Imagine easily producing great content frequently and consistently. You would save time, improve website traffic and transform your business! Let’s get started on web content creation by first defining what we mean.
Content Creation Definition
Creating written or visual content that will appeal to your target audience.
Every day people search for content on Google, read tweets on Twitter, Facebook posts, YouTube videos, and Instagram photos – it’s all content.
In this article, I am referring to writing content that will appear on Google search engine result pages.
Write Good Content
Easier said than done but good content will rise to the top, especially if you give it a helping hand with good SEO and social media promotion.
Write for your target audience
Who is the article for? Have a clear image of your target audience so you can address their needs and questions.
Short paragraphs
Don’t write long blocks of text, it’s intimidating. Prefer two or three sentences per paragraph. Keep the sentences short, don’t make the reader do more work than necessary. Complicated and difficult-to-read content will result in a high bounce rate on your website.
Use Lists
- Like
- this
It’s visually more appealing and helps break up the page.
Use images
You can illustrate a concept more clearer with an image than with a big block of text.
Visuals are processed
60,000
times faster than text
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312551
Stick to one idea
Try not to jump around from one idea to another. It makes your content rambling and difficult to follow. Write another article if you want to talk about the topic more, but try to make it dissimilar. It’s better for your visitors and for SEO.
Be concise and clear
Get to the point. People have busy lives and don’t want to spend a long time reading a long, meandering article.
Avoid using jargon and technical terms unless your target audience is likely to understand them. Simple, clear, precise language is best.
Write Content for SEO
Google answers 4 billion queries per day.
Websites are second only to social media as a channel used by marketers.
You will need to research keywords if you want to appear on search engine result pages. It will be very difficult to rank for one or two-word phrases, there is too much competition. Try to find long tail keywords when you are starting content creation until your website has plenty of backlinks.
Long tail keywords (3+ words) are more specific and have higher search intent. For example, “blue shoes” is more difficult to rank for than “blue sports shoes Florida” because more specific queries have lower volumes.
The search intent in the longer query is also clearer – the visitor is looking to buy sports shoes in the Florida area.
Check your competitors content, it may give you ideas for topics to write about. You need to aim to write a better article than your competitors. Depending on your keywords that could be difficult or easy.
Add links, internal links to your other content, and external links to other sites. It helps your SEO and it helps visitors to move around your site or to do more research on other sites.
Web Content Creation Tips
Simple tips to help you start with content creation.
Know the purpose of your content
How much value does your content provide to your readers? How does it provide that value? How are you different from your competitors? Clear answers here will help you decide what content to create in the future.
Create a Content Schedule
Schedule writing content so you have a steady stream of new content published. Google looks for freshness on your site and on individual pages. Google uses a freshness algorithm to determine if a page or site has been updated recently.
…fresh websites often add completely new pages over time. (This is the case with most blogs.) Websites that add new pages at a higher rate may earn a higher freshness score than sites that add content less frequently.
https://moz.com/blog/google-fresh-factor-new
Do keyword research
Want to know the problems your target audience have?
What issue or concern prevents them from buying from you?
Doing keyword research will help you find those issues. Then it’s up to you to address them with your content.
Premium tools are pricey, if you have a limited budget you can start with free keyword research tools.
Look on forums and question-and-answer sites
Your target audience is hanging out online. Visit some of those sites to get an idea of what the hot topics are, and what are they talking about?
Other industry-specific sites for your target audience.
Focus
Try to dedicate time to writing. Remove all distractions, such as your mobile phone so you can spend all your time focused on writing.
Break your content creation into tasks
Writing content has many different tasks that need to be completed. Such as:
- Research
- Writing (initial draft)
- Images
- Links (internal and external)
- Editing
- Publishing
- Promoting
When producing content I prefer to stick to one task at a time. So when I am writing, I don’t look for images, do keyword research or even edit what I’m writing.
By avoiding task switching, I don’t lose focus making me more productive.
Staying in focus on a single task will boost your productivity.
Check spelling and grammar
Spelling mistakes and bad grammar stand out and reduce your credibility. If you need help checking your grammar try using an online tool such as Grammarly or Hemmingway.
Set aside time to proofread and edit content before publishing – separate from writing the content.
Free Content Creation Tools
Save time by using some free content creation tools.
Canva
A great tool that will help you with your images and infographics. Whatever your size or format, Canva has a template to help you.
Quozio
Free quote generator. When you need to add a quote to your article, Quozio is simple and easy to use.
easel.ly
When you need to create infographics for an article. Thousands of templates to choose from, drag and drop interface.
Venngage
Make better infographics. It’s a free infographic maker and you don’t need to be a designer to use it.