13 Content Writing Tips to Improve Your Website Copy

Good content for your website will earn you more shares, gain links to your page, and gain the trust of your visitors. We are in a time when capturing the attention of a reader is a challenge. People spend fewer seconds on pages than before.

To overcome this, visitors need to be provided with good content that can be optimized for the web and hold the reader’s attention. These tips will help you give your content the attention it deserves.

1. Know your audience

Before you start writing, who are you targeting with your content? What audience are you trying to reach? The primary audience is your customers, while your secondary audience is anyone else who may need your services later. Make your content accessible and interesting. Answer all the questions your audience might have?

2. Stay away from keyword stuffing

Keywords are very important when writing for the web, however using too many keywords is frowned upon. Keywords make it easier for your readers to read your content. It also makes your content valuable and searchable. Going overboard with keywords only makes your work look unreliable to your readers and Google as well. It starts looking like low quality content and you get a high bounce rate. Over time, this can cause you problems with search engines.

3. Cause emotion in your readers

Your content should make your readers feel something. Your headline should compel your readers to click, your introduction should hook your readers and make them stick around, while your content should make the reader feel something.

4. Make your content easy to read

The attention span of online readers is a bit short these days, so keep it short. Keep your paragraphs short, your sentences short, and avoid repetition. When writing, make sure your sentence structures, tone, style, and word choice move readers to action. Avoid using the passive voice.

5. Link your articles

When writing content, you find that there are topics that you refer to frequently. Instead of repeating these points every time or writing new blog posts about the same thing, link to them. Doing this will save you time, help search engines know that your site has related content, improve your search results, make your content useful, and help you stay up to date. Search engines use these links to understand how the pages on your website are related.

6. keyword research

Now that you know your audience, use keyword research tools like AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer. This will help you discover what your target audience is searching for on Google. This also helps you find out how competitive a keyword is. Incorporate these keywords into your content when writing.

Look for secondary keywords to pair with your content. They will help you rank for a wide range of long-tail keywords that drive more traffic to your site.

7. Keep your content simple

Too much jargon will alienate your audience. Use language that is simple and easy to understand.

8. Write for your audience, not for search engines

Make sure your content has keywords, but don’t force them into your sentences in a way that doesn’t make sense or sounds weird. Also, make sure the keywords you are targeting are relevant to your audience. Whether a keyword has high search volume or not, ask yourself if it’s relevant to my target audience.

9. Hyperlink your sources

If you use content from another website, be sure to include a hyperlink. Cite your sources because it’s the right thing to do. This can also get you a reciprocal link or a quote in the future.

Citing sources also shows that the information you are giving is credible.

10. Edit your content

Make sure your work is refined before publishing it. Use tools like Grammarly to check grammar and sentence structure. Double check for spelling errors and only use words you are sure of their meaning.

11. Use social media to measure success

You are writing content to get results. So how do you measure the impact of the content you write?

• Use Google analytics. This will help you track your website traffic.

• Use promotion on social media. Identify what content gets likes, comments and shares, and what doesn’t. Use this information to fine-tune the type of content you’re serving.

12. Make your content easy to skim

Most web readers these days scan a page looking for the relevant information they need. This means that you should put your most important information at the top and make sure that your text can be skimmed easily. You can do this by:

• Use lists instead of a large chunk of text.

• Use subheadings to divide your work into sections. Headers will guide the reader as they navigate your page.

13. Use images and videos

Incorporate this into your content as studies have shown that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Charts, graphs, and infographics are also better for explaining information.

How do you make your content speak to your readers? share with us