Education

Website Copywriting Tips – Top 10

Research the keywords and phrases you want to target
Making sure your website is relevant to your target market and can be found online by them is essential. Using a free keyword tool such as Google’s allows you to enter your web address and get a list of related keywords and phrases you may want to target.
It’s important to include geographic phrases if you only offer a service in a specific part of the UK e.g. “plumber Edinburgh” rather than just targeting “plumber”.
Don’t settle for ‘good enough’
Even the best copywriters around won’t get every piece of web copywriting bang on first time. It’s important to invest time in your copywriting to get it as polished as possible. If you’ve written a draft and think “that’ll do” or “that’s good enough” you need to go back to it again and make it great rather than just quite good.
Avoid boring corporate speak
Despite what you may think, few visitors to your website will want to read formal corporate speak. Injecting personality into your text is vital if you want to connect with your target market. You should always write with your customer in mind rather than yourself. Don’t write about your business, write about how using your product or service will directly benefit your potential customers.
Invest in a copywriting book
If you’re serious about making the words on your website work, then a good copywriting book is a must. Don’t leave things to chance; anyone can write text for their website but there’s a real art to writing copy that gets results.
A copywriting book will at the very least give you the basics on what to consider and what to avoid. ” Web Copy That Sells ” by Maria Veloso provides a wealth of useful web copywriting information.
Get a second opinion
When you’ve finished writing your website copy, it’s a good idea to let someone else read it, preferably someone in your target market. They will be able to give you an honest assessment of whether or not it’s likely to convince them to contact you or buy your product.
Look at websites across a range of industries
If you’re new to copywriting and haven’t paid much attention to words on websites before, it’s a good idea to look at a range of different sites to see how they’ve written their copy.
While you should never copy the actual content from other websites, looking at different styles of writing may help you decide on your own approach.
Keep your copy short and to the point
People want information instantly online. The job of your website copy is to get across the benefits of your service or product as clearly and concisely as possible.
For example, if you’re an electrician people will want to know why they should use you rather than other local electricians so don’t write any technical information or jargon that will confuse your target market.
How to write meta tags
There are two main meta tags you need to consider when writing your website copy.
The meta title is the main title for each web page and appears as the heading in the search engine results. It’s important you use relevant keywords and phrases in your meta title.
The meta description is the two lines of text under the meta title that appear in the search engine results. Meta descriptions are you opportunity to convince people to click through to your website and again should include keywords and phrases relevant to each page.
Your web designer will be able to implement your meta titles and descriptions for you.
Where to place your keywords and phrases
In terms of SEO it’s best to place your keywords as early as possible in your meta title, headings, sub-headings and main text. This will also help your site appear more relevant to visitors.
Take your website copywriting seriously
The text on your website really does have the power to make or break your online business. Comparing it to the offline world, would you just hire any sales person to represent your company or would you conduct interviews to make sure you got the right person?
Your website copy is there 24/7 so it’s critical that you take it seriously as it’s representing your business even when you sleep.

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