I remember putting together my first website - when I was about 14 - and how long it took me to get the design just right. I planned it all carefully in my head, working out all the pages I thought a site should have (Main, About Me, Pictures and Links!). I even drew out a sitemap on paper, to make sure everything was perfect!

Then I painstakingly taught myself .html (this was back in the days before WYSIWYG editors were around), and drew out each .jpg from scratch. It took me several weeks, but eventually the site was finished. All I needed to do was to write the content to fill it. It was only then that I realised that I didn't have a single thing I wanted to say.

I designed my second website when I was in High School, and it was a far more ambitious affair. I made a page for each of my friends, and filled it with things I knew would make them laugh. The home page was little more than a list of links, because I wanted people to be able to find their pages easily. The design flowed naturally from the content, and unlike my first website, this one was a huge success. Because I had written it with my audience in mind, rather than trying to fit the content around the design, it was more accessible, and people took the time to read it. As a result, the site became very popular, and people still talk about it now, even though the site has been offline for years.

Both of my sites were very basic, amateur efforts, but the principle applies equally no matter what size the site. Design is important, but content is king. The web is a communication medium - if you publish something online, you obviously have something you want to say, and you cannot afford to let your words be overshadowed by your flashy new website. You need to learn to design for your content.

Design to communicate

The most important part of your website is the content itself. You have something to say, and you must make sure you say it, or all your effort has been wasted. But there's no point in just regurgitating a few paragraphs of marketing hype - web users are surprisingly savvy, and they can see through that in an instant; an instant in which they will have hit the back button and moved on down the list of search results.

You need to find out what people are looking for, and give it to them.

Do some research; think about which terms you would use to search if you wanted to buy your product, and then look them up. Have a look at who your competitors are, and what they are doing. Research on Wordtracker and see if there are any other keywords you could try.

Then use your imagination. Think about why people might be looking for your product and write for them. If your site advertises a skiing hotel in Switzerland, don't just advertise for 'hotels in Switzerland', provide useful articles about skiing, and then point them to your hotel in the middle of a ski resort.

When you know what content you require, you need to write it. The key to this is that it must be written well - you want people to read it and find the information useful. There's a lot of rubbish out there, and if people find a genuinely useful article they will remember it and come back for more. With that in mind, here are a few ideas for writing better content: