How to Layout Your Articles for Your Website

One of the most important areas of a website is the content, the reason you are building the site in the first place. I wanted to talk for a moment on how to best build this content in a way that will save time and help you organize your written word.

When I assemble the content for a client and ask for the articles they want to start with on their site I normally get it in a mass bundle with relevant titles to each page. The downside to getting it this way is that I don't know what comes first, what is most important and what is or should be considered supporting articles?

Groundwork for How I Organize Content for a Web Project

• Main Content Articles: These are the key point articles that are going to be used as main menu navigation elements and selling points for the website.
• Supporting Content Articles: These are articles that will be used to expand on the main content articles
• Supporting Bullet Points: Like Supporting Content Articles these will be used to support the Main Content Articles but they don't need to be full page articles and can instead be bullet points or quotes to support the full article or even the Supporting Content Articles.

Organizing your content either with the tree I describe here or something similar you will give your webmaster a sequence to follow that will result in less confusion and added work before the site goes live.

Breakdown of my Tree with More Details

Main Content Articles:

These articles are used to describe your product, service or deliver your main message. It is generally a good idea not to have these articles read like a book but rather point out the main selling points that you are trying to convey. Keep them short and use keywords, keyword phrases and bulleted lists. Set these to link to more details that will then expand on main message. This way you don't bore your sites visitors which generally leads into them leaving the site without getting the information that they came there to get.

Supporting Content Articles:

It is in these articles that you can expand on the message and give more details on what you said in your short to the point title page (Main Content Articles). Using the links from the main article to these pages, if the visitor clicks on this link you can be confident in knowing that they are interested and want to know more about what you are offering them. You still want to keep it as short and to the point as possible but you would be safe getting into more detail.

Supporting Bullet Points:

These can have multiple uses and can be used on both the Main Content Article pages as well as the Supporting Content. Use them as a way to deliver that one two punch message that will get your site visitors excited to know more. Then use these to link to either of the other two articles or use them to channel the visitor to a page where you can make a sale.