Content Marketing: Basic Criteria for Successful Web Texts

Good content is not everything, but without good content everything is nothing. Content builds the foundation of every website's success and enhances the success of other online marketing activities such as AdWords ads, affiliate programs, display advertising, link building, social media campaigns, etc.

Good content helps keep users on the page and perform the desired action (reading content, interacting with multimedia elements, buying offered products, etc.). Well-designed content also fulfils the following functions:

• Information about products and services

• dissemination of brand image and messages

• Awakening emotions and enthusiasm

• Awakening interests in product, service and brand

• Activation of social interactions (comments, conversations, sharing, likes)

• Description of functions and applications

But in content creation you can do a lot wrong. I give these tips on how to lay the foundation for successful website content.

Basic criteria for good content

Addressee: The difficulty with web texts is that they have two addressees - the site visitors and the search engines. For a long time writing "SEO-texts" has been the non plus ultra.

These are texts that are written exclusively for search engines. Web texts were written on the premise of bundling as many keywords and repetitions as possible into one text. But readers recognize such texts and assign them little relevance. In the worst case, they annoy the customers.

Content serves primarily the user and only then the search engines. Google & Co. Worries about website traffic. But ultimately, the content must convince the site visitors.

Those are the ones who interact with the website and buy products and services.

For website operators it is important to provide content that is intended for the user and

uses some SEO text elements (use of keywords, text structure incl. Heading structure, etc.).

Structure: People consume online differently than offline. This has been confirmed in numerous studies. Only a fraction of internet users read web texts completely. The vast

majority only skims over the texts displayed on the screen.

The reading behaviour corresponds to an F-shaped pattern. The fixation points of the reader are located on websites primarily on the left side of the screen. Only with interesting impulses, the eye jumps to the right. Likewise, Internet users are reluctant to scroll and often only read the "above the fold" content.

Websites must convince the user immediately. While offline with some types of text (eg dossiers, commentary, reportage, short stories, novels) the tension is a successful tactic to keep users, online texts have to get to the point quickly. Also searched content must be found on the website quickly. Otherwise, the visitor leaves the website again and visits competing sites. That means for website operators:

• The content provided should be short and goal-oriented.

• The key statements are at the beginning and on the left side of the screen

• The content is visually prepared (paragraphs, headings, font size, font, image size, resolution, video size, etc.) that the users are inevitably directed to the key points.

Target group-specific texts: "People do not want to buy a drill. People want a hole in the wall. " This sentence by the American economist and former Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt (1925-2006) is a key criterion for a good sales text: the emphasis on benefits.

People always want good end results. By what means they achieve this is initially secondary. Whether the drill is green or blue, weighs 1.5kg or 2kg, comes from Bosch or Metabo, are, particularly for business customers, incidental criteria. The quality of the drilled holes is the most important criterion for these groups. The product properties, on the other hand, are supportive criteria and then come to the fore when several products offer the same (qualitative) final results.

End customers, on the other hand, are more likely to buy for feeling: "People buy based on emotions and justify themselves with logic," copywriting legend Joe Sugarman

preaches. Consumers are more likely to buy products because they want them, not because they need them. Such emotional products include clothing, beauty products and home

accessories.

For online retailers, this means providing specific, target group-specific texts.

For business customers: Place the benefits in the centre and support them with properties.

For the end customer, on the other hand, benefits and properties are equivalent criteria.