When designing a website, making excellent content should be your main priority to drive more organic traffic into the site. Research has it that over a third of the website visitors quit after realizing that the content is not engaging or if the layout is not captivating.
When creating stunning content for your site, remember to have your audience in mind as well as the SEO aspects. To fulfill these two obligations, you need to invest considerable time and effort to achieve your desired results. We have simplified for you a list of excellent tips to help you boost the quality of your content.
Know your audience
Even before you start a business, whether physical or online, you should first identify your target audience. Also, understand how you will address the audience to connect with them in a more engaging manner. So, when writing your content, you must understand your audience to voice your ideas appropriately. Your written words are meant to sell your brand, not only at that particular time but in a long-lasting endeavor. To drive traffic into your business website, you need to talk to your audience in a language that they understand best.
Clearly understand who your audience is. Also, understand which geographic location they come from, age, and interests. Keep a list of all these factors so that it can be at the front of your mind when crafting the content.
Provide quality content
You need to write elegant texts while using quality (key)words that add value to your readers and the brand. After understanding who your audience is, you now need to speak to them in an engaging way. For every word, phrase, or line that you write, evaluate the audience's reaction to it. Construct your ideas to suit their desires and expectations in a conversational manner to create a personal touch. Try to fix their intended problems by writing compelling content. Also, try to spark curiosity about your products through your words.
If you are stuck in determining the right content for your website, consider reading the relevant and popular blogs to get the latest content trends. Get inspiration from these articles and apply the knowledge to your website in a better way. Within no time, you will develop a natural ability to write exceptional content.
Content optimization - SEO
Writing great content that speaks the customers' language is not enough to drive quality traffic to your site. You definitely have to put in a considerable effort to enhance your SEO strategy. Search Engine Optimization is used in making sure that your website ranks higher on Google search. The usage of correct keywords is essential to improve your SEO strategy. Conduct keyword research on your website to determine if the taglines or the phrases will enable your site to be discovered quickly by the target customers. There are several SEO tools to help you improve Google search discoverability.
First, you first need to determine the keywords you want to use on your website. Conduct keyword research to determine the popular words that are associated with your brand or the theme of your site. Then, repetitively use these words when writing the website content. Learn a bit more about "how to find the best Keywords for your SEO strategy" in this blog post.
Mention these keywords or the phrases throughout the website. These details include your brand's description, meta data and meta tags, and the alt text that you integrated into the images. The Google search engines will notice these keywords, and it will use them to direct traffic to your site. Therefore, ensure that the keywords are relevant, quality, and valuable. Learn more about writing SEO Friendly Alt Text for Your Images on our blog.
Provide website links
Providing a link to outside sources is essential to improve the SEO strategy of your website. This is because the Google search engine can validate the credibility of your web content. Also, you will create a mutual connection to other website owners, and they may, in turn, want to link back to your website.
However, it would help if you took careful consideration of who you link your site with. The linked sources must be credible, and if they supplement the content in your website. For instance, if you have written some theoretical concepts without indicating statistical facts, you may link to a site that can provide the facts, hence boosting the credibility of your content.
Apart from external linkage, you may also consider internal links too. Internal links connect the pages and all the sections in your site. You may include blog links to provide details that can cause clutter if presented on the actual pages. Through the use of internal links, you are able to simplify your work and enable the customer to have a seamless experience by accessing all the related content from any page.
Ensure simplicity
Your website content should be precise, short, and to the point. These are elements that signify simplicity; hence the customer can engage with the content easily. Web users tend to skim through lengthy articles or even disregard them; thus, they may miss important details. If you need your readers to read all the work, keep it short and straightforward.
We may have so much to write about ourselves and our brand, but let's not go on rants. Make the content direct, clear, and straightforward to ensure that the customer reads it all. It is not a must to say it all in one post; reserve the rest for the other updates. Most readers prefer posts that are under 1000 words, so ensure that you provide the most relevant details only at a go. Create a sense of curiosity by letting the readers explore the rest of the website for additional tempting content.
Apply the inverted pyramid
You need to apply the inverted pyramid method to ensure that the users get to read the most relevant details before they lose interest. An inverted pyramid method of designing the content starts with the essential information and proceeds hierarchically in order of their priority. Most readers are lazy scrollers; thus, ensure that the top and bottom of your article contain the most valuable content.
When creating the pyramid, remember to consider the structure and a logical organization or your ideas. Remember that you need to create a coherent and harmonious flow after all. You may consider applying the essay writing style: title, intro, body, and conclusion. If done correctly, the pyramid method will grab and retain the attention of your website users.
Avoid jargon and complicated language in general
Jargon is necessary when communicating with other members of your industry, but they may seem meaningless to the readers. When crafting the content, assume that the readers have never heard of your brand or products before. Explain the details in a simple, self-explanatory way. A simple and easy to understand article will attract and retain your audience.
Use a varied choice of words
Do not say the same thing in the same way over and over until the article is over. As you write content put in mind your keywords and also remember to use diverse wording techniques. You may use synonyms, or even simple colloquial expressions to express the same ideas.
You may get the help of apps such as Grammarly that quickly detects overused words, provides alternative synonyms, and even corrects any typo and Grammatical mistakes. Besides, you could have a friend to go through your work.
Call to action buttons
The call-to-action buttons indicate what the reader needs to do after they access your site. It is the action button that begs to be clicked on to complete a particular activity on the site. For example, if your mission is to make the visitors buy a particular item, you could include a 'Buy Me' button after the item details.
The CTA is straightforward and attractive. Keep your brand identity and be authentic when designing the call-to-action buttons. To help you develop the best CTAs, have a look at this article about how to write CTAs that work.
Maintain visual appeal
Your content should be visually pleasing. You need to grab the attention of your readers with an excellent design of the documents. Consider splitting your ideas into paragraphs, with sub-headings, numbers, bullets, and with some more extensive white spaces to give the user a clear distinction of the various segments.
Even if the reader is just skimming throughout the site, (s)he will at least have a glimpse of all the sub-headings in the article. Also, remember to consider the text and website layout. Consider reading the homepage design trends of 2020 to understand what is on demand today clearly.
We hope that these 10 essential steps will help you to create more captivating website content. Do you still find it overwhelming? We can help you out as well! Contact the Knight Design team if you would need any help with your website content.