by Matt McGee
One World Telecommunications
posted: August 3, 2004
Whoever said "a picture is worth a thousand words" never
developed a successful web site. On the Internet the words you
use have a
lot more power than a single photo. They also have a lot more responsibility.
On your web site, the words you use have to
- sell your company, products or services,
- convert visitors to customers, and
- improve your search engine rankings.
With that in mind, writing great copy becomes an imperative part of your online success.
Let's start by killing off one of the great myths about writing
for the web: Everything you've heard about no one wanting
to read the information on web pages is wrong. The Internet is
the
greatest
research tool ever. Millions of shoppers use web sites to research
products and services before they buy, and you can bet they're
reading web pages very carefully. It's laughable to think that
text isn't important "because no one reads web pages." People do,
and search engine spiders do. So don't underestimate the need for
great copy.
Know Your Audience
The first step
in every successful communication is knowing your audience. Public
speakers, for example, make a point to know as much as possible
about their audience in
order to tailor the message to that group of listeners. For our
purposes in this article, the question is "Who are you writing
for?", and we just gave away the answer in the previous paragraph:
people and search engines.
This is the great challenge of writing great copy for the web:
the words you use must get people to your web site (by writing
for the search engines) and then convert them from visitors
into customers (by writing for them). So there are two different
types of writing in play on your web site. Call them "SEO
writing"
and "copywriting" if you want; whatever names you want
to use, the important thing is to understand how they differ and
how to
bring them together on your web site.
Copywriting
Entire courses, books, and businesses are devoted to the art of
copywriting, so we won't pretend to cover it in a couple paragraphs
here. But there are two elemental aspects of copywriting that are
easy to understand and use when writing copy for your web site:
- Focus on benefits, not features.
- Write a compelling "call to action."
Focusing on benefits, not features means you don't just write about the
technical aspects of the red widget you sell. You need to write
about the benefits to the consumer -- why he/she needs it, how
it will solve his/her problem or make the consumer's life better.
You want to make an emotional connection with the customer.
A compelling call to action is how you get your web site visitor to become
a customer. You want the person to take some action -- it may be
placing an order online, or signing up for your mailing list, or
picking up the phone and calling for more information. Whatever
it is, it's a key element of writing copy for your web site. There's so much more to copywriting, but if you at least remember
these two fundamentals, you'll be on the right track
to converting visitors into customers.
SEO Writing
This is essentially the other side of the coin. Search
engine crawlers don't care about words that make an emotional connection.
They don't care about benefits over features. They're cold-blooded
machines with an algorithm that scientifically analyzes every word
they find to determine what exactly a web page is about. And you
have to keep them happy, too, if you want people to find your site
in search engine results.
Once you've established the important search engine key words
and phrases (see our article, "Choosing
the Right Keywords" to
learn more) for your site, your goal is to work these words and
phrases into the written copy of your pages. Keyword density is
an important consideration -- don't repeat the same words and phrases
too often on a single page. Even the choice of words to highlight
in bold or larger text matters to search engines. And whenever
possible, if some of your copy can be linked to another page on
your site, it should. In other words, if your home page copy talks
about the benefits of your red widgets, the phrase "red widgets"
should link to your page about red widgets.
Of course, you have to do
all of this SEO writing in such a way that it doesn't adversely
impact the emotional impact of the text. It's a fine line to walk,
and as we said earlier, it's the great challenge about writing
for the web.
How Much is Enough? Too Much?
Some in the SEO and Copywriting industries believe you absolutely
must have 200 words per page (or more) in order to connect with
both human visitors and search engine crawlers, but the reality
is that there's no way to set a fixed size goal for every page
of a web site.
When wondering if you've written enough, or too much, keep in
mind what your two audiences want:
- Search engines want to know what a web page is about.
- Visitors want to know the benefits of your product or service.
It's quite possible that a well-written page can give each audience
what it wants in as little as a paragraph or two; other pages may
require several paragraphs. There's no fixed answer - it depends
on the subject matter.
But if you're going to err, it's better to err with too much copy
than not enough. Search engines can't rank a web page if they don't
have enough to determine what it's about. And human visitors will
just go to the next web site if they don't get enough information
from you.
In the end, it's important that you not underestimate the need
for great copy on your web site, and plenty of it. It's what both
your audiences want. And the web sites that deliver great copy
to both users and search engine crawlers are usually the ones enjoying
the most success.
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