BUILD BRAND TRUST: Top 4 Principles to Writing Website Content that Search Engines Love!
Why Your Website Content Matters
Nowadays, video content dominates practically every online platform, so why should you care about written content? Does it even matter what gets written on your website? Are people even reading it? Yes and no.
The answer is that people DON'T read your website word for word, but they DO scan it. It's why how it's written and formatted is so essential.
But it's not only people scanning your website; it's search engines, too. When search engines scan and discover pages and links on your website, it’s called crawling, and the average crawl time can be anywhere from every three days to four weeks.
After crawling comes indexing—when search engines analyze, organize, store, and list your pages in the search engine results pages. When a user enters a search query, a search engine aims to show the most relevant, high-quality results (where your website pages could appear) in less than a second.
But wait, there's more!
Help people, assistive devices, and search engines out.
Another consideration is screen-readers, devices with text-to-speech technology used by millions of people with visual impairments and disabilities.
SEO best practices help your site become more accessible by helping screen readers comprehend your web content and page elements, consequently increasing the usability of your pages and providing a good user experience…all of these factors and signals help your website rank higher in search results (for relevant queries).
This is why on-page written website content is still the driver of comprehension, communication, accessibility, and SEO.
Since we're visual designers, admitting that written content is more critical than design feels like heresy. However, the truth is that descriptive, high-quality written content is still the most essential part of your website.
Written content informs the design. That’s why when potential clients contact us and want their business logo designed without any content or context, we advise them to focus on their messaging first.
Strategized written content that’s formatted correctly improves website health and site performance. It helps your audience discover and understand your content and increases your site's organic search presence in search engines. Well-thought-out page copy, titles and descriptions match websites to what users seek and add value to the search engine.
Keep reading to learn our top 4 principles for website content writing and how to structure, write, and improve your website so search engines and people will love you! (okay, no guarantees).
Plus, actionable accessibility and SEO tips. Bonus: Download our FREE Visual Sitemap (interactive PDF) and Website Content Writing template (Google Doc).
“Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different. The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”
1. Strategize Your Brand Messaging
Your brand is your foundation and the identity of your business. Before you write any content for your website, start with strategizing your intent, ideal client and goals.
Who are you, and what do you represent?
Answer these questions about your business:
What is your brand, company or organization?
When was it founded?
Is there a backstory behind your brand?
What is your brand’s core purpose and values?
Describe your brand in five words, then three words, then one.
Clarify what you provide:
What are your core services?
If a young child asked you what you do, how would you explain it?
How do your services impact your clients?
What one question do you get asked over and over again?
What makes your business stand out from other similar companies?
People must know they can trust you will do what you say before doing business with you. Google also evaluates your website based on its credibility with its E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) quality guidelines.
Earn people’s trust by providing them with validated business information. Ensure all your contact info and basic brand messaging are truthful and consistent across the web and social networks.
Know Your Ideal Client
Successful brands are the ones who know who they’re talking to, and defining who that is is essential.
Define and understand your ideal clients and their problems:
Describe your past and current clients and be as descriptive as possible.
Brand perception exists in your clients’ minds; in this case, their reality is the only one that matters. How do your current clients perceive your brand? Get recent client feedback or evaluate your reviews.
What is your client's problem (pain points), and how do you solve it?
If you don’t understand your client’s issues and problems, you won’t be able to write relatable content expressing how and why you’re the perfect business to solve those problems. Your content must FEEL and understand their frustrations and motivations, or that potential client will click away and look elsewhere.
User Personas
A user persona is a list of characteristics of your ideal client. You can use an actual client as a stand-in or a fictional representation to personalize and humanize your ideal client.
Developing user personas helps create written content and design decisions by taking users’ pain points and bringing them to the forefront. Knowing your audience's likes and dislikes will help you tailor your written content to their needs and wants.
Use these questions to create a user persona:
Where do they work?
What type of education do they have?
What challenges do they face?
What keeps them up at night?
What do they do in their spare time?
Are they married?
Do they have children?
Do they own or rent their home?
What are their job titles?
Which industries do they work in?
Where do they live?
How old are they?
Where do they spend their time online?
When would they use your service?
A user persona we created for AFCO Aviation Facilities to help us write website content for their ideal clients.
