A good website is made up of various elements. Good web content is one of those. It can increase or decrease your sales. As a matter of fact, it can attract or repel your audience. So, it becomes a must that you learn to differentiate good web content from bad website content.
Here are the answers to all those questions about website content that you wonder.
Let’s jump in.
What is Website Content?
The content that you write for your website is website content. This is the content present on your home page, about us page, contact us page, product pages, service pages, and many more.
How is Website Copy Different From Website Content?
Website copy is a kind of website content. It is the content that sells. In fact, it’s a disguised form of advertisement written by a creative agency for you.
With digital marketing, the line between website content and website copy is getting blurred.
But as an experienced marketer, I recommend a healthy combination of the two, website content followed by a website copy.
Why Does Website Content Matter?
So many times I have met with clients who had really terrible content on their website. In the starting, they didn’t realize the importance of good web content and what it can do for their business? But the website data, after making all the changes, showed them the power of having strategically created website content.
Here’s what my clients noticed and here’s why even your web content needs to be exceptional. It
- Attracts more customers
- Makes people take actions on your website by increasing conversions
- Improves trust by making sure you don’t look like a spammer
- Grows your sales
- Attracts the right audience
- Acts as another form of advertisement for you
Do I Need a Content Strategy Even for My Website?
Website content is taken so lightly even though this is one of the prime factors that makes you close a sale digitally. It is like your last piece of sales pitch which makes your audience take action.
With this in mind, a strategy should always be crafted for anything which has such a big responsibility like, in this case, making a sale.
So, before you write your web content, make sure you do your thorough research and define your website content strategy.
If you are working with a content marketing agency for this, make sure they are writing your web content based on a website content strategy.
What is Bad Website Content?
90% of websites on the internet have bad web content. So that’s why it is important to understand what exactly is bad web content and what is good web content.
- Bad content is spammy.
- And bad content is sales-y.
- Moreover, bad website content talks about you. Read- “Me! Me! Me!” will ruin your business.
- Lastly, bad website content is feature-driven.
Example of Bad Website Content
Here’s an example to help you understand. Little exaggerated, but its toned-down version can be available on most of the websites.
“Our product is the best.
-
- Look at our product details
Detail 1
Detail 2 - Here are some untrustworthy and unproven product claims
Claim 1
Claim 2
- Look at our product details
So, all the other products are bad. Buy from us because we are the best.”
Any website following this kind of web content pattern needs to rethink its content strategy.
Consumers can easily understand this sort of manipulative language. They are smart, and we should treat them that way.
What is Good Website Content?
Unlike bad, good web content is engaging and makes your audience feel important and not being spammed by a miracle seller.
- Website content is educational.
- Content is engaging.
- Website content talks about your customers.
- Website content is benefit-driven.
10 Effective Guidelines for Creating Good Website Content
Given below are some of the most effective guidelines for forming your content strategy.
1. Understand Your Audience
Yes, this is important!
You are not creating a website copy for yourself. You are creating it for your audience. If your audience doesn’t enjoy what you have to say, the entire purpose of doing that fails.
Also, start your web content writing by first understanding your audience.
You can’t sell the same product to different audiences with the same message.
Also, it doesn’t work that way. Just like you and your son (or you and your dad) don’t like the same music. The same is with the products.
So figure out everything you can about your audience.
You can hire a marketing research company to make it easy for you. They will conduct various types of surveys and make you acquainted with your right target market.
2. Show. Don’t Tell
If you’re just talking about a thing with no proof, you come across as a spammer.
The internet is full of those and you don’t want your business image to link with that term.
Don’t say I can make you a millionaire in a month if you have no proof of that. It will hurt your image and your business.
3. Have Clear Messaging
Many times you go to a website, read everything out there, and still have not much clue what services or products they provide. That is a big no-no.
You don’t want to confuse your audience.
Above all, you want to help them out with their problems.
And for that, your website messaging should be very complete, clear, and consistent. Hence, It should be very informative.
4. Make It Benefit-driven, Not Feature-Driven
A good website always has benefit-driven content. Instead of focusing on your products and their features, you focus on your customers’ problems and their solutions.
You are selling something because there is a need for that product.
And there is a need for that product because somebody has a problem that has not been solved yet.
Therefore, always focus on the root cause, which is the problem, and how your product solves that problem.
5. Showcase Your Brand Identity
If you want to build a brand and don’t just want to be an unknown company, start focusing even on your brand identity.
Brand identity is not just limited to how your store should look like, it should also be present on all the digital channels, especially your website.
There shouldn’t be a disconnect when a user goes to your website after visiting your store.
