Content writing is a mix of art and science.
And the most successful content writers focus on creating website content that engages, informs, and delights your target audience.
Website content includes everything from content marketing materials, such as blog posts and eBooks, to digital content like website copy and UI strings. It goes without saying that you can create awesome web content and blog posts. But if you don’t optimize them correctly for search engine results, they can have low page views. SEO is a powerful tool at the disposal of all content writers, and especially useful when you’re trying to increase traffic to a website. But we’ll talk about that later.
For now, let’s dive into the steps enterprise content writers need to take to create amazing web content!
Step one: Set your intentions
What’s the desired impact of your content writing? What do you want to tell your audience and what action do you want them to take? If you want to create top-notch, strategy-aligned content, you need to start by setting out your intentions. This should stem back to your overall content strategy, as you can’t provide value to your business without having clear direction.
For example, some content marketing materials are used to promote awareness, like blogs posts that are search engine optimized (SEO), and others are used to generate leads through conversions. Having a clear understanding of what you want your content to deliver means you’re more likely to track the metrics that matter.
| If you want to learn more about content metrics, check out our Second Edition of the popular Definitive Guide to Content Analytics. You’ll learn about the four metrics you need to be tracking for all your content writing and which vanity metrics are deceptive and less informative. |
Once you have the goal of your content figured out, it’s time to move onto the structure. Clearly planning and outlining your ideas is an integral part of content creation. So what’s the best way to structure a piece of website content?
First, you need to be thinking about scannability — that’s when you structure your content so potential customers can find and easily understand your message quickly and efficiently. Because your web copy needs to be digestible. That means using bullet points instead of in-depth explanations that manifest in dense blocks of copy. Or if you’re outlining a process, maybe include a clear step-by-step guide instead of long-form copy. After all, you want your readers to have clear and actionable takeaways.
Scannability is also about intentionally highlighting the important information. This keeps your web content clear and easy to understand — no matter who’s reading it. Consider using things like:
- Clear titles and headings
- Organized lists
- Clearly formatted tables
- Concise paragraphs
- Well defined subject matter
Making sure your copywriting is scannable helps you deliver quality content that’s high in readability. If you want to learn more about scannability, make sure to check out this resource.
Step two: Do your research!
We know that every piece of content you write isn’t going to be a long-form white paper, but you should aim to research everything you do with the same vigor you would a white paper or extended content marketing asset. Yes, that even means something as short and snappy as a social media post. Is there an interesting fact you can use to grab your audience’s attention?
Your aim should always be to provide value to your audience. And inevitably, that means your content writing should be well researched. Make sure that your content writing addresses the potential need of your audience and is able to provide helpful insights they can apply.
What’s more, great content is well-written, excellently researched, and has a clear call-to-action (CTA) — so it’s more than just a great article. A CTA helps to progress your potential customer along the content journey you want them to take, which makes thinking about it an important aspect of website content creation.
The more you invest in researching and crafting the content journey you want your customers to take, the more likely they are to actually take the actions you want them to.
For example, if your company sells a grammar checking software your content journey might look something like this:
- A blog post to increase brand awareness on a topic like the Oxford comma, prepositions, or English language variations. This could be found through an organic or paid search, or through a social media post.
- That blog would have a CTA to a comprehensive content marketing asset, like a grammar guide, with the goal of powering conversions.
- The guide would include company specific case studies, with the goal of generating leads.
- The case study would include a link to a landing page where prospects can submit a form to ask for a demo or a first meeting.
This hypothetical web content journey highlights the power that web content holds to fuel positive business results. The takeaway here is to never underestimate the potential of digital content, as it’s able to help you meet (and hopefully exceed) your business goals.
Step three: Focus on Content Impact
What qualities does your web content need to be impactful? Well, we believe that impactful content has seven qualities:
- Clear
- Concise
- Correct (in terms of grammar and spelling)
- Uses predetermined brand terminology
- Reflects your brand’s tone of voice
- Inclusive of all readers
- Scannable
If each web page has content that’s clear and easy to consume and understand, it’s a no-brainer that your chances of prospects or customers converting increases.
If you want your web content writing to be memorable, it needs to be written in your brand voice. That means using company-specific terminology for products and processes. So web content writers need to be writing in your brand tone of voice.
