How To Write Better Content >> 3 Simple But Powerful Mental Models

0:00Three Mental Models for Better Content

WP Speed Fix. I am back with another video. I just sent this one in a mail out. We actually sent this in a mail out two years ago as well, and the mail out was titled "How to beat our AI content overlords". I thought I'd make this video and we'll turn it into a blog post today, because we have this conversation all the time with customers about content.

Content is really important, obviously, and there's a lot of bad content on the web. These are some really simple ideas to make your content perform better. Especially in the age of AI content, when it's easy to pump out low quality nonsense at scale, these things become even more important and even more powerful. There are three techniques, or frameworks, or mental models I'll talk about here. I'll try and make this video quick because it's very simple, and just like a lot of the things we talk about on our website and in our videos, they're simple but not obvious things. So let's get into it.

0:47Inverted Pyramid Writing: Put the Good Stuff First

The first one is called inverted pyramid writing. Journalists are taught this technique. Basically, you put the good stuff at the top of the page to engage the reader. This is the opposite of what a lot of online content looks like, where you get this whole backstory, filled with nonsense in order to make the content long, with the expectation that longer content ranks higher. It doesn't, for no reason, and it adds no value.

I've got an example here. You search for best air fryers and you get to the page and it has two, three, five paragraphs on what air fryers are. It makes no sense, because if you've Googled best air fryers, you already want an air fryer. You already know what they are. You don't need an explanation of what an air fryer is. It's very much like going to a recipe site and getting a whole bunch of waffle about how it's their grandma's recipe and how they love this, blah blah blah, instead of just the recipe, just the thing you're looking for, the most important stuff.

So we want to put the most important stuff at the top of the page to engage the visitor. That's very simple. This mirrors an in-world experience. We have another thing that we talk to customers about, which is that you want to take the first step of the sales process online. It would be like going into the Apple Store wanting to buy a new iPhone, and they give you a 10 minute spiel on what a telephone is and the history of the telephone. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. That's not the point. It doesn't answer what you need. The same thing goes for your content. So that's inverted pyramid writing. Basically, put the good stuff at the top. Very simple.

2:41The Early Close: Tell Ready-To-Buy Visitors What To Do

Next one, the early close. This is similar to the inverted pyramid. There'll be a percentage of customers who come to a page, particularly a product or service page, and they are ready to buy now. They just need to be told what to do. If it's a service business, a good example is a medical practice, a doctor or a dentist or some type of medical specialist. Someone comes there wanting teeth whitening, for example, and they just want to book an appointment. They just want to know what to do.

So having a line or two at the top of the page, "If you're ready to book now, call us on this number to book an appointment, or you can book online 24/7, click here", or something like that, answers those people straight away. It's very similar to the inverted pyramid, where you're putting the thing they're looking for at the top of the page, but this is what we call an early close. Rather than go through the whole spiel, you give them the instructions on what to do if they're ready right now.

The same thing goes for e-commerce. Particularly on e-commerce sites, category pages and product pages are the pages that rank, so in many cases they're the first page the customer sees when they get to the site. You want to have all the information on there for someone ready to buy now. If there's something weird about the product, if it's a big product so there are questions about shipping, or it's a product that would typically be financed, or it's a higher dollar purchase, have that stuff at the top of the page and explain how to do it. Another simple early close in an e-commerce scenario would be explaining how shipping works. If you have two day shipping or express shipping or same day or whatever it is, put that in there. That would count as an early close.

The whole concept here is that someone has come to your website and they're ready to do the thing, buy the thing, sign up, subscribe, whatever it is. You just need to tell them how, with very specific one, two, three steps. If you're ready now, do this. Call us on this number to book an appointment. Click here to book online. Add it to your cart. Complete the checkout process. Whatever it is, spell it out, and you'll find that it will, in some cases, dramatically improve conversions, calls, leads, whatever it is you want from customers. Again, it's very simple, and related to that inverted pyramid.

4:59Avoiding the Price List Problem on Category Pages

The next one, since we're talking about e-commerce, is related as well. You want to avoid the price list problem. We see this in e-commerce where category pages will typically be the pages that rank for particular terms. They're often used to rank for a lot of mid-tier terms, not your head terms and not specifically product terms, but product category terms. We have these category pages that are essentially just a price list. You're not really selling people on why they should buy, other than that you're the lowest price, and you're probably not going to be the lowest price, let's be real.

This one is very much specific to category pages. Someone comes to a category page, and it is essentially like a second homepage, the landing page they see in the first case. They need to know who you are, why they should buy from you, and how they should buy. We just talked about the early close, but you need to make sure those category pages have content: the basics around who you are and why they should buy from you. Some simple content there avoids the price list problem.

We see the same thing on content sites, where the category pages are just garbage that lists blog posts. There might be great content, great blog articles, on an affiliate site, an authority site, something like that, but the category pages effectively have the content version of the price list problem.

6:08Examples of Good Category Pages

I've got a couple of examples here. This one, Didgeridoo Breath, sells didgeridoos, and this is the primary category for their products, the didgeridoo category. You can see it's very similar to the homepage. It explains who they are, how to buy a didgeridoo, and how shipping works, because it's a big product. So it's not just a list of products. This is almost identical to the homepage in terms of style and content, but ultimately we're avoiding the price list problem.

In terms of a content site, James Clear, who's the author of Atomic Habits, has amazing category pages on his website. If you were going to use something as the standard for category pages on a content site, this would be it. The category page is essentially a summary of the overall category, whatever it's targeting. Then it has a one or two line summary of what the content is, and a link to it. This is excellent in terms of what a category page should look like.

7:18How We Can Help With Your Site

That's it for this video. I'm going to keep it really short, like I said. That's how we tell customers to write better content. That's how to get your content to perform and beat competitors, and it's applicable to all types of sites. A lot of the clients we work with are local businesses, franchise businesses, e-commerce and content sites, so it applies to all of them. They're very simple ideas, but they can be very powerful when you deploy them across an entire site.

I hope you found that useful. If you need help with your site, there are a few different ways we can help you. If you go to wpspeedfix.com, we have a bunch of free tools on the website: a free SEO audit, a free Core Web Vitals report, and a free site speed test report. Those are all completely free, no opt-in required, and they take about 90 seconds to run. We also have our mailing list, Simple, Not Obvious, where we share stuff like this. Like I said, we emailed this about two years ago, and there are a lot of similar concepts, simple but not obvious things, that we email about on that list.

If you want help with your site, you can request a free audit on the homepage. Tell us what you're looking for and what you need help with, and we'll review your site and come back to you within one business day or so. That's it for this video. If you have any other questions, post in the comments below. Cheers.