Here are some of the other benefits of using user personas:
Your team members better understand your clients' identities and what they seek.
Your content will be client-focused, not you-focused.
Increased empathy with your target market.
When it comes to written content, always put your audience first. People want to read information that gives them something they can learn from. Figure out who your audience is so you can create relevant and valuable written content.
Where Are You Going?
Clear goals and objectives help steer your brand and website in the right direction. What do you want to achieve, and how do you plan to do it? Knowing where you want to go will elevate your brand message and instill consumer confidence.
Think of it as the “Who You Are” and “Why You're Here,” merging with “What Do You Want to Accomplish?” and “How Do We Get It Done?” to figure out where you’re going and how to build your business and digital marketing plans. Once you’ve figured it out, communicate this with branded written content on your website (easier said than done).
Need help strategizing your brand and applying it to your website? We offer the Power Plan: A 90-minute deep-dive interview into your business where we discuss everything (concerning your business, that is) — where you’ve been, where you are, and where you want to go and why.
Afterward, you’ll receive a robust written plan with actionable items to establish your brand and website to propel your business forward. It also includes a homepage outline and wireframe, research into industry keywords and competitors, our process, schedule, an accurate website quote, and a contract. All of our website design clients start here.
Once you have a solid strategized brand message jotted down on paper or typed up in a doc, including who you are, what you offer, who your ideal client is (user persona), and your business goals, you’ll be ready to start structuring your writing into pages.
“Don’t think like a fisherman. Think like a fish.”
2. Structure Your Writing (Information Architecture)
With written content, structure pertains to how you organize the information. Gather all the written copy you have so far to classify the content into a hierarchy of pages. Your content needs to be logical so people can quickly navigate, read, understand and take action!
Page hierarchy and navigation are vital to get right because it's unusable if people can’t comprehend your content. It creates barriers for people with disabilities and makes it hard for everyone to interact with your website.
Create a Page List and Visual Sitemap
A page list visualized into a simple sitemap delineates what pages you plan to create on your website, how you’ll organize them, and the pages you plan to write more content for.
List your main pages (primary navigation), sub-pages, and additional pages not in the primary navigation.
Keep in mind that the lower amount of pages in your primary navigation will reduce decision fatigue. We recommend four to five items in the primary menu. However, some exceptions exist, such as mega menus for e-commerce sites with many products. For most service brochure-type websites, the footer (section at the bottom of every page) menu will list as many additional navigation links as needed.
What pages does your website need?
The answer depends on the type of site. What’s your website’s purpose? What are your business goals? What additional functionality and features do you need?
Here is a list of standard website and collection page types:
Home page
About, team, and bio pages
Services and sales landing pages
Contact and scheduling pages
FAQs
Portfolio and project pages
Blog and blog post pages
Store and product pages
Checkout page
Events calendar and events pages
Video library pages
Course and lesson pages
Member private paywalled pages
Write a page list outlining your specific site needs. In addition to the general page name, “services,” write a descriptive page title to inform the reader and Google what the page is about. Limit your page titles to 30–60 characters.
For example, our website has three primary service pages, each with a descriptive page title:
Website Design and Development Services
Brand Identity and Logo Design Services, and
Graphic Design and Marketing Materials
It’s clear what the pages are about based on the page title alone. They don’t just say “services”. Descriptive page titles that identify page content are helpful for SEO. Each page should have its unique title. Do not use duplicates. And don’t leave page titles blank.
Website Visual Sitemap Example
You can leave your page list in a list format or take it one step further and create a visual sitemap to help you see the structure (information architect) of how you will organize those pages. Content structure should be grouped in a meaningful way.
At this planning stage, you make decisions about pages that define how users navigate your site. The more you plan page structure logistics now, the easier it will be to write, format and insert text content later.
Define your information architecture:
Create a page list based on your site needs (content and functionality).
Structure and organize your page list in a visual sitemap (navigation).
Download our FREE visual sitemap (interactive PDF) and website content writing template (Google Doc). This will assist you in the next step: breaking down the pages into sections.
Is Your Website Content Writing
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The 2nd Guide in Our Busted To Trusted Series…Get a FREE visual sitemap (interactive PDF) and website content writing template (Google Doc)!
