tips for Writing Website Content
I’m going to ask you to use your imagination for a moment. Think of a topic that interests you. Maybe it’s your favorite sport or hobby, for example. Now imagine that you’re searching the Internet for information on that topic.
The first article you come across is related to the topic you’re researching, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of value. It’s too general and full of pointless “fluff.” It makes obvious points that a third-grader could grasp. And it fails to offer any related information or resources.
The second article you come across is much more in-depth. It explains several aspects of your topic with refreshing insight. It is helpful and useful, and it links out to many related articles and resources on the subject. If you could only bookmark one of these pages for future reference, which one would it be? It would be the second page, right?
You, like most people, would probably prefer the second page to the first. It’s an easy choice, and that’s because the author of the second article understood (and delivered) the most important concept of website content development — the value factor.
5 Benefits of High-Value Web Content
This kind of content has value for the reader, obviously. But it also benefits the author / publisher. Here are the top five benefits of creating high-value website content for your small business website:
- 1. It keeps people on your website longer.
- 2. It makes people more inclined to trust you.
- 3. It encourages readers to recommend the site to others.
- 4. It encourages other webmasters to link to your content.
- 5. It helps you improve your search engine ranking and visibility.
All of this sounds great, you say. But how do I create that kind of small business website content? Here are the top five guidelines for creating high-value website content. 5 Steps to High-Value Web Content:
1. Choose the Right Author
I once worked for a company who let their web programmers write the instructions for their online ordering process. Big mistake. If their audience were programmers as well, this might be okay. But most of their customers had limited technical skills. So when these people encountered online instructions such as “Validate parameters before advancing” … the customers would often become dead in the water.
This is a prime example of choosing the wrong author for web writing. Sure, the programmers’ input is important. After all, they built the thing. But they should not be the voice of customer guidance. A skilled web writer (someone with usability experience) would have “translated” these instructions to say something like “Please fill in all required information before moving to the next screen.”
Here’s the key to this. The best author for your small business website content is not always the person who knows the most about the product or service from a technical standpoint. Often, it’s best to have an in-house writer who plays the go-between role of “consumer advocate,” getting the information from one group and translating it for another group.
2. Choose the Right Topic
If your small business only offers one product or service, then that will likely be the topic of your web content. In this case, I would focus on choosing the right angle as well. Don’t tell people what you want them to know — this is an outdated way of thinking about public information, especially when it comes to small business website content. Instead, find out what people want to know about the types of products you offer, and use your web content to address those questions or concerns.
If you are writing web content for a company that has many products or services, you will have to spend more time choosing topics first and choosing your angle second. In this case, it becomes more about topic organization than anything. Large websites with many topics are ideally suited for a category and sub-category system: These are our products >> And this is product ‘A’ >> And this is a web page that explains product ‘A’ in detail.
3. Address All Sides of the Topic
Whether you’re writing about one of your products, or you’re creating a tutorial of some kind, you need to cover all the angles. There’s nothing worse than website content that leaves the job only half-done, telling you why a certain thing is important but not pursuing that lead.
When you are close to a certain topic — as is the case with people who create a product or service — it’s easy to assume everyone else understands it as well as you do. But the opposite is usually true, so you need to explain all sides of a topic when you write content for your small business website. Want to keep your pages relatively short for easy reading? You can do that while still offering complete information. That’s what hyperlinks are for!
4. Link to Related Resources
Here’s the key to developing great content for your small business website. Try to create authority documents that others in your field would link to and recommend to others. One of the key criteria for a resource document is that it links to plenty of supporting information, both on the same website and elsewhere on the web.
In addition to being good for your readers, this kind of useful content will make other webmasters more inclined to link to your website. This adds to your link “popularity” and can further improve the search engine ranking of your small business website.
When writing a particular web page, try to think of it as “the ultimate guide to [blank].” This is the first step to creating the kind of authority documents that eventually dominate the search engines and drive endless web traffic for the authors. But it’s rarely possible to create an “ultimate guide” to anything in just one page, so be liberal about linking to other sources on your own website and elsewhere (as long as their not direct competitors).
5. Add Supporting Graphics, Pictures, Etc.
Reading online can be hard on the eyeballs. You can make the reader’s job easier in two ways. First, you can format your content appropriately for web reading (short paragraphs, narrow text columns, lots of bullet points, headers, sub-headers, etc.). Secondly, you can add supporting images and helpful graphics.
Well-placed graphics can improve website content in a number of ways. Images are more enticing than text upon first glance, so they can help attract and retain readers. They also help you clarify your message with visual reinforcement.
Conclusion: I have a motto I use regarding website content. “If it’s not worth putting online, don’t put it online.” This is my reminder to myself that I need to use the techniques outlined above to create superior website content. Because that’s the kind of content that leads to online success. Apply these lessons to your small business website and watch your own success increase!
