10 Steps to Better Content

As a veteran content strategist, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients and organizations to help them improve their content. Depending on their goals, the solution can be complex, which is where I come in. Often, though, at least part of the solution is rather simple. You know the old saying about the forest and the trees? 

Here are 10 steps to improve your content. While I’ve listed these sequentially, you can do them in any order. Do them all. Or do just one or two. Within a short timeframe, your content will be better. I promise.

Step 1: Check your Spelling

I’m serious. This is the lowest of the low hanging fruit. In my work, I’m always stunned when I learn that clients doesn’t spell check as a matter of practice. If you work in an international organization, or with international clients, make sure you’re using “the right” English – US, UK, Canadian, or other.

Don’t (ever) assume that US English is “the one.” If you do, you could undermine your brand, lose credibility – or even worse, lose customers!

Step 2: Check Punctuation & Style

Check key pages of your website for punctuation and grammar, including correct usage of commas, periods, and hyphens. Website content that includes sloppy punctuation or incorrect usage can easily make your Fortune 500 company look like an amateur enterprise. 

Use your in-house style guide as a reference. If you don't have one, use the Economist Style Guide, the Gregg Reference Manual, or other reputable guide for online business and professional writing. Remember: single space after a period in web copy. Always.

Step 3: Check for Key Words

Key words (often referred to as “metatags”) are the words and phrases that enable users and search engines to find you online. They include words and terms that are common to your domain, industry, or product line.

Review your content and drop in key words and phrases that are relevant to your target audiences. Write for humans first, bots second.

Step 4: Check for Omissions

Is any essential information missing from your website? Make sure you provide the core information your customers, investors, media, and other target audiences want and need (company facts, locations, etc.).

Say, for example, your US-based logistics company has recently expanded into Southeast Asia. A global furniture manufacturer wants to know if your company might be a worthy partner in Vietnam, but doesn’t find any mention of your new, state-of-the-art operations in Ho Chi Minh City on your website. If they can't find this information, they'll almost certainly choose your competition instead.

Step 5: Check for Inaccuracies

Making sure your content is accurate and up-to-date is also key to building and maintaining the credibility of your brand. Check your website for fact-heavy pages, including those with company information (e.g., size, locations, awards), and information about your offerings, and make sure they include the latest (correct) information.

Your target audience will look to your website as a source of the most reliable, and most definitive information about your organization and your offerings. Don’t disappoint them.

Step 6: Check for Consistency

Consistent use of words and phrases is essential to convey a strong and coherent brand, to build customer confidence, and to differentiate your company from the competition. Review language that appears frequently on your site (e.g., company descriptions), and identify and fix inconsistencies.

“Innovative insurance solutions ..” or “Your one-stop shop for insurance..”? Decide. And stick with your decision. 

Consistency also means ensuring that the information across your site content – and across all communication channels – is the same. Do new customers get the first month free, or a maximum of $50 free credit? A customer confused is a customer lost.

Step 7: Check for Length

By “length,” I mean the length of both sentences and paragraphs. Follow the tried and true “Say-it-in-One-Breath” (SOB) test that journalists have used for centuries. It's pretty straightforward: If you can’t read a sentence aloud in one breath, it’s too long.

Scan your content for sentences that look long (hint: look for sentences that take up multiple lines, or use lots of punctuation). Apply the SOB test. If the sentence fails, break it into two smaller sentences. Your readers will thank you. And they won’t pass out. 

Step 8: Check for Density

Scan your site content and notice its overall appearance on the page. Are there multiple paragraphs under each heading or title?

If the overall effect is more black (i.e., lines of text) than white (i.e., line and section breaks), create short subheadings to separate blocks of content. Use keywords and make sure your subheadings reflect the content in the sections immediately below.

Step 9: Add Visuals

If your content appears more black than white (see Step 8 above), add images to make your text more appealing and less monotonous. Use high-quality, relevant images that are optimized to load quickly, to enhance your target audiences’ experience.  

Sourcing and adding high-quality images to your website can be a little involved and time consuming. But it’s worth the effort. As much as it pains me, as a word person, to admit, a picture is indeed (often) worth a thousand words. Sorry, Confucius!

Step 10: Check Your Calls to Action

Check key pages on your website to make sure they include calls to action (“CTAs”) that support your business goals. If they don’t, add “contact us” or other engagement-type links as appropriate to your business. This will help ensure that users don’t “dead end” on important pages of your site.

Remember, every page of content on your website should serve a purpose for your organization or your target audiences. Besides conveying information, the content should lead or impel the reader to take a specific action after reading or viewing it.

What’s Next?

After you’ve taken some (or all) of these steps, your content performance and quality should be greatly improved. Now you can start thinking about the big picture: how to develop a content strategy that optimizes content to support your business goals and target audience needs.

Which of these 10 steps did you try? What happened?