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The 11 Golden Rules of Writing Content for Your Website, Know your…
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Know your audience
Before drafting content, ask yourself these questions: Who is my primary audience? What about a secondary audience who can influence and inform my primary audience? How will they find my site online?
Audiences find web content through many different paths—social media sharing, links from other websites, email sharing, and search engines.
our secondary audience is much broader and could include other professionals, reporters, or anyone who might need your services in the future.
Text could be extremely well-written and informative, but if it’s not optimized for search engines, chances are few people will find it.
Make text scannable
make sure text is easy to skim. Most web readers will scan the page to find the specific piece of information they’re looking for—if they don’t find it easily, they’ll move on.
Instead of text-heavy paragraphs, use bulleted or numerical lists. Instead of one long page of text, organize content into labeled tabs.
Always include “white space.” This is the empty space that surrounds paragraphs, images, and other elements on your web page. Though it may seem like this is just wasted space, it’s actually a web designer’s best friend.
Incorporate multimedia
Research shows that most the human brain is visual, and people process visual information many times faster than text.
An easy-to-read chart or graph can also do a better job of explaining a complex topic than text alone.
Images also help break up text, making your page easier to read. We recommend having at least one image on each page of your website.
Layer website content
Help readers find more great content by hyperlinking certain words or phrases to other relevant resources, especially those on your own website.
Building these internal links within your own site also helps your SEO, but keep in mind that links should always be relevant and helpful.
if you overload your text with links, people won’t know what to click on.
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Write short, simple sentences
Long sentences are for Charles Dickens—the short attention span of today’s reader demands sentences of 35 words or fewer.
If you’re not sure how to judge your own writing, then it’s useful to check how your texts score with an online readability tool. Most of the popular models are based on the length of words and sentences in a text.
Stick to active voice
Use active rather than passive verbs, and specify the subject of the sentence.
Active voice helps create succinct, reader-friendly sentences.
Show, don’t tell
Don’t limit your prose to generalities and high-level statements. Specific, real-world examples help readers better understand and visualize your messages.
more specific, descriptive product information helps your website’s SEO and gives customers the information they need to make those purchases.
Nix the jargon
make sure information is understandable for the educated non-specialist. Spell out acronyms on first reference. Avoid insider language. Explain complex or niche terms. And provide hyperlinks to other articles where readers can get more background information on a particular topic.
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Mix up your word choice
Words are like cookies—we all have our favorites. But when it comes to keeping your visitors interested, variety is key! Word clouds are fun to use and can help you vary your word choice by visualizing which words you use the most.
Negative words standing out in your cloud? Now you know exactly what to tweak for a more positive tone. Keep an eye out for your website keywords as well
Leave them wanting more
Writing, in general, is hard work—writing content for your website, even more so. But remember, you don’t need to write perfect texts first time around! Once your content is live, you can do monthly website checks to monitor and optimize its performance.
Good websites end each page with a strong call-to-action (or CTA for short). Is there a person a reader should contact for more information? An interesting video they should watch? How about a related blog post they can read or a report they can download?