Why is it important to have a clearly defined brand voice that you use across all content writing you ask? Well, here are a few reasons:
- It speaks on behalf of your brand when people can’t
- It helps you cut through all the digital noise
- It makes you memorable in a hectic online world
- It builds brand authority by bringing your company’s personality to life through content
- It gives your content focus when it comes to brand identity
- It makes you different and helps to build relationships with your customers
Likewise, your website content needs to be inclusive of all readers. Inclusive language demonstrates awareness of the vast diversity of people in the world. Inclusive expressions don’t presume to know someone’s gender or imply biased or prejudiced ideas. Whether that’s in relation to ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, ability, or any other personal characteristic. Using inclusive language in your content writing offers respect and belonging to all people — so it’s about more than just avoiding offensive language.
All of these factors help fuel your content to be more impactful. And when we say impactful, we mean content that delivers its intended results — as we outlined earlier. If you want some tips about how to create a content style guide that can help your content writers make sure all content meets your brand standards, check out our Content Style Guide eBook.
Step four: Optimize, optimize, and reoptimize
Content analytics hold a lot of power. They can provide insights and inform how you can improve your existing website content. They’re helpful when it comes to identifying web pages or landing pages that have a low time on page, a high bounce rate or exit rate, and with minimal page views.
Once you know which web pages are underperforming, it helps you strategize which pages or pieces of content you need to prioritize when it comes to improvement. Likewise, it can inform you of the types of pages and content that perform well — which means you can work to replicate their success elsewhere on your website.
| If you’re looking to better understand your content’s impact and how to improve it, Acrolinx has the solution for you! We’re giving our customers the “why” behind web content performance in our latest product offering: the Content Cube. It gives marketers clear insight into how their content is performing by aligning performance metrics with content quality data and providing actionable insights. Learn more here. |
Some organizations have employees that are focused on SEO full-time or part-time, while others might hire an agency or freelance writers to help lighten the load. Regardless of how you do it, SEO is a vital component of any digital content strategy.
One of the main ways to improve your content is to optimize it for search engines. Whether you’re looking to reoptimize a piece of existing content or optimize content you’re currently creating for search engines, there are several things you have to consider.
- Make sure you’ve done your keyword research and that it’s aligned to your SEO strategy
- Select a relevant keyword that correlates to a keyword cluster that you’ve identified
- Optimize your content — here you can use a SEO tool to help guide you to create content that includes relevant keywords and is the correct length
- Publish the content and monitor your analytics to see how it’s performing
But what if the content isn’t performing how you want it to? Perhaps the keyword you chose is too competitive? Or your page isn’t getting many views? Then it’s time to reoptimize!
Reoptimizing means returning to your SEO tool and trying to improve the existing copy by adding words that are related to your keyword cluster. Or instead it could mean selecting a new keyword all together if the original keyword chosen is too competitive or not quite capturing the audience you intended.
Whether you’re optimizing or reoptimizing, SEO holds a lot of potential when it comes to getting traffic to your website, so don’t underestimate it.
Step five: Use a technology
And no, we don’t mean something like Grammarly. True, it’s helpful to be reminded of those pesky grammar errors. But when it comes to impactful content writing, you need something more powerful than a grammar checker.
You need software to enforce your content guidelines, for tone, terminology, inclusivity, and scannability, across all your content. So regardless of whether a writer is freelance or in-house, they all create copy that’s automatically aligned to your content guidelines.
Enterprise Content Impact Platforms, like the AI- and NLP-powered Acrolinx Platform, helps web content writers create effective, high-quality, and high-performing content. The value of content is increased by streamlining its creation, governing it against established content writing guidelines, and improving its impact over time by incorporating high-level analytics from your website — with the Content Cube extension. Not only can Enterprise Content Impact platforms eliminate editorial bottlenecks and quality issues, they also make creation cost-effective and prevent compliance risks within the content supply chain.
And no matter what the content type — blog post or web copy, social media post or content marketing asset, Enterprise Content Impact Platforms help you transform poor, or even good content, to be truly impactful.
What are you waiting for?
Now you know how to write amazing website content, it’s time to take your learnings and turn them into action. If you want to brush up on your content analytics make sure to download our guide or if you want to start creating more impactful website content with an Enterprise Content Impact Platform today, let’s talk.
