Creating good content for your website can make a huge difference when you begin to assess your traffic flow. Any site can get traffic and make money from Google AdWords or by using “cost-per-click” ads, but those sites with good content will actually attract readers and visitors that are truly interested in your niche topic. The visitors will be organically drawn to your site through search engines, because of your good content and careful use of keywords and search engine optimization techniques.
It’s important to remember that you will need to continually refresh your content to keep it current and keep the search engines interested. Plus, if visitors do come to your site for information, and then they periodically return, if there’s nothing new, then their interest will quickly fade.
Well-written content is critical. What does this really mean? For starters, do not, I repeat, do not use content that includes poor grammar, misspellings, or typographical errors. Fix it or ditch it. Well-written content, however, is not only mechanically correct, proofread, and well-edited, but readable. Ideas should flow, the information should make sense, and it should be interesting to the reader. Be conscious of using a tighter style, one that gets to the point quickly, stays there, then wraps things up. Today’s web reader wants access to quick overview information that will lead them, often nonsequentially, to the other information they need. Web readers often do not have the time or patience to wade through extensive prose.
Creating good content is not too difficult if you understand a few things that are specific to webpage content as opposed to other types of content and writing. Web content is often more personal than the text you’ll find in a newspaper or magazine article. Use of the pronoun “you” is more common, as writers are often targeting a personal interaction with readers. Shorter sentences and paragraphs to “chunk” information will keep the text from becoming too visually overwhelming as readers scroll along. Use informative subheadlines, keeping in mind that those subheadings might actually be the piece of the article that is picked up by the search engines. Avoid headlines and subheadlines that are too “catchy” and not relevant to the article in general.
Don’t lose your main topic. Creating good content means sticking to a topic. If you need to branch off into a different topic, or even a more in-depth exploration of the original topic, do it with links to other articles or pages on the site. Let people navigate their way through the information in a clear, logical way. One that makes sense to the reader. Some redundancy and repetition will result from this, because you will have to include a certain amount of background information again in case the reader lands directly on a sub-page, but, try to become more comfortable with this pattern.
Finally, be sure that some of your content outlines your site, its purpose, who runs it and why, and other information that could be helpful. Readers often want to know where the information is coming from, especially with the personal touch that can appear more opinion than fact.
These few tips will help your site appear more authoritative, more professional, and more informative to your readers and visitors. This means more visitors!
Jack Humphrey is one of the web's leading social marketing experts. He teaches his social media marketing tactics at Social Power Linking and blogs about social marketing and blog marketing at the Friday Traffic Report.