Did you know copywriting is as important for your website as the design? Most people understand the value of a good website design.
Hiring a professional to develop a great website makes perfect sense. But without effective copywriting, that beautiful website might not be as successful as you’d like.
What is Copywriting?
Copywriting is creating text for advertising or marketing. The term “copywriting” also refers to the product of that process. “Copy” is the written content.
The text on your website, blog, promotional ads, and any other form of marketing (both digital and print) is called copywriting. If you hire a professional to write this content, you’re hiring a copywriter.
Some copywriters also create visual aids to support the text, especially for content like blog posts. In addition to writing words, a copywriter may also include screenshots, infographics, or video clips to enhance the quality of the copy.
3 Reasons Copywriting is Important for Your Website
Your website has 2 primary audiences:
- Search engines, and
- Readers (your target audience or potential customers).
Copywriting is the key to satisfying both audiences. It’s also an important factor in developing and maintaining your brand reputation.
1. Search Engine Optimization
The best website in the world has no value if it doesn’t attract visitors. And those visitors want valuable content.
SEO increases the traffic to your site. Do you have an SEO strategy? You should! And copywriting must be a part of it.
Without content on your website for search engines to crawl, there’s no reason for them to recommend your website to potential customers who might search for your products or services.
Here are a few ways copywriting improves your SEO strategy.
Fresh Content
One way to enhance your website for search engines is by publishing fresh content regularly. This shows search engines that your website is active. Search engines like Google recommend sites with recent content that contain quality, relevant information.
Keywords
Keywords are another way to improve your website’s ranking in search results. The only way Google knows your site is an excellent result for a specific query is if that query (or related keywords and phrases) is in your website’s text.
Effective copywriting uses strategic keywords and phrases, including strategic placement of those keywords.
Be careful with this. “Keyword stuffing” is a technique that tries to stuff the content with keywords, but Google recognizes that and doesn’t like it. It’s best to write content naturally using language that makes sense to the reader and includes keywords in that content in a way that feels natural.
Reduce Bounce Rate
The bounce rate of any page on your website is the percentage of visitors who leave your site with no interaction. Ideally, visitors should take action after reading your content. Search engines look for measurable actions. For example, visitors to your site might:
- Make a purchase,
- Fill out a form,
- Click a link, or
- Subscribe to your newsletter.
Copywriting can attract visitors to your site and keep them on the page longer. If your content is well written, it will captivate, engage, and persuade your audience. And if your content provides valuable information, visitors will come back for more.
Backlinks
Backlinks (also recognized as inbound links or incoming links) are links to your site from another website. When a search engine crawls a page with many backlinks, it assumes that the page is valuable to users because others are referring to it. That’s why backlinks are highly effective at improving your search rankings.
But you won’t get backlinks without content. Copywriting is crucial if you want to build quality backlinks to increase your search rankings because other sites need something to link to.
Besides creating relevant content for your own website, you can create backlink opportunities by copywriting for other websites. A few ways of doing this include:
- Guest Posts – Write a blog post for another website in a related market. This is one of the best ways to generate quality backlinks, drive more traffic to your website, and establish your business as an authority in your industry.
- Link Roundups – Roundup posts are a collection of links on a specific topic. Find a roundup post related to your content and ask the author to include a link to your site.
- Interview Quotes – Find opportunities to answer journalist’s questions relating to your industry. If they quote you in their article, they might include a backlink to your site. (HARO is a good place to start with this method.)
Developing quality backlinks takes time. There are many ways of doing it, and all of them are easier when you have copywriting you can use.
2. User Experience & Lead Conversion
We design effective websites with the user’s experience in mind. Copywriting is part of that user experience.
When a visitor arrives at your website, does your content give them what they were looking for? Does your website provide the information that your audience needs?
Think beyond the basics of your contact information, hours of operation, and mission statement. Your website copy should include more content that’s useful to anyone interested in your industry, products, or services.
If you were looking for a business that sold rocking chairs, which website would impress you most?
- Website A: Company logo, picture of the storefront, brief “About Us” paragraph, and contact info
- Website B: All of the above plus a photo gallery and articles about furniture construction, the ergonomics of rocking chairs, how to choose the perfect chair, why upholstery matters, etc.
Copywriting makes all the difference.
Lead Conversion
It’s nice to have visitors enjoying your website, but your goal is to turn those visitors into paying customers.
Beyond providing valuable content, copywriting employs the art of persuasion. The words don’t have to be salesy, but they can lead a customer to take action. That action can be the first step toward a sale.
Revenue-generating content requires strategic word choice. Sometimes you need a lot of words, sometimes only one is necessary. But in every case, you need ‘copy’ to nudge your prospects through your lead funnels.
