How To Start Content Writing For A Website

A website is representative of your brand. With a proper vision of goals, and plans to reach them, you can create a mindblowing website with your content writing skills.

Your website represents you and the services that you want to provide. There are numerous websites on the internet. If the quality of your website’s content writing is not up to the mark, then it is going to deplete your reputation as a brand. You will lose the trust of your users and, in turn, lose sales!

Just having the right products and services is not enough. The content is the USP of your website. Write content for your site in a way that will make your brand or company unique among other competitors. 

For someone who is a beginner, creating content for a website can be quite intimidating. Don’t worry! You have come to the right place.

Whether you are creating a website for commercial purposes or you want to construct it to drive knowledge to the readers, the following tips will help you to project the content of your site towards the direction of success and achieve the desired goals.

Here’s How To Start Content Writing For A Website:

Decide your niche and target audience

Niche denotes a specialized or focused area in which the owner of the website wants to invest their time and focus and, if possible, make a profit out of it. 

At first, you need to find a specific industry after researching and analyzing the market and decide to settle on it if it satisfies your interests and is suitable for business growth. 

Finding a specific niche is the key to make a website successful. It is the first thing before starting content writing for a website. Without deciding a niche, it’s impossible to identify the target audience and plan accordingly. 

Before you start getting your hands down into drafting content, don’t forget to bombard yourself with questions like for whom I am writing this content? What is the goal of my website? Who is my target audience, and how can I make this written document beneficial for them? Is the content informational and compelling enough to help them find my website? All these questions will help you design a  website that will not only reap large profits but will be equally rewarding for your audience. 

To make it easier to understand, let’s take an example: You want to create a website whose targeted audience is teenagers. The language and structure of the content will be informal and not rigid. It will be more on the emotional side so that they feel connected with the products or the information provided on your site. On the other hand, if you are targeting an audience from law farms, the language, and the content will be very formal with a rigid structure.

Understanding your readers helps in content writing for a website by organizing and producing engaging content that makes them coming for more. 

Deliver the best-quality content

The starting point to achieve a search engine optimized website is its content. Construct your ideas and come up with great content for your site. Make writing a daily habit, and keep posting more frequently to improve google ranking.

Every time you create content, do the following:

• Keyword research. 
• Competition analysis

Keyword research: Keywords are the foundation of content writing for a website.

• Before writing for a page or about a topic, pick the keyword that is specific to your niche. You can either choose a long-tail or short-tail keyword.

• Take the help of online tools to research the keywords.

            Ubersuggest’s Free keyword tool

            Google Keyword Planner

• In the search results, check the research volume and SEO difficulty (“low,” “medium,” and “high”) of the keyword that you want to use.
• You can opt for that keyword if the results show that the search volume of it is high and SEO difficulty is low.

• Avoid overstuffing of keywords. The density of the targeted keyword should be between 0.5%-0.7% of the total word count. 

Competition analysis: Also, keep track of what your competitors are doing. Don’t ignore the competition. Take the help of the online tool like Ubersuggest for competition analysis.

• When you search for the targeted keyword, the tool displays you with lists of page titles and URLs that are doing well using that keyword. 

• Enter the domain name of your competitor on the tool, and it will show the topics which are generating massive traffic on their website. 

• Your ability to rank depends on your competition too. Take inspiration from your competitor’s website and the content topics in which they are excelling. 

Keep content well organized

You should well outline and organize your website’s content. Always place the vital message at the top so that users can easily find it on the webpage. 

Readers spend only a fraction of seconds on a particular webpage, and if they don’t find the information that they want, they are going to bounce on to a different website. You should always:

• Divide the topic into different sections using descriptive sub-headers. Then, provide details about each one of those sections.

• Incorporate numbered lists and bullet points. They make the webpage scannable and more enjoyable to read.

• When you design pages for your website, have a clear vision about how many pages you want to include and what their purpose is. In the initial phase, create two to three pages. Later on, add more according to the website’s needs.

• Provide white space on the webpage so that they can take their eyes off from written texts, which is relaxing and makes reading more comforting.

Follow the inverted pyramid model.

Typically, web users scan texts. Imagine coming across a website and finding it dull because you could not find the information at a glance.

Nobody has time or patience to skim over the whole page to look for relevant information. In seconds web users decide to stay or leave the page. So, structure your page like an upside-down pyramid.

I’ll start by telling you what an inverted pyramid model is. After that, I will tell you why you should always use them in your writing.

What is an inverted pyramid model?

