How to Write a Good Content for a Website

Blog posts, articles in online magazines, category descriptions, and product contents for shops - all these online contents have one thing in common: far too often they are badly written (for people and search engines). This usually leads to a bad digital marketing campaign. This is about the question of what distinguishes two contents from each other, which contain correct and helpful information - one mediocre, the other really good.

Nobody "reads" online!

The biggest difference lies in the structure of the content. Poorly structured contents make it difficult for the reader and the search engines.

Contents that are structured meaningfully fit the way people read online: Scanning, skimming, or skipping are words that are often used to describe reading behavior. Hardly anyone reads the contents on a website word for word like a novel. The majority scans paragraphs and searches subheadings or highlighted sections for a clue that the key information they are looking for can be found there. To make it easier for these people, the content should be based on a meaningful structure and also be visible. With sub-headings, highlighting in the content, lists as key points, or in the case of longer contents, even with an explicit structure at the beginning that leads directly to the relevant section, this can be done. 

How to Write a Good Content for a Website

1. Writing Style

Easy language and short sentences are easier to understand. Informative blog posts should not become literary works of art but should offer the reader helpful information or answer a question.

Getting to the point also helps. As a rough rule of thumb, you can remember that a sentence should never have more than one subordinate clause.

Confused formulations with auxiliary verbs and subjunctive elements are difficult to read. In addition, they make the authors appear insecure and less self-confident.

Even very good authors love certain phrases and filler words. Since these personal preferences are hardly noticeable when self-correction, a second pair of eyes helps to edit the content. In addition to references to unnecessary lengths, textual turns, or repetitions, the last spelling and grammatical errors should of course also be corrected here.

2. Main Heading

The headline of content is primarily intended to arouse so much interest. At the same time, one should refrain from titles that are too lurid, which the contribution does not do justice to. Google and now Facebook also use algorithms that are supposed to keep the search results and streams of users free of clickbait. On the other hand, if you choose a title that arouses interest and clearly states the key message or topic of the article, it gives readers and search engines a good orientation and an opportunity to assess what the content is about.

3. Teaser Content 

As a rule, blogs and online magazines are equipped with overview pages or feeds, in which a short paragraph is displayed in addition to the heading and picture of the article. This should list the questions that will be answered in the rest of the content, or that clearly show the specific usefulness of the information for readers. As with the heading, the same applies to the teaser that no expectations should be raised that are not met at a later point in the article.

4. Introduction

An important function of the introduction, namely the motivation to read, was already anticipated by the teaser content. The benefit for the reader may be further elaborated in this part, as far as it makes sense. Otherwise, there is room for an explanation of why the topic is important (regardless of the reader), for disclosures (sponsorships), and for long contents for the structure and possibly an introductory summary in the style of an executive summary.

5. Subheadings

Should reflect the key information from the section below. Choosing the first subheading "Let's start" and the last "Last but not least" doesn't help readers at all, but unfortunately it is typed in too quickly. 

6. Highlighting

There are various ways to highlight important statements. It is easiest to bold important words. Depending on the platform and styles (CSS), there are various other highlights by info-boxes, font color, font size, or background color.

Only really important things should be emphasized. If you think everything is important and use too many different elements, the website will soon look bad.

7. Conclusion

In conclusion, all content should be summarized briefly and succinctly. The questions raised in the teaser or introduction must be addressed. After that, it is appropriate to give the reader a call to action, that is to say in concrete terms what needs to be done next. This can be very different, for example:

• Subscribe to RSS feed or email newsletter
• Read another post
• To buy something
• Share the post (via social media, email)
• Write a comment.

Author bio: Harnil Oza who is CEO of Hyperlink InfoSystem, a top app development company in USA 2020, having a team of the best app developers who deliver the best mobile solutions mainly on Android and iOS platforms.