Great website content catches your target audience’s attention, makes your website memorable, helps you win leads, and keeps your audience coming back for more.
Creating content from scratch can be a time-consuming process. There are a ton of smaller steps to think about on the journey to creating compelling content like research, SEO, and copy editing to name a few. However, you don’t have to start from zero when there are AI writing assistants that can help you create high-quality content.
Below, we’ll walk through the six steps you need to take to ensure your website content is as polished as possible. We'll also walk you through how you can come up with website content faster without sacrificing quality.
How to write content for a website in six steps
Whether you are creating new website content from scratch or revamping existing content, there are a few key things to keep in mind. By now, you already know the importance of writing clearly, writing copy with minimal errors, and writing in the language that speaks to your target audience.
However, what good is writing amazing content if no one will see it? This is where you’ll also want to consider SEO as part of your website content strategy. But more on that later.
Let’s dive deeper into each step of the digital content writing process complete with tips and examples.
1. Determine your website’s primary goal
While this might seem like an obvious step, it’s the one you want to start with. What good is creating a website without a primary goal in mind?
As you start crafting the most compelling content for your website landing pages, contact pages, and any other page you plan on publishing, consider the primary goal of each page. Is it to:
- Sell your product?
- Inform users about a specific topic?
- Review product options in a specific industry?
- Teach users how to do something?
- A combination of all four?
There are no rules for what your website’s main goal should be. But the more focused the primary goal of your website is, the more likely you’ll hit your website targets.
2. Research your ideal audience
Who are you writing for? That’s essentially the first question worth asking yourself as you think about the best way to approach writing for your website.
This is true regardless of whether you’re writing a sales page, a landing page, or even an about page. Every piece of content on your website should be created with an audience in mind.
Researching your ideal audience can be done in several ways. Some ideas include:
- Polling your email list if you have one
- Talking to existing customers one-on-one
- Assessing what your audience is interested in on social media
- Using SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to get an idea of what your audience is searching for
Take Gusto’s website as an example of a SaaS brand in the finance space that knows how to create web copy that speaks to its target audience (small business owners in need of payroll software). They know how to write web copy that answers their customer’s most pressing pain points.
3. Determine customer needs
Now that you know who your target audience is, the next step is determining the customer journey. Why is this necessary? Getting familiar with what your audience is searching for and why is a necessary part of the copywriting process.
For example, the process of discovering customer needs can uncover pain points that your audience is asking about in different search queries. This information helps you refine your website content.
Search intent falls into four general categories:
Transactional: When search intent is transactional, users are usually in “buying” mode. They’re looking for a specific product to fulfill a need. Any search queries with the words: buy, deal, coupon, or even discount can be considered transactional. Transactional searches also include queries of specific product names.
Commercial: When users are still trying to make a potential purchase decision, their search queries are considered commercial. Comparison posts or reviews are often written to satisfy commercial intent search queries. Listicles can be an effective way to rank content meant for commercial intent keywords.
Navigational: Keywords with navigational intent are searched for when a user is trying to reach a specific destination like a specific brand’s site or a specific webpage. If someone searches for Groupon in Google that’s an example of navigational intent.
Informational: Search terms with informational intent like “Mexican restaurant near me” or “how to start a website from scratch” are users looking to answer a question or learn more about a specific subject.
4. Incorporate keyword research
Good website content alone isn’t enough to get traffic to your site. Not only should search intent and keyword research inform what you should write, but it should also help you determine how you should write it.
For example, if you’re writing about social media strategy and your research reveals that your audience is looking for the “best social media scheduler” the word “best” indicates buyer intent. If your website is about social media, your best bet is to incorporate content that talks about the best social media scheduling software. That way, you answer their search query and hopefully rank higher in SERPs.
There’s a lot that goes into thorough SEO research. However, you want to get an idea of what type of search queries your audience is running.
