Writing content for a website can be difficult. Here are a couple of tips to help you get started.
Create a Site Map
A site map will give you an idea of the pages you want your site to have and will therefore dictate the content you need to write. It’s always best to create a sitemap before you start writing content.
A good starting place for many websites are the following main pages:
Home | About Us | Products | Services | Blog | Contact Us
This will be different for you depending on the kind of business or organisation you have. Check out some of your competitors’ sites to see what kinds of pages they’re including in their website.
See the Creating a Sitemap article for more information.
Writing Titles for Pages
Page titles are still pretty important as far as Google is concerned. It pays to make your title as descriptive as possible but not long winded. Bear in mind that in WordPress, your page or post title is by default, the same as the ‘slug’ (the hyphenated URL to your page). So whatever you title your page, the URL of the page will be a hyphenated version of that. However, it doesn’t have to be. You can edit either the title or the page slug to be different if you want the slug to be a bit more concise and the title a bit more wordy!
If the page will show up on the main menu, you may also want to keep it short and sweet. If it’s a blog post, rather than a page, you might want to make the title a bit longer since it won’t be showing up on a main menu, and you’ll be able to be more descriptive. Consider what people are searching for when they use Google. A lot of people ask questions like “How do I fix a tumble drier” or “Best family cars in 2017”. Check out the following article on titling your pages…
How Much to Write?
This will depend on the subject. If it doesn’t need more than a paragraph or two, then don’t write more than that. No need to waffle on! If you can’t write very much on a particular subject, because it just doesn’t warrant it, consider combining that content into another page as a section rather than keeping it in its own page looking all lonely.
Having said this, another important consideration is that content is the most important thing on the Internet. Search engines in particular love good content, so it helps to be able to write decent length pages so that they have something worthwhile to index. The more original content on your site, the better. But how much is enough? You don’t want to bore your readers, just provide enough information to satisfy someone’s requirement for information. You don’t need to write an essay. 2 Screen heights of text is plenty. 1 is fine.
What About Images?
Images can make or break a site. They aren’t so important in terms of Search Engine Optimisation, but as part of the design, they’re crucial. They help make websites more memorable. They convey ideas and concepts instantly. They reinforce a colour scheme. They provide examples to the customer. When choosing images for your website, we recommend you use professional stock photography unless you’re a decent photographer yourself. Most amateur taken photographs on a website make it look cheap and well, amateur-ish! Stock Photo companies can provide plenty of decent images, but they also have some really out-of-date cliche images which will drag your site down and make it look naff, so be careful and get a second opinion if in doubt!
Some good stock photography websites are www.istockphoto.com and www.123rf.com.