Guide to Writing Website Content

As a webmaster, why should you think about the quality of your site's content? The short answer is that good website content will give users a reason to visit your site, and more importantly, a reason to come back.

Depending on your site's practices, having good content can mean more earnings and traffic. Content can help establish a brand or theme to a website. Content even plays a part in boosting search engine rankings.

When writing website content, it's extremely important to understand how users read on the web. This should guide every decision in the process of writing for the web.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Keep web content short and sweet

Research shows that web users prefer short copy and copy that is separated in sections. Web users scan websites, and don't read them.

• Avoid lengthy sentences and paragraphs. Web content should not be book-like in any way.
• Content should be broken down into short sections with headings. Users are apt to scan headings and choose what sections they want to read.

I recommend: Website content should be written for users.  Make your website easy for them to read.  Check out this baby shower website that implements good content writing.

Optimize your content with keywords

Your website's content should contain relevant keywords. Why? When search engines index a website, they look at the text contained on a site. If the keywords are relevant to the site's theme (for example, a word like "milk chocolate" on a website that sells homemade chocolates) the search engines will notice. If the chocolate-themed website contains a word like "gasoline", the search engine may get confused.

I recommend: Use keyword software, or a free tool like Overture's Inventory Tool to find out what search terms people are looking for.

Update your existing content

Keep your content fresh to keep your readers interested, and to help your site's search engine optimization efforts.

• If your website was created years ago, and some of the content is original (read: old) time should be spent on updating it. If your site's content is continually updated, search engines will index it more often, which will ultimately help your search engine rankings (provided your content is good content!)
• For sites that already update their content, rewriting may be beneficial. Updating information, adding information or deleting irrelevant information can update your site.

I recommend: Hiring a Web content writer to add new content to a site, or refresh what is already there.  Search engines love new and/or updated content, so give them something to work with.

Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• Remember- You have about 8 seconds to grab a website user's attention.
• Use keyword-rich headings on every page.
• Credibility is important. Use perfect grammar. Don't lie. Back up your writing with research.
• Think like a web user. Save the big words and phrases for newspapers and college-level writing.
• Link, link, link! Add links to your site to make it easy to navigate.
• If you have a service or product to sell, make contact information very easy to find.
• Less is more. Website content should be about use about half the text it would take for a print article.
• Keep it current. Keep your content new and updated. Add a blog. Keep it fresh. If you build it well, they will come (and come back!)
• Take advantage of bold text and bulleted lists. It makes content easier to read.