Web design and content writing should complement each other. Web designers should create designs that are relevant to the content. Since website owners have only a few seconds to impress their visitors, the key to make a strong impression lies with creating designs that represent the purpose of the content, and content that is useful for the visitors.

Since a website is not similar to a graphic novel where every page has different pictures accompanied with text to tell the story, designers and content writers must keep in mind that consistency in the design and content matters.

Explained below are some plans of action that will help you boost the consistency of your web content writing and website design.

Back up your content with images to establish a sense of worth

Visitors should know about your products without scrolling over images. Give your visitors a tour of your product catalog where they will enjoy the combination of images and text and also feel an urge to proceed.

The key to creating a seamless image-text combination is improving the quality of the images. If the visual experience is not rich and professional and at par with the claims you make about your company, content alone can’t impress visitors.

Nobody likes boastful language. If your content makes sky-scraping claims about your products/services, no visitor would stay in your website for long. Support your claims with facts. Put your past records up. Let visitors browse through your portfolio and find out your area of expertise. It will justify your claims and convince visitors of your standards of service.

Compress

After eliminating the ‘big talk’ from your content, you will discover that it has become a lot more compact. Brief and compact content coupled with evocative design will help you garner desired results from your online identity. But only these two aren’t enough. If you want to capitalize on your content, you need to embrace a few more steps like prioritization, precise labeling and segmentation.

• Prioritization – It is about how you understand your target market and their activities and decide what you want your website to do. Create your website accordingly and get rid of any content that deviates from its objective. Present a comprehension for visitors to let them know why they are in your website. Don’t stress on how good you are in your field. Let the web design do that for you. Instead, tell your visitors you have what they need. If your web content clarifies that, visitors will automatically go further. Use appropriate headings, page titles and link text.

• Precise Labeling – Create the labeling in accordance with the visitors’ goals. Describe your product/service in a concise text. But let the design explain why you are better than others in the market. Cohering web content and design will allow visitors to have a sense of control.

• Segmentation – This is about dividing content into several sections according to the target market or objective. The content of the home page should briefly describe the different needs of different visitors and provide links to the specific pages. By doing this, you’ll be saving your visitors, time.

Create a Narrative Tone

For an engaging user-experience, narrative tones are very important. Web designers can create a narrative tone that will convince visitors. With intelligent content, you can experiment with different typographies and other elements that can be narrative. But you have to make sure your content and design are in keeping with each other and facilitates rich user experience.

Trust the Visitors

Rely on the visitors to establish a connection between your content and graphics. Remember, the higher sense of control you give your visitors, the closer you will get to them.  Enable the user to read and see what you have to offer at the same time.

These points will help you create and maintain consistency in your website content writing and design. They will also help reap the benefits of your online promotional campaign.

With the introduction of Google Panda, good quality content now assumes an important position in the SEO industry. No longer, sites can get away by publishing low quality or duplicate content. Rather, to improve rankings and avoid penalty, sites now have to post original and fresh content regularly. However, even that is not enough to acquire a strong fan following.

Despite posting good content, many sites find that their traffic rate is not improving. This leads them to believe that content marketing is an ineffective strategy. Unfortunately, they are unaware of the fact that the problem does not lie in Google or content quality. Sometimes, the way you market website content also affects your traffic rate.

What is the definition of ‘good’ content?

Everyone has his or her own interpretation of ‘good’. In most cases, an article qualifies as a ‘good’ content, when it gets several Tweets, Likes, or comments. However, we feel that to qualify as a ‘good’ content, an article should possess at least one of the following features.

• Good content is credible

To create good content, you need to be an expert in the particular field. If you do not possess an in-depth knowledge of a topic, avoid writing about it. Remember that a great article should always contain reliable and authentic information. Unless you are an expert in the field, it is impossible to incorporate authentic information in the article.

• Good content involves great effort

Web content writing demands investment of time and energy. A well-edited video, detailed research, and an informative infographic design – all can help you to come up with good content. Obviously, to edit a video or create an infographic design, you will have to put in time and energy.

