8 Ways Your Web Content Is Failing

Bad web content is a website’s worst nightmare. Your content is the very first impression you make on your readers. Making a good impression through your content, however, is about a lot more than writing a few paragraphs and slapping it on a webpage.

Internet readers are a flighty crowd: you’ve only got about three seconds to grab your reader’s attention before they’ll leave your site. Is your web content failing to grab your readers? Here are eight ways your content could be failing you.

1.) It’s Too Long

Internet readers have short attention spans, so make your point and make it swiftly. Ask yourself: What am I trying to say? What are the main concepts I want my readers to get from this piece? Draft an outline based on these key ideas. Having an outline will help prevent unnecessary tangents or excessively wordy explanations.

 Once you’ve written your content, go over it twice more. Cut out any unnecessary words or sentences. The cleaner your writing, the easier your content will be to read.

2.) It Doesn’t Have Enough White Space

Successful SEO copywriting is about writing clean, clear content that’s easy to skim. Make your content easy on the eyes by breaking up your ideas with subheadings, line breaks, and well-spaced line height. Nothing will scare away a web visitor faster than lengthy walls of text.

3.) It Doesn’t Have Pictures

Humans are visual creatures. Give your readers some engaging pictures to accompany your content. Think of Mary Poppins and her spoon-full-of-sugar-trick: pictures and white space are the sugar to help make your content (or “medicine”) more appealing.

4.) It Contains Weak Writing

Search your content for the following weak writing pitfalls:

• Passive voice (Saying “Good writing is loved by readers” instead of the active “Readers love good writing”)
• Weak verbs
• Run-on sentences
• Excessive adjectives (“We provide unique, engaging, well-written, professional content”)

For further reading, try Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) or Grammar Girl.

5.) It’s Too Vague

“We provide the best content writing services on the web,” isn’t the same as “We provide SEO copywriting services for several Forbes 500 companies.” Similarly, “We provide SEO copywriting services for top companies like General Electric and Whole Foods Market” conveys more about your company than the previous two examples. Aim to make your content as specific and focused as possible.

6.) It Doesn’t Have an Engaging Headline

Your headline is the most important part of your content. If your headline doesn’t pull your reader in, your content won’t be read. “How to Take Good Pictures” isn’t nearly as engaging as “14 Photography Secrets From Professional Photographers.” Write a list of headlines and choose the one that you’d be most likely to read.

7.) It Uses a Too-Small Font

A recent Problogger post revealed that the optimum size for web content font is 16 pixels. Don’t strain your readers’ eyes by using smaller fonts. Similarly, black text on a white background makes for the easiest reading display– lose the dark backgrounds or creative font colors.

8.) It’s Boring

If your content isn’t engaging, you might as well throw away the other seven tips on this list. Strive to make your content something that you’d want to read. Get interested in your content. If you don’t find your subject matter fascinating, your readers won’t, either.

About The Author

Nicki Porter is an active writer for CopyPress, a content development company. Nicki is a published poet, fledgling foodie, and admitted alliteration addict currently living in the greater Boston area. Raised barefoot in Pennsylvania farm country, Nicki’s been writing ever since she could hold a pen long enough to scribble down stories in her Pocahontas journal (complete with lopsided stick figure illustrations). Though her artistic talent never evolved much beyond those stick figures, she’d like to think her writing ability has—at the very least, she’s using bigger words now.

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