Good content for your website is of great importance. Good content ensures two important things. First, it ensures that Google views your information as relevant, which will result in you ranking higher in the search results. Second, it ensures that your visitors read exactly what they want to read. However, there are also pitfalls lurking. Below, I list five of them.
1. Copying text from other websites
When you start copying text from other websites, you are shooting yourself in the foot. You might benefit from this for a very short time, but after that, you will be mercilessly punished by Google. Just like you here as you can read, Google will pay even more attention to that in the coming period.
2. "Welcome to our website"
I still often see this sentence on website homepages and in titles. Completely wrong! After all, this is the first thing people see of your website. That is why it is important to have an attractive sentence there, but also one containing the right keywords. Below you can see two examples of titles. Which one do you think is more likely to grab the target audience's attention in terms of text?
3. Do not use modal auxiliary verbs
Words like "will" and "can" read very slowly and don't flow smoothly. Finally, it doesn't come across as very decisive either.
4. "Just act normal, that's crazy enough already"
You really shouldn't think like that anymore in 2011. If you act normal, you won't stand out among your competitors, and that is precisely what you should do. Try to be original.
5. Long texts
People tend to scan everything they read on the internet. They are very specifically looking for certain information. If you have an extremely long text on your website, they really won't read it all the way through.
If you have any other don'ts of your own, please mention them in the comments. Good luck writing your web copy!