• Good content contains useful and practical tips

People read blogs and articles to acquire good information. Therefore, to create a great article, you need to include valuable information in it. Additionally, ensure that the tips you offer are practical. Providing users with tips that they cannot implement in reality does not make any sense.

Tips to market your content

Considering the fiercely competitive scenario of the 21st century, it is wrong to assume that your job ends after writing a great article. Many believe that people will be aware of a great article automatically. Unfortunately, in the cyber-world, you need to be market your article and site aggressively. There are millions of sites in the Internet and if you do not market yourself well, people will not be interested in visiting your site.

• Interact with people

Once you have published your posts, get in touch with your friends and relatives. Inform them about the posts and request them to Tweet or Share them.

• Strategize your launch

Most of us are unaware of the fact that publishing time of the content plays a critical role in its success. If you publish your blogs at a time when the whole world is busy, chances are high that people will not be interested.

For this reason, creating awareness about the time when you would publish the article is important. Compare blog publishing with product launch; declare the date and time beforehand, plan the launch, and be vocal about it.

• Promote your content well

As mentioned earlier, publishing your content is not enough. You need to promote it aggressively. Few powerful marketing techniques can include sharing the content at social media platform, building links, and writing guest posts on similar sites.

Finally, consider the fact that success never happens overnight. To acquire a loyal fan base, you need to post good articles and market them regularly. Read comments of your readers and find out their preferences. Interact with them to show that you are willing to be part of a meaningful discussion.

Bob Stone, a famous copywriter, highlighted the importance of a great headline, when he declared, “Your first 15 words count more than the 15,000 words that follow!”

A great headline is somewhat similar to a movie trailer. It raises your curiosity and encourages you to explore the movie/article further.

As an Internet marketing expert, consider the fact that good web content writing can evoke various responses amongst the target audience. A well-written headline can provoke the user to read the article. On the other hand, a poorly written title can drive away people.

We provide you with few examples of great headlines and discuss why they are effective.

Headlines that Highlight a Thought-provoking Question

Maxwell Sackheim, in an article used the headline ‘Do you make these mistakes in English’? The headline, written almost 80 years ago, is still considered as a powerful title.

This headline is effective because it asks readers a thought-provoking query and engages them. It prompts readers to find out what exactly ‘these’ mistakes are, thus involving them in the process. The importance of the headline lies in the fact that it makes users curious, encouraging them to read the article.

The headline uses human psychology intelligently. No one likes to make mistakes. Therefore, if any one comes across a title such as the above, the person will automatically try to find out what mistakes the author has highlighted.

Headline that Starts with ‘How To’

A famous example of this type of headline is ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’? Dale Carnegie used this title in his popular self-help book.

This title earned great popularity because it solved one of the basic requirements of most people, i.e. influencing others. Similar to the above example, this headline also utilizes human psychology cleverly. After all, who would not like to know the secret of influencing others?

This headline highlights the benefits (win friends and influence people) and avoids pointing out the process (talking in a particular way, offering positive feedback) that one may have to go through for enjoying the benefit. This strategy lures people successfully because they want to know how they can influence others.

Headline with a Direct Statement

Consider the headline ‘The most affordable website design solutions you will ever find’.

This headline highlights a direct statement and is perfect for companies who want to present a powerful feature. The title is clear, direct, and does not make the reader guess anything.

The ‘Benefit’ Headline

This headline tries to present the benefits before the readers. A good example can be ‘How to lose 2 inches in 1 week’?

This headline emphasizes the benefit that the user can enjoy. To create the benefit headline, find out your unique selling point and incorporate it in your headline.

To assure the customer, you can use the phrase ‘money back guarantee’ as your sub-heading.

Opt for the ‘Command’ Headline

As compared to other headlines, a command headline is more aggressive. Consider the example-‘Utilize your time better by writing powerful headlines’. It is a powerful title because it urges people to act.

Headline that Uses ‘Who Else’

‘Who else wants to shed some weight?’ can be a good example of such a headline. By using the term ‘who else’ in the title, the writer creates the notion that others have already availed the benefit.

This headline also taps human psychology perfectly. Humans are more likely to consider an option (a weight loss program or a new product), when they know that others have also tried it.

