You can easily say that the internet is an immensely crowded space. It’s like billions of stars in the sky, atoms in a cell, or sand around the beach. Let’s go with the numbers from Internet Live Stats. There are as many as 1.9 million websites in existence, 3.5 billion-plus Google searches happen every day, and around 3,50,000 tweets uploaded every minute.
That incredible number shouldn’t surprise you, especially if you know a thing or two about the internet world.
Capturing readers’ attention in this immensely crowded and exploding digital world can be extremely challenging, especially if you are not smart enough with your tactics.
According to a study from Analytics Service Chartbeat, as many as 55 percent of internet users spend only 15 seconds, or even less, on a webpage.
If you want to beat these unbelievable statistics, you have to be very smart with your content writing techniques. You have to do everything differently and uniquely so that you can stand out among others who broke all the jinx to get on top of leading search engines’ rankings.
There are a few golden rules that apply to all forms of writing. Whether it is for printing, on paper, on-screen, or even if carved into a wall. But there are some specific tactics, especially for the digital scribes.
Here are a few golden tips, or you can even say the content writing principles for websites.
1. Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is an extremely important part of content writing.
It sounds very simple, but it’s not! You have to think about your audience. Sit down properly before putting your fingers on the keyboard.
Before drafting your content, ponder a little on a few things: Who’s your primary audience? What about the secondary audience? How can the secondary audience inform and influence my primary audience? How can my website be reachable for both primary and secondary audiences?
For example, you’re creating a website for a management institute. Without any doubt, your primary audience might be the students who are already studying in the institute or the teachers associated with it.
However, your secondary audience is the potential students who are looking to study management and are on the hunt for a good institute.
You have to make sure both types of your audiences are easily connected to the websites. Your primary focus should be to influence the primary audience. If everything related to the institute is true, the primary audience will easily influence the secondary one.
Try to prepare contents that are accessible and interesting for both primary and secondary audiences. What are the facilities given in the institute? What about the placement records? What is the overall experience of students already associated with the institute?
Prepare a few contents related to different topics and subjects of management. So that the potential future students can find it easy to access and as well as understand.
Once you’re done properly writing the contents according to primary and secondary audiences, transfer your focus to different digital paths; your audience can potentially find the web content.
Give a lot of importance to social media sharing, email sharing, search engine results, and sharing links through other websites. Make your websites as user-friendly as possible for your audience. Keeping your audience in mind will be very helpful for you to draft the web content perfectly.
2. Follow The “Inverted Pyramid” Model
As we’ve already discussed, there are a plethora of websites on the internet. Users can easily access and decide whether your website is useful or not. Following the “inverted pyramid” or cone can be very helpful for you to draft complete and informative content.
What does that mean? It is pretty simple. Give maximum importance to the specific message you want to convey to your readers. Put the most important message on top of the content. Proceed with more specific and supporting information about the message, and then move down with a few tangential details.
For example, you’ve to draft content for a conference in the near future. The most important details of the conference must be the description, theme, the topic(s) of discussion, date with timing, and location, etc. Put them on top of the content. A few supporting details like information about the speaker and their specific topics should follow, and then the less important information like organizers, the history or series of the conference or the detail about related sources should appear at the bottom.
Conceptualizing your content with the most important information to the less important ones can be a huge difference between informative and unproductive or vague content.
Also Read: Here’re The Top 11 Writing Tips To Start As A Content Writer
3. Draft Your Content With Short And Simple Sentences
The short span of attention of today’s reader demands short and simple words. No one is going to keep engaged with those catchy and lengthy sentences. Nowadays, sentences with 50 words or less are considered readable.
So, make sure the website content you’re drafting is not only easily accessible but is perfectly readable.
Your primary focus should be on the usage of nouns and verbs; use adverbs and adjectives carefully.
There is no need for using words like “equanimity” or “obfuscate” if the words like “calm” or “confuse” can be easily inserted in your sentences.
Most of the readability tests are done based on the lengths of words and the sentences in content. One of the best tools for testing the readability of your content is Microsoft Word.
Always make sure that your content is readable and easily understandable for a 7th to 10th-grade reader.
Also Read: Here’s How To Become A Content Writer?
4. Avoid Passive Voice As Much As You Can
If you can easily use the active voice, there is no need to make your content complex with the passive voice
Active voice makes your content reader-friendly. It’s easily directed to your audience. And you’re surely speaking directly to your audience!
For example, instead of writing “the food was ordered,” write “the man ordered food.” Instead of typing “products can be purchased from this website,” type “you can purchase the products from this website.”