Certainly, your store can’t give a luxurious and customer-centric look and your website a different one.
So, figure out who you are, who you want to be, and make sure those elements reflect on your website.
6. Write For Your User, Not For Yourself
Don’t write for yourself.
Your audience doesn’t care who you are if you are not solving their problems.
Certainly, they are not from your industry either, so they don’t understand all your industry jargon. Don’t confuse them.
Write something that they can understand, in a language they speak.
Don’t write for the search engines.
Many business owners end up doing this by mistake. They will over-optimize everything so they can start showing up in the search engines.
While doing that, they forget that their audience is not searching for engines or bots, their audience is still a human.
So keeping that in mind, make sure you are targeting humans with your writing.
Write to your user.
In brief, write it for your user. Make it so simple that even the most industry illiterate user can understand what you are offering.
Your audience need not know all about medical terms to understand that you are selling your services as a medical professional.
7. Focus on Website Content Experience
Therefore, the focus should not be content marketing, but it should be the content experience.
A good content experience will make your audience feel informed. A bad content experience will make your audience feel befuddled. Click To Tweet
8. Keep It SEO-friendly
Even though the copy is not initially for the search engines. Certainly, it should still follow some good practices for improving search engine ranking.
Because Search engines focus on providing a good search engine experience to a user.
So that means they want to show the right results to the right user query. That’s why writing appropriate content is very crucial.
Also, give the right description for every product.
Google will come to know if it’s the wrong description and will end up moving your website at the end f the search results.
9. Understand User’s Search Intent
Before you write, think like your audience for a moment. Try to figure out the answers to these questions –
-
- Why is this user searching this?
- What problems is she facing?
- Kind of solution is she looking for?
- Priority for getting this problem solved?
- What features in my products can solve her problem?
Not just these. There are many other questions that you need to figure out to understand the intent of a user search. Also, it will help you in reaching the right audience.
So if you find it tough to do yourself, you can contact a content marketing agency like ours and we will share with you a detailed user profile, your user’s journey map, and how you can target them better.
10. Try Website Testing
What our audience will like? There is no perfect answer to this.
Why not? Because we are targeting humans.
Humans have complexity.
They don’t work based on an algorithm but change and evolve with time.
They might obsess over a thing right now and can completely get over it in a few years.
So what can we do as business owners? Website testing or experiment.
Therefore, we can do various types of tests related to website content, formatting, language, content structure and various other things to figure out what is making the most effect.
You will find many of the things you assumed were wrong.
When I was working with a beauty client, I analyzed that their audience didn’t like any makeup-heavy supermodel pictures.
They preferred a girl-next-door type of picture as they could relate more. This was very contrary to what my client believed.
Why Shouldn’t I Use Auto-generated Website Content?
In philosophical words, I will say that it lacks a soul.
In business words, I will say it lacks your business soul.
By business soul, I mean, it doesn’t reflect your brand. It doesn’t tell your audience who you are. It distorts your story and takes the energy out of it.
Like I said so far, web content is so important. And if something is so important, you can’t trust software to do it for you.
Certainly, software can’t share the same emotions you have for your business or your audience has for your product.
Humans are not practical beings. They are emotional beings.
Is Using Website Content Template Effective?
We do not base anything that involves a strategy on massively distributed templates. Any strategy including website content strategy is to differentiate you from others, to bring out your uniqueness.
Therefore, using the same template as others makes you disappear again in the same crowd that you were trying to stand out of.
So if your goal is long-term growth and building a brand out of a company, I wouldn’t recommend website content templates.
How Can I Write Great Website Content?
Follow Bizadmark’s Golden Triangle rule.
Start with research. Research your market, your audience, your competitors.
Then form a strategy matching your business goals and business values.
Finally, implement your strategy
Don’t stop here. Repeat it.
Do more research. Do website testing.
Improve your strategy.
Implement again.
Who Provides Website Content Writing Services?
A content marketing agency or a digital marketing agency that offers content marketing services can help you out with writing web content.
If you want more than just plain copy creation, you need copywriters not content creators.
If you want it to be more creative than usual, you might have to reach out to a creative digital marketing agency or digital advertising agency.
What Does Website Content Writing Servies Include?
-
- Strategy
- Research
- Creation
- Experiment
- Refreshment
Key Takeaway: Good vs Bad Website Content
Website copy is like a sales funnel.
Properly written web content will guide users from the homepage to product pages, from product page to contact us page. Click To Tweet
Hence, badly written web content will make a user bounce directly from your home page without reaching your contact page.
So an effective website content creation starts with a great content strategy backed by even greater market research.
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