9 Things That Separate Good Online Content Writing From Bad

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All the best SEO tools in the world won’t help you if your content is terrible. After all, once you get a visitor, you need to keep them for longer than a few seconds if you’re going to turn them into a lead.

Online content writing is an art form and involves a lot more than just slapping some words in a blog post. It’s a skill that can be learned and needs to be developed.

The best content draws readers in and makes them want more. It gains the trust of your audience and converts visitors into customers. Bad content, on the other hand, causes visitors to cringe and disappear.

In this post, you’ll find the 9 things that separate bad content from great content so you can start creating great articles for your potential customers.

1. Strong Title

The title will typically be the first thing a potential reader sees of your piece, so you need to make sure that it grabs the attention of your readers so they want to click to read the rest.

The most important thing you can do in your title is to make the content clear to potential readers. For example, “A Lesson Learned” doesn’t tell what the post is about, whereas “Content Marketing: A Lesson Learned.”

2. Proper Keyword Usage

A few years ago, the best way to rank in search engines was to include a certain keyword as many times as possible. Now, the algorithms that drive these programs have become more innovative.

You need to use a variety of keywords that will let search engines know exactly what your post is about. They should fit naturally into your content and you shouldn’t have to think too much about it when using them.

Although it’s important to include these keywords for search engines, the content needs to be written for humans. After all, it’s a human that will potentially find your content and then decide to interact with it.

3. Completely Original

There’s nothing wrong with getting inspiration from the web, especially to find out what your audience is looking for, but each piece of content you create needs to be completely original.

Copying and pasting anything from other websites directly is plagiary. Even if you’re not caught by the law, you will be caught by Google who will flag your site for duplicate content, ensuring you’ll never find yourself at the top of the search results.

Re-writing someone else’s content seems like another solution, but people recognize when you have nothing new to say and won’t stay for long. So, make sure that whatever you put out there, it’s all unique content that your readers have never heard before.

4. Addresses a Problem

Your audience has problems. For you, that’s a good thing, as long as you know what they are. When coming up with content creation ideas, you’ll want to list as many of your audience’s problems as possible.

Once you’ve identified some of the concerns your potential customers have, you can start addressing them.

A wedding dress business will have customers with very different problems than a fishing shop. As you can imagine, addressing specific problems will help you attract the right readers.

5. Provides a Solution

Don’t just talk about the problem that your reader is facing, because that doesn’t really help them. And, it won’t make them want to stick around your website for very long.

Once you’ve addressed the problem, it’s time to provide the solution to that problem. There are three basic ways that you can offer solutions to your potential customer’s problem:

  1. Teach them how to do something themselves
  2. Offer your services to do something for them
  3. Provide a product they can purchase to solve the problem

As you can imagine, you may include more than one of these options to ensure that your reader has a solution to the problem they’re facing.

6. Creates Value

If a post isn’t valuable in some way to your audience, then there’s no point in writing it. For the most part, if you follow the previous points of addressing and providing a solution to a problem, then you will have created value.

Before you even begin writing a piece of content and throughout the process, ask yourself what your readers will be getting out of it. How will their lives be enriched in some way because of your content?

7. Engages the Audience

One of your primary goals with content should be to connect with your audience. It’s through connecting with them on a personal level that you can begin to build trust which will help convert casual readers into paying customers.

Use words like “we” and “you” to let your audience know exactly who you’re writing for. They want to feel like you’re focusing on them and wanting to get to know them.

There are a number of ways to increase engagement with your audience, including the use of images in your post. People are drawn to the visual, and so having relevant photos can help your audience connect with you more in your post.

8. Flows Well

Bad content jumps all over the place and makes it difficult to follow. Good content is easy to read and your audience will easily be able to follow everything you’re saying to them.

To help your content flow well, have an outline before you start working, and stick with it. Then, as you’re writing and editing, be sure that you don’t jump from one subject to another without clear transitions or reasons for doing so.

Your audience should never have to wonder why you’re talking about something or wonder how you got from point A to point B.

9. Is Actionable

Whatever your specific business goals are, you want your readers to take some sort of action. It may be providing you with an email address to convert them into a lead or encouraging them to buy a product or service.

Provide clear calls to action (CTA’s) in your content so your reader knows exactly what you want them to do, and how to do it. If you’ve done your job in creating outstanding content, then your audience will be eager to take action to interact with you more.

Learn More About Online Content Writing

Now that you understand everything that goes into a good piece of content, you likely have one of two reactions: “I totally got this” or “I don’t have time to master this.”

If you’re in the second group, don’t worry. Under our SEO resources page, you can find more information about online content writing services that can help you achieve your dreams quickly and easily.