When you write content for your website, such as blog posts, articles and website content, the temptation is to use sales focused wording. As you’re talking about your own company, you’ll naturally want to sell your services, talk yourself up and make sure that your readers know how good you are.

However, this kind of web copy doesn’t work very well for website visitors, or for Google.

If your copy is overly gushy, using words like ‘best’, ‘outstanding’ and ‘excellent’ then your website’s visitors will be suspicious of your content. They won’t believe what you’re writing because the tone of your copy is too sales focussed.

For the same reason, Google will mistrust your copy as well. Google wants to see neutral styled content offering useful information. Google wants to see this because it’s exactly what Google’s end users want to see, your customers.

The golden rule with SEO and content is you should do what’s right for your users and it will also end up doing what right for Google. If you fill your website with sales content then you won’t achieve the rankings that you’re searching for and you won’t win any repeat visitors to your website.

This may seem like an obvious question, bus is your website’s content easy to read? Before you answer, think about the sort of people who will be reading your content. Think about the sort of people who use the Internet, and look at the words and sentence lengths that you are using.

If you are writing long sentences, with many long words, in large paragraph blocks, then your content will be difficult to get through. If it’s difficult to read, people will give up. If they give up, they will leave your website, and this isn’t what your content is about.

You should also consider that many people in the UK do not have a particularly high reading age. It’s no coincidence that the tabloid newspaper The Sun has the highest circulation, it caters for the lowest common denominator. The Sun is aimed at readers with a reading age of 13, which is why it is so popular.

Now, we’re not saying you should write your content in the same style as the tabloids. However, you should be aware that when you write lengthy, wordy content, your readers may not be able to follow it.

Know your audience. If you’re writing for the average man, you will need to change your writing style from content that is catered towards professionals or graduates.

Who are you writing for?