Crafting Website Copy that Drives SEO and Conversions

Know your audience

For your copy to be effective, it needs to engage your audience. Having a deep understanding of who your audience is will not only help you establish a tone of voice that resonates with them, but it will also help inform your keyword strategy. It often comes down to trial and error, so testing captions and how the audience responds to them on social media can help you create strong website content.

Create a keyword strategy

Optimising your copy for SEO is all about keywords. When you are working on your keyword strategy, think about who your audience is and what they search for. What pain points does your product or service address. Think about what your audience needs and values and build on that. A good entry point for those unfamiliar with SEO is to enter search terms into Google that you think your audience would use and see what some of the popular results are.

Get the keyword balance right

Ensuring targeted keywords appear throughout your web copy is important, but there must be a strategy in place. Getting the balance right is a skill to be mastered – the content still needs to read well, so keywords must fit into the context and flow without being jarring for the reader. Keyword density is something you should keep in mind while writing as your keywords need to appear enough for Google and other search engines to consider your page relevant, but don’t overdo it. Keyword stuffing can actually make your ranking drop.

Don’t forget about your page title and meta description

Page titles and meta descriptions are an important indicator of the relevance of a page to Google as well as your audience. Google considers the page title as part of the ranking algorithm and the meta description appears on the SERPs (search engine results pages). A good meta description concisely summarises what the page is about and lets a potential visitor know what they can expect to find on your web page. The recommended length is around 155 characters so it doesn’t get cut off by Google.

Include relevant and effective CTAs

You should consider the overall purpose and objective of each page you are writing copy for. If the aim is to increase conversions, you absolutely must include a relevant and effective call to action (CTA). Your CTA should encourage visitors to your page to perform a specific act, for example: ‘Get in touch today’.

Make your copy easily digestible

The readability of your copy doesn’t just come down to what the actual text says. While it should go without saying that you write in proper English and ensure your text is free from spelling and grammatical errors, the visual layout of the text is of equal importance. Your copy should be structured with a main heading and sub headings throughout. Refrain from using huge chunks of text – instead break your copy down into smaller, easier to navigate paragraphs, which helps visitors to your site find the relevant information they are looking for. You can use bullet points too, which helps readers scan a page more easily.