In short, avoid the usage of passive voice as much as possible. It’s not something like you can’t use the passive sentences at all, but overuse of them makes the contents slightly disconnected to the readers.
5. Understand The Difference Between Interacting And Ordering
You can’t be a good writer if you don’t know how to interact with your readers.
You must know how to interact with your audience. There is no need to limit your sentences to generalities and high-level statements. Think about showing instead of telling.
Readers are more interested in understanding the specific, real-world examples. If you are showing some descriptions about the products or services or anything for that matter, use only realistic phrases. You can suggest to your readers about something; you can’t order something like “you must have to buy this” or “you won’t get anything better than this.”
You’re a medium between the products or services and the potential consumers. You can’t even think about being like a boss. Your flow of sentences must need to be user-friendly, interesting, and polite. Give only the real description of the products or services or whatever your website is dedicated to.
Your explanation should be perfectly clear so that even a not-so-qualified person can easily understand.
Also Read: Here’s You’ll Find How To Use Blogger
6. Make Your Draft Easily Scannable
Putting the most important information about the content is not always enough. Your content needs to be easily scannable, especially for a few specific things. Your readers will scan your webpage for a particular piece of information, and if they find it tough, they won’t wait; they’ll move on very quickly.
So how can you make your content easily scannable for the readers?
Here Are A Few Things You Need To Keep In Mind
- Instead of using only paragraphs, use either numerical or bulleted lists.
- Instead of drafting your content on one long page, organize it beautifully into labeled tabs.
- Keep enough space between paragraphs. A comfortable amount of white space in content makes it very easy and user-friendly to read.
- Divide your content properly into different sections with descriptive and sub-headers. The sub-headers are not only easy to navigate by the users; they make your content easily accessible by search engines as well.
7. Incorporate Multimedia; If Needed
Sometimes an infographic or a picture or video is worth a thousand words. According to the research, visual information is transmitted very easily to human brains. An eye-friendly chart or graph can make a lot of difference, especially if you’re explaining some complex stats.
There is no need to be a professional graphic designer for that. You can prepare some very simple and easy-to-get graphics using very simple tools. If you have the budget, you can surely get services from professional graphic designers.
Images can also make your page easy to read. Adding at least one image to each of the pages of your website is recommended.
8. Always Use Dictionaries
You will be amazed to know the number of words misused by people on a daily basis! Only use the words you’re perfectly comfortable with. Don’t use it without understanding the proper meaning.
You can always visit different dictionaries available online from very reliable sources.
Imperfect or misplaced words can completely disturb the flow of your content, and that must be the last thing you would want. So, be a hundred percent sure about the usage and placement of the words.
9. Keep Simple Things Simple
Using difficult synonyms can make your readers a little annoyed. You have to keep all types of readers in mind. Keep simple and easy words as they are.
For example, there is no need for naming “Banana” as “an elongated yellow fruit” or “Chair” as “a piece of superb craftsmanship and high-quality material.” Overuse of hard-to-understand buzzwords can completely derail the interest of your users.
Using those words can surely be helpful to show your writing skills and qualifications but thinking more as a reader will help you keep your audience in touch with your website.
Simple and easily understandable terminology is easy for the readers; it is sometimes very important from an SEO point of view.
10. Give More Than Just Content To Your Readers
Ensure to draft your content in a way that offers a little more than just “words and sentences” to your readers. You can add a lot more than that, especially a few actionable tips and insightful ideas.
It won’t cost you anything more than a little effort. You can add anything useful and informative like a link to a webinar, a Google Drive Template, or something like a worksheet.
Try and give your readers something more than they can imagine. They won’t only read your content with a lot of interest; they possibly can refer to their friends as well!
Also Read: Grab The Opportunity Today To Make A Free Blog
11. Always Keep Learning And Improving
This must be on top of the tips we’ve discussed. Nevertheless, do not stop learning. Keep honing your writing skills. There is no need to do a lot of different things at a time.
Take those baby steps. Move-in the right direction. But ensure you’re learning something new every day. Keep searching about different tips and tricks of content writing.
You can look for various content writing and SEO training available online. More importantly, you need to be very patient with your progress. There is nothing like a shortcut for learning, especially if you want to learn properly.
Also Read: Search Engine Marketing Techniques Basics For Your Content
Keep one thing in mind; there is no way you can go from novice to pro overnight. And every pro was a novice once!
There is tremendous competition in the content writing industry, and if you’re not giving your best, survival won’t be an easy thing. These are some very useful tips and tricks to write quality content writing for websites. Keep improving, keep learning, and at least reach that level where you can write quality content- and there is always some room for improvement. Sometimes perfection is a result of multiple failures.
