Top 3 Most Common Mistakes Users Make When Writing Web Content

Website content says a lot about a business. It’s often the first opportunity you have to make a connection with a visitor, so it’s essential that you make a good impression. The content you post on your website gives visitors valuable information about your business, your company ethos, and how professional you are. If you don’t put a lot of effort into creating the right content, you could lose a lot of potential customers. So what are the three most common mistakes to avoid.

1. Copying Existing Content

Sounds obvious, but it is amazing just how many businesses think it’s acceptable to cut and paste content from other websites. The trouble is, whilst copying existing web content is a quick and easy way to fill a website with text, it is extremely bad from an SEO perspective.

Google and other search engines penalise websites with duplicate content. The Panda update targeted duplicate content (amongst other things) and affected websites dropped down the search rankings. To avoid being penalised, make sure your website contains original content. Either write the content yourself, or pay someone else to produce original text. Either way, it is an investment worth making.

2. Using Self-Focused Text

Imagine having a conversation with someone who only wanted to talk about themselves. It would be very annoying, right? Well web content is no different. Visitors are turned off by websites with a high proportion of self-focused pronouns in the content. A good website is focused on the customer. This helps them to connect with you, which will increase your chances of achieving a sale at the end of the visit.

3. Missing Out Strong Titles and a Call to Action

A wall of text is seriously off-putting. It can be hard to read a lot of text on the screen, so you need to make it as easy as possible for your visitors to jump straight to the pertinent points on the page. If you don’t they might not immediately grasp the benefits you are offering. And if that happens, they could bounce over to your competitor’s website instead.

Strong titles and sub-titles help a user quickly digest a web page. Studies have shown that a well formatted web page with subheadings and bullet points outperforms the same content without formatting by 58%. Don’t forget however, that good web content also has to have a strong call to action that encourages a customer to buy the product or contact you for more information.

If poor website content is affecting your business, give the team a call today to find out how we can help.