When people visit your website, they're going to be looking for engaging and informative content. It's your way to connect with your audience and prove that you are a trustworthy source that deserves their attention. Your blog posts, product pages, case studies, and any other form of content must be of a high standard. Otherwise, readers will quickly exit your website and may not return.
Before you start writing content for your website, you need to think about who your audience is, why you want to engage with them and how you can retain their attention.
In this guide, we'll take a look at what makes a great article, from the layout and process of writing to ways that you can improve your craft. We'll also look at which tools can help you and the benefits of investing in a content writing agency to help you nail the content on your website.
Below are a number of important factors that can vastly improve your writing and help you with writing killer content. From nailing a winning headline to researching your niche, all can help create content that will engage and delight your readers.
Clear objective
Your content needs to benefit the reader while at the same time helping your business to reach a specific goal. You could be trying to achieve any number of objectives, such as generating more customers, improving website traffic or boosting brand awareness. The content needs to be tailored in such a way that it persuades the reader to take a certain action, such as buying a product or subscribing to a newsletter.
For example, if you're trying to boost sales of a hair care product, you could create copy that acknowledges the reader's pain points (such as dry hair) and then provide ways that they can be solved (like your company's new shampoo).
Your content shouldn't read as a blatant sales pitch, but it can explain how your shampoo can help solve the reader's dry hair problems. You can be helpful to the reader while boosting your authority within your niche. It's a good idea to include other ways that they can improve their hair, such as different washing methods and other products that can accompany your shampoo. This will help your reader by giving them solutions to their problem, as well as guiding them towards your product.
If you write content without a clear goal in mind, there's no way to lead your reader towards the desired objective. They won't know to click on a product's link, sign up for your newsletter or take whatever other steps you may hope for. Your content may read well, but it won't necessarily benefit your company unless you write with a clear objective.
Thoroughly researched
There's no use making empty or vague statements in your writing. Readers will either switch off or won't trust you as a valuable resource. You need to carefully research your chosen topic before you begin writing so that you have a group of relevant facts and figures to back up your statements. This will give weight to your expertise, and readers will come to trust your guidance. Once you have their trust, you can lead your readers towards whatever objectives you have set out.
During your research, you should also read similar articles by your competitors. They can help you find out which areas you could focus on, as well as gain inspiration for the angle you could take. You should keep an eye out for effective trigger words that evoke a reaction from you, as well as keywords that can help your article to rank well on search engines.
Reader engagement
You haven't got long to grab a reader's attention, so it's a good idea to try and make the text look as appealing as possible. Try to break key ideas into bullet points and separate your article into separate sections under different subheadings. This will make it easier for your audience to skim-read the whole text and focus on sections that particularly resonate with them. It's also good to have a clear call to action, such as a button that allows readers to sign up for a newsletter or buy a product.
A good article will be written with a target audience in mind. You need to understand your audience's needs and desires, which can then help you to make the content relevant to them. Readers like to know that their problems are heard and understood. Otherwise, they will switch off.
On brand
Your company should have a consistent tone of voice across all its content. It could be chatty, serious or humorous — there's no right or wrong way to communicate with your audience, as long as you provide them with valuable content. It's just a matter of basing your tone of voice on the type of person you are trying to target. If you're writing a B2B article, for example, it's better to keep the article professional and informative. On the other hand, if you're writing for a clothing brand, you might be more likely to take an informal approach.
Good headings
The first thing your reader will see when they browse the web and click on your article is the headline. After this, the next thing that will jump out at them is the subheadings that break up the text. Effective headlines are straight to the point and let the reader know exactly what the article is about. They should also be catchy and emotive enough that it sparks a reaction or curiosity in the reader.
For example, in this article, the heading could have been 'How can I write an article' or 'What are good ways to write content?'. While they do get straight to the point, they're boring and aren't likely to inspire interest from readers in the way that a better headline would.
As with anything, the best way to improve your writing is to practice. Try to write sample articles in different tones as much as possible so that you can easily switch your tone of voice when the situation calls for it. You should also try different article styles, such as listicles, product reviews and how-to guides. A good writer can adapt their content to suit the objectives and brand voice, so you need to work on being flexible.
Your sentence lengths should vary throughout an article. Short sentences and paragraphs are often more powerful than longer ones, but a good mixture prevents the text from being too monotonous. Short sentences can create emphasis for key points, while longer sentences can add more detail.
