5 Essential Tips When Writing Website Content
I’ll begin with one of the keys to a website’s success: content.
The internet may have changed completely over the years, but the evolution sure didn’t leave out the people who used it. Readers who browse, read, and gather information online are different now in terms of how they view content online and what they consider as ‘useful’ and ‘interesting’. Because of this, it is important for you to gauge just how effective your site’s content really is and to do as much as you can with it to make it more useful to your visitors.
After almost two years of writing content for the web, I’ve come up with 5 essential tips that will guide you when crafting your web content.
1. Cut the Sugar Coating Out
If you’re prone to writing sentences with a lot of adjectives, adverbs, metaphors, idioms, and all that it’s time to cut it out. Research has shown that you’re given only a couple of seconds to catch a person’s attention before they decide to skip, scroll down, scan, and leave your website. Prevent this from happening to you by writing content using words even your mother can understand.
2. Maximize your Bullets, Numbering, and Subsections
Your content needs to be easy to digest because lengthy paragraphs can overwhelm your readers. You can achieve this by formatting your content with bullets, numbering, and subsections. If you have a paragraph that’s too long to swallow, cut it up properly and see if you can insert a bulleted or numbered list. If you think a subsection will help introduce your readers to a new paragraph, go ahead and do it!
3. Place your Media in the Right Areas
This usually depends on your personal preferences so establish a style when inserting media into your content. Do you prefer the photo to be centered above the corresponding paragraph or right beside it? Do you find it more effective to place a video clip or will a quotation do? Knowing how to place your media in the right areas of your content will bring in a lot of benefits, one of which is a stream of engaged readers.
4. Check your Spelling and Grammar Before Publishing
I’ve come across a lot of websites that publish but forget to check the spelling and grammar of the content at all. Do not fail to proofread and constantly update/edit your content so that you won’t turn your audience off (especially those who are spelling and grammar specialists). If you can’t find the time to do so, hire an editor to pull out the weeds and replace them with the right kind of flowers.
5. Know Who You’re Talking To
This is one of the most important tips when writing website content, which is why I placed it at the bottom for finality. You write because you’re addressing an issue, problem, or are sharing information to a particular audience. How will you effectively do this if you don’t have any idea who you’re catering to? A simple example would be a website made for teenagers. Would you use professional content or simple content with a touch of teen language? Of course not. So do your research and know who exactly you are talking/selling to.
Take these 5 essential tips as reminders whenever you’re revamping your web copy or improving your blog’s content. Keep in mind who your audience is, be straight-to-the-point, and don’t forget to spell and grammar check before publishing.
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