Break Down Pages Into Sections
Now that you have your page list and visual sitemap, you can break down your pages into small sections. This section-by-section method has proven effective in writing and laying out written content.
Let’s analyze a basic brochure-type website home page; what sections are there?
We use the Storybrand formula loosely, and remember you can “season to taste” afterward. Download our free Home Page Template for a visual guide.
Starting top to bottom:
Website header (business logo and main navigation links)
Intro section (above the fold—visible without scrolling down the page)
Value stack section
Problem statement section
Offer/Differentiator section
Authority/Guide statement section
Accreditation/Education section
Reviews/Testimonial section
Plan/CTA (call-to-action) section
Blog post content section
Freebie/Newsletter signup section
Footer (business logo and additional navigation links)
Break down every page into chunked sections like this. Reorder, add and delete sections later if needed. Sections help you lay out content in pieces so users with short attention spans can scan text, read, and retain more information.
You’ll determine what sections you need per page depending on page type and intent. Not all pages have the same formula or are this long, but all pages should have a content hierarchy and a flow to keep people on your page consuming helpful info and reaching your website goals.
If you skip the sectioning step, the next part will be ten times more challenging…prep work (steps 1 and 2) is the difference between staring at a blank page or starting with a thought-out outline to build on.
Now that your pages are divided into sections, it’s time to write them!
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
3. Best Practices for Writing SEO and Accessibility Website Content
Learn these essential best practice rules to follow when writing content for web pages.
Page Settings
We’ve already covered that every page needs a descriptive title (30–60 characters).
You also want to write unique meta tag descriptions for the pages that really matter (120–160 characters). Google will use your meta descriptions when there is not much content on the page itself or when the meta description is more relevant to a user’s query than the page's actual content.
Even though meta descriptions are not ranking signals because Google does not consider them, they still help with SEO because they’re used to generate content snippets, and keywords can appear bolded in search results descriptions.
SEO Page Title and Meta Tag Description Example
Content Duplication
Do not duplicate page titles and meta descriptions. If you are writing these, they should be different on every page.
At a minimum, every page will have your header and footer menus, which will be repeated on every page. You don’t need to worry about content duplication for common page content like headers, menus, sidebars, and footers; blocking them from indexing is unnecessary.
However, you do NOT want multiple pages with similar content topics. Google has similarity metrics to determine duplicate content and might only index one of the pages if most of the content is identical enough…
Think location-type pages with only a few words or phrases that are different, similar product pages but just the pricing is different, or a blog post you recreate every year with practically the exact same written content (don’t do this!)…Instead of creating a new page with similar content, it’s better to update old content, merge it into one powerful page and create redirects for old deleted pages (so you don’t get broken links and people don’t get forwarded to 404 pages).
Bundling information builds more relevancy in one place. Group and consolidate your content to improve the page performance.
Translated content, such as multilingual websites, will not cause duplicate content penalties if the content has been reviewed, hand-vetted and polished by a human. Translate tools, like Google Translate, that auto-generate content is impressive but not at the same level of quality that a skilled native speaker would produce.
Quality On-Page Content
The content's importance in the page's body surprisingly gets overlooked. Page content quality is considered a ranking factor.
The more text content you have on a page, the more text the Googlebot can find, but this does not mean that more words are better (more on this below!). Written content still needs to be of value.
Textual information can go a long way…
If you have an image-heavy website, for example, a project portfolio, you still need to generate high-quality written content. Why? In image searches, Google uses page content to generate text snippets for the image. They also consider page content quality when ranking images.
At a minimum, each page should have three sections:
Intro
Main points with original content
Call to action
Usually, there are many more sections on a page, but it depends on the page type and how much helpful content your audience needs to understand your message. And, of course, how much content you need to convince them to take action. Sales pages, for example, will likely need much more information than a contact page.
As a rule, each section needs the basics:
Heading text
Body text
Call to action text (button or link)
Image content (with alt text descriptions)
Website Homepage Intro Section Example
All text content should be descriptive, high-quality, helpful, and relevant. This is because Google's algorithm is based on “helpful content systems,” they aim to match and serve users with content to solve their exact problems instantly.
More content is only sometimes better! Google says word count is not a ranking factor. Follow the rule of quality over quantity. That’s not to say lots of content is terrible…if it’s specific and provides good info to your users, it can be helpful.
