Back in 1996, Bill Gates said a phrase that has determined the future of online content. ‘Content is king’ he said, and today, content is really the king that can bring royal fame to your website or punish it with the lowest ranking in search engines. Nowadays, content becomes one of the strongest tools to attract new clients and sell your goods or services. Content can be used for promotions, for developing the relations with clients, for establishing your brand on the market, for communication, and for reaching other goals. That’s why every marketer, entrepreneur, or website owner should know useful web content writing rules.
Why is content so important?
First of all, let’s analyze why content has such a huge importance. Of course, it is possible to say that everything is important for your website but it will be difficult to believe that these things really deserve your time and effort. So, here are 5 proofs that content can improve your website, help with promotion, marketing, and sales.
Content boosts SEO
Every marketer knows the importance of search engine optimization for website promotion. SEO-optimized websites always rank higher in search engines, and when a user enters some keywords, they get perfectly optimized websites on the first page of Google or any other search engine. Of course, to take top positions, just content is not enough although it affects the results greatly.
First and foremost, you need to make sure that you have chosen the keywords that are relevant to your website and keywords that your visitors use to get to your site. Here is an important trick: your website will rank higher only if you introduce relevant keywords into your marketing plan. Some small businesses make a mistake by adding some popular keywords that have no relation to their business. Another huge mistake is to choose the most popular keywords in your niche. A content writer should understand all these rules and peculiarities in order to create SEO friendly content.
Content engages your visitors
Modern Internet users know that the content that is produced by a company can help them with decision-making and problem-solving. That’s why they really read blogs and news and follow companies on social networks. A company, in its turn, should understand that it needs to produce engaging content that will make users stay on its website and subscribe to the news.
Engagement of visitors is an important step, and you need to do everything possible to make it work for you. Many companies use their content for lead generation. They exchange their information for the contacts of their followers. In this way, visitors get what they want – useful information, and the company itself works on the lead generation collecting contacts to turn leads into customers.
Sales incensement
Today, content writing is a strong strategy that can really be used as one of the best marketing techniques. Just a couple of years ago, no one cared about the selling descriptions of the goods and services. Most of the companies relied on the images of the goods and clients’ testimonials. However, modern customers have more requirements to the description of the goods. If you cannot add a video that explains all the benefits of your goods or services, you must add the description that will tell a client why exactly they need to buy something or order some services.
Adding value to your business
No one trusts a company that is not present on the Internet. More than 90% of all Internet users start their search for something with an Internet search. It means that if you do not have a website, you lose a huge number of potential clients.
Besides, your website is a strong trust factor that will help you influence the decisions of your users. For example, here you may include testimonials of other users who have already used your services. This will help you explain to your prospective clients that they should not be afraid to use your services.
Content increases traffic
Even if you do not care about SEO, content still works to attract visitors to your website. Of course, to get good traffic, your content should be unique and answer the questions that are interesting to the target audience of your website or business. For example, even if you do not have enough followers yet, but you have a huge number of interesting posts, your traffic will increase. Besides, you will be able to use this content for promotion on social media.
How to write appealing content?
Here we come to the main question: how to write content that will help you reach settled goals. There are some technical points that you need to obey and there are some general rules of writing texts that are appealing to the visitors.
It does not matter what kind of content you create but you should always remember that it must never contain mistakes. That’s why you need to make use of proofreading and editing services that ensure perfect quality of your texts.
1) Start with SEO
We have already mentioned that SEO is very important to your website. If you want to rank higher, you should always work on your SEO. Relevant keywords are important by far, but there are some other tricky points that you need to remember. First of all, you need to know how exactly to choose keywords to make them work for your website. The best tool for that is Google Keyword Planner. The only drawback here is that it will help with promotion in Google and will not affect other search engines. However, today, most of the users use Google for searches, so you may leave all doubt behind and just use this tool.
Here you can create lists of keywords and plan the budget of your company. There are basically two ways of finding keywords: you put a link to your website and the tool automatically determines the keywords that are the most relevant to your website. The second way is to enter a couple of words that describe your website and the services you provide and click for the results.
