New and well written website content is a powerful way of keeping site visitors and the search engines interested in your site.
By updating your site frequently and refreshing existing content you ensure that you are giving your site visitors and the search engine a reason to come back to your site again and again.
Will Any Content Do?
Quality content which is well written, interesting and informative should always be your number one priority. Equally important is that the content should be UNIQUE. There is no point in plagarising copy from another site. Google will simply see it as duplicate content and your site may be penalised.
Over and above the quality of the content there are a few other things you should keep in mind when preparing your website’s content:
- Updating: You should aim to update content at least once every couple of weeks, more often is better if you can find the time.
- Spelling and grammar: Google does not penalise you for spelling and grammar errors i.e. it is not used as one of the 200 ranking factors in deciding where your website appears in the ranking however Matt Cutts has reported that the ability to spell does appear to correlate with those sites which rank better! Site visitors are also likely to pick up on sites that have spelling and grammatical errors and are more likely to then assume that if the site is poorly written then it’s less credible. Therefore it makes sense to apply a spell-check and to spend some time checking the grammar in your content. Some Content Management Systems (CMS) will allow you to spell-check and may even advise on grammar.
- Reading age: In order for content to be easily understood, the writing style should be clear and simple. The structure of the document should be logical, unambiguous, and avoid redundant words. Readability tests provide a prediction of the reading ease for a document. Reading level algorithms like Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid can be helpful in determining how readable your content is. Reading level algorithms only provide a rough guide. Whilst they’re rough guides, they can give a useful indication as to whether you’ve pitched your content at the right level for your intended audience.
- Paragraphs: Try to keep paragraphs brief (1-4 sentences) and separate sentences into paragraphs according to topic.
- Lists: Having bulleted and numbered lists can help you divide up information and make it easier to read. Lists are often seen as a way to highlight information for both your site visitors and the search engines.
- Sentence length: Keep sentences focussed and not too long. If you feel that your sentence is too long, break it up with punctuation to make it easier to read.
- Contextual relevance (Latent Semantic Indexing): When defining your keywords look for terms related to your keywords, as well as stem variations of the keywords and blend these into your content.
Type of Content
Content can come in many shapes and forms. It doesn’t have to be confined to your main website content or even to blog entries.
Be adventurous e.g. why not add content in the form of editorials, feature articles, news clips or stories, reviews, announcements, interviews, interactive features – polls and feedback or share a story or experience?
Think about your content message and ensure it appeals to your audience. Will they find it interesting and informative? Ask yourself the question – does my content “add value”.
SEO
Always remember when writing or updating your website content your keyword phrases are key!
We have written a number of articles on SEO so rather than repeat what we’ve said before check out How To Determine Your Keyword Phrases,‘Web Design Kent’ – Why It’s Relevant To Your Website’s Content and Simple SEO Tips for more information.
Copywriting
If you are struggling to write new content for your site you should consider outsourcing to a professional copywriter. Writing content that flows naturally and balances the content, your message and keywords for your site visitors and the search engines is no easy task. If done well the results can be immensely rewarding. Well written, focussed, message driven content attracts and keeps site visitors and the search engines coming back and will greatly benefit your business.
Contact us to discuss how to improve your SEO or website content/copywriting.
