Web Content

Before you write content intended for your site, you need to stop and consider who your target audience is. What are they searching for on the internet in relation to your service or product? Will the content that you are planning on writing be relevant to your audience? Does the current layout of your site provide easy navigation to the solutions or information they’re most likely looking for? When you know your audience, you understand what their needs are.

When creating content for your website, it’s recommended to follow the inverted pyramid model. In the past, most websites used a content model that would entice readers with bits of information first. Website visitors would be teased by little bits of information that would draw them to read more and hopefully read on to consume remaining information.

Unfortunately, that will no longer work with modern internet users who are extremely impatient. If they cannot find what they are looking for immediately, they will leave a site. That is what the Inverted Pyramid Model is for.

Under this model, the main message that you want to deliver is front and center. With this model, you include any answers or information your audience may want as the headline or wherever your audience can see it automatically. You can then provide additional details in the main body of the content. The aim is for you to catch your audience’s attention with your initial content to keep them interested.

You have to start with the most important piece of information that you have and then work your way from there.

The average American has a middle to high school reading level ranging from grade 7 – grade 9. That may sound shocking, but we’re sharing this because it’s important to adjust your level of writing to the level of the average reader. You want to reach out to the greatest number of people within your target audience as possible. 

This means unless you have a certain type of audience whose reading level is higher, you generally want to stay away from using long sentences. How do you measure if a sentence is too long? When the sentence is over 35 words, then that’s too long. Make the words simple and easy to understand. Ask yourself if what you are writing is going to be readable to a kid in the 7th grade. If not, then it’s too complicated for your audience.

Here’s one tip that you can use; focus on nouns and verbs. Stay away from using too many adjectives and adverbs which tend to make sentences longer.

You want to stick to the active voice when you are writing content for your website. Instead of writing, “A book was bought,”  you should write, “Eric bought a book.” It emphasizes the action and it makes the sentences shorter and more suited for fast reading. The use of the active voice is always recommended by writers because it makes the piece more interesting.

Keep in mind that your website should be for everyone within your target audience. More often than not, your customers do not possess the same level of expertise in your field as you do as the business owner. You want to avoid using jargon or language that only insiders can understand. Explain the difficult processes and terms using simple language. You’re not going to gain followers or customers if you try to communicate using technical language. 

There is always the tendency for business owners to use jargon when talking about something technical because they want to demonstrate their knowledge. But you should avoid using jargon if you can; you can still showcase your knowledge by explaining things clearly with simple language.

Visual content like infographics and photos are attractive to people simply because they’re easy to process. But text content can also be made visually attractive to readers! You can still make long-form content “skimmable.” What is skimmable text? This is the text that is broken up by spacing, sections, bullet points, lists, and more.

How many of us know the feeling of reading and then seeing one solid block of text; you start feeling discouraged about reading it right? As if it’s tedious to read. You don’t want your customers to feel that way! What you can do is break your text down into sections. Make the paragraphs around 4 to 7 sentences each. You can also use headings or subheadings to further organize your text.