It the current state of the internet, content can make or break your site. They say content is king and that should instantly tell you how important it is. The quality of the content in your site will determine its success or failure as well as the desire for potential clients to do business with you.
Content serves numerous purposes including:
1. Generating Leads
2. Driving traffic to your site
3. Conveying compelling messages to the target audience
4. Persuading prospects to take action such as signing up, responding to a post, making a purchase, downloading an ebook, etc.
According to statistics, most web users usually leave a web page within 20 seconds, but if you have content that holds their attention, then they spend more time in your site and even consider what you are offering. Search engine optimization experts will tell you that creating good content is a vital SEO technique.
That being said, here are some tips for creating good website content to help you succeed in your venture online.
Know Your Target Audience and Create Buyer Personas
Before you start publishing, ensure that you understand your target market or audience, know their needs as well as their language. Developing a buyer persona will put you on the right content creation path.
Set Content Goals
What do you intend to serve with your content? Do you want to use it to sell your products or services, educate your target audience, position yourself as an expert in the field or create a connection and relationship with your readers? Which relevant keywords will drive the most traffic to your website? What tone do you want the content to have i.e humorous, educational, first-person style, second person, etc? Starting with your target audience in mind will help you publish content that is focused on driving the right results and fits well with the website design.
Chunk Content
Information on the internet is consumed in a modular style and not linear. People do not like to spend too much time reading and often skim the content to either quickly get the information they are looking for or know whether the post is worth reading entirely. As such, you need to separate your content in easy to skim chunks to facilitate the reading style of most individuals. You’ll want to instructive headings, subheadings, bullet points, short paragraphs, and anchor points in order to make it easy for people to get the context in a short span of time.
Educate and Do Not Sell
People do not like it when you always try to sell to them. Most individuals are looking for experts they can trust to engage business with. As such, you will want to establish your content in a way that positions you as an expert in your field and provide relevant and helpful information to the readers or visitors.
Be Clear and Concise
Write your content in an active voice. You will want to have simple sentences and strong verbs. Quickly get to the point as earlier mentioned, long, drawn-out content tends to turn people off.
Remember, SEO is Important
In order to drive natural and relevant traffic to your site, you’ll want to ensure that you employ ethical SEO practices in your content. These include focusing on one keyword per page, including the phrase in the title, headings, throughout the content, the page’s URL, image files and alt tags, hyperlinks as well as in the meta tags.