Tips For Writing Effective Web Content

Writing content for your website is very different to writing for print. Ideally, your visitors will be on the look-out for the kinds of products and services you provide. Hopefully they will have been driven there through an effective SEO or online marketing strategy. The idea is to get them to make a quick decision.

To convert them to paying customers as soon as possible. Here are some tips to help you achieve this:

Get your priorities right: 
Tell your visitors the most important facts first, and tell them quickly. Don’t waste their time on lengthy sales spiels, preambles or market reports. Think about what they need to know. What makes your products different to everything else on the market? What kind of discount are you offering? Any additional information can be added later on. After all, buying decisions are usually made in a matter of seconds. First get them through the door. Then you can show them the room.

Don’t Be Obscure: 
Where many companies fall down with their web copy is trying to be too clever or creative. People don’t have time to puzzle out what you mean. Or they may find your obscurity off-putting. Keep your text as simple as possible. Even if you’re a person who’s fond of a clever analogy or likes a sub-text, your website is not the place to indulge this. If you want to use jokes to keep the tone light, make absolutely sure your target audience will get them right away.

Use Familiar Words: 
When it comes to writing website content, you also need to think about your SEO strategy. Put yourself into the mind of your customer base: what kinds of search terms are they most likely to enter into a search engine? If you sell discount shoes, for example, don’t talk about your ‘competitive pricing’. Use the kinds of words that they might automatically enter – think ‘low-cost’, ‘cheap’ or ‘discount’. It may not sound classy but ultimately it will lead more customers to your website. It’s only when you are going for the very high end of the market that you can afford to use more specialised terms.

Scan-Friendly Design:
Many people will tend to scan website content to get the gist of it. They may not have time to read every word. With that in mind, your text has to be set out in the right way. Make sure that the most important phrases – the things that are likely to clinch the sale – are in bold or appear in cross-headings throughout the text. This way the scanners will pick up on what you want them to know.

What Are The Most Common SEO Mistakes?

SEO is easy to get wrong. It’s a fact. But when you get it right, it can make an immeasurable difference to your company’s online standing. But a bad SEO strategy can be more damaging than no strategy at all. With this in mind, it’s just as important to learn what not to do as it is to keep up-to-date with the latest techniques. There are plenty of common SEO mistakes that companies continue to make time and time again. To help you avoid making them yourself, here are some of the main ones:

Choosing The Wrong Keywords: Your keyword selection, if you’ll pardon the expression, is key. Many people choose the wrong ones simply because they sound impressive, or perhaps because they don’t fully understand their customers’ priorities. It pays to do proper keyword research and analysis to find out exactly what kinds of terms your customers would type in when they are searching for products or services like yours.

Keyword Stuffing: This is an absolute no-no, as anyone who has fallen foul of this rule will tell you. Stuffing is when a person over-uses their keywords or phrases. This was OK when search engines were relatively unsophisticated, but now they can pick up on keyword-heavy blocks of text and you may well be penalised. This is because search engines are geared towards helping users find the highest quality content. A piece of text that simply repeats the same thing without telling them anything new does not qualify as useful. You have been warned.

Duplicated Content: More and more, search engines are penalising websites that don’t publish original or high quality content. It used to be far too easy for companies to simply copy large chunks of text from one site to use on their own. Doing this on a regular basis will now reduce your rankings to get producing some useful and original content.

Too Broad-Based: If your website doesn’t have a strong focus then search engines will find it much more difficult to direct users to your site. And once they’re there, if your content is too broad-based you will be lacking a certain authority. What you need to do, at least to begin with, is specialise. That way you can have a small number of really targeted keywords and work on building up a reputation as an expert in your field.

Poor Backlinks: Backlinks are just as important for your SEO rankings as keywords. But you have to be selective about them: links from sites with little relevance to your subject or to poor quality sites will not do you any favours. And another thing – never be tempted to buy backlinks to boost your search online standing. Search engines are now wise to this and regard it as a form of cheating. If you practice this regularly you may well find your site blacklisted and this is very hard to recover from.