Rules for Effective Web Messaging

As a content writer, it will come as no surprise that I believe quality content is extremely valuable for a business. Your website content is one of the first impressions prospective customers will have of your business. It will tell them who you are, what you’re an expert in, and what the process of working with you will be like.

However, not all content is created equal and the wrong messaging in your content can be more harmful than helpful.

As I have worked to create site content for many businesses, there have been a few principles that will always be necessary to create effective web messaging.

Effective Web Messaging Rules

Easy to Read and Understand

• Grade level 9

• No wall of text

All web messaging should be easy to read and easy to understand. Site content is not typically the place for academic level dissertations or extremely detailed case studies.

You also want to be sure the text visitors are reading is easily digestible. Sentences should be short and to the point; blocks of text should be small and easy to read at a glance.

When visitors are reading your content, they are looking to get a basic understanding of who you are and how you can help solve their problems. You want your messaging to communicate this to your visitors in a way that is quick, frictionless, and provides value.

Accurate

• No false advertising

The messaging in your site content should focus on proving to your visitors that you understand their problems and can help solve them.

What you should not be doing is making false claims or misrepresenting yourself or your services. This will destroy any trust your visitors have in your business and ruin your chances of closing them as a customer.

Encourage visitors to learn more about you

• Demonstrate that you understand their problems

• Show you have the experience and expertise to solve their problems

• Show that you are easy to work with

Visitors are on your website to learn more about you and your company; your site content should encourage them to do so.

Taking the time to research who your ideal customer is and what pain points they face will allow you to develop site content that shows these prospective customers you not only understand their struggles, but you also have the experience and expertise to have a solution to their problems.

You also want to create site content that gives examples of who you are as a company and why you are easy to work with.

Do you have a free shipping policy? A generous return policy? Do you pride yourself on your customer service team? Use these important elements in your messaging as examples of why visitors should learn more about you and how easy it is to work with you.

Help Sales educate and close prospects

• Messaging should be similar to what Sales teams say in person

• Give visitors a reason to read your content - something they cannot find anywhere else

I always say that if your content cannot be used in more than one way, it is not effective content.

Website content is no different; for it to be effective, it has to be usable on your website and usable by your sales team to educate and close prospects.

This is achieved by involving your whole team in the content strategy process. The sales team helps by providing insight into their sales process and the questions they get asked during this process.

This will allow the marketing team to create content that is not only effective for website use, but also provides value in the sales process to educate and show thought leadership.

When you are creating content that demonstrates your thought leadership in your industry, you are producing content that can’t be found elsewhere. This gives your visitors a reason to read your content and helps you stand out from other basic wikipedia level articles that exist on the internet.

Developed for SEO Value

• Keyword optimize

• NOT Keyword stuffed

Running with the theme of dual-plus purpose content, any site content should also be developed with SEO value in mind.

However, this does not mean that content should be created specifically for SEO; I never recommend keyword stuffing or creating content only to rank for a certain keyword.

Instead, effective web messaging should be unique and created to solve problems and provide information. If your messaging is of value to your industry and intended audience, there will naturally be a keyword phrase and other keywords within your chosen topic that you can optimize for.

These optimizations should be worked into your content naturally and organically. Don’t overdo the keyword use; optimization should not come at the expense of readability.

If your content is so full of keywords that visitors can’t make sense of it, they will not stay on the page. If this happens enough, it will signal to Google and other search engines that your content does not have relevance and is not valuable for that particular keyword, which will decrease the SEO value of your page.

By keyword stuffing, you will not only have lost SEO value, but you will also have lost the trust of a prospective customer.

Final Takeaway for Effective Web Messaging

Effective web messaging is not something that happens overnight.

To be effective, you need to truly understand your target audience and their problems. This takes time and research to understand these important elements, even if you are a well-established company.

If I were to give one final piece of advice that encompasses all the above rules, it would be this:

People do not want to be sold to; they want to know that you understand their problems and they want to know how you will help them solve their problems in a way that is different from your competitors.

If you can communicate that to your audience through your content, you will be well on the road to effective web messaging.