Writing attractive headlines is critical for drawing attention of the people. However, remember that your title should match the body of the article. If you do not progress logically from the title to the body, your readers may feel deceived. Therefore, offer good information in the title and enjoy higher traffic.

Despite what its detractors might say, fact remains that several thousands of Press Releases are shared by social media users in sites like Facebook and Twitter. There are reasons for web users preferring press releases over other forms of content.

• Web users, including social media users, often get distracted by vast labyrinth of information thrown by search results. They often face a problem of finding out content that is authentic and useful. Press releases are viewed as de facto statements of events relating to an organization and hence they carry some amount of credibility.
• Well crafted press releases convey relevant information in a brief package. Users need not go through long pages to get the gist of a matter.
• Press releases usually do not come with bindings like copyright and sharing restrictions. They are meant to be distributed.

Web solutions services need to be aware of salient characteristics of effective press release to cater to users. They need to compose press releases to suit requirements of web users. It is also necessary to be aware of how web users want information to be delivered to them.

• Press releases should feature elements that can be indexed by search engines easily. They can contain keywords and compelling visuals along with a landing page that can be shared across popular social media sites.
• Web users can access information in various ways. Therefore, SEO professionals can think of presenting a press release in various web friendly formats. For instance, content about any event or product can be distributed online in various ways. A webinar can be turned into a podcast or blog post. A Press release can also be used in similar ways.
• Not all web users have the same habits as far as content sharing is concerned. Some may prefer podcast while some others are hooked to media based content found in online media sharing sites.

It is important for a content writer framing press release or sharing it online through various modes to know what outcomes he wants to generate from target users. This, of course, depends on type of content used in a press release.

• Press releases can also turn out to be effective means of lead generation for businesses at times. This is owing to the fact that they can be shared quickly. They can reach out to various segments of users too.

Press releases come in handy when an organization wants to widen its target audience and reach out to more people outside its customer base fast.

Often, website design experts will concentrate more on the aesthetic factors of a website. There is nothing wrong with it, except, they end up compromising site usability for the sake of beauty.

The usability of a website makes it popular among its users. Here are some of the most important usability principles for successful website designing:

1. Design With a Target in Mind- If you work in a website design company, you obviously work with clients regularly. You have to know the main purpose behind building a website to design one accordingly, and help the client achieve his goal.

2. Design a Site That Answers the User’s Questions- Every user has 3 basic questions upon visiting a site that your design must fulfill.

• Where Am I? – Highlight the particular page in the menu bar to help a user understand which page he is on currently. The page title and H1 and H2 tags should be relevant to further help him.
• What Can I Do Here? – The main objective of an eCommerce website is to make the visitor realize that he can buy a product from the products page. You should design the site in such a way that the user clearly understands what the company is selling and how he can buy it. Integrating a detailed product list with images, a “buy now” button, simple payment process, etc. can help answer the user’s questions.
• Why Should I Do It? – This is where web content writing comes handy. A well-written salescopy can encourage a potential buyer to buy a product. The job of a designer is to make sure content is readable and complemented with images, video or audio to make it interesting.

3. Design for the Ideal Customer- A website is bound to attract visitors from different age groups, with different purposes. Some will simply visit the site for free information, while others will want to buy a product. You have to satisfy them all. A combination of useful information and benefit (usually in the form of useful products, free downloadable items, etc) is useful.

4. Users Don’t Like to Think; They Like to Scan- Design a website in such a way so that users can easily scan pages and realize what the site is about. Web users not only hate long paragraphs, they also dislike confusing menu bars. When you design a site, put yourself in the user’s position and find out which parts of the design makes you think twice.

For instance, if you simply include a page as “About” in the menu, a user doesn’t understand what the page is about – about the business or about products? Instead of “About”, if you write “What We Do”, he will immediately realize that the page will inform him about the business and possibly, about products too.

5. Follow the Conventional Rules of Website Designing- Users are comfortable with traditional website design styles – a horizontal menu with drop down feature, links that change color when clicked, contact info at the top of the page or in the footer, a vertical navigation, etc. If you are designing a site to reap profits from the web, don’t take chances with what’s been there and is accepted.

