Why should you write great content for your website?
For one simple reason...
To stand out from the crowd.
People love websites with great content. Let's face it, looking for websites with great content is the reason everybody uses the internet.
But more importantly, search engines love websites with great content.
The reason search engines exist is to bring websites with great content to people who are searching for them.
People who find websites with great content tend to link to them. Not only do these links help with search engine popularity, these links are another source of traffic.
A website which uses an effective linking strategy will get more traffic from links than from search engines.
But a website needs great content before people will link to it.
How do you write great website content?
Writing great website content is not just about good grammar and spelling.
It is also about:
1. Presenting a surfer with the information that they have searched for.
People search for information on the internet by typing keywords into the search engines.
By knowing what words people are searching for, a webmaster can incorporate these words or phrases into their webpage content and increase the likelihood of their webpage being included in the results of a search for those keywords.
How to research keywords is covered in detail in the using properly researched keywords section.
2. Making sure that the information is in your own words.
One of the biggest "turn offs" when doing research on the internet is to find that the information in each website, on the list of search results, has the same content, or content you know has been written by the same person.
When people are researching a topic or a product, they want diversity. They want to "hear both sides of the argument", to see all competing products.
So how do you make sure your content is different?
By writing your own content.
In fact, the best content you will ever write, will be based on your own personal experience. It will be "your side of the argument". The diversity that will make you stand out from the crowd.
There are a number of sources you can use to research content for your website, the most common being:
- Your own personal experience
- Other peoples personal experience
- Literature
- The internet
This list is intentionally written in this sequence, although literature and the internet are interchangeable (a vast amount of information previously only found in books is now available on the internet).
To gain credibility on the internet you need personal experience. You need to write from your own experiences, your own point of view.
Other people will soon realize if you are trying to use somebody elses words or trying to pass off somebody elses experiences as your own.
You will find that as you become more knowledgeable, from research using books, the internet and speaking to other people, you will start to form your own opinions, theories and ideas.
Your own personal experience will prove or disprove these opinions, ideas and theories.
When you base your writing on your own experience, you are speaking with an authority that is unique to you.
The sequence you should use to carry out research for your website content is:
- Search the internet for all the information you can that is related to your website theme. Make a note of each website address (URL), you may need to refer back to them later.
- Try to find as much information as possible from the books available to you.
- Speak to as many people as you can who have some knowledge of your website theme.
- Memorize as much of the information as possible, internalize it.
- Use the information you have learned in your daily life, prove it or disprove it. Form your own opinion as to what works and what doesn't. Decide what is feasible and what isn't.
- Put your experiences and opinions into writing. This information is now unique to you and the basis of your website content.
Important - To write with some authority, try to keep your theme as focused as possible and learn all that you need (not all that you can) to become competent.
On the other hand...
If you want to become an expert you had better be prepared to spend many years learning all that you can (not all that you need to).
When trying to figure out "how much is enough information?" there are two things to consider:
- How much information is necessary to be able to answer with some authority?
Think back on all the questions you had when you first became interested in the topic of your website.
Research and learn enough information to answer these questions (and any more that you can think of) and you will have learned enough to answer with some authority.
- How much information is there in your competitors websites?
Your goal should be to have the best website on your topic or theme.
Use the search engines and research all of the terms you can think of that are related to your website theme.
The websites that come up in the results are your competitors. Go through each website carefully and find things that you can do better or answer more fully, look for things that are missing that you could include in your own website.
3. Writing the information in a brief, but detailed and easy to read format.
A visitor's first impression from the visual appearance of your website will determine whether they are going to bother reading anything or not.
The following will cause a bad first impression:
- A busy layout (text or pictures in every available space).
- An untidy layout (no apparent order to the webpage).
- A "tacky" background (any background image that distracts you from the text).
- Flashing or scrolling text.
- Animated images.
- Huge images that take forever to download.
- Brightly colored text on colored backgrounds (e.g. red text on a blue background - to some people the red text seems to shimmer and is impossible to read).
Your website has to convince the world at large that you are a professional and are competent (not an expert) in your field.
