With so many websites out there, differentiating your own can be extremely difficult. Despite that, many site owners and content creators fall back on traditional calls to action and keywords instead of being more creative. 

While you should follow basic SEO and content writing rules, you should also consider your readers’ expectations. Striking a good balance between original text and SEO is what the golden rules of content writing are all about. Here’s what you can do to get started on redefining and sprucing up your website content.

1. Write for your Target Audience to Increase Conversions

To make your website as high-performing as possible, you should always cater to your audience’s expectations. This goes for anything from SaaS and eCommerce to service outsourcing or blogging. Don’t try to appease everyone because you’ll fail to satisfy anyone. Talk to a certain demographic and those people will be more likely to come back for more content again and again.

2. Keep Your Sentences Short, Actionable, and SEO-Friendly

In the age of mobile devices and instant information access, people have very little patience for long-form content. This is especially true for website navigation, where information has to be actionable and immediate. Write short sentences with actionable verbs to achieve this effect. Shorter sentences will be more SEO-friendly and make it easier for people to read your content without losing interest along the way.

3. Instead of Plagiarizing, Use Other Websites as Inspiration

Plagiarism is one of the cardinal sins of writing content for your website. Even if you see a high-quality website perform well online, don’t copy/paste their content. You can however use that content as a springboard for your website. Use different successful websites as inspiration to craft your original content to avoid SEO problems or open plagiarism accusations.

4. Break Down Large Blocks of Text into 2-3 Sentence Paragraphs

Once you start writing blog posts for your website, you will soon run into readability issues, both for visitors and SEO crawlers. Break up large chunks of text into bite-sized paragraphs to fix that. Shorter paragraphs are easier on the eyes and allow visitors to skim content more quickly. You can improve your legibility further by using bolds or italics, or by using subheadings, bullet points, and other similar text customization options.

5. SEO Extends to Every Page on Your Website, Not Just Blog Posts

Speaking of SEO, it’s important to understand that every page on your website will be scanned and ranked accordingly. The amalgamation of all of your website’s pages will determine how well your domain name will rank in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Search for trending keywords from your niche and apply them throughout your website, including your home page, about us page, and contact us page. Aim for a 1/100 words keyword density to avoid coming off as a spammer and to keep your website content as healthy as possible for SEO.

6. Write Alt-Tags for your Multimedia for Better SEO

As you upload images and videos to your website, its loading speed will start to dip. You will have to compensate for that with SEO, starting with alt-tags for each piece of media. Alt-tags are quite easy to add via a CMS like WordPress and will improve your search visibility drastically. You can go further and add captions or subheadings for videos to increase the content’s appeal for people who can’t experience it as intended.

7. Calls to Action Make or Break Website Content

The number one element which will encourage people to browse through your website for longer is CTA. Calls to action are very important, regardless of how confident you are in your products and services. Place them throughout your website to invite people to visit other pages on the domain. You can also use CTAs to increase subscriptions, sales, and other forms of interaction on your website - don’t overlook them!

8. Use Link-Building for Better Online Visibility

Depending on how in-depth your content writing is, people will want to know more about your train of thought and look for additional resources. You can accommodate that by introducing internal and external links throughout your pages. While internal links will keep your visitors engaged on the domain, external links are where your professionalism will truly shine. Provide them with reputable, trustworthy resources to follow up on.

9. Always Proofread and Spell-Check When Writing Content

You don’t want people to come across spelling or grammar mistakes on your professional website. Always read your content manually before publishing it to ensure no mistakes crept their way into your content writing. Proper grammar is important not only for your visitors, but SEO algorithms as well. Avoid this seemingly basic issue and your website content will perform much better.

Maintaining your Website’s Content (Conclusion)

Writing content for your website is more complex than it might appear at first glance. No matter how good your value proposition is, without good content, no one will convert into a paying customer or subscriber. 

Take these golden rules into account when you write content for your website. They will increase its appeal, improve its SEO, and ensure that the right people find it and use it as intended. Go over what you’ve written periodically and update it as you learn new trends, skills, and SEO trends, and you won’t have any website issues.