A complicated navigation system, Flash buttons in the navigation or in the page to unlock text, text or image on mouse-over, etc, may give your site that much needed zing, but will not benefit it in the long run.

Your home or landing page is ideally where you have talked most about your product or service with the intended purpose of a positive action from your visitor. Given below are 12 useful content writing tips that will help you write an effective, result-oriented landing page.

1. Headline – Make sure your headline matches the source text your visitor has clicked to land on your site. An exact match, or even a close match between your landing page headline and ad copy will tell the customer he has come to the right site, and keep him oriented.
2. Call to Action – You must tell the visitor what you expect him to do. Your landing page should have a defined call-to-action graphic or linked text that urges the visitor to act upon it.
3. Writing in Seconds – Visitors aren’t exactly bothered about your company or the products or services you provide. What they really want to know when they come to your site is how your site will benefit them. Address your visitors in your landing page content as ‘you’ and ‘your’ and refer to yourself as ‘I’ or ‘we’. This also builds interactivity.
4. Writing Style – Your landing page content should be business-like, clear and easily understood by visitors. You must write to precisely communicate an idea to your audience, not showcase your grasp of the English language, or creativity.
   
5. Long or Short Copy? – Both work depending on your end product. If you are selling a product or service, a long copy is generally more useful in cash generation. For a free newsletter subscription, a short copy suffices. Whatever you write, just make sure it is motivating and gets you the result you desire.
6. Set Clear Goals – Your body content should be a logical extension of your headline. Your content should focus on the products you are selling. Any ancillary services wastes time, distracts the viewer, and is of little use.
7. Focus from the Start – The most important features of your product/service should precede paragraphs and bullets. Most visitors will only scan through your page content, and they should be able to do so quickly but without missing out points which talk about your business. Also, readers have a tendency to read the starts and ends before reading the actual body content. The most critical points about your product/service should therefore be at the top and bottom than in the middle.
8. Short First Paras – The first paragraph should not be more than one or two lines. A short first para means it’s easier for your readers to follow your remaining copy. Also, at no point of time should your paragraphs exceed four or five lines.
9. Content Above or Below the Fold? – The natural tendency of users is to scroll. So ideally, it doesn’t matter if your opening paragraphs trail below the fold. Of course, some things like the banner, menu and headline and sub-headline should be above-the-fold, including the opening paragraph. It helps catch reader attention.
10. Keep Your Landing Page Clean – Remove extra elements like navigation bars, links, and extra images from your landing page. Your readers should only focus on your web content copy and any supportive images that reinforce the idea you are trying to convey.
11. Don’t Need? Don’t Ask – Your landing page isn’t a market survey form. Don’t ask for information you will not need to complete a sale. Too many questions irritate the user. Besides, it’s a waste of time.
12. Test – A site, which works on assumption, isn’t too far from its doom. You might be the best web designer/developer in town, but you are still human, and humans err. Test your landing page before making it available to visitors. Interactive elements whose sole purpose is to engage visitors must be tested to ensure they are working. You don’t want to lose out on business because of broken links or forms that don’t work, do you?

A challenging aspect of content writing and web design is creating enticing headlines. Whether you are writing a blog post or an article, title is the first thing that grabs attention. In fact, studies have proved that headlines play a crucial role in stimulating interest of the people and encourage them to read the entire text.

A women’s magazine, for example, had published an article with an interesting title-‘The Child who won the Hearts of all’. The emotional appeal of the title was so powerful that it created a strong buzz and encouraged people to read the article.

Here are few ways you can come up with catchy headlines.

Do not use cliches

While creating a good headline, remember that people will not read your blog or article unless they find any interesting information in them. Therefore, the first step is to convince the readers that your article is different from others. Avoiding clichéd terms such as ‘number one’ and ‘top quality’ is recommended. Creativity and imagination can help you write a great title.

Consider the situation

Opinions regarding whether a writer should use creative titles or direct ones, vary. While some believe that flowery words in the title can attract attention, others think that direct headlines create a positive image amongst the visitors.

