Websites Under Your Control Blog

While it’s true that a picture may be worth a thousand words, your website can’t be only graphics. You need the right well-written text to deliver your message.

In fact, the best looking site won’t be the best-performing site on the web, unless you have solid content that reaches your audience and propels them to action.

You want your site to entertain or educate, but not at the cost of sales.

Here are several tips that will punch up your text, making it easier to read and understand.

• Rather than writing in long paragraphs, use bulleted lists. Visitors to your site may get put off by the sight of long paragraphs, and they won't read them. The only person likely to wade through a white paper on your background is your mom.
• Keep each topic focused. It’s better to have one page on shipping and one on receiving than a combined page on shipping and receiving. That way, your visitors can read the only the parts they need. (It is better for your search engine results, too.)
• Use subheads. Subheads make the text look nicer and give it a more organized feel. Readers can go right to the part that interests them.
• Avoid bragging or hyperbole. Save that for the ads. Your website should be an objective take on your services. Make it a gentle read.
• Don’t try to "stuff" your content with keywords. Search engines are too sophisticated to fall for that old trick. It’s better for you to have well-written content that delivers to your audience. That way your visitors will get your message completely, and take action.

If you don’t feel qualified or don't have time, hire a pro--like ours. We have a ghostwriter in captivity who is ready to write some great content for your website. And if you need a newsletter, press release or blog article, our writer will compose it quickly and well.

It can be humorous, instructional or informative. You can have one article written or one every week or month. The more work we give this guy, the less noise he makes.

Hiring a professional writer is a good idea if you don’t feel like dusting off the old English 101 textbook, or you'd rather be on the golf course in the little free time you have.

But whether you write your own content or hire a ghostwriter, follow the above steps to make your website more readable, more persuasive and more frequently read.

Unless web geeks are your best customers, keep it simple, avoid the costly flashy stuff, and never, ever, have a starting page that says "click to skip intro." And write for your customers, not your own ego!

One of our oft-repeated messages to our clients is, focus your web site toward those people and businesses you feel are most likely to become your best customers.

Some want a website that tries to be all things to all people. That may sound like it would get more potential business, but you are diluting your appeal to your best prospects, and inviting time-wasting inquiries you don't want from people you can't help.

You are also dramatically weakening your Google appeal.

If you have a site that proclaims "anything for dogs" but you only sell jackets for dachshunds, you’re going to compete with a vast number of other sites for Google ranking.

Great Dane owners will find nothing to buy, and  your best customers will probably never find your site.

However, if you aim your site specifically toward wiener-dog owners, you’ll be more likely to get prominent Google ranking, even without any other special efforts.

But there's more to life than Google...

How much time do you want to spend with the wrong people? How about, precisely zero?

So in addition to what you say, make sure that you keep your best prospects in mind when you decide how you say it.

By way of example, since you are already here, look around our new website  (update long overdue, but you know about the shoemaker's children...)

Rather than design a garish, overblown site with fireworks and an organ grinder just to prove we can, we designed it as we would for any of our customers. We kept it simple, easy on the eyes, and informative.

Our decision to keep the tone light was based on our own personalities, plus our preference to work with people who think like we do. We want to inform, not preach. We’d rather joke than complain.

This is who we are, not who we want you to think we are.

We think a web site should be individual and personalized. It doesn’t have to scream to be heard.

Sometimes people listen more closely when you whisper.

Need help? That's what we are here for.

There was a time when filling your website’s pages with relevant keywords and incorporating a variety of search engine optimization (SEO) tricks would all but ensure you would rank high in search engine results. There were plenty of SEO tricks back then, and many proved to be highly effective. But, as they say, all good (or maybe not so good) things eventually come to an end.

Search engines make their money by selling ads, and need lots of users in order to sell those ads.  It is only natural, then, that search engines continuously improve the methods they use to deliver the best, most relevant search results possible. As it turns out, they are very good at it – and getting even better.

It is no secret that Google adjusts its search algorithms more often than most people take a shower. One of the primary purposes of these tweaks is to seek out and destroy the tactics being used to surreptitiously increase a site’s ranking in search engine results. Consequently, websites filled with pages populated with content created solely with search engines – rather than visitors – in mind are only going to continue their steady fall into oblivion.

This leads to the obvious question: What do we do now? Well, we do what we should have been doing all along. We fill our web pages with high quality content that is well-written, informative, and of interest to our target markets. Search engines will only continue to hone their ability to recognize high quality content, while putting the kibosh on SEO tricksters.

If you populate your website with informative, quality content, it will naturally include words and phrases that are relevant to your topic or to the searches your target audience will perform to find products or services like yours. As long as the site is built properly (see our posts on titles and headlines), this is what it takes to for search engines to prominently display your pages.

(Need help with your content? We offer a ghostwriting service for our clients. If you're not our client, see if your webmaster or marketing advisor can help.)

The days of keyword stuffing have passed, and poor quality content written just to appeal to the search engines will no longer be so easily forgiven. SEO strategies that worked wonders before will now do little to increase your ranking, and their effectiveness will continue to dwindle in the coming months and years.

Providing useful, high quality content that educates your visitors and holds their interest is your best option. Rather than fanatically calculating your keyword density and obsessing over whether “web site” or “website” has more local search juice, simply deliver good, useful content that meets the needs of your target market.