Does Your Website Content Entice Your Visitors To Buy Or Send Them To Sleep

Whilst fancy colours and images can make your website look attractive and professional, quality content is crucial for two reasons:

1. Calling the reader to action
2. Getting a high search engine ranking

So how can you achieve good quality web content that meets the requirement of both reader and search engine? Here are some useful tips to help you strike the right balance:

1. Keep your content concise and to the point. The average web user needs to get straight to the point and will try to filter out any ‘marketese’ language. Too much promotional style writing can damage the website’s perceived credibility anyway. If the text is too long, the user will lose interest. People read 25% more slowly on the web than they read print material. That’s why web content has to be 50% shorter than print. Break up the information and present it on different pages to make it more user friendly.

2. Make your content scannable. Remember that web users don’t read text, they scan it. According to a study by usability expert Jacob Nielson, 79% of readers on the Web tend to scan or skim text rather than read word for word. Use highlighted keywords, meaningful sub headings and bulleted lists to grab the user’s attention. You only have a few seconds to grab a user’s attention so make it worth their while.

3. Make your content enjoyable. You want your visitors to keep coming back so give them something to come back for. Try offering entertaining and useful news or articles on a regular basis. If your article content reaches out to your readers, they will come back for more. You can also send quality articles to article submission sites which will boost your website’s popularity,

4. Use appropriate keywords in your text and titles. This is essential for getting your website noticed by the search engines so that potential customers can find you. Of course, the higher up your website is in search engine results, the more visitors your website will get. Keywords should be relevant to what your business offers. Too many of them however can result in keyword stuffing which could lead to your website being penalised, or worse, banned by search engines.

5. Ensure your website content is correct. Make sure your facts are fully researched as any inconsistencies will make the reader question your website’s integrity. The same can be said for any spelling mistakes. The reader may think that if your website is full of mistakes, what else might your business overlook?

6. Call to action. Let us not forget that we want the reader to take some form of action that benefits us. Otherwise, what’s the point? Once again, your copy should conclude with a call to action that persuades the user to proceed in the way you want them to. Is it to purchase, contact, subscribe or simply continue reading?

If you remember that quality content is king, your website will be both user friendly and search engine friendly. That way your website should keep on delivering clients to your business time and time again.