Good content for your website will earn you more shares, earn links to your page, and earn the trust of your visitors. We are in an age where capturing a reader’s attention is a challenge. People spend fewer seconds on pages than ever before.
To overcome this, visitors need to be provided with good content that can be optimized for the web and hold the reader’s attention. These tips will help you give your content the attention it deserves.
- know your audience
Before you start writing, who are you targeting with your content? What audience are you trying to reach? Your primary audience is your customers, while your secondary audience is anyone else who may need your services later. Make your content accessible and interesting. Answer all the questions your audience might have?
- Stay away from keyword stuffing
Keywords are very important when writing for the web, however, using too many of these keywords is frowned upon. Keywords make it easier for your readers to read your content. It also makes your content valuable and searchable. Going overboard with keywords only makes your work look unreliable to your readers and also to Google. It starts to look like low-quality content and you get a high bounce rate. Over time, this can cause you problems with search engines.
- Provoke emotion in your readers
Your content should make your readers feel something. Your headline should compel your readers to click, your introduction should hook your readers and make them stick around, while your content should make the reader feel something.
- Make your content easy to read
The attention span of online readers is a bit short these days, so keep it short. Keep your paragraphs short, your sentences short, and avoid repetition. When writing, make sure your sentence structures, tone, style, and word choice move readers to action. Avoid using the passive voice.
- Link your articles
As you write content, you find that there are topics that you refer to frequently. Instead of repeating these points every time or writing new blog posts about the same thing, link to them. Doing this will save you time, help search engines know that your site has related content, improve your search results, make your content useful, and help keep you up to date. Search engines use these links to understand how pages on your website are related.
- keyword research
Now that you know your audience, use keyword research tools like AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer. This will help you find out what your target audience is looking for on Google. This also helps you find out how competitive a keyword is. Incorporate these keywords into your content as you write.
Look for secondary keywords to combine with your content. They will help you rank for a wide range of long-tail keywords that drive more traffic to your site.
- Keep your content simple
Too much jargon will alienate your audience. Use language that is simple and easy to understand.
- Write for your audience, not for search engines
Make sure your content has keywords, but don’t force them into your sentences in a way that doesn’t make sense or sounds weird. Also, make sure the keywords you are targeting are relevant to your audience. Whether a keyword has high search volume or not, ask yourself if it’s relevant to my target audience.
- Hyperlink to your sources
If you use content from another website, be sure to include a hyperlink. Cite your sources because it is correct. This can also get you a reciprocal link or quote in the future.
Citing sources also shows that the information you are giving is credible.
- edit your content
Make sure your work is polished before posting it. Use tools like Grammarly to check grammar and sentence structure. Double check for spelling errors and only use words that you are sure of the meaning of.
- Use social media to measure success
You are writing content to get results. So how do you measure the impact of the content you write?
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Use Google analytics. This will help you track your website traffic.
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Use social media promotion. Identify what content gets likes, comments, and shares, and what doesn’t. Use this information to fine-tune the type of content you’re providing.
- Make your content easy to skim
Most web readers these days scan a page for the relevant information they need. This means putting your most important information at the top and making sure your text can be easily skimmed. You can do this by:
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Use lists instead of a large chunk of text.
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Use subheadings to divide your work into sections. Headings will guide the reader as they navigate through your page.
- Use images and videos
Incorporate this into your content as studies have shown that the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Charts, graphs, and infographics are also better at explaining information.
How do you make your content speak to your readers? Share with us
