Use Your Words – Writing Awesome Web Content

The power of the internet has allowed us to reach millions of users with just the click of a button, increasing the potential to broadcast your brand’s message to the masses with ease.

Creating engaging content on the web is one of the best ways to get traffic to your website and engage your target audience.

What follows are a few tips for writing quality content that is easy to read for your company blog or landing pages on your website.

Title

The title of your article can make or break it. A great attention-grabbing title will entice users and lure them into reading your article.

For example, if you’re writing an article on “Things to do in Baton Rouge,” you may want to name it “Baton Rouge Entertainment.”

But, consider giving a title with a little more flair, more pizazz, more intrigue.

How about “Visiting Baton Rouge? 10 Things You MUST Do.”

See, the latter of the two titles grabs the reader’s attention and interest and lures them into your article.

Here’s an example of the perfect landing page you may want to look at. The principles are the same.

Inverted Pyramid

Although there is some debate among journalists and writers, historically it’s been suggested to use the inverted pyramid.

In the inverted pyramid, the “base” of the pyramid (the most fundamental facts), appears at the top of the story, in the lead paragraph. 

Non-essential information appears in the following paragraphs, or “nut” graphs, in order of importance.

Bullet Points

• Use bullet points or numbers to break your article down into bite-sized chunks. 
• A good rule of thumb is if you have to put more than two commas in a list, consider putting it in a bulleted format.

Numbered Lists

Whereas bulleted lists are for breaking down an article, we like to use numbered lists only when describing steps to completing something, or performing an action of some sort.

1. Step One
2. Step Two
3. Step Three
4. Step Four

Bold Text

It’s also an excellent idea to bold certain words of your article such as warnings and important information.

Some SEO and content marketers will sparingly bold the keywords of their content to reassure visitors that they have found the information they were searching for.

Visual Illustrations

If applicable, include pictures, videos, illustrations, embed tweets, or other visual elements to keep your reader interested.

Make sure that your web designer sizes your images properly to keep your web page’s size as small as possible and its loading speed fast.

The query “header tag optimization” provides the perfect example: To optimize these in 2021: Use Target & Related Keywords Always use your main keyword in at least one header tag and high-value related keywords in others. https://t.co/svd1bdE0LP #SEO

CreativWebTools (@CreativWebTools) November 22, 2020

Oversized images on one of several technical SEO errors that will hurt your rankings (and cause your readers to keep on looking for the information they are seeking elsewhere.)

Yeah, we could have put the above sentence into a bulleted list. We’ve already broken one of our rules-of-thumb, showing you that there’s no written-in-stone set of rules to writing for the web.

Length of Article

Although long-form blog posts certainly have their place, the ideal length of a blog post is around 1,600 words, about seven minutes of reading. (Source: Buffer – The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research“)

When you create your web copy, focus on your content and message and don’t get hung up on a certain length.

There is no absolute word count.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Make sure that your content is optimized for both humans and search engines. Make sure that you have the optimal keyword density, you’re using H1-H5 heading tags properly, setting your meta description for your post, and don’t forget to include ALT tags on all of your images.

Learn more about optimizing your webpage content in our recent article: Three SEO Mistakes That Can Impact Your Search Rankings.

Write Blog Posts Frequently

One of the best ways to keep your website’s visitors coming back for more is to blog often.

By writing often, you increase the keywords that your website will rank for and get more web traffic as a result.

Plus, your articles will help establish you as an industry leader and shows you as an authority in your niche.

Engaging, Authoritative Content

Always publish original content written for readers, not search engines.

Or put another way, write to inform, not just to show up in search results.

Sometimes, writers get all wrapped up in crafting SEO-friendly content that they end up writing an article that is hard to read or worse.

It bears repeating:  Write for humans, not search engines.

If you genuinely know the topic you’re writing about, the keywords and ideas will flow naturally, we promise.

And please, proofread your content. Make sure it’s free from spelling and grammar mistakes that could cost you money.

Provide Resources

Ok, we’re a digital marketing agency, so we’ll use ourselves as an example:

We know a lot about a lot and are pretty good at what we do. Some even say we’re the best SEO agency in the Baton Rouge area.

However, we don’t know everything and often have to research our topics and lean on some heavyweights like Rand Fishkin, Neil Patel, and others.

When we use their ideas or quote them, we make sure to link to the original article. (You can see this in our hyperlink out to Buffer earlier.)

Use Examples

One of the best ways for your reader to relate to your post or article is to provide real-life examples. Provide them if you can to paint a picture.

Provide Internal Linking

If your article gets too long, consider providing a table of contents and internal anchor links to help your readers see the content’s breakdown and offer them easy access to the different sections.

Sharing on Social Media

If at all possible add a call to action or a button where the reader can share your post (or article) to social media.

Great content is meant to be shared, plus search engines will take note of the shares and you’ll get a boost in the search results pages.

Above are just a few guidelines for you to use when writing web content.

They are not absolutes, nor are they rules written in stone. Feel free to adapt, change, or dismiss them as you see fit.

Ultimately, writing for the web is about self-expression, as an individual or as a business.

Good luck and happy writing!