How do you write good web content? Good web content could be useful for some and not of any importance to many. There are many elements to the well-written web content, a well written about page, service page, the meta description, product description, career page descriptions but they are not the limit. An organized page with journal entries, information, stories as a blog page keeps the users consistently connected and engaged.
The good web content series is an attempt to write and create an informative collective of many topics, pages, and different kinds of content and copy that goes on a website. The first post in this series is focused on writing good blog posts.
Well written blogs are a tool for creating a strong web and social media presence. They are written to increase visibility, create a brand image, and show specific areas of expertise to the identified audience.
Before planning, creating, and writing content for the blog posts it is important to understand the three key questions and their explanations.
How do people search for Blogs?
Users mostly have two ways of finding the blog posts and to read content on your web page. First, if you are established as a content and information provider users come to your website directly or it's simple they find you through keywords. It's important to research for searchable and trending keywords before creating content for a blog post. Those keywords should also be a part of your blog title and should be edited and added to existing content.
How do people read Blogs on the websites?
Reading a book is different from how users read and consume content on the web. They take a quick impression while scanning the entire content. They usually read in parts and focus on the content they are interested in and skim the remaining content.
It's important to write content that is minimal, to the point and easy to understand. Another way to increase engagement is to add interesting sub headings and bold the insights and takeaways.
Why is it important to define your writing goals and organizational goals?
We know that the users are important but have you defined your goals, needs, and reasons for writing blog posts? What are the goals of your organization? and what are you attempting to achieve?
Are you blogging for business? Is it to make product sales? or deliver a service or create a brand image? you could be creating blogs for digital marketing campaigns, or to increase your presence. Every organization has different reasons, to begin with, content-based blogs. Defining those goals is important to aim at achieving them strategically. These details make up for your content calendar and help to show your area of expertise to the right audience.
According to the Hubspot blog post, The 4 Most Important Pages on Your Website (& How to Optimize Them) a blog page should be optimized keeping the below points in mind.
- Organize information on your blog clearly — Divide the information on the blog page in different and appropriate categories and sub categories. As design, events, technology, knowledge and learning, compilation, case studies, e-books, downloadable PDFs, newsletters and so on. This makes the search easy for the users once they are on the website and navigating it for information relevant to them. Separate the most recent ones, from the most popular and old content. This helps to makes sure that the right content gets the attention it needs.
- Include CTAs — Add a call to action button for subscriptions and other actions like downloadable files that are valid to the blog posts.
- Provide CTAs in the core design of your blog — Place the CTA intuitively. Read more in detail about the importance of CTA in How Design Influences the Conversion Rate of a Website.
What to do?
Understand your readers
Identify the audience who is going to read your blog before deciding what you want to write. Define the knowledge, information and story that the particularly identified audience would like to read. Write to the needs of the audience. Figure out the possible questions and answer them in a relevant way while providing valuable insights.
Identify the Keywords
The most important part of good blog content to attract new visitors are the keywords. Identify the words visitors are already looking for as this gives information about the keywords used to reach your website. Stay updated about trending words and analyze the keywords on the websites similar to yours. Use the Google Keyword Planner to find out the search volumes of keywords and stay updated about keywords forecast.
Research and search consistently for the keywords according to your planned content calendar and marketing campaigns and make sure to duplicate the most searched keywords to keep the visitors.
Create easy to scan content
Title, headings, subheadings, quotes, bold sentences are integral to creating an easy to scan blog post. Give the reader meaningful, clear, and direct information through bullet points, infographics, numbered lists, summaries, and overviews.
Write simple and easy content
Not everyone knows everything but they could be curious. How do you explain something to a non-expert? Find easy ways to write difficult terminologies, acronyms, and jargon with simple and clear expressions.
More than three to five sentences in a paragraph is writing for fiction. If you want your words to get more attention give them less, keep it short.
As explained in How to Use Short Paragraphs to Strengthen Your Writing short paragraphs are more readable on a screen and less text keeps readers’ attention.
Write authentic content
Authentic content will always keep the readers coming back to you. Keep your facts checked and accurate. Write like you mean it and like you are having a conversation with the reader. Build trust with your writing by providing sincere and straight information, a true insight into a story.
Mention the resource of your information. Mention yourself, let the readers know who are they talking to, and give credits where it's due.
Create a unique tone and voice
But a tone and voice that the readers can relate with.
Almost 2.75 million posts are published each day on WordPress alone. With so much of words being written and millions of blogs being published, how will your blog stand out with unique and different content? How are you supposed to sound? what to do when what you are writing may have or has already been written?
Simple, sound like yourself and your brand values. Combine your research, knowledge, experiences, and learning into a storytelling compelling content with the organizational goals and values.
The tone and voice are what communicates your uniqueness, your way of writing explains how you work, the efforts you put into making reading informative, fun, and knowledgable. This builds a relationship with your readers, they keep coming back for.
Keep it human
Have you ever wondered what makes your blog content more relatable?
People know when you pay attention to them, your readers are no different. Thoughtfully written content gives readers something to relate too and turns the information into a conversation.
Address the reader's problems before answering them. Explain the challenges and goals of solving the problem. Keep yourself inspired and go the extra mile to research for those answers. Infuse more real-life experiences and work examples in knowledge and informative content.
As explained in 17 Blogging Mistakes to Avoid in 2020, According to HubSpot Bloggers People want to feel like they're doing business with real people, not robots. So, get rid of the jargon. Make a pun or two. That's how real people talk -- and that's what real people like to read.
Give attention to what's working
If you have no idea who is reading your content, then why did you write it?
This may sound like it has come from a school teacher's vocabulary but studying blog analysis regularly is an unavoidable mathematics exam that everyone has to take to reach the next class.
Let's look at the statistics below.
- An overwhelming 77% of Internet users regularly read blog posts.
- Once you publish 21-54 blog posts, your traffic can increase by as much as 30%.
- Content marketing is 62% cheaper than traditional marketing.
- Blog posts with 6-13 word long headlines tend to drive more traffic.
Once you have the data available, it gets easier to make decisions and back up those decisions. As defined, analytics uses data and math to answer business questions, discover relationships, predict unknown outcomes, and automate decisions.
When you find something that's working, continue the improvements based on data and readers' responses.
Conclusion
Writing content is a way of telling a story that is informative, engaging, and interesting. A story that could be about any topic including product, service, and business. The story could be created to give insights about design or explain something tech. It could be about work culture, real-life experiences, learnings, and many other things.
When it comes to creating a content calendar and writing for a blog driven by strategy and research — do it with a purpose. Solve a problem, answer some questions, tell the story of your brand, and share your area of expertise by adding value to the readers' life.