By now, you have a winning strategy for how you will use content to grow your business… an effective idea-generating system in place… and an editorial plan for the content you’ll create over the next few months, give or take.
How to Write Content for Website in 4 Simple Steps
Websites are at the heart of digital marketing. Even with many new customer-facing channels opening up, websites remain an important touchpoint for brands. An impressive website speaks volumes about the site owner’s credibility.
And contrary to popular opinion that website design inspires credibility, it’s actually website content that fosters trust. No matter how well a site is designed, if it serves sub-standard content, it’s going to bounce visitors sooner or later.
Great content, on the other hand, keeps visitors hooked and moves them along the sales funnel seamlessly. That’s why it forms the backbone of content marketing.
Good quality content keeps website visitors on-page longer, which is a good sign for search engines. When this happens on a regular basis, search engines push up your rankings, which helps drive more organic traffic. More traffic means more conversion opportunities, and eventually more revenue.
Content consumption habits of users keep changing, which impacts web copywriting styles as well. Copywriters need to educate themselves on how to write website content that satisfies searcher intent and abides by latest best practices.
To that end, we’ve broken down the website content writing process into four broad steps that cover everything from SEO to readability. Check them out below.
Disclaimer: This content contains some affiliate links for which we will earn a commission (at no additional cost to you). This is to ensure that we can keep creating free content for you.
The Creative Process
That’s because not all content producers consider themselves writers. But each time you produce a new piece of content — whether it’s a blog post, podcast or video — you follow the same process of organizing your ideas and finding the right words to express yourself.
Any time you sit down to produce a new piece of content, you’ll use these steps. You won’t always work through them in order, and sometimes you’ll jump back and forth between steps. But the best content has usually gone through all six:
Quality Content Writing Tips For Web Pages
1. Please, please, please, DON’T plagiarize.
Copying content from other sites, no matter how tempting, will result in your site getting penalized, or even removed, from search engines. Maintain your copy/pasting self-control and just spend a few extra minutes coming up with your own original content. After all, your company is original, right? It deserves original content.
Top Duplicate Content Checkers
2. Don’t use run-on sentences.
Short and sweet appeals to both humans and search engines and you’ll be rewarded. If you have a lot to say, make sure to break it up into easily scannable chunks.
3. Don’t write content that is too complicated.
It might make you feel smarter to use 4 syllable words 18 times in a paragraph, but most people won’t appreciate your language prowess. Keep the text understandable to the average person.
4. Don’t write long walls of text.
If possible, try to keep paragraph length to 80 words or 4-5 lines. Bullet points, lists and visuals can help break up the text and make it more skim-friendly.
5. Don’t repeat yourself ad nauseam.
Your site visitors are coming to learn about the subject your website covers, and they don’t want to have the same concepts or keywords bombarding them when they want to learn something new.
6. Don’t oversell your product or service.
Quality content writing involves a careful balance of promotional and non-promotional content. Sure, the website’s purpose is to promote what you’re offering, but that doesn’t mean you should bombard readers with invitations to buy or sign up. Provide them with valuable, informative content that they can appreciate before asking them if they’re interested in becoming a consumer.
Research
Whether you share opinions or fact, and whether you want to inform, persuade or entertain, you need to back up your ideas with relevant details. That’s why it’s so important to research your topics.
What type of research do you need?
When you find articles that share useful statistics or reports or that could serve as research for future content, save them. Then, when you need numbers or facts to back up your claims, you already have them on file.
How do you do research for content marketing?
Get focused.
Begin by copying the topic from your Editorial Planner and pasting it into the top of a new Word document. This will keep you focused on your topic as you research.
Next, perform an online search for your primary keyword.
We prefer Google, but you may use your favorite search engine. Type your primary keyword in the Google search bar and look at the types of articles that show up in the SERPs. As in Step 1 above, you want to see what other people are saying about your topic. But now, you’re looking for information that aligns with your message, so you can reference it in your own content:
Check the URL of the sites that show up in the SERPs.
You want to find sites that are recognized as authorities in the subject. That’s not to say that lesser-known brands don’t have anything to contribute. But you can save time by focusing on industry-leading websites.
Read or skim the articles on authoritative websites.
Not all content needs research. An opinion piece, for example, may be entirely made up of your own ideas. But be aware that every piece can be strengthened by adding statistics, including other people’s opinions (agreeing or disagreeing with you), or references to a book or other resource.
How to Write Content Writing Samples That Win You Your Dream Job
If you’re a creative entrepreneur with lofty goals of expanding into your own writing biz — maybe even an agency?? — it probably seems scary and intimidating. What should you do first? How do you start, grow, and scale?
This powerful program is all about helping you launch your brand successfully, including the skills, systems, strategies, and support to boost you to that next level.
An in-depth, 5-phase curriculum. 1:1 coaching from me. An entire library of templates. Guided brand-building exercises with expert feedback. A bustling student community.
References:
https://attrock.com/blog/how-to-write-content-for-websites/
https://www.quicksprout.com/learn-to-write-content-like-a-pro/#:~:text=Learn%20To%20Write%20Content%20like%20a%20Pro%201,…%207%20Edit.%20…%208%20That%E2%80%99s%20it!%20
https://thriveagency.com/news/how-to-write-website-content/
https://www.quicksprout.com/learn-to-write-content-like-a-pro/
https://contenthacker.com/how-to-write-content-writing-samples/