Our 7 Best Tips for Great Website Content

We've seen articles in the past with over 30 tips for writing content. Slight overkill we think. Here are the 7 that we push with our clients.

1. Prioritise quality over quantity. Your content should be readable, relevant and reviewed regularly. Don't spend time writing content that no one will ever end up reading.
2. Plan the layout of the content. The more content you have on your website, the more important it is to plan the layout. The hierarchy needs to be intuitive to a visitor and content needs to be easy to find. If they need to spend time figuring out your site, this will mean they will either leave or at best will spend less time reading what you want them to read.
3. Stay focused on your online goals. Write content that supports these goals.
4. Do not use the full width of the screen. Wider screen sizes are now being used in more browsers. Don't be tempted to use the space for text. It is just too wide for the human eye to comfortably cope with, so visitors will not read the full text.
5. Avoid using excessive links. Particularly, in the body text. They can distract from the flow of your text. At an absolute minimum, avoid having them in an early paragraph unless absolutely necessary.
6. Edit, Sub-edit, re-edit. Do your best to eliminate superfluous words. Pages with lots of text tend to be read less or only scan-read.
7. Keep an eye on keywords. Our advice is not to write text specifically aimed at search terms. It will appear unnatural. It's better to write good quality content and then review it to see if some words can be added or changed to improve the optimisation for search engines.