Web content is undoubtedly one of the most important determinants of any site’s success. More than the keyword density, relevance and presentation is key – readers will only come back to your site if they find your articles useful, and is the information you present is easy to read.

Read on for some tips on how you can use your web content for search engine optimization (SEO).

Anatomy of effective web content

Readability. Aim to create web content that is easily readable by both human readers and search engines. To do this, keep sentences short and snappy. Remember that writing for publication is not the same as writing for web – in fact, experts recommend that web content should be at least 50 percent shorter than regular publication content.

It’s a good idea to ‘chunk’ text – that is, break text into short, easily understandable segments for added clarity. Paragraphs should be kept very short, and bullet points should be added whenever necessary. Some experts also advocate for the use of colored and bold texts to emphasize important points. This helps web readers who often just scan the document for the information they need to easily find exactly what it is they are looking for.

Good structure. Forget about saving the best things for last – you are not writing a novel, you are writing web content. The reader (and the search engines) needs to be able to read your main point right at the very start. Keep the most important information at the top, and then just develop it as the web content progresses.

Harmony and architecture. Web content is not exclusive to texts, though, so pay close attention to your images as well. Make sure that the pictures you put are of actual relevance to the corresponding text, and that they are labeled so that search engines can detect them.

Your presentation is just as important – the page should be functional to make navigation intuitive. Even the best-written web content is useless if it is hard to find. Your web content should be organized so that it makes most sense to the users. Add appropriate links for easier referencing – this way, your readers get to jump from one related article to the next without much effort. It is a good idea to develop a ‘flow chart’ even before you start building web content – this will help you define exactly what web content you need, and how they are related to one another.

Remember that an efficient and well-organized web content will make it very hard for your readers not to include you in their list of favorites, and especially harder for search engines not to put you in the high ranks. Look at web content as the heart of your website – do this well, and your site will be a hit in no time.