Website content writing need not be intimidating. SEOs of times past have complicated writing for the web with keyword density, proximity calculations, and automated content generation machines. Many of these ideas about website content writing persist today. In the next few paragraphs I will work through a few considerations when writing content for the web. Beyond these loose guidelines, which focus more or readability and communicating a clear message than technical SEO principles, allow your message to be your guide. Avoiding SEO formulas will help to future-proof your content against the movement away from keyword search toward semantic search.
Topics
When it comes to writing great web content, one of the toughest tasks is coming up with topics. I believe that the anxiety about content topics comes from looking in the wrong places. When we sit down to brainstorm topics for future blog posts here are some places we look.
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Yesterday’s Research – What questions did you answer for a client yesterday that required a bit of research on your part? Why not share the learnings that you shared with one client with a larger audience. One of our most popular blog posts How to Track QR codes with Google Analytic was written after researching this question doing some pro-bono consulting for a non-profit.
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Idea Parking Lot – You know all those conversations you have every day about new stuff your company or industry is doing – get in the habit of thinking that would make a great blog post, and add it to a parking lot. A parking lot is a public place where all content writers will have access to ideas when they get stumped. Our parking lot was once a wall of sticky notes in my office and has transformed into a Google Doc with titles and as many bullet points as we can write about that topic in 3 min.
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Content You Consume – Give shout-outs. If you read a really great article that you want to share with your audience why not give a shout out on your blog? Write a quick paraphrase that communicated the main message you got from the article then link to the article that you read.
Content Organization
The organization concepts in your web content is second in importance to your topic. Â You want to make your content scannable by the reader.
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Bulleted lists – Using bullets helps a user to find important concepts easily.
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Section Headers – Using section headers helps who is scanning more easily find topics of interest. Using anchor links in your intro paragraph that will take a user directly to that section is also great for usability.
Sharability
Whats the point of writing great web content if no one will be able to find it? Focusing on sharability will maximise the reach of your web content.
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Visuals – Use of visuals dramatically increases the sharability of your web content. Â Infographics are very effective link bait and social sharing material. Even a simple chart of a graph can drastically increase both the stickiness of your web content as well as increases sharability. Video – while resource intensive – is the king of all visual content when it comes to sharing. Whatever the visual, maximize sharability by making sure it has all the info necessary to make a point without the surrounding text.
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Backlinks – If you write web content about topics that help answer questions or give helpful information, you can link to these posts when you are answering questions on forums or via other social media.
SEO
Last but not least a few SEO considerations.
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Do some keyword homework – Generate your topics first so you make sure you are writing good quality web content then do a bit of keyword research to help you pick a keyword target for your article. It only takes moments to pick a good keyword and this will pay dividends for your final web content strategy.
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Internal Links – Make sure you are linking to other relevant posts on your site in your content. This is a great way to get users to discover other posts as well.
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Write for humans – This is the most important point when it comes to SEO. Writing for humans will ensure that users have a great experience on your site which is the most important consideration. This will also help future proof your web content to algorithm changes.
The final point when it comes to writing good web content is to relax. You are an expert in your area of expertise so go ahead and share what you know. Your clients already take advantage of your knowledge, so why not let it work for you via your web content strategy and get a few more inbound leads because of it.
