Incorporate multimedia

Sometimes a picture—or infographic or video—really is worth a thousand words. Research shows that 90 percent of the information transmitted to the human brain is visual, and people process visual information 60,000 times faster than text. An easy-to-read chart or graph can also do a better job of explaining a complex topic than text alone. If you’re not a graphic designer by trade, there are a lot of great services out there that can help you make graphics yourself, like Canva and Piktochart

Images also help break up text, making your page easier to read. We recommend having at least one image on each page of your website.

Think like a search engine

Readers find web content through many different paths—social media sharing, links from other websites, email sharing, and search engine results. That last method is especially important for web writers. Text could be extremely well-written and informative, but if it’s not optimized for search engines, chances are few people will find it. Think of your audience again: what search terms would they type into Google? Make sure to include those terms in headlines and sub-headers. If you’re not sure what words are best to use, check out this post on conducting keyword research for your website.

Layer website content

The great thing about a website is that it’s easy to direct readers from one page to another. Help readers find more great content by hyperlinking certain words or phrases to other relevant resources, especially those on your own website. This will help keep people engaged with your content and moving through your site.

For example, say this sentence appeared on your cooking website: Ratatouille is a low-fat dish that consists of seasonal ingredients like eggplant, squash, and tomatoes. You could hyperlink “low-fat dish” to a page with other blog posts on healthy eating.

Building these internal links within your own site also helps your SEO, but keep in mind that links should always be relevant and helpful. Visually, if you overload your text with links, people won’t know what to click on. Google recommends keeping the amount of hyperlinks on a page to a “reasonable number.”

Leave them wanting more

Good webpages end with a call to action. Is there a person a reader should contact for more information? An interesting video they should watch? How about a related blog post they can read or a report they can download? This strategy helps direct readers to other areas of your website and encourages them to promote your content to their friends and family.

Keep these calls-to-action succinct, and begin them with action verbs like “download,” “share,” “join,” “sign up,” “learn more” or “watch.” To really draw the reader’s attention, try designing a box or button for the call-to-action. And of course, make sure to include a hyperlink that actually allows readers to fulfill the action you’re asking them to take! On Jimdo websites, it’s easy to create a call-to-action button with our Button element.