Writing copy for you own websites is often more of a challenge than you may expect. The words on your website need to quickly catch the attention of the visitor, engage and encourage your readers to become paying customers. And let’s not forget that keywords also need to be incorporated for Google!
Also website layouts aren’t fixed like print: different monitor sizes, mobile devices (iPods, BlackBerry’s etc) and individual setting will all affect the positioning and display of your words.
I’d say that writing strong and effective copy is easily as challenging as the website design and build. Here are some brilliant tips for spicing up your website copy!
1) Focus on one topic per page.
This is probably one of the single most important tip. By using a single page for each service or topic you will avoid confusing visitors with lots of extra information. Your devoted pages will also be naturally keyword rich for Google – who also prefer pages with focus.
2) Include clear calls to action on each page.
This may be as simple as encouraging visitors to contact you for more information or to drive them to a particular information rich page with another strong call to action. The simplest way to include a call to action is to use a nice graphic and some text to make it very clear to the visitor what they need to do next.
3) Don’t just talk about yourself.
So many website are filled with reams and reams of text about how long the company has been established, the company goals, the team and lots of “we do this” and “we do that”. This needs to be completely turned on it’s head. Instead of thinking about what your business does, think about the problems and needs of your clients.
4) Use links.
It is a website after all! Don’t go crazy – but using internal links to pages from your own website can help visitor find relevant information and is also great for Google.
5) Break up long text with catchy headlines.
Lots of text can be very hard to read, especially on websites. Breaking up your text with headlines will make it much easier for your visitors to find the information they need. Headlines (if coded correctly) are considered important by Google – so use a keyword in the headline too.
Finally, I would like to add that, if people are not responding to your copy or Google is not finding you – then tweak it! Strong copy will help you to win more clients and make it easier for Google to find you. It’s tricky and time consuming to get right but well worth the effort.
