Website Content Writing Depends on 3 Important Goals

Website content writing is a complex process because it depends on variables that aren’t necessary for writing in print. Three important goals are growth, improvement and search engine optimization.

Search engines have increasingly complex and demanding requirements for a website to get higher ranks in search results. Competition continues to grow at a rapid pace; the number of websites and website pages far outpaces the growth in audience and revenue.

That means visitors are getting more picky about what sites they visit, how often they visit them and how long they stay on them. It’s a beautiful buyer’s market for visitors and a challenging one for websites. Failure is not an option.

A publisher may find it helpful to take a step back and focus on just three goals that act as guides to every other goal and tactic with website content.

Growth as a Goal

Website content writing is first and foremost about consistent volume. Growth of content naturally means more content. More content comes in two main forms: articles and images.

Anyone who tracks website analytics knows that search engines respond favorably to new articles and images. They also know that the frequency of postings will have a positive impact.

A site that publishes a new article seven days a week will have a faster growth rate in organic search engine visitors than one that publishes three days a week.

Volume and frequency matter for growth. So does the length of articles. A 1,000-word article obviously contributes more to the overall growth of site content than a 300-word article. Longer articles create more opportunities based on their keywords to attract a broader set of search visitors.

Think of content growth as not just the number of articles but also the total number of words. But quantity by itself isn’t enough. Quality matters just as much. Quality depends on good grammar, information, structure and organization.

Improvement as a Goal

Basic SEO tips. © 2017 Scott Bateman

Unlike writing for print, website content writing allows writers to make changes after their articles go live. They also can make as many changes as they wish for years to come, as long as the article remains live, useful to readers and easily available via search engines.

Other priorities do get in the way. So do resources such as time and money.

Writers often can’t produce a 1,000-word article every time they write. They may write only a 300-word article because they don’t have time to do any more.

That’s where improvement via article rewrites becomes important. The 300-word article has the potential to grow much more, get more graphics, increase the word count, etc.

In the early stages of live, a brief article may not rank well in search engines. So when time permits, it behooves the writer or publisher to return to that article and make improvements.

Those improvements aren’t limited to the content. They also may apply to the graphics. Some graphics take only a few minutes for the creator to improve them, such as giving them a larger title, more colorful background or even replacing them.

Improvements also apply to the caption and alt tag of the image. The image may show up in the third or fourth row of search engine image databases because of weak captions and alt tags. An improvement may lead to higher rankings and more click throughs.

SEO as a Goal

Again unlike print, search engine optimization also adds a layer of complexity to website content writing. Writers must research keywords to see what readers want to read. Articles without a basis in SEO keyword research won’t rank, attract clicks or drive revenue because no one will find it via search engines. The effort is a waste of time.

So writers must:

1. Research keywords
2. Write naturally for their audience
3. Implement keywords and synomyms in the title, meta description, graphics and body copy
4. Do the SEO implementation without annoying readers
5. Do the SEO implementation without triggering search engine penalties for manipulation.