The inverted pyramid model is a structural convention used by content writers to tell their stories. You have to present the most informational attention-grabbing part of the story at the top of the page. Follow it by the gradual addition of supporting information and other details towards the end of the piece like so:

1. Conclusion or most important information
2. Supporting information
3. Background or other details and a compelling call to action at the end of  the page

Why is it important in content writing for a website?

• It is an excellent way to present the most critical information at the beginning of the page itself. 

• Will reduce the bounce rates of the website because readers find it engaging enough to go through the rest of the page. 

• They will spend more time on your website.

• The readers can understand the story even if they leave the page at any point without completing it.

• Not only in news writing but also adaptable in other content writing areas too. Such as emailers, blogs, editorial columns, marketing factsheets. 

For instance, 

What if you want to create a webpage about an event. Position your main points- the five W’s: when, who, what, where, and why at the beginning of the page. Firstly, Include details like time, date, location—secondly, the schedule of the events and activities throughout the day.

Follow it by adding supporting information about additional performances or programs hosted in that event. 

At the bottom of the page, add less critical details—such as event organizers, list of related resources, events during the year.

Use short, clear and easy sentences

To make your readers get hooked to your content, avoid opting for lengthy sentences.

Long sentences are messy to read. They are a complete no-no when doing content writing for a website. 

Advantages of using short sentences:

• The goal of content writing for a website is to convey information to the clients. By using small sentences, it helps to provide clarity of the content.

• Crisp and snappy sentences navigate the information in a gripping and exciting way.

Don’t assume that everyone is capable of comprehending complicated and tricky words. Instead, use simple words that can be easily read by 8th graders. For example, in place of the word “caveat,” use “warning.” For “equitable,” write “fair.”

Always check the readability of your content. If you are a beginner, you might not know what readability is (don’t worry!). Let me tell you more about it.

What is readability?

Readability is the ease with which the reader can understand, decipher, and enjoy the written content. If the readability of the text is high, then people will easily understand your content. Having low readability means readers might have a hard time grasping what you are saying.

Writing a grammatically perfect sentence does not ensure high readability. People can still find it tough and draining to understand the meaning of the sentence. To increase the readability, you can follow these practices:

• Check the readability by installing the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress account. Yoast SEO offers the benefits of SEO and also provides readability scores and suggestions to improve it.

• Avoid using big, complicated words. Use shorter, concise sentences.

• Incorporate transition words into sentences to make them more readable (transition words help to establish a connection between words, sentences, phrases. They help the readers to progress from one idea to the next one)

• Using an active voice is a good practice. Active voice is more direct and informal, which results in impactful writing. It makes the sentences short and crisp, which is unchallenging for the readers to grasp.

• Remove tautology.

• Use subheadings in your text. 

• Always highlight the essential words or phrases to make them more noticeable. Use bulleted points to make the content scannable. 

• Split the paragraphs to make them easier to read.

• Take help of free online readability tools like:

Microsoft Word

Web FX The Readability Test Tool

Grammarly

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant

The bottom line is to write in a layman language so that everyone can understand and drive value from it.

Headings and Subheading

Haven’t we all got attracted to an eye-catching headline of an article and felt like going for it. Yes, we found it that attractive! It has happened to every one of us. A punchy and impactful heading is what grabs the attention of the readers in the first place.  

Not only headings but subheadings are also vital as they encourage action. The subtitle provides the supporting idea and summary of the article. Also, it makes the reader stay on the page. Furthermore, convinces them to go through the rest of the websites’ page and click on the purchase button.

Let us take the press release about the “product launch of a gaming series” as an example. In the heading, write the announcement of the launch of the game. On the other hand, provide specific information about the feature of the game in the subheading.

Looking at the heading and the subheading, readers feel the following:

The headline: It looks so mind-blowing! Let me see what it’s all about.

The subheading: Okay, now I got an idea about it. Let me read the rest.

And finally, they get convinced to make the purchase. 

Formatting headline and subheading:

• The text format of the heading is different from a subheading. Titles are bigger, and the font size is more compared to subtitles. 

• The heading should always have an H1 tag. Only incorporate one Heading1 tag per page.

• Format the subheadings with title tag hierarchy, i.e.,

1st subheading: an H2 tag

2nd subheading under 1st subheading section: an H3 tag

3rd subheading under 2nd subheading section: an H4 tag

Try to insert keywords in headings and subheadings as it helps in SEO by making the search engines identify the content.