2) Create a schedule
This is a rule for any blog or information website: you should write regularly, and your readers should understand this schedule. It will not be effective for your website if you post three posts in a day and then forget about your content marketing for a month. It is always better to write one post a week than to post several articles a day. From one point of view, this is better for your website in technical aspect as the site will be updated more regularly, and Google will definitely rank it higher. From another point of view, it is better for your readers as they will wait for your posts.
If you cannot develop a schedule for your posts, you should hire a content manager who will take this responsibility and will work on your time management indicating when exactly you need to publish your articles to get more traffic and attract more visitors.
3) Write to your audience
This is another basic rule of writing content. You should always understand who is your audience and how you need to talk to it. To define your target audience, you need to create an avatar that will represent all the people who read you. This avatar should be detailed and include such information as:
Demographic aspects including sex, age, and even religion (if it is important to your business).
Interests and places where your avatar spends their time. Thus, you will understand where to find readers and what platforms to use to place your advertisements. Perhaps, your avatar prefers Medium to Facebook, and it will be better for you to place extra posts on Medium than to buy Facebook ads.
Fears and desires of the avatar. Thus, you will be able to determine what exactly you need to write to attract visitors.
4) Choose a tone of voice
Another important step that you need to make when preparing content is to choose your tone of voice. In other words, you need to choose a style for your writing. Perhaps, you prefer informational style as your target audience are serious people who look for serious information (for example if your blog is dedicated to financial issues). If you write an entertainment content, you should avoid informational style as it will be too boring to your readers and they will not return to your website.
5) Write in the language of your audience
After you have determined the tone of voice, it will be easier for you to decide on the language that you will use to communicate with your readers. There is a common rule for everyone: you must write in the language of your audience. If you write about marketing to marketers, you should never explain to them some obvious things or call them another way. They perfectly understand what is lead generation, and you should not explain that additionally. At the same time, if you write about finances to the audience who just wants to know more about financial issues, you should not use special terms or at least explain them.
6) Engage your readers in communication
Your readers are not just someone who sits behind the screen and reads your writing. They want to communicate and discuss some issues, express their opinion, and share their experience with other users. Make sure that you give them enough space to communicate with each other and to speak to you. Perhaps, you need to allow comments on your blog or create a special Facebook page where all the posts will be shared and discussed by people. Thus, you will also capture the attention of the Facebook audience.
7) Evoke emotions
A good piece of writing always evokes some emotions no matter what exactly you are writing. That’s why you need to work on your storytelling abilities. Even if you are writing about finances, you need to be able to evoke some emotions with each of your stories. The emotions should not be only positive. They may also be negative. However, you need to be very attentive with the negative emotions and always control your writing in order not to stir up too much negativity.
8) Do not lie
The main rule of a good text is its trustworthiness. Always use proved facts and never lie to your readers. If you publish information that cannot be proved, your readers will never trust you. Besides, if you spread rumors, you may have problems with cyber police. If you care about your reputation, you must take care about what you write.
9) Use statistics
If you want to create really appealing content, use statistics. Of course, it is always better to use your own research, but if you have no possibility to do an investigation, use special websites that conduct researches and share them with other users. Perhaps, you will find materials that will be useful to you in your texts. Do not forget to include links to the sources, as this information is usually protected by the copyright laws.
10) Support your ideas with visuals
Web content is not only about texts. It also includes visual content, such as images and videos. Today, none of the readers will read plain text. Your readers need something that will catch their eye, and images and videos are perfectly suited for that. For example, you may present your statistics in the form of infographics. If you have some case studies, you may use presentations or even videos to share them with your readers. The main demand to the visuals is that they should support the idea of your texts.
Are you ready to create content for your website? Using our 10 rules, you will be able to write texts that will help your business move to the next level. Besides, you will simplify and organize the process of text writing and will know what points you need to pay your attention while creating content. Good luck!
