Why content should become your baby

I was sitting in the office today and heard about a phone call, inspiring me to write this post. The client wanted us to write the company history. Now, not only did we not know the history, but the content of your website is the reason the website exists and should be written with care, dedication, and effort. In the SEO world, there’s an infamous expression - “Content is king”.

Make the text on your website your baby. If you look after it, it can have a strong impact on your viewers. And that’s what you want right?

Right.

After reading Box UK’s Ultimate Website Launch Checklist, I took particular note to how long the section on content and style was. It reminded me of back in design school where they prove how content needs to be looked over with multiple sets of eyes. Each of us must have handed our CV’s to the teacher ten times before they were error-free from spelling and grammar mistakes. As a rule of thumb for both client and designer, look over content twice and if there’s somebody in the room, it doesn’t hurt to get someone else to take a look at it.

What to look for in your content:

  1. Punctuation errors
  2. Spelling errors. Spell checkers are nice.
  3. Commonly repeated terms that can be expressed in different, more creative terms. Expand your lexicon and use a thesaurus!
  4. Check your links and ALT text and make sure they’re error free and link to their respective locations
  5. Look at every nook and cranny of your site and make sure there’s no leftover Lorem Ipsum or other test/ replacement text
  6. Keep your tense and tone consistent
  7. Ensure the word variation is the same. For example, Canadian English is different from UK and US English.

Call me out on any potential spelling errors in this post.

Related posts:

  1. Idea engineering: Making your content unique
  2. Designing a logo from scratch part 1: Creative Brainstorming

Robin Bastien
Howdy! I'd the head of Ocular Harmony. I spend most of my time designing, reading beatnick literature, and pounding sound waves of experimental pulsation into my brain's frontal lobes. Contact me if you have any questions!


Get the latest: RSS feed for new comments on this post

3 Comments

  1. Deed poll says:


    April 11, 2009

    I think you are right. There are too many sites where content is the last thing the writer worries about.

  2. New artist Crocdile says:


    May 27, 2009

    I absolutely agree! Content is king, indeed! Too much websites around is just about marketing or about articles which no body read. Most of webmasters think just about Page Rank… But the best way to gain good rank in long terms is content! It is much easier to promote website with quality content.

    Btw, your advices are useful! Thanks

  3. Qeen of Island says:


    June 17, 2009

    Content is king, but unfotunetly in now days design is perhaps more important! This notes help me a lot! Thanks