Web Page Content Template for a whitepaper/Informational Article

When you think of web content, you probably think of informational articles. Of course, as you've already seen, informational articles are just the icing on the cake of a business website that already has the most essential pages for helping customers and potential customers make decisions about their products or services.

But once you've gotten those essential pages finished, the great bulk of your new pages may will be whitepapers or informational articles. Indeed, a stock of information-packed, well-written web pages is the necessary foundation for getting return visitors, links to your website, and a high ranking in the search engines for your target keywords.

The HTML source code for the template is at the bottom of this page. Just copy and paste the code in the body of your new whitepaper/informational article web page to make getting

[Title/headline of your whitepaper or informational article--include a keyword relating to your subject matter toward the beginning of the title so the article will be easier to find]

by [writer's name--you can also just use your company's name, or your company's name followed by the word "staff"]

[brief biography of the writer of the article, if you identified an actual person as the writer.] [brief 1-2-sentence description of what your company does]
[Link to your website--strongly recommended. One of the great values of these articles is that you can gain incoming links from people who repost them on their websites. If you are targeting specific keywords, be sure to include them in the link text.]

Tips:

Keep the author's biography and the description of your company under a single paragraph, preferable less than 100 words.
Avoid promotional or marketing language or hype. Particularly avoid superlatives--even if you are the best rotgut redistributor on Prince Edward Island, you don't have enough space here to support the claim with sufficient evidence to make it believeable.

[Optional: one-three-sentence summary of the article, including the most important conclusions, or a teaser that only hints at the important conclusions.]

[Hook: in the first paragraph, present the problem or subject of the article in a way that captures the reader's interest. Seeming paradoxes or logical challenges work well. This is also a good place for a rhetorical question.]

[Section 1 of your article]

[Section 2 of your article]

[Concluding paragraph]

Tips:

While traditional whitepapers were written in a dry style, and government whitepapers still are, your business whitepapers must avoid being too dry at all costs. Your primary goal is to give web surfers something they will be glad they read, not simply to educate them (they can get that in school). The tone of your article should be appropriate for your target audience, your industry or field, the image you are trying to project for the author and the company, and, of course, the subject matter.
Avoid promotional or marketing language or hype. This information is supposed to be believable, so don't sound like a salesman.
Don't know what to write? Ask your website visitors. Set up a poll for what they would most like to see covered next in an article on your website. Or just contact some of your customers and ask them what topics interest them. You should also read websites, newsletters, and journals related to your field on a regular basis. As a last resort, see what topics your competitors are writing about and use those.
Variations of the whitepaper/informational article include: "news" articles that are really just informational articles on topical subjects; how-to articles; reviews; advisories/warnings; and even some well-written blog entries.

Informational Article/Whitepaper Template HTML Source code

This source code is for the main body of the page--not the entire web page. It contains no formatting or layout. Place it between the <body></body> tags. If your page has formatting such as sidebars, headers, and footers, make sure to place this code in the right spot, in a special place in the layout table or div tags.