Strategies to help you create meaningful website content

Web content is vital to the growth of your digital presence. These strategies will help you create meaningful content for your website.

The best website content is the kind that leaves visitors with a sense of understanding.

Content should be helpful to readers; it should help them get what they need or want from your site quickly and easily.

Content should be written in a tone that is friendly, informative, and conversational. It also needs to meet your business goals for its effectiveness.

Ensuring that you have valuable and usable content that is well structured and easily found is vital to improving the user experience for your website’s visitors.

Having a content strategy can help you create an effective content plan based on accurate user data and the ideal user experience.

A solid content strategy focuses on the planning, creation, delivery, and governance of content. Interestingly, web traffic is among the top two most common measurements of success for content marketing strategies.

Let’s take a look at some of the best practices to follow when writing content for a website.

Conduct a content audit

First things first, conduct an audit of your current website content or the content you already have. Content audits are a great place to start when looking at the big picture of your website’s content.

Content audits can help you identify duplicated or outdated information by revealing what is being said in different ways across various pieces of content on your site. Content audits highlight any gaps in coverage that may exist between pages and sections containing relevant topics. According to recent content strategy research, 51% of companies say updating old content has proven one of the most efficient tactics implemented in their strategy.

Content auditing is also suitable for identifying gaps in knowledge about what exists across teams, uncovering duplicate efforts, or insufficient data. A content audit is a valuable tool for understanding what’s working and what isn’t.

A content audit should include:

• Content inventory (what types of content do we have?)

• Content quality assessment (are the pieces useful, engaging?)

• Content gap analysis (what’s missing? do we need more content types or platforms to better reach our audience?)

• Content flow analysis (what are the workflows in place? how do people access content?)

The goal of an audit is to provide a snapshot of your website’s current state. Content audits can be used as reference points for future planning and prioritization, helping you figure out what items require immediate attention.

Develop content goals

Your content strategy should start with a clear understanding of your goals. Content needs to be useful, and it should meet the business objectives you have set for it.

Content planning starts with creating a target audience(s) or personas — profiles highlighting common demographics such as age, interests, and personality traits. Marketers today generate content for multiple audience segments — marketing to three audience segments is most common.

Website content goals can be divided into three key categories:

• Increase website traffic

• Improve conversions (lead generation and lead nurturing)

• Drive social engagement

Content strategy helps you plan how content might fit into your overall marketing initiatives, such as SEO or email campaigns. Content is a great way to create more effective messaging that will boost engagement.

Build content structure

Content needs to be well-structured so that it’s easy for visitors to find what they are looking for. Content is more likely to work if you have a solid understanding of your user experience strategy, defining the structure and content types needed on each page or section of your website.

Content should support tasks users need to perform, whether signing up for your newsletter or filling out a form. Content strategy helps you align content with user goals and tasks they need to complete.

Before creating any new content, try using Google Analytics Content Strategy tools to look at the keywords visitors are already using to find what they are looking for on your site. This will give you a good idea of what users already know and help you avoid using industry jargon or technical terms.

Content on a website should be written so that visitors can find the information they are looking for as quickly as possible, whether through search engine results, social media platforms, or following links.

Content needs to support user-friendly language that is easy to understand. A solid content strategy helps you determine how information should be structured and what content types might work best for each page on your website.

Content needs to support the user experience, not get in its way.

Create content strategically

A solid strategy helps you create an editorial plan with enough time allotted for research, writing, and production of new content in advance, so there is no gap in publishing.

Content marketing campaigns planned well in advance can help you maintain a regular flow of content and avoid gaps where no new information is published on your website.

A content calendar helps keep track of different topics, themes, or ideas to be covered throughout a campaign, as well as any deadlines associated with those items.

Content calendars can include deadlines for new content, topics to be covered, and even related promotional campaigns. Content marketing is all about timing — your strategy needs to consider the best time of year or month to publish certain types of content to get the most traction.

Content storytelling helps you connect with your audience by bringing them inside your brand story. The content strategy enables you to determine what kind of stories might resonate with your target audience and how to incorporate those stories into your website content and social media posts.

Content strategy helps you determine an editorial voice that matches your brand and can also help define a tone or style of writing for each type of content on your website.

Develop content with end-user in mind

Content development for your website is a creative process, but it’s also important to remember that content needs to provide valuable and usable information.

Write each web page with a specific goal in mind, whether that might be to get visitors to fill out a contact form or click on a clear call-to-action (CTA). There should be a balance of content and imagery that helps visitors to accomplish specific tasks while also answering any questions they might have about your company.

The best way to write web content is by making text scannable. Write short, simple sentences in an informative voice to help readers understand what they are looking at. Content should be written as if it were a conversation, not an academic paper.

Every piece of content you publish on your website needs to consider how it will benefit your customers and users — keep this central to all web copy and blog posts.

Content should be written for the end-user in a tone that would speak to them, not at them.

Content needs to address questions or objections they might have about your products or services while also providing helpful information and answering any other questions they might have.

Stick with an active voice and avoid jargon because the reader won’t get what you’re saying if they can’t understand your words (which means cut down on all those long-winded phrases).

Your content strategy should include various content types and be chosen based on the target audience and what they’re looking for. Here are some content examples:

• Blog posts: a blog post is created to provide helpful information. They can help keep your visitors engaged with new content regularly.
• FAQs: providing answers to common questions is a great way to provide useful information for users looking for quick answers.
• Videos: providing visual instructions can help users understand how to use a product or service.
• Infographics: using images and diagrams, infographics are an excellent way to explain processes to users who prefer to consume visual content. Images can be used to break up blocks of text, so it’s easier for readers to digest.
• Case studies: telling the story of how your product or service has helped a client can help people see themselves benefiting from your products.
• Product and service content: providing details about your products or services can help visitors make purchase decisions.

Web copy’s ultimate goal is content that resonates with audiences — whether through written word or imagery.

Content strategy is not just about the words on the page. It’s about understanding your audience and their needs, then delivering content that meets those needs in a way that leaves them feeling satisfied with what they’ve learned or experienced.