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Below is an excerpt Content is King: The Complete Guide to Creating Website Content That Sells By Laura Briggs, now available at Entrepreneur Bookstore Amazon, Barnes & Noble and bookstore.
no. One of your website’s jobs is to attract readers. That reader is the one who will ultimately connect with your product or service, so you need a strong, conversational, and consistent voice throughout. , review these principles to ensure they are as effective as possible.
Tip 1: Educate, not sell
You might think that the primary function of the website and its content is to sell services and products. The underlying element of sales is performed via a comprehensive website. However, the primary focus of all content you create is to educate and support your target customers.
By conveying useful information that answers people’s questions and concerns, you can build a relationship of trust as an authoritative person or company. Your ultimate goal is to convert that reader into a paying client or customer, but start by giving first. Most readers will be able to tell when they are on sale. If you push yourself too early, they may be hesitant to trust your expertise.
Tip 2: Make Your Content Familiar
One of the most important elements of compelling content is relevance. Even a professional service provider whose education or expertise is important to the story should be relatable and accessible to the audience.
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It’s okay to talk about mistakes or demystify complex processes to make it more friendly. Don’t assume the reader is stupid or doesn’t have the context of the topic. As such, we want to strike a balance between providing useful information without the content becoming too complex or high-level to resonate with our readers.
Tip 3: Don’t use all caps
It’s relatively simple, but powerful. All caps is visually confusing and difficult to read, so use formatting tools such as bold, underline, and italics instead.
Tip 4: Check for content duplication
A matching copy of another person’s page may appear on your website, whether intentionally or accidentally. This is known as duplicate content and is not just plagiarism. It can negatively impact your efforts to rank your website for your chosen keywords.
Content writers should do proper research to ensure that their work is original. Use a tool like Copyscape.com and pay a penny for every 500 word searches. This gives you peace of mind that your content has not been stolen. Content should always be 100% original.
Tip 5: Make sure each website page has a clear beginning, middle, and end
The content of each section of your website page should be balanced between an introduction and a conclusion. Most pages have the majority of their content centered. In this case, do a final review of every page you write to make sure the beginning, middle, and end of every page is clear from the reader’s point of view.
When reviewing pages, pay attention to the journey your readers are taking. Does the end of the piece fulfill the promise made in the title? If you told someone to learn a 6-step process, did you explain all 6 steps clearly? and other descriptions?
[Click image to buy]
Tip 6: Always check for grammar and spelling mistakes
This should be obvious, but without the right people and tools to make it happen, it’s also hard to fit into a strategy. Errors can slip through, they can actually go unnoticed, and they can hurt your credibility.
Thankfully, an easy route exists to solve this problem. The first is to hire proofreaders. If you haven’t created any ongoing content, a proofreader can help with her one-off projects. After writing a draft, you can give them all the completed website content pages. After proofreading, publish all those pages together. Frankly, whether you write the content yourself or hire a freelance writer to create it, consider proofreading the final step of the publishing process.
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If you’re not working with a proofreader, you can also use tools like Grammarly and the Hemingway App to spot-check your work. Both offer useful tips for making the finished piece as polished as possible.
Tip 7: Edit for brevity, then edit again
Don’t assume that more words are better. Websites are often too long. In other words, many readers don’t scroll the part of the page that first appears on their screen. This becomes even more important when you factor in the impact of mobile viewing. Take the words on the page of the first first draft, cut them later with a fresh eye, then cut them again. Always look for opportunities to make your writing more concise.
Tip 8: Make promotion easy
If everything feels like clickbait these days, it’s because a lot of people do. But you don’t want your readers to feel compelled to buy, buy, buy the moment they click on your website.
Tip 9: Don’t exaggerate your results
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You may feel that your product or service can change a reader’s life, but if 80% of her customers actually aren’t, ignore such hype.
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Tip 10: Focus on quality, not quantity
It’s easy to get caught up in the pressure to create something new every week or two. If the content production system is not in place, the work will be messy. It’s tempting to push out something that looks good enough but always makes mistakes in quality over quantity. Sure, it’s important to teach search engines to post regularly, but you don’t want to waste your hard work by pushing out content that doesn’t meet basic quality standards.