Provide outbound and internal links

Every day while using the internet, we come across a large number of links. The online medium is crawling with them. Let it be a website, social media platform, search engine pages; links are an integral part of everything that’s on the internet. 

Content writing for a website will be incomplete without adding outbound links, also called an external link. Inbound links matter too for the SEO of your website and on-page optimization.

When you add outbound links on your site, it directs you to a different website. An outbound link from you is an inbound link for the other website. 

If clicking the link lands the reader on a specific webpage of the same website, it is called an internal link. It interconnects different content, sections, and pages of your website. Internal linking makes the site structure SEO friendly.

There are two types of outbound links:

• Do-follow

• No-follow

Do-follow link: Every link that you provide on your website is a dofollow link by default. You don’t have to make any changes to it. Clicking on it lands you on the targeted webpage. 

For example: In the reference section, when citing a specific source or giving credits to an article, you can make the links do-follow if they are advantageous for your website. Add them because:

• It helps in gaining trust from the readers. They can go and refer to those sites if they want. 

• They show that you have researched well before writing and that you have followed trusted websites.

• It is the right thing to do. The information of that content has helped you gain knowledge and write about something.

• The target webpage might link back to your website.

• External links boost the page rank.

While providing outbound links, make sure you send the users to trusted websites.

Avoid linking to the pages that are full of advertisements and are harassing for the readers.

Nofollow links: It is the outbound link with no-follow tag. The link containing this tag tells the search engines to ignore it.

Some examples where adding a nofollow tag is better:

• If you don’t have control over the comment sections of your website, then change the setting of the outbound links with no-follow tags. It’s because those links are not verified, and spammers might add links to malware sites there. Opening them might harm the readers by exposing their personal information.

• In some cases, you might want to add editorial links on your page, but you make them no-follow. Do this if you don’t want your clients to navigate to those sites.

Anchor texts in the outbound links are the words written on the link that the readers click to land to other pages. They should be informative and clear enough to give the readers an idea about the landing site. 

Inbound links or backlinks are the links that you get from other sites. They help in off-page optimization of the website. When you provide links to someone else’s website, they might give you a backlink by submitting your link on their website. Backlinks 

Sometimes they do it if they find your content very useful for them or their readers.

You can get backlink by posting your content on different social media sites. Google considers it a good practice. Acquire them authentically and naturally. Too many inbound links make the search engines suspicious. 

The tip: Avoid over jamming your page with outbound links and balance between do-follow and no-follow tags effectively.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing different aspects of the website, like content, webpages, to increase traffic, its visibility, and rank high on the search engine results. 

Well-optimized content has higher chances that google will include it on the first page of search results for that keyword.

There are many ways to optimize your website. I am mentioning a few of them below:

• Pictures that you use on your website should be appropriately tagged. 
• A catchy headline.
• The comment section should always be active to encourage readers to post comments (User-generated content) there and provide feedback for your work.
• Avoid keyword stuffing and use keywords with high-value traffic.
• Don’t get engaged in link buying and link exchanging practices. 
• Improve your site speed so that users don’t have to wait for the pages to load and to download content. Use online tools like GTmetrix to measure the speed of your site.
• Create multiple landing pages for high volume keywords.
• Provide the best user experience. Include outbound and internal links.
• Good quality content

There are tools present to check whether your website’s content is Search engine optimized or not. 

Neil Patel SEO Analyzer

SEO Analyzer – Bing Webmaster Tools

There are multiple tutorial videos present to provide knowledge around SEO. If you don’t want to do SEO yourself, hire a professional content writer who is well trained in SEO and content writing for a website.

SEO optimized website starts ranking on the first page of the search engine in around three months. Keep the site updated. Add new content and update the older ones with further crucial information.

Add Multimedia content

Multimedia content involves the incorporation and combination of different content forms such as text, audio, video, infographics, images, animations, slideshows to acquaint the users or readers with information in a visually compelling way that helps to educate them in all kinds of topics and issues.

Imagine going through a text-heavy website and coming across an image or a chart, which not only acts as a soothing treat for the eyes but also gets across lots of information in an easy-to-understand way. 

Multimedia assets benefits in the following ways:

• Help to Increase brand recognition. 

In today’s era, people have become very visual. Multimedia content drives in more viewers to the website, which in turn helps in building the brand.

• Help break the monotonous routine and captivate the readers by improving the visual aspect of the site, which makes people spend more time on your website. 

• Having at least one image per page of the website is recommended, which will make the webpage easier to scan and read.

