The Success of any Website Primarily Depends on its Content

The rest of the parameters, such as design, videos, visuals, etc., are secondary and play a supporting role to enhance the effectiveness of the content.

A website with clear, keyword-rich, and relevant content that delivers the right message to the right audience with power and conviction successfully retains website visitors while ensuring a high ranking on search engines.

In this article, we’ll talk about some dos and don’ts of writing website content that targets your audience, engages them, and persuades them to take action. So, let’s get started.

Dos of Writing Website Content

1. Write for your target audience

Your content should be written while keeping your target audience in mind. Conduct thorough research to understand the needs, requirements, and pain points of your target audience. This insight will help you to choose the topic and write content that addresses their needs and concerns.

2. Do your research

By researching content topics, keywords, ranking content, and your competition, you can develop a better content strategy that can set you up for success.

Content optimisation was difficult before due to a lack of resources. But now, we have help. Tools such Contenteum for content creation and optimisation , Ahrefs, SEMRush, Mangools KWFinder for keyword research and optimisation, etc can improve your content immediately and empower you to get better at your content writing skills.

3. Have a content outline

Once you are done with your content research, you need to have a strong, organized idea of how you’ll be writing each of the website pages. Create an outline to decide the content structure and flow of information.

4. Use bullets and numbers

Modern readers have a short attention span; they don’t read but skim through the content. To make your content appealing to them, make sure your content has:

  • H1 and H2 headlines
  • Bullet points wherever applicable
  • Subheadings in bold
  • Highlighted keywords and phrases
  • Numbers and facts wherever applicable

5. Make your content easy for the eye to keep reading

Dense paragraphs, complex terms, and long sentences aren’t great for a pleasant reading experience. With most people skimming through the content, writing simple content has become more important than ever.

Some tips for writing simple content:

  • Write short paragraphs and sentences.
  • Make sure the content is readable and to the point.
  • Use large, easy to read fonts.
  • Mix content with images to make it interesting while ensuring there’s plenty of white space.

6. Include a clear Call To Action

If you want your readers to take any kind of action, you need to have a clearly visible and optimised call-to-action placed at the end of the article. The CTA can be in the form of a button, link, or an image that can encourage the website visitor to take action.

Don’ts for Writing Website Content

1. Don’t plagiarize

Nothing makes you lose your credibility and ranking on search engines like plagiarized content. Google has algorithms in place to weed out copied content. Even spun content is a big no-no. The best thing to do is research, absorb the information, and write your own content.

2. Don’t be boring

Yes, people come to your website for information, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to read through the boring stuff. Make the content interesting for them. Allow the content to have a sparkling personality and a unique voice. Try to use humor wherever applicable, give real-life examples, and be witty; it will help in retaining the reader’s interest.

3. Don’t pick up copyrighted images

It’s easy to look for images on the internet, but not all can be used. Some of these images have copyrights. It means that you need to ask permission or give full credit to the source. Avoid making the mistake of using copyrighted images by creating your own graphics and images. If this is expensive and time-consuming for you, the other alternative is to look for royalty-free images on websites like Shutterstock, Pixabay, etc.

4. Don’t oversell

Your website should be a balanced mix of promotional and non-promotional content. Although the website content’s purpose is to promote your business, avoid bombarding readers with offers and invitations to buy or sign up. Ensure that while you are promoting your product/service, you are providing them with valuable information.

5. Don’t allow grammar or spelling errors on your site

Even the best of writers make grammatical mistakes and spelling errors. But these mistakes can ruin your business reputation. Therefore, it is important to review and proofread every piece of content carefully before it gets published on the website. Hire an editor or let the second pair of eyes read through the content.

In conclusion

It’s important to understand the ultimate role of content on your website – to generate revenue and growing website traffic. These smart content writing dos and don’ts will help you enhance your website and grow your business.

Author Bio

Sofia David is a digital content marketer at Contenteum where she heads and executes the content creation strategies. Contenteum is a wholistic platform that helps SEO agencies and content teams in planning, researching, creating, optimising, and publishing content to help with rankings. Sofia believes that good content is what offers true value to the reader and that is why she creates content with a reader-first mindset. When she’s not working on new content, she finds pleasure in gardening and loves to play Scrabble every chance she gets.