Don’t write:
Light or thin fluff filler content
Spammy content, or
Content just for the sake of creating more content
It won’t help your site's overall performance in organic search.
Provide Accurate and Descriptive HTML Headings
Without headings, people need to work to read through ALL the content to find out what it’s about. If you aren’t formatting your text with headings, it’s time to start. Headings let the user quickly identify content on the page.
HTML headings (H1, H2, H3, H4) are title tags and provide semantic structure (helpful for screen readers and SEO). Accurate and descriptive headings allow search engines, assistive technologies, and users to understand the page content.
Think about the purpose of the content, organize it and provide a hierarchy of textual elements with headings.
Only use one H1 per webpage (the main point with primary keywords)
ONE H1 PER PAGE! (Yes, it’s worth repeating because we’ve scanned hundreds of websites (even SEO agencies) with four or more H1’s!)
Use multiple subheadings in order (H2–4)
Write short, simple, descriptive headings
Don’t use vague headings
Don’t use visual-only headings, such as images with text. You need the HTML semantic tags for text for formatting and conveying the function of the text they contain
PROTIP: If you use Chrome, add the SEO-Meta in 1 CLICK extension to your browser. It lets you check meta-data and headings tags.
Guidelines for Body Text
Do not copy and paste other people’s content. It’s plagiarism, does not add value, and Google (and site owners) can tell you’ve used someone else’s content and penalize you.
AI-generated content is okay as a starting point, but everyone has access to those tools and is churning out the same types of content. Human-generated content is still the most valuable form of creation.
Write in substantial chunks. Most people skim content. Unless someone is serious about buying from you, they’re not reading word-for-word, so keep users engaged by writing short sentences in blocks.
Use formatting to make content scannable: bolding, all caps, lists, and white space.
Your writing must be easy to read to keep your audience's attention. 1–3 sentences per paragraph is a good rule of thumb. Writing for the web is conversational; It’s different than academic writing.
Avoid jargon and use known terminology. Your information must be clear, even for someone not specialized in your niche. Explain complex or hyper-scientific terms for clarity.
If you work in a technical industry, you must simplify your language. Your website is not an academic white paper. You want to attract more people to your website; if they aren’t industry experts, they won’t know your industry jargon.
Using language that is accessible to everyone will help you come across as a friendly and trustworthy brand. Always err on the side of clarity.
Use an active tone of voice. When you use the active voice in your content instead of the passive voice, you create a reader-friendly, authoritative piece of content that persuades your reader to act.
Write relevant content only. There’s no point in writing content for your website unless it’s pertinent to your audience. Address their needs. Topicality will give your website more authority over time.
Research your topic and keywords. Keywords are terms and phrases that potential users are typing into search engines. Writing content with keywords will help your web page rank higher for those terms.
The best research method is using a keyword tool to identify primary and secondary keywords related to your main topic. You could also look at competitor websites to see what they’re using. Or analyze your site’s data and look at search terms being entered and used to find your current content.
Write Descriptive Link Text for Context
Links take users from one page to another. Either within the same site (internal link) or another site (external link).
Besides letting users navigate between content, they serve an essential purpose for Googlebot. They allow crawlers to find other pages of your website by locating links on the page and following them.
Google’s PageRank algorithm measures a webpage's importance based on the (number and quality) links. Backlinks, inbound, or incoming links from authoritative websites are significant for SEO because they can help increase your site rank in SERPS (search engine results pages).
If people are linking to your website, it’s likely because you have helpful content. Remember that editorial links can be treated differently (given more weight) than footer links regarding how Google considers them for relevance, reputation and trustworthiness.
Your text, button and image links should provide context. Each link has a clear purpose. Users should be able to determine the link's destination before clicking it. How? With descriptive link text.
