Content is not just ‘filler’ or words used to fill up the page to help balance out the photos and make things look good. Individuals who subscribe to that notion are severely missing out on the great benefits that properly written content has to offer. Content is an opportunity to provide the user with satisfaction, and gain from him confidence and support.
Due to the advent of search engines and websites many people have progressively lost sight of the actual purpose of content and instead have proceeded to relegate it to ‘text with keywords for search engines’.
Therefore if you find yourself simply putting content on a page to balance out the photos or to increase your keyword density for your SEO you have missed the boat on the actual purpose of content.
The purpose of content
Let’s realign ourselves with what the actual purpose of content is and what we are trying to achieve with it. It could be summed up as:
“Content is information, text or images that are of value to the user; data which helps him or fills some need; thereby building trust and interest in the provider/author, resulting in the user purchasing products/services.”
The end result of good content is most definitely a sale. Businesses are not charities therefore any time & effort spent in marketing/promotion/copy writing, must be towards the end product of making a sale (directly or indirectly).
If the purpose is making a sale then the content must be very well-written and valuable indeed! Therefore one must be alert to the right and wrong ways to write content and be willing to invest time in the creation of superior content.
How not to create content
In light of the above many have developed various means and ways of getting ‘easy content’ to slap on to their websites. Let’s look at some of these so we can establish what ways are wrong, so as not to make the same mistakes.
1) Taking random paragraphs from multiple websites and merging them together to create ‘new content’
2) Copying directly from Wikipedia and other websites
3) Using software to generate content automatically
4) Paraphrasing existing content from other sites
How do I write good content?
In next week’s article we will discuss the key points you need to know and use in creating good content.
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