3. Brand Recognition,
Your brand is more than your logo. It’s a personality. Copywriting helps you express your brand personality. It’s an opportunity to stand apart from your competition. And it presents your brand as a reliable source and authority in your industry.
How to Write Good Copy for Your Website
Knowing why copywriting is important for your website doesn’t guarantee your copywriting will be effective. How can you create good content that generates search traffic and is genuinely useful to your readers?
Writing for the internet differs from writing for anything offline. Your audience reads online copywriting on many devices, browsers, and applications. Your copy won’t look the same on each device or platform. Good copywriting works well no matter where your audience finds it or on what device they read it.
Also, when people are reading online, there are so many distractions, and it’s super easy to click away to a different page. There’s more competition for the attention of your readers with online copy. Google has indexed hundreds of billions of web pages. That’s a ton of competition!
So your copywriting needs to be first class. Here are 6 keys to writing excellent copy for your website.
1. White Space
People who read online scan more than they read. If your page has large chunks of text, it will scare readers off. White space is essential.
Create white space by keeping paragraphs short. Use headings and subheadings. Break up the text by incorporating graphics.
2. Style
Every word matters. Rambling and repetition are not welcome in the world of excellent copy.
Write in a style that’s in keeping with your brand and will appeal to your target audience. A conversational tone without a bunch of industry jargon is your best bet.
Your headline or the first line of text is the first impression. If it’s not enough to convince the reader to continue to the next line, it doesn’t matter how good the rest of your copy is. Each line needs to draw the reader to the next. Keep it interesting and get to the point.
3. Formatting
When formatting your website content, traditional rules about sentence structure and paragraphs go out the window. Unless you’re writing for your English professor, format your copywriting in a way that keeps drawing the reader down the page and grabbing their attention.
Years ago, formatting tools like accordions and tabs were discouraged because bots couldn’t crawl it properly. Things have changed. You can clean up the page, keep it scannable and user-friendly by hiding bits of text with features like these.
4. Spelling, Grammer, & Punctuation
We don’t like to talk about spelling, grammar, and punctuation. We left school years ago. It was nice to leave those subjects behind. But they could mean the difference between making the sale or wasting money on an ineffective website.
Your copy needs editing. If you’re writing the copy yourself, have at least one other person go over it carefully before publishing it.
If you seem to miss many minor mistakes, try editing your copy by reading it backwards. Start with the last sentence and make your way to the start. It’s unnatural, so you’re less likely to overlook something that doesn’t fit.
Never publish web-copy the same day you write it. Please wait at least 24 hours, then give it another close look. You’ll be surprised how many minor errors you spot when you read it with fresh eyes.
5. Call to Action
Helpful information is great for visitors to your site, but the benefit to your business will be minimal if that’s all it is. Your website copy should lead the reader to action.
Every piece of copy on your website should include a call to action (CTA). Keep it short, simple, and concise.
Calls to action (CTAs) can be buttons your visitors click or a sentence that tells them what action to take (possibly with a link). Common calls to action include:
- Add to cart
- Buy now
- Call us
- Click here
- Contact us
- Find out more
- Get started
- Read more
- Sign up now
Don’t clutter your page and distract your reader with multiple CTAs. Stick to 1 CTA per page.
6. SEO Strategy
Your website copy needs to be optimized for search engines. This requires strategy.
Keywords are part of that strategy. The keywords you target need to be selected strategically, then placed in your copy strategically. The copy must include the keywords, but it won’t work to use “keyword stuffing.” The language must be natural and clearly written in a way that engages readers, not just search engines.
Writing effective copy for search engine optimization is a skill that takes practice.
The Importance of Copywriting for Your Marketing Strategy
Copywriting is important in your marketing strategy because it’s essential to successful search engine optimization, user experience, lead conversion, and brand recognition.
But there’s one more valuable benefit of good copywriting. It’s multi-purpose. It’s the foundation of a robust marketing strategy. One piece of copywriting can be the catalyst for various campaigns and spin-off pieces. For example:
- Blog post
- Email campaign
- Social media post (different posts for each platform)
- Video or video series
- Slideshare presentation (good for LinkedIn)
- Webinar
- Infographic
- Direct mail postcard
- Sales brochure
- Case study
- E-book,
Take this blog post, for example. Each subheading can serve as its own standalone piece of copy that can be shared on social media, turned into engaging graphics, or added to an email campaign. The post could be summarized in a video or converted into a presentation for potential clients. The possibilities are endless.
Without good copywriting, your marketing strategy could be all over the map. Copywriting gives you consistent content to use on every platform and every marketing campaign.
Get Effective Copywriting for Your Website
Crafting quality content takes time and skill that’s developed with practice. We recommend hiring a professional to design your website and do your copywriting. Website design and copywriting go hand in hand.
Code Web can help! Contact us for help with your digital marketing program. From website design to SEO and copywriting, we’ve got you covered!
