Quality content is the backbone of any successful website. Your website content needs to draw readers in, keep them engaged, and invoke their emotions. You need to provide relevant information and convert them into customers when necessary.
Well written content helps your website rank on Google and grows organic traffic. It gives your brand a unique voice, readers resonate with you while getting information they need, this increases brand awareness and customer loyalty. If you succeed in writing content for a website, you will start to build an online income in no time.
How to Write Content For a Website
Online businesses do not succeed without content. You can’t just launch a website then sit back, expecting to grow an audience, and make a profit. You need content on your website to get traffic and build any sort of following.
You need to know how to come up with writing topics, how to structure your content, and what content to write. In this post we cover:
How to Come up With Ideas
How to Structure Your Content
Why You Need Website Content
How to Come Up With Content Ideas
Start by providing your readers with content that is totally unique to you. The best content for a website is the things you truly know and care about. No one has ever heard your message or had your combination of knowledge and experience before. Use your writing voice to separate you from the competition, growing your online brand and traffic.
There’s plenty of ways to come up with content ideas for your niche. A couple of simple strategies to come up with great ideas are:
Mindmapping/Brainstorming
Keyword + Competitor Research
1. Mindmapping/Brainstorming
When you enter a new niche and write content for a website, doing a simple mind map is a powerful tool. It gets the creative juices flowing and provides some clarity around where your website is headed. This is also a good time to jot down some goals on what you want your website to achieve in the future.
A mind mapping tool for generating unique content ideas is the 5 W’s and 1 H. As in Who, What, Where, When, Why, How.
In the middle of your page write your niche, then draw five arrows and think of a relevant article heading related to the 5 W’s and 1 H. You can do this exercise in under 2 minutes, its the perfect way to quickly come up with 6 unique content ideas.
2. Keyword + Competitor Research
Once you know what niche you want to target with content, you need to do some keyword research. This will help you understand what your target market is interested in and wants to know.
Use tools like SEMRush, Ubersuggest, and Keyword Revealer to find relevant keywords, all of these websites have free trials.
Find searched terms and questions in your niche and start writing content for your website based on those words. This is where you will have the most success in driving organic traffic and climbing up the google rankings. You want to look for keywords in your niche that have a high amount of searches per month. Look for 100+. Then look for keywords with low SEO difficulty. Low difficulty Keywords have weaker competition, making it easier for you to rank when you write content for a website.
Look at the first page on Google for each keyword you want to rank for. Open each of the websites on the page and see if you are able to provide more relevant and valuable information to the reader than your competition has. By finding keywords with low competition from other sites, you will rank much faster on Google.
How to Structure Your Website Content
When you create a website, its crucial you upload content to it. The magic number for gaining authority on Google and driving organic traffic is 30 posts. Obviously the more posts the better, but if you can get your website to 30 posts you will be starting to build a following.
This doesn’t mean just posting something for the sake of getting to 30 pieces of content, your readers want Quality content over Quantity. By writing 30 pieces of content and regularly updating content on your website, you will improve your ranking on Google, drive traffic, and start making money.
Once you know the topic to write about, choose the style you want your content to be. Three types of website content that serve as a great foundation for your site are:
Pillar Posts
Staple Posts
Response Posts
1. Pillar Post
3000-3500 words. Very informative post with lots of relevant quality information. These posts are literally the pillars of your site, use them to build the foundation of the site.
Pillar Posts target some of the more competitive keywords in your niche. Find a competitive keyword, then look at the competitors ranking on the first page of Google for this keyword. All you have to do is provide better content than these websites and patiently wait for it to climb the rankings.
A Pillar post helps to build trust with readers and gain authority in your niche. When writing your pillar post, link to your staple and response posts where possible. This keeps readers engaged on your site, lowering the bounce rate, which is important for your Google Ranking.
2. Response Post
1000-1500 words. Responds to a direct question in your niche. Use SEMrush, Ubersuggest, or any keyword tracking tool to find relevant questions in your niche. Create a piece of content for your website directly answering that question.
For Example, if your niche was New Zealand Travel. A popular question in that niche is “Do I need a visa to travel to New Zealand?” Readers in this niche want information about this, so write a piece of content that clearly answers that question.
If written correctly, these articles rank the fastest on Google, so it’s a great way to get some early traffic when building a site.
3. Staple Post
2000-2200 words. These are list type articles, perfect for giving readers tips or step by step processes. These posts do really well online as they are quick and easy to read and readers can skim until they find the information they are after. An example of a Staple post could be a list of top books in your niche, or you could recommend the best 10 products you use.
The ideal way to start structuring the content of your website is with 33 posts. We recommend 3 Pillar posts, each with 5 response posts and 5 staple posts interlinking to it. This is our key to ranking on google as fast as possible. We have displayed the content map below:
Why You Need Website Content
A website without content will never be able to drive organic traffic from Google, meaning your website will never generate a passive income. But, Google is not the only reason for writing content on your website, without content your customers will not understand what product, service, or information you are trying to provide.
Your content needs to offer information about your business, products, and services. If done well you will build trust with a loyal group of readers and customers. You will build awareness around your brand, beat your competition to gain market share, and take your slice of online income.
If you want to learn how to set up a new website, check out our step by step guide.
To learn more about making money online as a freelancer, give this article a read.
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