In order to do well in search and on social media, your content must stand out above the rest. There are several different ways to capture the attention of readers: you can target a small niche where there isn’t much coverage, you can engage in controversial topics, or you can use emotion to draw your readers into the dialogue. Whatever the approach, there are always some constants in creating excellent website copy, and it’s important to know which ones provide benefit. Below, we will discuss three simple tips you can use in your day-to-day writing to boost the effectiveness of your website copy and please readers in the process.

Always Be Optimizing

There are many different ways that your content can find itself in front of a potential reader. For most, the biggest source of traffic will come through search engines. In order to be featured prominently in search, you must first produce content that search engines love. Optimization of content via SEO is a vital tool that will make or break your efforts. The best way to optimize your content in the current environment is to simply write content that people want to read. This involves using emotion, information and persuasiveness to get the job done. If you try to just write from the perspective of pinging for SEO – as opposed to pleasing readers – then search engines and searchers alike will scoff at your offerings. Write for audiences, and the majority of the difficult optimization work will be complete.

Provide Simplicity

Your content must be engaging and persuasive, but it also must be simple enough for readers to enjoy. While this might not apply in niche areas regarding technical writing,most website copy will need to be simple enough for people to digest quickly and in one sitting. There is a false equivalence in the business between quality content and massive verbiage; this is not the case. While your content should strive to be fairly detailed in terms of length (search engines no longer view 200 word entries as favorably as they once did), producing website copy that can be read without a thesaurus or dictionary is vital if you want to survive at the top of SERPs for any measurable amount of time. Many people have recommended that you use partial sentences and even break grammar rules, as a way to add a sense of informality and flow to your content’s style.

Use Subheadings

Last but not least, you’ll want to break up your website copy into smaller sections that allow people – if they so choose – to digest bits and pieces while multi-tasking. Subheadings are a great way to do this, and also allow you to organize content by topic for those pages that may cover multiple elements. In addition to this, subheadings provide additional cues to search engines in regards to what your content is about, which is great for those who are obsessed with pinging for SEO. In the end, subheadings are a godsend for those who need to write 1000 words or more, but who don’t want their content to seem overly complex or boring to those who might read it.