Where to find content for your website

When using websites that require a low literacy level, lower literacy users completed their tasks faster and with less frustration. That seems fairly obvious, right? One incidental discovery from this research, however, was that users with high literacy levels also scored much better when the language on the website was of a lower level. Bottom line: Keep your language simple and clear.

Your low and high literacy users will thank you for it. So how does this relate to content strategy for the web? It should be consistent across all content. Tone on the other hand, can, and should, adapt according to the context of the content. For example, humour on a welcome page can build likability and loyalty. But in a warning message, it can result in exactly the opposite. MailChimp is so passionate about voice and tone that they have created a website called www. With recent Google algorithm updates like Panda and Penguin, people from various digital genres have been claiming that SEO is dead.

This is mostly true. Not so much anymore. So does this all mean that SEO is dead? Content strategists are well-positioned not only to govern content so that it follows webmaster guidelines from the search engines, but also to plan and create content that builds brands instead of just using keywords. Google even provides a checklist of SEO tactics to avoid. For any given piece of content, if your CMS only has a single massive WYSIWYG field to enter content into, it would be very difficult to separate that content out into smaller pieces later on, should the need arise.

The right approach, according to Lovinger, is to get your web developers or whoever is responsible for setting up the CMS to have separate fields for the chunks that make up your content piece.

By breaking your content into chunks, it can flow into different presentations and be used in flexible ways. Many mobile sites only display a portion of the content that their desktop counterparts display. Bottom line: Structure content into its smallest building blocks in your CMS so that content can be re-assembled flexibly for use in different contexts and on different devices.

Your website should answer the why and how of your firm, explaining how your services and process provide value to your clients. Your value proposition should address these things, and it should be unique from other firms in the industry so that you can differentiate yourself from your competitors. Use this as a basis for the content you create for your website. Your unique value proposition should be prominent on your website and weaved throughout your content. Making sure that your content is targeted and relevant to the people you want to reach is critical to the success of your site.

Before creating new content, determine what content you already have and where you see holes that need to be filled.

What content needs to be re-written? What pieces of content are performing well and may not need as much work? Document all of the content you currently have and then identify what can stay, what needs to be refreshed and what needs to go. This will give you a clear picture of how much new content you need to create and where to start. When creating website content, firms often think about what they want to say instead of what their audience wants to read.

Buyer personas help you visually picture the type of people you are trying to reach and better understand buyer behavior. By determining your key buyer personas, you can create personalized content that is targeted and relevant to their interests, needs and goals. Your content is meant to answer their questions, educate them on industry topics, and address their pain points.

Remember that you have more than one audience, and your website should have content that caters to each one. In addition to prospects, you should create website content that is geared towards clients, prospective employees, business partners, the media, etc. Your content should also lead visitors and prospects down the sales funnel. Your website should have a variety of content that addresses different questions or concerns depending on where the prospect is in the client journey , from awareness to purchase to advocacy.

Specific details in the second description show readers the dog bone rather than tell them about it. Here are more tips to writing great product descriptions for your online store. The web is for everyone—not just technical experts. So make sure information is understandable for the educated non-specialist. Spell out acronyms on first reference. Avoid insider language. Explain complex or niche terms. And provide hyperlinks to other articles where readers can get more background information on a particular topic.

Many of these terms are comprehensible only to broadcast journalists. A reader-friendly revision would be:. The journalist interviewed a bystander about the incident, and recorded her statement to include in the story. This tip is especially important if you work in a technical industry, but want your website to attract non-expert customers.

Remember that you need to write for your audience see point 1 and not for your colleagues. Using accessible language will help you come across as approachable and open—just what you want to convey to future customers.

Words are like cookies—we all have our favorites. But when it comes to keeping your visitors interested, variety is key! Word clouds are fun to use and can help you vary your word choice by visualizing which words you use the most.

Just copy and paste your text into a free word cloud tool to generate your cloud. The more you use a word, the bigger it will look in your cloud. Have you overused a certain word? Type it into Thesaurus. Negative words standing out in your cloud? Now you know exactly what to tweak for a more positive tone. Keep an eye out for your website keywords as well: these should appear several times in your text, so it should be easy to recognize them in a word cloud.

Make a list of terms that describe your company and group together any words you use to mean the same thing. Pick your top choice and stick to it everywhere on your website. Like this:. Do you call your customers clients, patients, or users? Do you refer to services, packages, or plans? Once you have this list or glossary, you can use it to review any text before you publish it.

In addition to putting the most important information up top, make sure text is easy to skim. Are you reading every word beginning to end? Or is your eye jumping around, looking for the information you want? Research shows that most the human brain is visual, and people process visual information many times faster than text. An easy-to-read chart or graph can also do a better job of explaining a complex topic than text alone.