About the Author: Brandon Cornett operates an web marketing firm in Austin, Texas and is a web writer at large for dozens of websites and blogs.
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40 Responses to “5 Tips for Writing Website Content”
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Fantastic post. Just superb. Loved the way you have explained the whole content writing in detail. I have bookmarked the article for future reference.
This is a fine example of a guest post. Thanks Brandon!
Very interesting post, and proved the first point. Stuck the visitor to the website for longer.
This is an excellent post about how to do proper SEO…good content and proper link building techniques are probably two of the most important aspects. Another useful technique (for internet marketing) is to optimize your sub-pages long tail keywords which have a higher conversion rate and usually bring a higher % of inbound traffic to your website.
Loved the way it is explained in detail. It is just too good.
Great article. I just wish to emphasize on point No.1. The right author, correctly identified by you as the go between and therefore the best communicator, will be the ideal. If your ace salesperson can also write, nothing like it.
It’s a good post, covers all the basics of how to write a quality article. I think most people know this, but are lazy to accomplish all steps.
Just think about the articles at doshdosh, those are something special and really hard to do.
Great post, most of my site content is small blurbs, but I could see how in depth content could improve things.
Nice post, its a really cool blog that you have here, keep up the good work, will be back.
You are very correct. Your point is well taken and I hope other web designers will do likewise.
We try to do this on a constant basis. It is great for keeping original content and yes providing useful information for my visitors. An excellent post.
Hey.. this is a very interesting post. Thank you. Maybe next one you can teach me how to write any article that could improve my SERP.
What i meant is how to write with specific density of keywords (without sounding strange) that could improve my SERP.
This post is very true, particularly about covering all sides of the topic, as leaving things out certainly sends people searching other sites for the missing information.
Great post, thanks for sharing your knowledge!
great post..very detail post about writing blog content
This was an EXCELLENT post. Thank you!!!
ADQ
I have to agree with the comments above, very good post!
Great information, maybe this will motivate me to start writing more content and stop commentating. (Doubtful.)
This is great. It’s always hard for me to write an unique article that create visitors for my blog and I am sometimes too lazy to write. What I have never done is including the link to related resources as you mention above. I will try it. Thanks.
Simple tips but at the same time very useful.Thanks a lot.I’ve read with great pleasure
i think that the web design and the new web2.0 features are appreciated by people now, ajax calls, light box, and all these new gadjets, but i agree that the content is the king of all this stuff.
It may look so easy to create good and interesting content but in reality is so damn hard to make useful articles. There are so many poor websites and web writer and is getting harder and harder to even find a good writer.
Very helpful tips, I will use some of them for our future blog posts.
One of the best articles I’ve read on writing for the web. People are looking for answers to their questions and solutions to problems. Provide them with that and you’re gold. I’d recommend using this particular article as a guide. I know I will.
The key issue for a lot of us is time though. I accept that it is probably best to use good content or no content at all but getting a good article together can take ages.
Admittedly, I have a full time 9-5 job but it’s hard to find the extra hours.
I’m looking back at this post because it seems like I’ve got writer’s block. bah.
Content writing is really time consuming and I hate to write. Personally I outsource all my content creation and this really save me a lot of time.
There are many factors that involves write a good content. Your article covers five of them that are very important. Congratulations!
I think that the most overlooked method of establishing great content is being focused on what the reader is interested in. Also, make sure that you have a point to writing something. Writing with no purpose turns into rambling, boring waste of time. Give your readers a reason to come back — offer insightful, interesting readings backed with genuineness.
You might want to add that you should write for the right audience. Too often I read content that doesn’t know who it is trying to speak to, much less, who it wants to persuade or influence. Remember, you aren’t writing to yourself.
You can always get your users to do the work for you
Providing good content and linking out to authority pages on that content is a great thing to do… your pages rank better and faster.
>and linking out to authority pages
You pages will gain more usability, but they should lost their weight with every outbound link. That’s the thing you have to keep in mind always.
Hello Brandon Cornett,
Thanks for accentuating to this tips. I will take care of it.;)
Very well said. Great post! I wanted to add that website should also be advertise. No matter how good your website is if it doesn’t reaches your target market, it is useless.
Great post, and I definitely agree with a lot of the things you said.
I’ve found that if I simply write ABOUT something, just giving people information, it’s less popular then if I write about how to do something or how to use the information about a subject. They could just go to a more credible website to find out ABOUT stuff.
I think it’s important to point out that the information you give has to be useful for the reader…which you did point it out in the beginning of the post, I’m just reinforcing with my own 2 cents.
This article gives the real information one needs. Thanks for the tips.
I like your motto, this will save the www from all the junk that is already on it. If only everyone could think same way.
Hi Brandon,
I never thought that there should be a strategy to make website content.
After reading your article, I will follow this guidelines to make a website in a such a way that I can attract the users as well as engage for a long time.