This article is a Sponsored Guest Post. For more information, please see our Disclosure Policy.
A website needs content.
This may sound really obvious, but surprisingly some companies still think it’s OK to create a page with absolutely nothing on there apart from a logo and a contact form. Well that’s all fine and dandy if you subscribe to the minimalist school of website building, but for those of us who want to build positive customer relationships, a bit more web content won’t go amiss.
The trouble is that writing web content is not as easy as it sounds. Too many businesses pay lots of attention to the overall design of their website and forget about the text. Websites do need to be aesthetically pleasing – but they should also have great content that is SEO friendly.
So here is a short summary of what not to do when writing web content.
Use Lots of Big Words
Everyone knows using big words are a sign of intelligence, right? Wrong! Unless you are pitching your content at PHD level, don’t try and bamboozle your readers with long words and technical jargon. It’s seriously off-putting. Web visitors don’t want to read a stiff corporate-speak load of blurb. They want to feel as if they are talking to a real person, not a machine.
Don’t Bother Proofing Your Content
It looks really professional when a website is littered with spelling errors and typos… not! Always, always proof your web content before you publish it. And if you wrote it, ask someone else to proof it as you may not spot the errors.
Talk about Yourself… A LOT
It’s always a good idea to waffle on about you, the business, and how wonderful you both are. Actually, no, it isn’t. What you should be writing instead is useful, informative content that seeks to answer questions your readers might have, such as what you sell and why it might be useful to your customers.
Write an Opus Magnus
Writing a 10,000 word essay and posting it on the home page of your website is not recommended. Customers don’t want to have to wade through acres of blurb to reach the salient bits of information. If you make it too hard for them to see what you are offering – and if there is any benefit to them being on the site – they will back click in a heartbeat.
Write like a Spin Doctor
The recent election campaign was full of vague promises and spin. If you write like a master spin doctor and weave a tangled web of intrigue in your web content, it just looks shady. Trust is very important, so be transparent and honest at all times. Try and build up the hype too much and people will assume you have more to hide than a slippery accountant flogging tax avoidance schemes.
Never Update Your Content
Updating content is a tedious affair. After all, who wants to waste their time rehashing old stuff? Of course it will last for years! No, you guessed it – it won’t. An old website with out of date information lacks credibility, so make sure you check the content at least once a year and remove anything that is obsolete.
Writing killer web content is not as hard as it looks. Think about what your customers need and try to offer them value. And if you don’t have time to write your own killer content, outsource your content creation to an SEO company such as Click Intelligence.