Consider using tools like:
- Ubersuggest
- Google Keyword Planner
- Ahrefs
They can help you get an idea of what audiences are searching for and how often. From there, you can start the outlining process and start bringing your writing to life from an informed lens.
5. Write, optimize, and edit your website copy
With research, audience intent, and a clearly defined website goal as your foundation, it’s time to start crafting your website content. Here are some writing tips to keep in mind:
Writing: Writing your website copy starts with crafting copy for the main pages. This may include your homepage, about page, or contact page. After all your research, creating copy that speaks to your audience should be a much easier task.
You’ll be able to write headlines, rebuttals, and even CTAs that speak to the pain points of your audience. You want to make sure you write as directly as possible to your site visitors. This takes some skill. But starting with a clear subheading, a strong call to action, and proofreading helps.
Optimizing: Don’t forget to use all the research you’ve conducted. Incorporate your main keywords wherever it’s relevant. That way Google can properly index what your site is about and it can show up in relevant search queries.
Editing: Finally, there’s the editing to think about. A website with too many grammar errors and formatting mistakes can be an immediate turnoff for users. Ensuring quality by going through a few rounds of edits makes all the difference and helps you maintain a level of quality that speaks for itself.
6. Publish your copy and update it periodically
After creating polished website content, all that’s left to do is to hit that publish button. However, the writing process doesn’t end there.
Written content on the internet inevitably goes through content decay, Yes, even website content that may be considered “evergreen.” This is why the last part of the website content writing process is to establish a workflow where occasional updates are part of your content maintenance process.
Over time, your audience’s pain points might change or the main purpose of your website may evolve, hence the need for occasional revisions. When you go back through to refresh your published web content be sure to take both structure and SEO into account.
How to write website content using AI
It’s well known that writing content, either for websites or blog posts, can be a manual, time-consuming process. But there’s a faster way to create content without having to sacrifice quality. Enter Jasper, an AI writer for just about any piece of content you want to create.
With it, it’s possible to cut the time you spend creating content in half or more. Generating high-quality AI content that's unique and tailored for your needs can be as easy as:
- Entering your title
- Adding a description
- Plugging in your preferred keywords
- Choosing a language and tone preference
Jasper includes plenty of website content templates designed to help you get a headstart with your website writing efforts, including:
- Content Improver
- Paragraph Rewriter
- Perfect Headline generator
- Website Sub-headline generator
- Persuasive Bullet Points
- Company Bio
- Feature to Benefit
- Unique Value Proposition
Let’s walk through an example together. Continuing with the social media strategy example, say we want to create a landing page for the best social media scheduling software. We want to use the Unique Value Proposition template to create an attention-grabbing landing page statement.
First, we’ll want to:
- Login to our Jasper account
- Click on Templates
- Click on Unique Value Proposition
- Enter a product description (what your website is about)
- Enter your preferred tone
- Enter your preferred language
- Tap on Generate AI content
Now, the best part is our results. Once you click Generate AI content, Jasper does the rest for you like it’s a subject matter expert. Any sentence you don’t like can be rephrased or checked for spelling or grammar issues.
Example website content writing using the AIDA framework
The AIDA framework—which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action—is an effective way to go about creating website content that touches on each point of the buyer’s journey.
Thankfully, you don’t have to start from scratch when Jasper provides an AIDA template through which you can craft website content with a click of a button.
To start creating website content using the AIDA template, follow the steps below:
- Login to our Jasper account
- Click on Templates
- Click on AIDA Framework
- Enter your description
- Enter your preferred tone
- Enter your preferred language
- Tap on Generate AI content
Write faster with Jasper
As an AI marketing platform, Jasper can be a key part of the web content writing process when you’re trying to grow a website strategically. With it, you can spend your resources—including time and money—on other tasks to move the needle.
But first, it’s important to establish a writing process that enables you to produce content faster and better. No doubt, an AI writing assistant is a powerful tool to incorporate into your process.
Try out Jasper for free and see how quickly you can create content for your website.