Think about how you speak in a conversation. You want your writing to flow in a natural way, so try to read everything out loud when you finish your first draft. This will help you to vary your sentence structures and identify unnecessary words that can be cut.
It's near impossible to improve your work without getting feedback from other people, so make sure to get a proofreader to look over your work. Most content agencies employ editors to look over articles before they are published, which will provide you with a professional opinion.
There are a number of writing skills that you need to create effective content, such as:
- knowledge of the language you're writing in
- excellent communication skills
- good spelling
- adaptability
- research skills
- discipline and the ability to keep to deadlines
You need to be able to communicate clearly so that readers don't have to work hard to understand what you're trying to say. There's no use shoe-horning lots of complicated words into your content if you can convey the same message in a few simple sentences. You want your articles to be interesting and engage your reader long enough for them to take the call to action and convert them into a customer.
All the written content you produce, whether it's blog articles or posts on social media channels, should have perfect spelling. Misspelt words will make you look unprofessional, which will immediately dissuade readers from wanting to buy products or services from you. Spelling mistakes should be caught when you proofread your work or when an editor looks over your writing.
Good writers should be able to do in-depth research on whatever topic they are given, as well as adapt their writing style and tone of voice to suit the audience.
It's a good idea to build an arsenal of tools to help you with your creative process. Below are several tools that you might want to consider using in the future.
Grammarly
This is a free writing app (with a paid version available) that checks your spelling, grammar and punctuation as you write. Grammarly offers suggestions on how you can improve your work, while also providing customised reports that give your writing an overall score.
Surfer SEO
Surfer SEO can help you find which keywords and headings you should put in your article to help it rank well on search engine result pages. The AI tool calculates which words are likely to encourage high site traffic, as well as recommendations on how to structure your article.
Thesaurus
When in doubt, it's helpful to rely on a classic writing tool. A thesaurus (digital or physical) can help you to find synonyms that will help you to avoid repetition and express yourself clearly. Although it's good to use a variety of different words, you shouldn't overcomplicate your text. It's counterproductive if your reader has to keep leaving your article to Google what every other word means!
Hemingway Editor
This handy tool helps make your writing more concise. It highlights sentences that can be cut in half, as well as paragraphs that are too dense. The Hemingway Editor gives you a readability score and helps you find words that can be cut or changed.
When making SEO content, you are creating content that will boost your webpage's ranking Google and other search engines. The term encompasses both the way that your content is structured as well as the text. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you to improve the level (both quality and quantity) of website traffic coming to your website and web pages.
SEO content is important because it influences how a search engine reads your writing. This will determine where your website and webpages rank on their search result pages, which in turn will influence the volume of your site traffic.
Beneath the SEO content umbrella, some of the most important elements are keyword research, content structure and content quality. You should try and do as much keyword research as possible before you begin writing so that you know which terms your target audience is searching for. By including these keywords, you can write topics that answer these niche questions and hopefully gain more site traffic.
Another important factor is the way you lay out your webpages. This includes separating your text into subsections and putting key ideas into bullet points. A good structure will help search engines and readers understand your content. Google will rank your content higher if it can be easily indexed, which will boost your rankings. Readers are also more likely to spend longer on your site if it is easy to navigate to other relevant articles, which will reflect well on your website.
Finally, the quality of your copywriting and the content you produce will determine how attractive your website is to read for your audience and Google. Your content should be brand new and original rather than a copy of what other websites are publishing. Good readability, such as sentence structure and text layout, will help establish your blog post as a useful resource. This will hopefully lead to a positive cycle: Google will rank your webpage well, which will encourage more site traffic, which will boost your website's ranking and so on.
By using a content writing agency to create content for you, you can take the pressure off your internal marketing teams, who may not have time to create regular blog posts. Using professional writers means that you can be confident that you will have a steady stream of content that has been well-researched, properly structured and tailored to your audience.
Here at Prime Content, we can provide you with impeccable content that will rank well on Google and attract more traffic to your website. We know how to write and structure text in a way that helps articles rank well on Google.
Just a handful of carefully chosen keywords and headings can have a dramatic effect on the ranking of a piece of content. We are equipped to find which terms are most likely to get the attention of Google and readers, which will help improve your company's industry authority.
Contact us if you'd like to find out more about how we can help boost your website's ranking on Google through our carefully curated articles.
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