Good content for your website will allow you to share more content, generate backlinks for your page, and earn the trust of your visitors. We are in an age where capturing the reader’s attention is challenging. People spend fewer seconds on pages than before.

To overcome this, one must provide visitors with good content that can be optimized for the web and hold the reader’s attention. These tips will help you give your content the attention it deserves.

1. Know your audience

Before you start writing, who are you targeting with your content? What audience are you trying to reach? Your primary audience is your clients, while your secondary audience is anyone else who may need your services later on. Make your content accessible and interesting. Does it answer all the questions your audience may have?

2. Stay away from keyword stuffing

Keywords are very important when writing for the web, however, the use of many of these keywords is frowned upon. Keywords make it easy for your readers to read your content. It also makes your content valuable and searchable. Overdoing your keywords only makes your work seem unreliable to your readers and Google too. It starts to look like low quality content and you get a high bounce rate. Over time, this can cause you problems with search engines.

3. Generate excitement in your readers

Your content should make your readers feel something. Your headline should force your readers to click, your introduction should hook your readers and make them stick around, while your content should make the reader feel something.

4. Make your content easy to read

Online readers’ attention spans are a bit short these days, so keep it brief. Keep your paragraphs short, your sentences short, and avoid repetition. When writing, make sure the structure, tone, style, and word choice of your sentences propel readers to action. Avoid using the passive voice.

5. Link your articles

As you write content, you discover that there are topics that you refer to frequently. Instead of repeating these points each time or writing new blog posts about them, link to them. Doing this will save you time, help search engines know that your site has related content, improve your search results, make your content useful, and help you stay current. Search engines use these links to understand how the pages on your website are related.

6. Keyword research

Now that you know your audience, use keyword research tools like AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz’s Keyword Explorer. This will help you find out what your target audience is searching for on Google. This also helps you find out how competitive a keyword is. Incorporate these keywords into your content when writing.

Search for secondary keywords to match your content. They will help you rank for a wide range of long-tail keywords that drive the most traffic to your site.

7. Keep your content simple

Too much jargon will alienate your audience. Use language that is simple and easy to understand.

8. Write for your audience, not for search engines

Make sure your content has keywords, but don’t force them into your sentences in a way that doesn’t make sense or sounds strange. Also, make sure the keywords you are targeting are relevant to your audience. Whether a keyword has high search volumes or not, ask yourself if it is relevant to my target audience.

9. Hyperlink to your sources

If you use content from another website, be sure to hyperlink. Cite your sources because it is the right thing to do. This may also provide you with a reciprocal link or quote in the future.

Citing sources also shows that the information you are providing is credible.

10. Edit your content

Make sure your work is refined before posting. Use tools like Grammarly to check sentence structure and grammar. Double check for spelling mistakes and only use words that you are sure of the meaning of.

11. Use social media to measure success

You are writing content to deliver results for you. So how do you measure the impact of the content you write?

• Use Google Analytics. This will help you track your website traffic.

• Use social media promotion. Identify what content receives comments and actions that you like and what you don’t. Use this information to adjust the type of content that you are providing.

12. Make your content easy to read

Most web readers these days scan a page for the relevant information they need. This means that you should put your most important information at the top and make sure that your text is easy to read. You can do this as follows:

• Use lists instead of a large amount of text.

• Use captions to divide your work into sections. Headings will guide the reader as they navigate your page.

13. Use images and video

Incorporate this into your content, as studies have shown, the brain processes images 60,000 times faster than text. Charts, charts, and infographics are also better at explaining information.

How do you get your content to speak to your readers? Share with us