Is your website copy hurting your business?

When surfing the net for a product or service, we’ve all landed on one of those webpages that just looks exhausting. There is too much text, it’s too dense, it’s way too busy. We maybe spend about 15 seconds looking at it and then close the window. Even if that website’s company was the perfect match for what we were looking for, we won’t know because of their poor web copy.

Great web copy pulls the viewer in and tells them everything they need to know right off the bat. It ranks well in Google and other search engines thanks to smart SEO. And, most importantly, highly ranked web copy converts. Great copy can be incredibly difficult and time-consuming to write, so here are a few areas to focus on that will improve your web copy and get you higher rankings on search engines:

Make It About Them

When writing, ask yourself, “what you can do for your customers?” and “what do they want?”. Address their needs and issues. Provide quality content and services that they want to read.

One way to see if your web copy is customer-focused is to check how many times you’ve used the word “We”, rather than “You”. If you have used “We” far more than “You”, you should refocus your website copy.

Knowing your audience is one of the most important aspects of writing web copy. You need to know who you are writing for. If your page is filled with content focused on you, guess what? They won’t read it. Good web copy isn’t about you, it should be about them.

Smart Use of Keywords

Before writing copy, you should create a list of keywords that people search for. They should be spread throughout your web copy, including in your description tags and page titles. They need to be relevant to your website’s content, so search engines know what your website is all about. Headlines really matter when it comes to ranking, so ensure your headlines contain keywords.

Use Keywords in Headlines

A smart use of keywords is an essential component of good SEO. Search engines rank your page by analysing a number of different factors, including how often you use certain words in the text. By using keywords, you can increase your ranking and visibility online. It is one of the most valuable services a web marketing company can offer.

To the Point

Most people that visit your site aren’t going to want to spend time reading paragraphs of text to find what they want. Being clear and concise, with short sentences that are to the point, will help your visitors quickly find the desired information. They aren’t there to read a novel, they are there to find out what you can do for them. If your customers want more information, they will delve further into your site, check your blog, or simply give your business a call or email.

Use short bursts of text, relying on headlines and headings to guide your audience’s eyes to the relevant information. If they need to spend more than a few seconds finding the information they want, they will simply move onto the next page. Keep your web copy short and to the point. Learning to write great web copy can be difficult to master (), but the payoff when it comes to your website’s ranking is worth it.

When it comes to good web copy, clever is good, but clarity is better.

Utilize Internal & External Links

Internal links are easy to create and manage. Since you have control over all the pages of your website, you can always make sure that the link is active and will direct the user to the right place. As some pages of your website rank higher than others, having internal links in your web copy will help with SEO. If you can, attach a relevant link to a highly valuable keyword in your copy to give it even more “juice”. For example, if you were to attach a keyword like copywriting to a relevant link, both pages could benefit. See what we did there?

External links can be a bit more challenging. You need to make sure that any webpages you link to in your web copy are highly ranked and trusted sites. If you accidently link to an untrustworthy website that could spread malware, your SEO ranking could be greatly hurt. That being said, your site could greatly benefit from being linked to a highly valuable website like Google or Reddit. Even linking to popular, related blogs or articles can be a huge help.

An internal link is a link from one page to another on the same website, while external links lead to pages on another website. This is an essential practice to make sure that one webpage’s ranking is linked with another.

Strong Call-to-Action

The call-to-action is the entire reason they have come to your site. A successful CTA results in conversions. A CTA can be just about anything, from a offer to call your business to a download for a free PDF.

If you want to see some examples of quality, highly ranked web copy, check out some of these awesome examples we have designed for many of our clients.