8 Tips on How to Write Content for your Website

It is important to spend time on choosing the right web design company to build your website but it doesn’t end there.   Where the web design company looks after the look and development of your site, the content is an important part to having a successful website.

Please see our 8 useful tips on how to write content for your website.

1. Research your customers, competitors and Industry – knowledge is the key when putting together content for your website.   By now you will know your industry and customers and the majority of them want the same thing. You will need to translate this with your content to showcase your services and product through your website for potential customers. In the same way it is good to research your competitors online and get tips on how they do it.
2. Never copy content from someone else – even though you are researching your competitors’ website, it is important to never copy their content. Obviously you don’t want to be the same as everyone else and you want to stand out from your competitors. But the main reason you should never do this is because of the search engines. The search engines are clever and will catch you out and you may land penalties, where your site is dropped, under content duplication rule.

3. Don’t just copy the print marketing – one of the most common mistakes that a website owner does is to copy and paste the marketing materials from the brochures onto the website. Writing for the Web needs to be different from writing for print. The way the Web works is different from print and the writing needs to reflect that.
4. Make Content Easy to Read – when writing for your website put yourself in the shoes of your customers and visitors to your site. Don’t use overcomplicated words as this may look fancy but it will put off the reader and may confuse them. You need to project a clear and concise message about who you are, what you can do for them and why they should choose to work with you.

5. Keep pages short and to the point – nowadays people don’t have the time to sit down and read all the wonderful things about your company.   Even though your content is an important part to your site, it needs to be to the point. If a visitor see lines and lines of text they may lose interest and click that dreaded back button. So when you are writing your content think about having a targeted message for each section of your website.
6. Write for your Readers and not for the Search Engines –search engines are important to get readers, but if your writing is obviously tailored towards search engines, you will quickly lose readers. When you write for a keyword phrase, you need to use the phrase enough so that it’s recognised as the topic but not so much that your readers notice. If you have the same phrase repeated in a sentence, that’s too much and also not more than twice in a paragraph.

7. Use Images to Expand on your Text – content is important to get your company’s message across but it can be boring just looking at text on the pages. Using images can help give life to a page and keep the interest in the reader. Images can also project your message in ways that content cannot do.
8. Don’t self-edit your work (at least not right away) – Ideally, you’ll have somebody to edit your writing. If you’re responsible for writing andediting your web content, don’t do both in the same day. It is always better to come back to your content a day or two later and read through everything again. This will allow you to be objective and edit your content more productively.