Tips for Writing Good Web Content

Following on from the last article; here are some tips on writing good web content. Writing for your website isn’t really like writing a school essay, a magazine article, or a novel. Here are some tips that should help you create engaging web content:

1. Create list-type content. Generally, people love list type of articles. They’re easier to scan when you use bullet points and then you get comments about the info you included in your list. And you could also get complaints about things you left out. Regardless, it will encourage interaction with your readers.
2. Use shorter words. In the above, notice that I used “left out” instead of “excluded”. Not everyone is a native English speaker.
3. Keep your paragraphs short. Nothing turns off a visitor than huge blocks of text. Cut them into shorter paragraphs of 3 lines or less. Anything more than 5 lines will just chase your readers away.
4. Check your text for mistakes. Misspellings and grammar errors are also huge turn-offs. It also makes people doubt your expertise or intelligence.
5. Talk to the reader. Think of it like you’re in the same room with them and talking to them directly. Use “you” a lot in your text. It’s clearer and friendlier and it will feel like you are talking to them.
6. Don’t stuff your content with keywords. Mentioning your keywords in every other sentence will make your reader feel like you’re writing for Google instead of for humans. Ironically, Google hates keyword stuffing too.
7. Double-check if you’re not sure. If you don’t know how to spell a word or what a word really means, Google it. The same thing goes if you want synonyms so the same word doesn’t appear 20 times in your article.
8. Don’t be sarcastic. Someone once said that there should be a font just for sarcastic or ironic statements. That’s because some people won’t get what you’re trying to say and they’ll believe your literal meaning—which is the opposite of what you really meant.
9. Humor is a landmine. Be careful about jokes too. Lots of times, you’ll just offend someone.
10. Add hyperlinks. You can link to your other pages so readers can visit more of your site. You can link to other “authority” pages too, to make your content look more credible. Sometimes the sites you’re linking to may even link back to you too. In any case, hyperlinks are always beneficial if used properly.
11. Stop repeating the same things. Saying the same things twice in the same article annoys a lot of readers. Repetition just makes readers feel like you’re beating them in the head with your statement.
12. End with a flourish. Remember how important a good first impression is? Well, as it turns out, how you end your article also matters. Here’s a guide on how to do it right.

In the end, if you want to write good web content that will pique the interest of your target readers, keep it simple, to the point, clean and memorable.