It can be added here that as a content writer, while creating headlines, one should consider the purpose of the article as well. An example will make this point clearer…

Let us assume that you are writing an article about discounts offered by a clothing company. In such a situation, you can opt for a direct title, such as ’50% discount offered by XYZ’. On the other hand, if you are writing an article about the latest style trends, a creative title will add an interesting touch.

Short titles are powerful

Studies reveal that Internet users have short attention span and long titles can discourage them from reading the entire article. Incorporating seven or fewer words in the headlines and titles can be a good idea. If you think that you require few more words to explain the concept, put them into the sub-heading.

Have an honest approach

Deliver what you promise in the article/blog. Avoid writing an interesting headline, followed by an article or blog that is unrelated to the title. Remember that misleading the visitors can negatively affect your reputation and credibility as a writer.

Ask a question

A simple way of creating interesting title is to ask a question. It will even serve the purpose of stimulating interest of the readers. There are high chances that the visitors will read articles that contain titles such as ‘How to make your Kid Eat Healthy Food?’ or ‘Where can you find the Best Piano Removalists’?

Use humor with caution

Writing humorous titles can be a good way of grabbing attention of the visitors. It even makes your title different from others. However, use humor carefully. Avoid offending anyone and opt for detailed research before coming up with humorous titles.

Unless you write an informative or entertaining article, a great headline will not be of any use. Therefore, pay attention to the body of the text. Use bulleted list to highlight the main points, avoid spelling and grammatical errors, and finally, provide valuable information to engage the readers.

Anyone who has ever done SEO, or is still involved, will agree on the importance of content writing in search engine optimization. Good, home-grown content is the key to getting the search engine biggies to notice your website. A website without content isn’t just a mish-mash of colors and images; it is useless, without a purpose and has zero chances of being ranked, let alone going anywhere near the top of a search engine results page (SERP).

Where is the Challenge?

Content has the power to make or break your website. Naturally, online businesses attach tremendous importance to quality and compelling text to pull in potential customers.

The persistent problem with content writing is not the writing itself, but people’s attitude towards writers. An alarming number of people think of content writing as putting pages of plain English sentences together with a generous sprinkling of keywords to attract search engines. In retrospect, it appears content writing has a recipe – correct grammar, complex industry jargon and keyword usage for an interesting and effective result.

“So, where is the problem in stringing words together?” “It’s just writing!”

Well, here is the problem and the challenge…

Content writing is not rocket-science! Content writers don’t have rule books to follow, except what little Google tells us about keyword density. Writing is for the people and web users are indecisive, evasive and over-critical most of the times, knowledge of English language and personal preference notwithstanding. Therefore, there are no set methods that content writers can follow to appease worldwide readers, nor proven strategies they can apply to roll out 100% effective content.

Yes, quality matters and good, informative writing will show results. But, there are other things that influence the overall success of your website, such as color-scheme and design, user-friendly navigation, load time, link-exchange, directory submissions, social networking, blogging, etc.

Content is King, yes, but even a king needs a cabinet to run the kingdom!

Case in Point

Neither the success, nor the failure of your website depends on content alone. Content is the most important ingredient in search engine success but a sumptuous buffet of top-ranking web pages is possible only when peripheral SEO practices are carried out with sincerity.

In conclusion…content may not be the foundation for a superior website rank, but it cements the building blocks of website optimization firmly and in a manner that ultimately makes a website what it is and will be in the future.

Therefore, content writing deserves more respect than it gets!

What makes a compelling web copy: correct grammar, short sentences, and simplistic approach, or big words, professional style, highly industrial jargon? In a world where user attention is limited to seconds, how do you manage to keep readers glued to your web copy for several minutes? Do site visitors at all care for what’s there to be said?

Content writers are often caught between what pleases their creative style and what is comprehendible to the readers. One of the obvious challenges of content writing is to come up with a web copy that is self-gratifying yet satisfying to the readers. Following are 10 easy steps that will help you attain a balance between the two:

1.  Personal Style – A web copy written in third person is passé. You would want to give your visitors a relaxed environment to read. Readers are looking for informative content, more importantly, information they can easily grasp. Nobody has the patience to sit around with a dictionary under his/her arm, going back and forth to understand what you have written. Why should they anyway, when similar websites are just clicks away?