Follow these SEO and accessibility link best practices:
Write the link purpose and where the link will take a user
Link 1–3 descriptive words of contextual text
Don’t use the full URL for link text; highlight a phrase to hyperlink
Don’t link the entire paragraph or sentence
Provide hyperlinks to trusted websites with related topics for additional info
For affiliate links, add a nofollow attribute (rel=“nofollow”) to tell search engines to ignore that link and not pass signals or PageRank across those links
Don’t use nofollow on internal links
Add corresponding link text describing the link's purpose for clickable images
Don’t link different URLs using the exact words on the same page and vice versa—don’t link duplicate URLs using different words on the same page
Don’t link the words “click here” or add “link,” it’s vague and meaningless (especially to screen-readers)
Don’t use “read more” as a link unless the context is evident by surrounding text to support it
Don’t use so many links that it looks and feels spammy
Don’t link from suspicious websites (for example, websites without SSL certificates)
Text for Image Content
Images need text alternatives that describe the information represented by them. This is for accessibility and SEO. Text alternatives are short descriptions conveying the information in the image.
The image type (informative, decorative, functional), usage, context, and content of the image will determine the alt text. Accessible images make it easier for people to understand the content, and they’re more likely to be indexed by search engines in image search.
For a grouping of images in one image (like a collage), the alt text should explain the information of the entire group. If the image is complex, such as a graph or diagram, you can provide a text equivalent of the data in the image.
If you use text as an image, the alt should contain the exact text as the image. However, we recommend avoiding images of text…even though, nowadays, OCR (optical character recognition), in tandem with AI and machine learning (also known as “live text”), can read and recognize text within a digital image and copy, paste, and translate text from photos to make that information useful.
Follow these SEO and accessibility image best practices:
Use descriptive file names for the images. What words or phrases would your audience use to search for your content visually?
Use high-quality images and optimize image file size to load fast for users
Write appropriate alt text attributes depending on the image type
Make sure the visual content is relevant to the topic of the page. Are you using your images on the right pages?
Optimize image placement—place your images near relevant text and the most important image near the top of the page
Add a caption under or near the image
Keep your text on the page and not embedded into the image. Not all users and search engines can access text in images.
Images help users visually find web pages for a wide range of tasks in search. Follow these tips so people and search engines better understand your images.
“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; you just need to share your unique perspective on why the wheel is important.”
4. Website Content Writing Template (Home Page and Sections)
Now you know all the basic best text practices for headings, subheadings, paragraphs, links, and images. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you produce effective webpage written content that drives engagement and action.
If you follow this framework, you’ll generate high-value content for your website:
PREP PHASE
Write a page list
Create a visual sitemap
Define the purpose/goal of your page
Brainstorm keywords and phrases users might search to find your page
WRITING PHASE
Write a unique page title and meta description for each page
Write a 5–7 word headline (H1) using your main keyword, and position it at the top of the page
Write supporting body text under your main headline
Write subheadings (H2–4) for each section
Draft 1–3 paragraphs of body content under the relevant headlines in each section
Draft your call to action descriptive link text for each section
REVIEW AND APPROVE PHASE
Review: Share the content and collaborate with your team
Gather feedback, revise and finalize content
PRE-DESIGN PHASE
Sketch a rough layout of how the page will be visually structured (based on the written content)
Add relevant images, videos, and written alt-text
Review to make sure your links work, and your content is error-free, and make final edits
Now that you’ve got your content written, it’s time to hand it off to a professional designer so they can build it on a live web page!
If you need help strategizing your brand messaging, structuring your writing, writing with best practices for SEO and accessibility, and writing your website page content, we can help!
Schedule a call to see if we’re the right fit for your business.
FAQS
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Website content matters because even though people may not read it word for word, they do scan it. How it's written and formatted is crucial for conveying information effectively to users. Additionally, search engines also scan website content to understand its relevance and quality, which affects its ranking in search results.
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Written website content impacts SEO and accessibility in several ways. SEO best practices, such as using relevant keywords, descriptive headings, and quality content, help search engines understand the content and rank it higher in search results. Accessibility is improved when written content is clear and well-structured, making it easier for users, including those with disabilities, to access and understand the information.
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Some best practices for writing website content include:
Using descriptive headings and subheadings to organize the content.
Writing clear and concise paragraphs with relevant information.
Incorporating keywords naturally into the content to improve SEO.
Providing accurate and descriptive link text for context.
Using alt text for images to improve accessibility and SEO.
Ensuring that the content is relevant, valuable, and user-focused.
Avoiding duplicate content and using high-quality, original content.
Following guidelines for formatting, including using HTML headings appropriately.
Providing clear calls to action to guide users on the next steps.
