How to Create Perfect Content for Your Website

Creating high-quality content is an overarching aim of every website, since it's the main way to solve users’ problems and build a loyal audience. Perfect content should not only be properly written and useful for the reader, it should also be unique and properly optimized for search engines. Travelpayouts has prepared the following guide on how to create “perfect content” for your website in the eyes of readers and search engines.

What quality content means today

Creating website content is a lot like creating content for email marketing. The text should be useful to your readers, but search engines must also be considered. Your articles should catch the attention of Google as well, so that your website will achieve a high position in the SERP. If you can fit your ideas into short bursts of text, your content should appeal to both readers and search engines.

The following two main factors are important to readers:

• Useful – content should be useful and answer the reader’s question;
• Ease of perception – the content should be essentially and correctly designed for easy perception.

There are others, like the novelty of information, but the first two factors cover the basic needs of readers.

If you focus on organic traffic from search engines, your article must be better, or at least no worse, than articles on 1-3 sites on the search engine results page for the search query for which you want to gain traffic.

For example, if you want to prepare an article about the sights of Paris, then even if you know this city very well and are sure that your article will be the best one, you will want to study the articles in the SERP to understand the level of your competitors.

Filling the website with content is an extremely important part of website development. However, website content is not only text but also illustrations, video, and audio, as well as other information. Below, we deal only with text and provide practical recommendations on how to prepare quality articles.

How to write good articles for website

With step-by-step instructions on how to prepare quality content, anyone can write a good article even without previous experience. The comprehensive free guide “How to create perfect content” will teach you more about content creation and show you how to effectively monetize website content.

Content types

There are 4 main types of articles. Before you create content, it’s important to decide which one is suitable for your website:

• Copywritten – Text created by a professional journalist or copywriter from scratch. This is unique content. It is the most preferred by search engines and, of course, users.
• Rewritten – This is a revised version of the already-ready articles (not always, but often the content of other sites is used for this). Most often, rewriting consists of replacing words in the original article with synonyms, which does not benefit either the style, perception, or placement of the site in the search results. However, high-quality rewriting compiling several sources may come close to copywritten in quality.
• Translation of the original text of an article – search engines regard this as unique content. In the hands of a skilled translator, this type of content can be high-quality and useful for readers.
• Copy-paste – Direct copying of articles from other sources without making any changes to the text is the easiest—and worst—way to fill your site with content. Firstly, your site runs the risk of being sanctioned by search engines. Secondly, this is contrary to copyright law. Thirdly, such content doesn’t bring anything new to the reader.

Each type of content has its own purpose, and even copy-paste is appropriate in some cases. The same “lorem ipsum” text is perfectly used on hundreds of sites as stub text. However, if you focus on a regular audience and want to get organic traffic from search engines, then you should focus mainly on unique content: copywriting, high-quality re-writing, or translations.

6 simple steps to create perfect content

Only 6 simple steps separate you from writing a high quality article.

1. Topic

If you are considering covering several topics in a single article, forget about it. You cannot effectively explore more than one topic in a single article.

There are several strategies for choosing an article topic:

• Write about what you know and what you like. This approach is ideal for beginners.
• Choose topics that your audience is interested in, which is strategically the better option. You can find these topics by using special free tools, such as Google Ads Keywords Planner and its alternatives.

By choosing topics according to the audience, you are preparing an excellent foundation for organic traffic.

2. Article format

The choice of format is another important brick in the foundation of your article. There are several popular formats that are used by both beginners and professional copywriters:

• Problem Solving – Specify a problem and then share a solution with the reader. Usually it’s better to provide several solutions.
• Q&A – Base your article on the formulation of a question and the following answer.
• Tips & Tricks – Share practical tips on a specific topic. This format is similar to problem solving, but is usually presented as a series of tips or walkthroughs.
• Expert Assessment – Write a broad comment regarding a specific subject or problem.

Most importantly, there should be value in your article. Don’t chase word volume. The reader doesn’t come to your site to read more, but to find out the answer to a question. If you can provide that answer through a succinct, short article, do it. Meaningless articles that are “full of water” won’t benefit the audience and, therefore, won’t benefit your website.

3. Title

One article may have two headings:

• What a person who has already visited the site sees
• What is shown in the search results snippet

The headline directly impacts the user's decision to open and read the article. When choosing a headline, you should simultaneously reveal the essence of the article, interest the reader, and use keywords that are important for SEO.

When choosing a heading for a finished article, it is important to ensure that the content of the article and the heading match. Otherwise, the reader will get confused, won't find what he/she came for, and close the page. This affects SEO, since behavioral factors, including bonus rate, matter to your SERP ranking.

The length of your article titles matters. Only a few people are willing to read long headlines and, moreover, search engines usually don’t show headings longer than 60 letters.

Beware of using artificial emotion, such as adding multiple exclamation marks. Excessive emotional usually hurts your headlines.

If you are having difficulty with headings, here are some simple tricks for writing a headline:

• “How ...”
• “A quick way ...”
• "A simple solution … "
• “Now you can ...”
• "5 ways ...", "7 steps to ...", and so on.

If you focus on SEO, then organically enter keywords into your headline. The title should still be appealing to read, but the presence of keywords will help you reach the high positions in the SERP.

4. The outline of the article

Ideally, you should prepare and adhere to a plan when writing each article. The plan may include only headings for future material, as well as short comments for each block.

As a rule, each article should include:

• Introduction
• Main Part
• Conclusion

In the introduction, briefly talk about what this article is about to summarize it for the reader and catch their attention. In the main part, share all necessary information in detail. At the end, wrap it all up.

This plan will help you provide information in a structured way and, as a result, you will write a more comprehensive article. Here is an example of a plan:

5. Article writing

Identify the main problems and their solutions. Remember that the main goal of your article is to give value to the user. Even if you want to sell or get something from the reader, you must first solve the reader’s problem.

Try to present the information in as structured a way as possible. To do this, follow your own outline and these tips:

• Use short sentences. Most sentences should not be longer than 25 words.
• Do not make large paragraphs. Try to avoid crossing the limit of 80 words per paragraph.
• Separate parts of the article into blocks by using subtitles.
• Use lists and tables whenever possible. This is a convenient format for perceiving information.

Do not limit yourself by setting a maximum article size. There is no ideal article size. The important thing is that you answer the reader’s question so he/she doesn’t go to another site for the answer. This can be achieved by ensuring everything you write is valuable and necessary.

Artificially overestimating the size of an article is not required. Neither readers nor search engines will appreciate this.

6. Finalizing

Before publishing the material, you will want to re-read it. Ideally, someone else will do this for you. You can find many offers on specialized exchanges such as Fiverr and Upwork.

Proofreading will make your articles even better. A professional editor can polish your posts and correct errors/typos. Nevertheless, there are no limits to perfection. Do not get carried away with too much proofreading, which can take up a significant amount of time. There are small mistakes even in professional magazines.

These are 6 main points on how to write a quality article. If you want to delve even deeper and prepare the best articles, download the free Travelpayouts guide.

If you typically write your own articles, but have decided to hire a copywriter, it is important to prepare a detailed technical tack, where you will describe in detail what should be in the article and indicate your requirements for the final results.