Most website professionals agree that, when building websites, copywriting should come before design.

This is because you have to get the content to roll out in the most persuasive, informative, motivating way possible. You can’t do that with design.

Design can make a fantastic difference to the user experience, the way the words are perceived, how easy they are to read, ease of site navigation and the image your company projects.

And, of course, designers and their technical people can produce responsive website designs that convert your desktop website design to mobile. And as over 50% of global web traffic originates from mobile devices, that’s a significant benefit!

The same goes for responsive images and fluid grids, which speed up website page loading times. This has a effect on how long a visitor stays on a site. Research shows that over 50% of mobile users will abandon a website if it takes longer that three seconds to load.

But to back to my initial statement, research also shows there are plenty of amateurish-looking websites that outperform beautiful websites – and that’s usually down to the copy.

So how do you go about copywriting for a website?

At the initial brief you should ask for:

• Details of the product or service
• The main benefits to customers – in order of importance
• The main goals the company has for the website, such as increased profits, increased turnover, the successful launch of a new product or service, the development of new market sectors
• The way the company likes to be contacted – phone, email, social media, website forms or live chat helplines.

You should then write a structure for the website which gives an idea of the content with possible page allocations.

Your next website hurdle

For your second hurdle, you enter the realm of navigation – to scroll or not to scroll, lazy-loading ‘Load more’ buttons and infinite scrolling. It’s heavy stuff, but it seems you can use a combination of techniques, depending on the product or service you’re talking about.

As a copywriter, unless you’re an expert on website scrolling, you should ask your client what they want and why. If they have experts, you should include them in the discussions.

One thing I can say: I wouldn’t recommend leaving your call to action and contact details to the end of a scroll. Place them at the top right of the ‘home/top page’ and at intervals throughout the scroll down.

SEO: your third website hurdle

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is another thorny topic.

Let’s start with a definition:

‘SEO is the art and science of persuading search engines, such as Google, to recommend your content to their users.’

Here’s how it works

When someone types a topic into a search engine, it displays a list of results. This is known as the organic part of the Search Engine Results Page, or SERPS. Companies pay nothing for these listings and when the user clicks your company and goes through to your website, there is no charge.

Listed in the SERPS, you will also see Google Ads, identified by an ‘Ad’ icon. The companies who place these ads pay Google every time someone clicks through to their website.

Google changes

Google constantly updates the algorithms it uses to compile SERPS. Sometimes there are major changes that can drastically affect your site’s rankings and traffic.

Most major changes are announced on Twitter via @searchliaison.

Google has thousands of Quality Raters, employed to improve the Google search experience by deciding on what makes a good or bad result.

There is also a large document which can be downloaded here, which lays out in meticulous detail the content Google wants to serve to its users. It talks about quality, but makes no mention of the ranking factors, or how the Google algorithm works.

EAT

EAT is an acronym used by Google. It stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Three attributes that are very important to Google and should be at the front of your mind when writing or re-writing website content.

Website content: On-page signals

These are signals Google finds on the page of your website. As a copywriter, this is something you have control of.

Here are a few useful tips on the website features rated by Google.

• Meta Titles – One of the main signals is the meta title. This gives search engines a brief description of the contents of your website. It can feature on the SERPS page. Here’s how my meta title currently shows up in a Google search.

• Keywords – These are the words and phrases that people type into a search engine box, when they’re looking for information. Good free online keyword search tools include Google Keyword Planner and Wordtracker.
• Rich content – Google doesn’t like pages crammed full of text. It wants to see images, sound and video to improve the user’s experience.
• New content – Update all your content regularly. This shows Google you’re providing information that’s up-to-date.
• Internal links – This involves placing links in your content to other pages on the website.
• Outbound links – These are outbound links to relevant, authoritative websites and sources. Another positive signal for Google.
• Inbound Links – Inbound, external or backlinks are links from another website which point to one of your website pages.

Apart from the technicalities in the background of websites, it’s still important to write clearly, focusing on benefits for the reader and using the right tone of voice. Split your copy up with benefit-led headlines and subheads, avoid topics which are unrelated to your client’s objectives and pay attention to your Call to Action.

Here’s a link to my websites page.

And another to my FREE 500-word, copy-editing offer