The golden rule is - if it does not add to the sales process or does not add to the explanation within the webpage text, it does not belong.
Here are some tips for creating webpages that are brief, but detailed and easy to read:
- Use a font that is easy to read.
- Get to the point quickly.
- Use short sentences and make your paragraphs no more than five or six lines long.
- Use lots of "white space" between paragraphs.
- Use a plain light colored background with a dark colored text.
- If you must use a background image, make sure it is very faint, similar to a water mark.
- If you must use any graphics, make sure that they are small and quick to download.
- Use bulleted points as often as you can (rather than a long list of items separated by commas).
- Try to avoid using the word "I" and use "you" instead.
There are no golden rules on how to write text for your webpage. Everybody develops their own technique.
The secret is to "do it". Just start writing, don't try to force it.
You will find that the words will flow, they might not make a lot of sense to start with, but they will flow.
Once you have written a page or so, read through them and edit them so they make sense. Then leave them overnight and re-read them the next day. In the beginning you will find loads of mistakes, this is good. It means you are beginning to form your own style of writing.
Practice this for a day or two but pick a few topics and write about them. Don't let anybody proof read them, that is for later.
Now you are ready to incorporate keywords and do a little search engine optimization.
4. Putting this information into a webpage in such a manner that search engines will index the webpage favorably.
So far you have...
- Discovered how to find keywords, related to your webpage theme, that people are searching for using search engines.
- Identified the keyword or phrase that you want to incorporate into your webpage text.
- Discovered how to research, learn and use information so you can write about it from "experience".
Now we put it all together...
- Write a title (which goes between the title tags) which contains your keyword or phrase.
Try not to start the title with your keyword or phrase and never use the same title for every page.
- Write a heading (which goes between the H1 heading tags) which contains your keyword or phrase. Try to use the keyword or phrase near the beginning of the heading but do not start the heading with your keyword or phrase.
Your heading is important because it should make your reader want to read the webpage text.
- In your own words, write your webpage text. Aim for about six hundred words, certainly no less than two hundred.
Do not copy other peoples work, it is illegal and brands you as a fraud.
Use your keyword or phrase:
- Near the beginning of the first sentence.
- At the beginning and end of every subsequent paragraph.
Important - If your webpage text sounds odd or is difficult to read because you have used your keyword or phrase too many times, you probably have, so reduce the frequency.
Important - Do not use the same text or content on different pages (i.e. do not copy and paste text from one page to another - this includes copying from other websites). Search engines regard similar content as spam and their programming enables them to compare the content on different pages.
- If there are any graphics on your webpage, use the keyword or phrase in the alt tags.
- If you are using any text links pointing away from your page, include your keyword or phrase into the link text and try to include your keyword or phrase into the URL you are linking to.
Important - Search engines do not like referral links. If the page you are linking to is your referral page, put the link into a HTML page that uses a meta refresh to your referral page.
Here is the code for a simple meta refresh page:
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=http://www.your-referral-link.com">
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Replace http://www.your-referral-link.com with your actual referral link and then save this page with a name that includes your keyword or phrase.
- Try to include your keyword or phrase into the name of your webpage.
For example - if your keyword phrase was "cellphone covers" and your webpage theme was "cellphone covers" you would name your webpage "cellphone-covers.html"
- If your website is a minisite which is tightly themed around a single keyword or one keyword phrase, include your keyword or phrase into the domain name.
For example - if your keyword phrase was "cellphone covers" and your minisite theme was "cellphone covers" you would try to get cellphone-covers.com as the domain name.
Important - the URL http://www.cellphone-covers.com/cellphone-covers.html would be considered as keyword stuffing by the search engines and treated as spam.
Once you are happy with your webpage content, do a spell check and then proof read it, fixing any obvious errors as you go.
Leave your webcopy over night and read it out aloud the next day. If your webcopy is difficult to read out aloud, change it so it flows smoothly.
Once you are happy with your webpage content, get somebody else to proof read it and make any changes that are necessary.
Get their feed back on your content:
- Was it interesting?
- Does it fully cover your webpage theme?
- Is there anything missing?
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