So you would like a website that shows off your business beautifully, but how to ensure that your customers can find it and stick around once they do? The key to this conundrum is content, the text, animation, images, sound and video that you use on your website. These days, is it not enough to just have a beautifully designed website, it needs to be optimised for both search engines and your readers. So how do we go about the seemingly impossible task of pleasing both the search engine analytics and human beings? Surely what pleases one will not please the other? This is where choosing an excellent content writer is paramount to the success of your website.

Finding the Balance

If you use content with too much emphasis on keywords to try and please the search engines, you will end up with content that your clients will find non-engaging at best and possibly unreadable. On the other hand, without the relevant keywords interjected into your engaging content, you may not rank highly in search engine results, therefore not attracting clients to your site in the first place. The Last Hurdle’s skilled content writers will ensure that not only is your content optimised for the search engines, your users will remain interested once they have found you.

Content Writing

In order to produce great content, there are a few things we take into consideration:

Headings and Titles

According to surveys, 5 times more people will read the heading than will read the article itself. If your content is amazing, but the headline not interesting enough, the chances are your article will not even be read. The tricky part here is having an engaging headline that is also optimised for SEO.

Original Content

Original, custom content is absolutely essential. Originality is important as search engines recognise duplicate content and your site will take a hit in rankings if you’re simply taking content from elsewhere. Custom content is about engaging with your users by knowing your target market, knowing their concerns and issues, knowing what kind of language they use and using all of that to create content that will endorse your credentials as experts in your field. By analysing your reader’s behaviours, you can make sure the content you are producing is going to be of interest to gain these valuable website visitors.

“Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single most important thing to do. If your pages contain useful information, their content will attract many visitors and entice webmasters to link to your site. In creating a helpful, information-rich site, write pages that clearly and accurately describe your topic. Think about the words users would type to find your pages and include those words on your site.”  Google Webmaster

Eye Catching Visuals

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and it’s especially true when it comes to website content. With the ever increasing pace of our lives, content needs to grab our attention quickly or we’ve already moved on. As human beings, we process visual imagery much faster than text, so great photos, infographics and even videos are always going to catch our attention. With the myriad of visual content available to choose from, The Last Hurdle will always be able to provide interesting and engaging visuals specifically targeted towards your clients interests.

Research

A content producer must be a tenacious researcher. With the vast and varied array of topics that a content writer will be asked to write about, they must know how and where to find the information they need. Nobody expects a writer to know everything about everything, but with excellent research skills, they can make it seem like they do! Accuracy of information really is of paramount importance, whether it’s quoting informational sources or gathering facts and figures, it has to be correct. So no matter if it’s about hair extensions, virtual reality software, cleaning services or the latest government legislation, The Last Hurdle can produce top quality content, and that starts with top quality research.

Content Writing, No Shortcuts

More and more companies are promising that they can supply you with cheap, quality content for your website, and while this may seem a quick and appealing option, it can actually be counter-productive. Your content should be telling your users what they want to hear and the most effective way to do this is to write it specifically for them. A good marketing company will get to know about your company in its entirety, and ensure all your content is properly targeted, relevant to you and your business and engaging.

Content Writer Attributes

Content writers require a varied skill set. Unlike conventional writers that will find their niche and reside there quite comfortably, content writers must be able to transition from writing web page content to blog posts to factual articles and back with ease. They must also have SEO (search engine optimisation), marketing, research, proofreading and presentation skills alongside their language skills, in order to give the client the most suitable content for the project at hand.

Here at The Last Hurdle, we don’t underestimate the importance of high quality, customised, properly targeted, engaging and well written content specifically composed for your business, after all, first impressions can only be made once, even digital ones!