• It will benefit your website’s SEO. 

To optimize on-page SEO, adding metadata for every content that you upload, like images, videos, and other multimedia media components are vital as it improves the website’s ranking in search engines. 

• Especially when explaining a complex topic, adding a picture or video makes users grasp and learn the subject more and in a short amount of time than text alone. Insert multimedia content that is cohesive and relevant to your topic.

• Write the alt text for every image you add on your website. In the alt text, add a description about the image and, if possible, include keywords too. Google cannot see the picture but is capable of reading the alt text. 

You don’t have to be a prolific and experienced graphic designer to create engaging multimedia content on your website. There are plenty of tools present which you can use, like Canva, Piktochart, and many others. 

Never plagiarise

Writing sometimes gets tiring. You might get lured into using someone else’s work, ideas, expressions, pieces of information on your website. Thinking it’s an easy way out is a mistake. It is the same as theft or fraud. 

Plagiarising can have the following effects on the website:

• Search engines take it very seriously. Your site might get penalized for using other’s work or, even worse, get blocked.

• The content that you copied might be DMCA protected or have copyright laws. The owner has all the legal rights to take legal action against you or demand compensation.

• Furthermore, the websites’ traffic gets affected. The search engines always want the authentic content to rank above others. So having plagiarised content on the website destroys the ranking of the website severely.

What can you do to avoid plagiarism?

• Nagging of the deadline makes it tempting to use other’s work. Plan and complete your work ahead of time.

• Do more research work because consulting a single source can lead to duplication of the content intentionally or unintentionally. 

• Whatever sites you have consulted, don’t forget to give them acknowledgment. You can mention them and provide links in the references section.

• There are many free online plagiarism detector tools which you can use to avoid plagiarism. Some of them are:

Plagiarism Checker by Grammarly, Small SEO Tools Plagiarism Checker, Dupli Checker, Copyleaks.

What to do if someone else has plagiarised your website’s content?

• You can always contact the infringer and ask to take down the content which the person has copied.

• Sending an infringement-notification letter is an option.

• If you are unable to contact or locate the infringer, then contacting the higher authority is the next step.

• Locating the higher authority, if not possible, notify the ISP that hosts the infringing website. According to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the ISPs need to remove the infringed material upon receiving a written statement against the infringer. 

Your reputation is at stake. So steer clear of plagiarising and enjoy writing.

Editing and Proofreading

The ultimate step in content writing for a website is Proofreading. Always edit and proofread the content before posting it to make it precise and well written. If one error slips by you and ends up on the webpage, it might change the entire meaning of your post altogether and put you in an awkward spot. 

A content riddled with errors is confusing to read, and the reader might not take it seriously. Proofreading is essential and acts as a final checkpoint to make sure only quality content is out there on the webpage for the target group. So after writing, re-read the entire prose, slower and with caution, and mark errors to correct them in the end. 

Proofreading ensures the following points:

• There are no grammatical mistakes or spelling and capitalization errors, numbering, and punctuation mistakes, proper word choice.

• Or any inconsistencies in the format of the content copy.

• It is the final review of your work where you can include any additional information like facts or better arguments that you might have forgotten to add in the first place to make the content of your copy and its flow the best.

There are many online tools available to aid in proofreading. One in the many is Grammarly. Take their help to make your proofreading experience hassle-free.

The Call to Action (CTA) button

At the end of the page, put an impactful call to action button to make the consumers take the final action before leaving your site. 

CTA tells the readers what they should be doing after they click it. They improve your conversion rates. They are the final words of your essay, so make it count.

Include the following in the CTA to make it better:

• Use the words that evoke emotion and clings to the reader’s mind.
• Be creative and use numbers whenever possible. 
• Tell them the benefits of clicking on the CTA.
• Make it informative and direct for the clients to increase the click-through rate.

Some of the CTA examples are:

• “Buy,” “order,” “shop,” if the website is e-commerce.
• “Submit a form.”
• “Subscribe,” “download,” for white papers.
• “Share”: for sharing your content with others.

Conclusion

Content writing for a website has its challenges. In the beginning, things will be difficult, but once you start following the tips that I have mentioned in the article, you are going to start seeing positive results. 

Once your website is live, monitor and ace the performance of its contents and keep it optimized according to the market needs. Fresh and updated content is better content! Keep your posts up-to-date by adding new information and rewriting them.

So, take out your laptop, get a coffee, and embark on a journey of making a beautiful website!