Content, content, content and no more empty pages online!
Write copy for web pages first
Thinking about websites, business owners often forget what is the most important part of its success – its copy. They are mostly focused on getting the web design and development done, but leave copywriting for the very end. This is never a good idea because the best practice is to write the content first, even before getting in touch with a web design company.
Never put empty web pages online
Even bigger mistake is putting a website live with empty pages! Business owners believe that content for web pages will follow soon when they will find a moment to put their hands on it. However there is always something more important for them to do, so sometimes it takes ages to add up a missing content . The effect of this practice may cause your company some good deals. Website visitors don’t want to give businesses to companies which websites instead of useful information give them pages with ‘in progress’ or ‘to follow’ text.
It is good to remember that no website at all will be better than a one which is unfinished and unprofessional.
Website position in search engines listings is always a big concern. It is true that Internet is full of business websites in every industry, so there will be always difficult to compete online at the beginning. However what most people don’t realize is the power of website content in search engine optimisation process. The fact is that website content was, is and will be the key factor for climbing up in search engines results lists. If written correctly and kept up to date and relevant, it will bring traffic to your website in a long term period.
Below are the tips how to adjust your website copy to maximise its potential.
Good website copy should:
- Be full of keywords and key phases relevant to your business and products: Think about what key phases your potential clients use to find your kind of business in Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. Then use those keywords when writing content for your web pages. Use specific and niche terms relevant to your products and services.
- Be easy to scan: Don’t forget that website is not a book, and nobody reads it line after line. Most people only quickly scan for what is there for them. To make your web content easy to scan use:
- Headers
- Sub headers
- Bullets
- Bolds
- Brakes
- Dashes
- Short sentences
- Be user focused: Nobody is actually interested in your company, people want to know what they can get from it. This is why you should write with customer benefits in mind.
- Answer all the questions: People like businesses which are transparent. Use ‘About Us’ and ‘FAQ’ pages to learn visitors about your company, products, services, terms and conditions, etc. This extra content will also be great for search engine spiders and crawlers that visit your website and index it for search engines.
- Be persuading: Include call to actions, testimonials, use professional graphic design for effective visual communication with your potential clients.
- Be smartly divided: Don’t write everything on one page. Websites should have smart structures. All the info need to be nicely sectioned and everything has to be easy to find. Visitors shouldn’t have to take too many steps in order to get what they want.
- Be up to date: You can use blogs to quickly add news, articles or marketing content. This will ensure visitors that you all the info on the website is up to date and they can use your offer. This is important because when a website is relevant to what a visitor is looking for but it has news from 2008 then a visitor will probably leave it thinking that this company might be closed now.
Excellent. Thanks so much for the post. -Kate
Great post. Very refreshing given all the duplicate content out there. Thanks for doing something original.