Your web copy should be conversational. Use of ‘you’ and ‘your’ to address readers helps retain their interest. Occasional use of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘we’ keeps the conversation going.

I would also suggest an About Me page, preferably with your picture on it, especially if yours is a personal website like a portfolio site or blog. The idea is to reveal a bit of yourself to your readers to help them connect to your website. A Facebook or Twitter page helps, but you don’t know if your readers will at all track you down to social networks.

2. Simple Language – What use is an authority website if the first-time visitor does not understand terminology you have used? Your web copy must accommodate all visitors, niche or otherwise. Of course, your writing style will primarily depend on the type of audience you target. An insurance site would hardly write like a holiday site.

Keep it simple, yet professional. Note: professionalism must not border on use of confounding words and style only a handful of people will understand. You can still be highly professional with simple sentence construction.

3. Personal Stories – Your web copy should bond with its readers. Use personal style highlighted in point #1 to make a connection with your users. Cement connection by sharing personal experiences, opinions, realization; anything that makes your web copy a dialogue, not a lecture.

4. Pictures Help – Images are necessary breaks in your content that help reduce strain. Also, images convey the tone of your words; add an emotional component to ideas. Pages of content is boring, no matter how compelling or useful.

5. Read Aloud – Reading content aloud helps you understand if it’s personal and conversational. If your content doesn’t sound like natural speech, it is stodgy and lacks rhythm. In other words…boring.

6. Edit to End – Always edit your web copy at the end. Make additions, changes, modifications once you have got the entire copy in place. Editing as you go along severs your creative style.

7. Wit/Sarcasm – These are hard to read in writing. Infuse humor where it’s unmistakable; humor that everyone can understand.

8. Don’t Get Carried Away – You can take liberties with personal web copies, but there is some modicum of decency you should maintain. Foul language and too colloquial terminology hurts your brand image. The fine line between funny and distasteful should be maintained.

9. Optimize – Keyword rich content is critical to your site. They help draw in targeted web users. Do a bit of research on what type of keywords the web audience uses to find your niche. Also, because you wouldn’t use a particular keyword to find your niche, does not mean your users wouldn’t either.

10. Scan-Friendly – Yes, users scan content before they read sentences word by word. Don’t forget to add bold headings, bold points in your article, and use bullet lists and italics when you write. Hopefully, users will find pieces of text that will make them stop and read your article.

In Conclusion

There will always be a naysayer demeaning content for graphics. Don’t listen! The reason visitors come to a website is because they believe it has information that is useful to them. Without legible scribbles between images, a website doesn’t account for much. Plus, there are search engines to reckon with; without content, a website is just a jumble of colors and pictures without purpose, hardly index-worthy, let alone capable of finding a foothold in organic search.

Content is undoubtedly one of the most important parts of a website. Through it important information are provided to the readers. This is why, one needs to remain careful while writing content for a website. However, the style of writing content differs on the basis of the site’s purpose. Apart from this, before writing content for your website try to understand what your target audience is expecting from your write-up.

Usually, the writing style for business website should somewhat differ from the personal web content writing style. If your target audience belongs to highly educated group then you can use ornamented languages for your content, whereas, if your audience belong to common mass then its better to do content writing in a simple language.

It is always advisable to interact with the customers in a friendly way, but in order to do so you should not forget to maintain a professional approach, whereas, if you are targeting to students, you should write on a formal and professional tone. Tone is indeed one of the most important aspects of an effective content. However, make sure that the tone you are following suits your target audience.

Writing content for a website is not that difficult but make sure that you have already decided what points you are going to cover. Always try to avoid using difficult words in your content or else there remains a possibility that your visitors will find it illegible. Keep the sentences short and make separate paragraphs for each idea. You should also avoid using complex sentences in your write-up.

Precise and to the point content makes the readers easy to find out what they are searching. However, after writing an easy to read web content, you need to place it in the central location of a page. You should also focus on the coloring and the font type. The links should also be defined clearly.

Thereafter comes, keyword, without properly using which you cannot make your website rank good in the search engine result page. These are indeed some of the basic points that a company offering web content writing services follow for developing an effective content for their client’s website.