Think of a few sites that you like to visit again and again. What makes you keep coming back? Most likely, it’s compelling, relevant, and timely content. Quality articles, tutorials, tips, etc. compel the reader to come back again, and again, and maybe even email some of their friends to come too.

List after list have been compiled by bloggers on the things that make blogs successful - but on every one that I’ve ever seen has been a statement about content being the ultimate key. ‘Content is King’ is a catch cry that has echoed through the blogosphere for years and while at times I think it’s been used to the point of ignoring other aspects of what makes a successful blog - it really is what a good blog boils down to.

The sites that are consistently top ranked in the search engine results have these things in common when it comes to content:

• Interesting,unique content that is well-written.
• Links that point the searcher to other parts of the site (and more well-written content).
• Links feed the spiders and compel better search results accordingly.
• Evergreen as well as updated content. “Evergreen” means that the information will not be outdated a month from now.

In addition, if searchers can find what they’re looking for on your site with a minimum of clicks, then you’ve got a very good chance of making them a return visitor. For instance, if your site is all about chickens, but you choose not to have the word chicken anywhere in your site content, then you are doing a disservice to your readers who are looking for chicken information. This is an extreme example but makes my point: quality Web content must be easy to find, and it must be relevant to what the searcher is looking for.

Scannable Titles and Text in Bold are Vital

It’s important to keep in mind that Web surfers don’t necessarily always “read” your content. Instead, they scan the page, looking for stand-out words and sentences. This means that in order to attract searchers, you must not only write compelling content, but make it scannable. For instance, see these headlines I’ve got breaking up the article? That’s an example of writing scannable text - if you don’t want to read this entire article (and of course I hope you will, but this is an example), you can save some time by just scanning the page. Long, unbroken blocks of text tend to turn away visitors, for the very simple fact that they are difficult to read on a computer screen. So, in summary:

How To Write Good Web Content

Usefulness and Uniqueness - As this post is a part of a series of posts that get back to the basics of blogging and so I will start unpacking the topic of ‘writing good content’ with perhaps the most basic and obvious point of all:

‘for a blog to be successful your content needs to be useful and unique to your readers’

Think Keywords You’ve worked hard on these keywords; make them stand out (bold, different font,headlines, etc.) There are these things called search engines and people use them quite a lot to find stuff. If you write articles with a few keywords in the back of your head your content will be picked up by these search engines and people will eventually come to your blog through these keywords you thought of. You can insert keywords into your content and bold them like this , how to write good content.

Clear titles. Make it painfully clear what you are going to talk about. It’s fun to be clever and cute, but it can backfire on you. Search engine spiders just aren’t attuned to puns, cliches, or out of the ordinary slang terms.

Be short and sweet.This is highschool English. Don’t cram as many ideas as possible into one paragraph; rather, use that paragraph to focus on only one idea.

Sales language. Do you enjoy wading through a bunch of sales language to get to the meat of a story? Well, neither will your readers. Don’t inflate your writing with a lot of hot air; keep it down to earth.

Research your Readership

Perhaps the best advice that I could give on developing useful content is to research your readership (or potential readership). If you already have a blog do this by surveying your readers (either formally or informally) or by asking for feedback. I regularly seek out the opinion of my blog readers to find out what their needs and desires are in the topic I’m talking about. If you don’t have a blog already then you’ll need to work a little harder to research your potential readers. I tend to survey friends, look a lot at other people’s blogs on a topic (especially their comments section to see what types of questions people are asking) and particularly look hard in forums and discussion groups on topics where there is usually a lot of question asking going on. As you do this you’ll begin to put your finger on what people are wanting and what you might be able to provide to meet these needs.

Unique Content

Another factor to consider when thinking about ‘good content’ is whether it is ‘unique’.

With a blog being created every second and with blogs on virtually every topic you can think of, the challenge for bloggers is to build a blog that stands out from the crowd. I see blogs every day that provide ‘useful’ content that have no readers simply because people are finding that information in other places.

Don’t just throw up a post. Go further in your blogging. Find the conversations that are out there in the area you are interested in. Listen to the conversations. Engage in those conversations by commenting, leaving trackbacks, linking to and thanking those that comment on your blog. And empower your readers to do the same. Allow both comments and trackbacks on your blog. Use your blog as a communication tool that gets you involved in the conversation and gets you noticed.

These are just general guidelines for writing quality Web content. It’s not something that most people can master overnight, so give yourself some time, practice a lot, read a LOT, and always put yourself in your Web site visitor’s place to make your site as user-friendly as possible.

Resources:

http://websearch.about.com/od/keywordsandphrases/a/goodcontent.htm

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/02/18/writing-good-content/

http://www.blawgforprofit.com/blogging/good-content-and-get-people-to-talk-about-you/

http://www.everybodygoto.com/2007/02/09/5-ways-to-write-good-content/

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