Content is King...

1. Accessibility

Your content needs to be accessible, to that end one of the simplest things to do is to use the correct font size and style in your articles. 

The suggestion from the Royal National Institute for the Blind is that it recommends 14 pt. Helvetica or Ariel font (Tahoma and other font styles are suggested too).  The minimum font size is set at 12 pt, but this does not meet most of the visual needs of those with partial sight.    Additionally, any images that are not logos or are not present for design reasons should have appropriate descriptive text in an alt tag (A special place on websites to help the visually impaired – usually a facility provided in any content management system to allow the addition of text).  

See short link  https://goo.gl/D6nwq7 that is https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/inclusive-communication/accessible-communication-formats

If you have clicked on either of the above links you will find that 16 pt is mentioned and of course if you use this size your crucial content will be read by nearly all your visitors that are partially blind.  The site also recommends that 70-80 characters should be used per line except when you are using columns.

2.  Interest

The best and most useful content is written well, but more importantly,  it should grab your reader’s eyes and interest.  This is obvious but content that is boring will not be read.   Nor will it encourage anyone to look at anything else you write.

3. Entertain When You Can

And of course, not all of what you write can entertain. 

The golden rule if your text is not useful or interesting, write fun-filled content that excites and entertains.

4. Useful

It is important that any content interests or entertains.  But if it is not useful and does not relate to the reader’s needs he or she may not come back.   To avoid that you can create useful content such as tutorials and educational material.  This technique is popular with readers and with search engines.

5. Research Well

Your content needs to be well researched, ideally from multiple sources.  Some are obvious:-

• Google and Google Alerts
• Yahoo
• Facebook Search
• LinkedIn Search
• Twitter Search
• and Bing 

Basically,  these are the big search engines and you will probably know more

The less obvious are:

• Google’s Keyword Planner short link https://goo.gl/CE7NLM  https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/
• IFTTT .com –  If This Then That – There you can create tasks to deliver content to your inbox.
• Inoreader .com which is basically a content curator see more ways it can be used easily at short link https://goo.gl/oZxbXX https://www.maketecheasier.com/customizing-inoreader-for-web/
• Questions and Answers at Quora .com – See for instance this question with some answers… short link https://goo.gl/dcA1t2    https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-10-most-useful-WordPress-plugins-you-can-install-and-why
• Topics at Reddit – https://www.reddit.com/ for well-informed topics about most subjects
• Talkwalker Alerts see https://www.talkwalker.com/alerts

6. Factually Correct

You need to check your content and of course, that takes time,  One needs to verify that at the outset and of course you need to go back to the article from time to time as facts do change.

7. Grammatically Correct

This is always a challenge.  For some people,  it is easy, while for others that may not be the case.  If you are using the Chrome browser there is Grammarly Extension that may help.  For WordPress, there is the standard JetPack plugin, by using the Proofreading Function (Grammar and Spelling).   Don’t forget to tick the proofread check box.

I am pulled up from time to time by the Grammar police on the Internet.  But it will surprise you to know that Google can tell if your content is grammatically correct or not.  Therefore, it is very important that your spelling, grammar, and punctuation are all correct.  So get those free or paid for extensions from Google and WordPress now.

8. Long

The bad news is that these days, Google wants quality content,  and much more than 300 words,  The nearer to a  thousand words the better.  But three thousand words is top-notch and that is what we all should be aiming for.  Perhaps I need a content writer!

9. Media

Having a variety of media on your pages is great for your visitors, and Google loves a variety of Media too.   That is images, video clips, slides, audio tracks, and games.   You do need to balance with written content on your site,  especially if you are using video clips.  There is a requirement that video clips should have text script or a textual explanation about it.

10.  White Space

Create white space if you can.   Office typists prior to the year 2,000 did this automatically,  They used the following rules.   

Double or One and a half space between lines

Two spaces between sentences

and Two lines between paragraphs.