After all the changes that websites have undergone, content is still king. Content is ultimately what keeps people coming back to your website, what persuades them to contact you, and what inspires them to buy from you. Speaking louder than all the other voices shouting in the digital sphere is difficult, but creating content that most strongly resonates with your personas helps you speak to the people who matter—the ones who will become loyal customers and clients.
To write website content for a small business like yours becomes a less intimidating step with the help of some guidelines. Website content should be readable and accessible in order to boost the potential of each visit to your website.
Organize Your Ideas With a Site Structure Map and Keywords
No matter what you write about, it must reflect your business and how it makes you unique.
With all the possibilities that come with web content creation, it’s easy to forget the small details about what you do and offer. Make a list of every service to better grasp their importance and why you specialize in them.
Listing your services provides you the opportunity of defining why you’re better than the competition and why buying from you is the right decision for consumers. Web content must be clear, organized, and persuasive.
The next step is creating a site structure map. The site structure should consist of:
- A home page
- Different categories
- A number of content pages for each category
The home page should have the most general content, while the content pages should have more specific content.
Each individual webpage should have a focused keyword or phrase that governs the tone and substance of the content. Keywords are words that best represent what your business is all about, from the specific (long tail) to the general (short tail). Once you’ve chosen the keywords that best reflect your business, map them to the site structure. Keyword mapping is the process of attaching a keyword to the most appropriate webpage.
The easiest way to create a site structure and a keyword map is in an excel spreadsheet, where you can break it up by homepage, category, and content page.
Keyword research helps you find words that have a good amount of search volume on search engines and, when researched more closely, are actually winnable providing quality leads. Tools like Google keyword planner, SEMRush, KWFinder, and Wordstream all provide in-depth analytics of what words are ranking well for your industry and is a good place to start.
Don’t be greedy! Keep in mind that high search volume keywords doesn’t necessarily translate into more website visitors from search engines. Those keywords may already be targeted by hundreds of other businesses and the effort to gain search engine ranking may take much more effort, time and cost than you anticipate.
If you have a thorough understanding of your products and your mission as a business, targeting the right keywords should be easy.
The purpose of listing and organizing the structure of your site is to make its navigation as simple as possible. As research has shown, sloppy navigation will drive visitors away from your website and cost you customers.
Don’t make people guess where on your website the information they want is hiding. Both you and your visitors need to be absolutely sure of how your site is structured.
Write Content That Is Easy to Read
The truth is, most visitors will only glance at the words you’ve written. Most people have neither the time nor the interest to read slabs of text online. According to Chartbeat, 40% of visitors leave webpages after 15 seconds. Readers, all of us, have short attention spans, especially when we’re just looking for the essential information.
That might sound like a discouraging statistic, but you can play this to your advantage. To write for the web is to write content that appeases short attention spans and the immediate needs of the consumer. Write only the most essential information about your services. Write it so clearly and plainly that even a glance can absorb everything a customer needs to know about the web page.
Set these parameters while writing to make sure your content is optimized for skimmers:
- Short, punchy paragraphs
- Bullet points
- Simple words—nothing flowery
- Heading and subheadings to break up content into actions
- One idea per paragraph
- Keywords related to the topic and industry, and any related keywords
The more spread out your content is with chunks instead of blocks, the likelier your visitors will stay engaged with your content.
Write Compelling, Authoritative Content
Customers want to buy from the best of the best. You know your industry well, and your content should reflect that.
So how do you write content that commands authority? You provide direction and context. One way of doing this is to link to other sources.
Linking to other pages gives your content more credibility. Link to other content on your site to connect the page the reader is viewing to another page that might pertain to their interests.
Link to outside sources on other websites as well. These outside (or external) links should confirm the accuracy of your own content. External links lend your content more credibility because it shows the reader that others agree with what you are stating.
Include calls to action (CTAs) in your content. CTAs compel readers to take a step on your website that can be measured. These include:
- Subscribing to email lists
- Making a purchase
- Requesting a demo or quote
- Downloading a PDF
- Watching a video
Calls to action should be dispersed throughout your content and relate to the topic.
The potential for CTAs to convert into favorable actions is high. Hubspot found that anchor text CTAs increases conversion rates by 121%, and CreateDebate increased their conversion rates by 45% by using button CTAs.
Your content needs to stand out as definitive. Establishing it with related links and enticing CTAs is an integral step to turning visitors into customers.
Pair Written Content With Visual Content
No matter how succinct, clear, and airtight your writing is, it still needs additional aids to keep eyes on the pages. Visual content like videos and images should always be included with writing.
Images will typically be more memorable than text. A picture related to the text makes readers 65% more likely to remember the information on a page.
Video is making an even bigger splash. KPCB predicted that 74% of all online content will be video by this year. This reflects changing expectations from Internet users, who expect videos to present to them what it is they want. Multivision Digital found that consumers are 64% more likely to buy after watching a video related to the content of the page.
Creating videos and image to complement your written content sounds more intimidating than it actually is. They don’t have to be high-budget or put through much post-production to be persuasive. Just follow rules of thumb similar to your written content:
- Keep them to the point
- Explain the benefits
- Be educational and thorough
- Show the products or services in action
Images and videos let you expand and elaborate on your business while keeping the attention of website visitors. Even just a start will move the needle for your website traffic.
Always Refine and Update Your Content
Whatever industry you specialize in, it doesn’t sit still, and neither should your online presence.
Your website should be treated as a live document. Keep your content current with industry changes. Users discovering you for the first time won’t know you’re a reliable source unless you answer their newest questions and demands.
Keep your content current by:
- Inserting new, trending keywords that pertain to your industry
- Updating images and videos that are more detailed and more modern
- Using analytics to track the performance of your site and which areas can be edited for a better user experience
- Creating new pages dedicated to the new products and services you offer as they develop
You already stay on top of new industry changes. Updating your website is just the proof.
Successful web content caters to people’s interests, attention spans, amounts of trust, and visual sensibilities. Be straight to the point, but be creative. Explain the benefits and inspire people to react.
Managing web content can be an overwhelming task for small businesses. That’s why we create and supervise SEO-focused content for small business websites that drive traffic and produce profits. Let’s talk today about the right content for your site.
