How to Write the Best Content for Your Website

TL;DR – write helpful, well-written content for the people you expect to be reading it.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but doing so professionally for at least 20 years now. With my background in web design and content marketing, I’ve watched both evolve over the years and honestly, my TL;DR really does sum it up. Google favors well-written content that is helpful to humans, but I’m going to elaborate on this based on what Google actually recommends and what may help you from a marketing perspective.

Before going any further, it’s really important that you know who the audience is you’ll be writing for. It’s definitely one of those “Marketing 101” type things to get that out of the way. If you need help, I have a checklist and worksheet you can grab here.

E-E-A-T

This stands for:

• experience
• expertise
• authoritativeness
• trustworthiness

What’s great about E-E-A-T is that, if you write your content with these 4 key areas of focus in mind, you’ll come out with content that works for both people and Google.

EXPERIENCE

Think about your literal experience with the topic you’re writing about. Showcase your valuable insights, tell stories, present case studies or real-world examples. Basically, you want to give readers solid reasons why they should be paying attention to the information you’re presenting.

EXPERTISE

According to Google, this refers to the depth of knowledge and understanding your possess in the subject you’re writing about. Key things here are you can mention if you have certain credentials, degrees, licenses or affiliations. You can mention things from your bio that bolster how your expertise may be perceived. If you’ve established a good reputation, add examples of this.

If you make any claims, back those up by providing supporting evidence from reputable sources.

In your writing, go beyond surface-level information and offer a more insightful analysis and a unique perspective on the topic.

AUTHORITATIVENESS

In Google’s eyes, this refers to the credibility and reliability of the website the content is on. This kind of looks at the “whole package” in that your entire website is considered as well as external factors that boost that authoritativeness (example: high-quality backlinks, mentions in reputable publications, community involvement and social media engagement).

When it comes to your website here’s a short list of things you should have on lock:

• your website should be well-designed and align with what your target audience and peers would consider high-quality (free from errors, generally well written);
• your website is secure, free of technical issues and of course, free of any malware;
• your website scores high on Google’s Page Speed Insights.

TRUSTWORTHINESS

Some say this is the most important factor, but if you’ve covered the other three, then the trustworthiness of the content and your site will be bolstered. Google states: “Does the content present information in a way that makes you want to trust it, such as clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author or the site that publishes it…”

This also expands out from your website to include your overall online reputation. If you have reviews about you, your service, product or business online, are they positive? And if you add reviews to your website, make sure they are real reviews. I still come across sites that use fake reviews (complete with stock photos of people), which is just bad all around.

Another couple key things for Trustworthiness are:

1. Avoid misinformation and misleading claims – this should be a given, but there are still a lot of sites out there that fudge the truth a bit or manipulate information in a way that makes it untruthful. Don’t do this.
2. Be transparent as well as honest. If you have conflicts of interest, be up front and disclose those. If you have limitations to your expertise or the scope of your research, let people know.

What about AI?

AI is definitely the new, shiny toy on many fronts, but what’s important to realize is that AI is a TOOL. Just like Microsoft Word and an iPad or a laptop are tools for writing. There are a lot of people out there though who are simply putting a prompt into an AI chat bot and then copying and pasting what it spits out, into their website. Don’t do this.

I recently came across a post on MIT Management, “Effective Prompts for AI: the Essentials”, that I think gives some good tips when it comes to writing prompts for AI.

You’ll want to be very specific with your prompts and add context. Here are some other things I recommend when using AI as a tool for content:

• Copy and paste a sample of your own writing and ask the chatbot to provide answers in that style and “voice”. This can get provided responses a little closer to your actual writing so that it’s less of a leap to refine it (you absolutely should refine it – don’t just copy and paste exactly what it spits out).
• Use follow up prompts that refine the results you get. Often, the result to the first prompt falls short of what you really need. So you may have to reword things or add additional information. I’ve found that getting really specific helps.
• Ask the chatbot to provide its sources for the information it’s giving you. It’s still a very gray area when it comes to copyright on provided answers from these AI tools. You do not want to be liable for plagiarism.
• To expand on the above point, run things through one of the many plagiarism checkers available (plagiarismdetector.net is just one you can use).
• Also, after you’ve refined the AI provided content, run it through one of the main AI checkers such as zerogpt.com. I have had mixed results with these checkers (for example, 100% original content I’ve written can come back as “possibly” AI), so that’s something to be aware of. Obviously though, if it comes back 100% AI, you should do a little more work on it.
• Be aware of AI’s limitations. As of this writing, the majority of AI chatbots are simply scraping databases to formulate their answers. Some may not have the latest information. It’s still important to be able to do actual research when necessary and not rely on an AI tool to be 100% accurate.

Self-assess Your Content

Once you’ve written your content, assess it for things like:

• Is is well-written from a grammar standpoint? You can use tools such as grammar checkers like quillbot.com/grammar-check.
• Have you answered key questions like who, what, when, why?
• Have you truly provided helpful and informative content written specifically for your audience?
• Is the content trustworthy? For example, clearly noted sources, evidence of the expertise involved, etc.
• Also, if you’re unsure about headlines, you can try one of the headline analyzers, such as the one from monsterinsights.com.

I also encourage you to view the list of questions on Google’s “Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content” page here. Google clearly outlines what it’s looking for.

Photo credit: Mikhail Nilov