Are you looking to create content for your website, but aren’t sure where to get started?
Creating stellar website content is essential if you want your site and your business to grow. In fact, 43 percent of B2B marketers say blog posts are the most important type of content they produce.
However, when it comes to creating blog posts and other forms of the website content, you can’t just slap a few words together and call it a day. In order to reach a wider audience and boost your SEO rankings, you need to produce content that stands out from the rest.
How do you do this?
Check out this guide to discover how to write content for a website.
1. Determine Your Goals
You can’t write good website content without first knowing why you’re writing it. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is establish your goals.
Are you writing content in hopes of selling a new product or service? Are you looking to attract more clients to your website? Are you simply trying to raise brand awareness and establish yourself as an expert in the industry? Are you trying to build traffic to support ads and sponsorships?
Whatever your goal is, make sure you have it clearly defined from the start, as this will help you better organize and position your content.
2. Research Your Audience
Another thing you need to do before you put pen to paper is to research your audience. What you say and how you say it will depend on the type of audience you write for.
Here’s what you need to know about your audience before you start writing:
- Their level of expertise: Are you speaking to novice consumers or other industry experts? This will affect what type of language you use and how much industry jargon you incorporate
- What they want to know: This is essential to writing good website content because if you can answer questions better than anyone else, you’ll have a greater chance of winning them over as customers
- How they’ll land on the page: Understanding how your readers are finding your page will help guide how you position your content
- Audience interests: Knowing what they’re is interested in will help you know what elements to add to your content to keep them engaged
3. Research Your Competition
The final thing you need to do before you actually start writing is to research your competition. By comparing your website to competitors’, you’ll be able to yield important insights that will impact how you write your copy.
Here’s why you should research your competition:
- Your visitors are also visiting your competitions’ websites. By learning what they’ll reading, you’ll figure out what stance to take and if you can offer something different
- It’ll help you identify industry trends
- You can use data from competitors to benchmark your performance
- Researching competitors can inspire new ideas for topics
4. Start Writing Content
Writing website content can feel overwhelming at first, especially if you’re new to the game. The most important thing to keep in mind is that website content is different from other forms of content out there, and there are a different set of rules you need to follow to keep your readers engaged.
Here’s what to keep in mind when writing content:
Follow the Inverted Pyramid Model
Web readers have short attention spans, and they’ll decide within a few seconds if your website has the information they need.
This is why you should structure your content like an upside-down pyramid. In other words, put the most important information at the top, then gradually drill down to more specific information.
Write Short, Simple Sentences
Long sentences are for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novels. Short sentences are for web readers who also have short attention spans.
Try to keep each sentence under 35 words. Adverbs and adjectives should be used sparingly. Generally, you want to keep your readability levels at something a 7th, 8th, or 9th grader could understand. You can use an app like Hemingway Editor to find out what your readability levels are.
Stick to Active Voice
Active verbs are always better than passive verbs, as these help keep the reader engaged.
For example, instead of saying, “the movie was directed by Steven Spielberg”, you should say, “Steven Spielberg directed the movie”.
Writing this way also helps create more succinct, reader-friendly sentences. Additionally, it’s more direct.
Show, Don’t Tell
When writing website content, you shouldn’t limit yourself to general statements. Instead, back up what you’re saying with real-world examples.
For example, let’s say you’re talking about the benefits of doing yoga. Instead of just saying, “yoga is a great exercise for your mental health!”, you can say:
“Yoga is known for its ability to promote relaxation and ease stress. In fact, one study had 24 women practice yoga daily for three months. After the three-month period, the women had significantly lower levels of cortisol, fatigue, anxiety, and depression”.
As you can see, highlighting what you’re saying with an example can really help get your point across.
Make the Text Scannable
No matter how great your website content is, most people aren’t going to read it word for word. So, in addition to putting the most important information at the top, also make sure that your text is scannable.
Keep paragraphs short- around two to three sentences. Also, use bullet points where you can, and break up your text with images and other graphics. Doing all of this will help make your text easier to digest and boost SEO rankings.
How to Write Content for a Website: Wrap Up
Now that you know how to write content for a website, it’s time to get to work. Before you know it, your content will be drawing in more and more readers.
Be sure to check back in with our blog for more writing-related tips and tricks.