A professional copywriter can help you get found online

So, you’ve invested in a new website, and your web designer asked you to provide the copy, which you dutifully did. Are you now getting the results you want from your shiny new site? Are your visitors finding you, and more importantly, are they contacting you? If the answer is no, it may be because your website copy needs some review. This is where a professional copywriter can help. As a digital marketer and copywriter based in West Sussex, I know that your website copy is the unsung hero of your online presence.

So, in this article, I’m going to share some fundamental principles of how you can improve the copy on your website.

5 Tips from a professional copywriter to improve the words on your website!

Know your customer and know your competitors:

When you engage a professional copywriter to help you, they will first do their research. They’ll research your industry, your target audience and your competitor. As a business owner, you may think you know all of this. But when was the last time you delved into your client database to determine their unifying traits? If you know your audience, you can create some fictional personas; having those in mind when you craft content will help you engage with your visitors to sell your products or services.

Write for your customer:

As a professional copywriter, when clients ask me to complete website copy reviews, one of the pages I review most often is the About Us page. It’s one of the most visited pages on any website. But your visitors will head there not because they want to learn more about you but because they want to know more about what you can do for them. Did you spot the subtle difference?

Whatever you write on your website (on any page) must be written with your customer in mind. The moment you lose focus of the customer and begin to write for the business itself, you risk losing the attention of your visitors. Again, use those fictional personas to help you put your customers first. Be conversational in your copy; use ‘you’ and ‘your’ to speak more directly to your visitors.

Make it easy on the eye:

How we read online is different from how we read a printed publication. So, it stands to reason that the way we write online must be different too. Make your copy scannable by chunking text into paragraphs and using subheadings. Don’t use too many complex words, and keep sentences short where you can. All of this will help to ensure you have a good readability score. This is an essential factor in the search engine optimisation of your website. Good readability helps your visitor find what they want, influencing their behaviour signals, which Google measures.

Write for the Search Engines too:

I stand by what I’ve said above… Whatever you write on your website (on any page) must be written with your customer in mind. BUT… There’s always a but. You do need to consider the search engines too. And that’s when a professional copywriter with experience writing for the web comes into their own! When I first started in this business a decade and a half ago… One used to be able to optimise website content by including target search terms as often as possible, but that is no longer the case.

As search engine algorithms have advanced, they have begun to emphasise high-quality content that resonates with readers. If you publish original, valuable content written by experts (that’s you or your professional copywriter) demonstrating experience, you’ll get an excellent E-E-A-T score. Find out more about that here.

Always show your customer the way:

You may have crafted the most brilliant website copy in the world… But, if you don’t show your customer what you’d like to do next, it all counts for nothing. Clear Calls to Action are essential throughout your site to convert your visitors to customers. Whether you want them to buy the product, sign up for your newsletter or book a discovery call, show them the way!

What would I like you to do now? I’d like you to get in touch so we can create copy. Let’s get started on improving the words on your website!