Words on your website: Let them come naturally

You can’t get away from it. If you want to have a website, you’ve got to have text for people to read there!

It’s said that many people fear public speaking more than death. Based on the “frozen in place” website clients I’ve comforted over the years, I’d say that writing comes in a close second in giving people the heebie jeebies.

If you can provide real value, who cares if you are not the most eloquent writer since Shakespeare? To become a “destination site” – to get traffic to your website and fans on your Facebook page – just be useful. Think of what you could say that could make a difference to the reader. What can they gain from visiting your site or social media page?

Examples of useful content run the gamut. A sidebar on how often to clean which areas of the home, brought to you by a house cleaning service. A paragraph on ways to prevent pilling on sweaters from a dry cleaner. A piece on primary versus secondary colors from an interior design firm. A short section on which toothpastes are best, in priority order, from a dentist.

See? Trademark rules for the entrepreneur are great fodder from a law firm that specializes in helping clients bring products to market. Think of your audience and its needs, and then meet them. Style, grammar and punctuation take a back seat to being useful and of great help.
Need a push to produce?

Here’s an incentive to write prolifically: Google loves copy. Text on the page. The more text on the page that’s relevant and unduplicated, the better. Their recent algorithm update called “Hummingbird” is all about words – and the more words, the more rankable a site will be. Google seeks to sort the sites that give the best answers to queries on their engine – and a lot of that has to do with how a website interests visitors.

Google values your site for its graphics, its easy and clear navigation, and its compelling copy. The over-arching question: Does your site keep people engaged?

It’s not easy to hold ‘em on your site! People make a decision to keep reading and exploring in your site in a mere 7 seconds. Yikes!

Here are some quick tips (See? I’m being useful!) on how to capture attention from web visitors. Make your site ‘sticky’ – a veritable Venus flytrap! Consider these ‘keep them on your site’ proven methods:

• Know why you are writing this page in the first place.
• Know your target audience. Consider their concerns, motivations, hopes and dreams. I keep a picture of a person just like my client’s target on my desk to inspire me (a soccer mom, for instance, when I’m selling detergent).
• Assume they won’t read word for word. Website readers typically scan, so use lots of headings and subheads.
• Keep the critical info at the start of the page.
• Use short sentences.
• Use short paragraphs.
• Consider bullet lists.
• Write subheads and bold or italicize them.
• Add in tables, charts, graphs, and prominent visuals and graphics.
• Silence the English teacher in your head. On the web, it’s OK to start a sentence with “and” or “but.”
• Adopt a casual, interactive tone.
• Approachable, relaxed, fresh.
• Verbs, not adjectives.
• Use the active voice.
• Don’t use jargon or force a joke into the copy. Sorry, it will fall flat without your “being there,”
If you write with the reader in mind, and think of ways to be truly useful to them, and write naturally and casually – as if you were talking to your prospect in person – you will be pleasing Google, captivating your readers, generating material for spinoff articles and multiple posts for social media – and beating your competition online in the process.
Not bad for an easy walk on the word-side!

Laurie Macomber, owner of Fort Collins-based Blue Skies Marketing, can be reached at 970-689-3000.

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