Readability is of course of utmost importance when you have a website. You don’t want anyone to struggle with any part of your site, especially your content. This is after all what keeps them coming back for more.

You would be surprised how often the small details are overlooked when people do their content. In order to cement your readers into your website, you must have good, quality writing. It’s okay if you’re not the best writer in the world, but it is essential that you follow some specific steps to make it as professional as possible.

Here are some steps you should always practice:

• Type It Out: Never type your content straight into the webpage. You always want to go through another program first. There are a lot of things you’ll see when you type it in Word (or a similar program) that you wouldn’t by just typing directly into the webpage. Besides, it is always a good idea to have a back up of your content, should something unexpectedly become corrupt.
• Spellchecking: There are a multitude of resources out there for you to check your spelling with—utilize them. Use the spellchecker in your text editing program, an actual dictionary, Google search for a correction in spelling, and/or Dictionary.com. Regardless of what you use, you should be able to find the correct spelling. You don’t want a simple mistake like the spelling for “lose” and “loose”. These have completely different meanings, but very similar spelling. If you are unsure of the meaning on any words you use, always look them up. It’s a good idea to be thorough.
• Proof Read and Edit: Read, reread, then edit your work. I generally write something, then read it and decide if I think it sounds okay. I then reread it and begin the editing process. I replace words, especially overused ones, and sentences. Sometimes rearranging sentences will make content flow a little smoother as well.

Unless you’re a huge company with tons of clients, no one is looking for perfection in your writing, but it should be as close to perfect as you can get it. Don’t get hung up on this and think you’re writing a book. You are simply striving for accuracy and competence.

Once you have typed your content and it looks and sounds great, you need to put it in your webpage. This sounds easy enough, right? Well, believe it or not, this is where some people go wrong.

For whatever reason, Microsoft Word and WordPress do not get along. Sometimes when you copy content out of Word and paste it into WordPress, there are tons of new characters that appear. Some of your quotes and apostrophes, among other characters, have been replaced with random symbols. Not to mention some other symbols that snuck in where there were no characters at all. It can be very frustrating.

When you’re in your WordPress there are a couple options for how you view your post: Visual and HTML. A lot of people overlook this section, but this will save you a lot of trouble. You always, always want to work in HTML view. If you don’t know HTML, that’s okay. You’re just pasting your text straight in from Word so you don’t need to know anything about the programming of the webpage.

Pasting your text into the HTML section shows the text for what it is, and nothing more. When you paste it into the Visual section, it automatically tries to attach Word’s style sheet to your text.

This is where the frustration comes in. It doesn’t always interpret the text the same way. Sometimes it will look okay, and you think you got lucky, and other times you have the jumbled mess of characters and symbols. So, to avoid this headache, always use the HTML mode.

You’re probably wondering at this point how this is incorporated into SEO. Well, as I have said before, if you can read it then so can search engines. You don’t want a bunch of nonsense appearing on your website. Search engines could see this as a spammy site if the content doesn’t make any sense. No, the search engines cannot actually read your webpage, but if it sees a lot of characters that do not belong (particularly in a repetitive fashion), it will not reflect positively on your site. You want more traffic, in any honest way possible.

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