When writing content for your website there are two primary things to consider:
- What information your audience is looking for
- What information search engines are looking for
To write content successfully you need to be strategic and engaging. Defining a content strategy will help guide your website copy, propel your online marketing and set the keyword foundations that help customers find you online.
We’re content strategy experts, so if you’re looking for any advice give us a shout. We’d love to help.
If your content strategy is in place and you’re ready to write copy for your website, here are our top tips!
Give your readers what they want
The most important thing to remember when writing website copy is this: give your readers the information they’re looking for.
Put yourself in their position and think, ‘why would someone visit my site? What are they looking for? How can I help them find what they’re looking for?’
It’s tempting to write content based on what you want to promote or share, but will your audience find that useful? If not, think twice before adding it to your site. That content may be better utilised on another digital channel – like Facebook or LinkedIn.
Analyse your website
What type of traffic is your website attracting? If most is organic that suggests people find you by searching Google or Bing for keywords that relate to your business, brand, location and inserted in your websites meta descriptions.
Once people have found your site, how long do they spend on each page? Look at your analytics and pay special attention to page dwell time and bounce rate. Longer dwell times indicate your audience is interested in the copy they’re reading, but high bounce rates indicate users aren’t finding the information they want / expect. Use this to inform the new copy you write and make improvements to existing copy.
Arrange content based on hierarchy
There will be certain pieces of information – or conversion criteria – that matter more than others. Have a think about the hierarchy of your copy for all pages on your website. The most important information should be on your homepage followed by subsequent site pages.
If you’re not sure what information is most important to your audience, have another look at your website analytics. What specific pages on your site have the highest amount of traffic and dwell time? Your most popular pages provide a good indication of what information is important to your audience and can inform content hierarchy changes.
For a more sophisticated analysis of content (also useful for single page websites) use heatmapping software to analyse specific headers, calls to action and even phrases that users are spending time hovering over / looking at.
Easy to read and understand
People read websites differently than they do printed materials. The devil is not in the detail when it comes to website copy. In fact, it’s the opposite – you want to feature important content so that it’s displayed prominently and is short, simple, easy to read.
Don’t try to sound like brand you’re not – a business you’re not. Be true to your brand, use your own tone of voice and keep your language as simple to understand as possible.
Break paragraphs into short chunks with approximately three to four sentences each, and refrain from using jargon that your audience won’t understand.
Writing website copy is simple!
Writing copy for your website doesn’t have to be complicated. Here’s a summary of our top tips that you can keep referring to:
- Give your readers the information they want from you
- Take a strategic approach to content – analyse the type of traffic coming to your site and how they’re engaging with copy
- Put the most important information at the top of every page, and order pages based on what your readers want
- Keep your sentences and paragraphs short, don’t use jargon – keep it simple
Remember, there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to your website. Just a series of tests that you can track, analyse and evolve.
If you’re looking for help writing website copy or putting together a content strategy, get in touch – we’d love to discuss your requirements.
