Not all copywriting is created equal. Give your website a boost with these website copywriting best practices.

If you’ve spent hours constructing and curating the most beautiful long form paragraphs and stories for your website, I might be about to burst your bubble. Successful website copywriting is not about how much content you write but how you structure it.

Users do not typically sit and read the whole webpage line by line. Why? Well, they are impatient and want to seek out the information they actually need quickly. Hell, you may be already skipping this intro looking for the good stuff below ( I see you.)

Take an online food blog for example. You might have searched for a vegetable kofta recipe, clicked on it and started reading…only to be barraged by the recipe makers thoughts about how their kids LOVE this and their husband doesn’t even MISS the meat. You didn’t come for a life story, you came for the ingredients and the method…which is why food bloggers now have a convenient “jump to recipe” button at the top of the page.

I hear you saying “but, don’t you need a decent amount of copy on your website to be able to effectively rank on Google?” and the answer to this is yes but there are rules.

You see, important pages such as:

• Homepage
• About Page
• Services
• Contact

Should be relatively short on copy, to the point, enticing and information baring while pages such as:

• Blog posts
• Whitepapers
• Case Studies
• Media Releases

Are where users can find out more about your business and what you stand for if they want to, or feel compelled to. These pages should be where the bulk of your copy sits.

Putting your life story on your main pages will turn people away. They simply don’t have the time or the want to read about it.

Now we have that clarified, let’s look at some website copywriting best practices for your website.

 

1. Headings

What you put in your headings is super important when it comes to website copywriting. You have a tiny window to capture your audiences attention so you want to make it count.

Headings should be informative and enticing. Your aim is to keep the audience on your page.

Structuring your headings with questions and colons can get your audience thinking. I have written more about this in another article if you’re keen to explore further and see some examples.

 

2. Short Paragraphs

As mentioned previously, people are scanners. They are often on their mobile phones looking for quick answers or information that is going to get straight to what they need. So in short, don’t waffle on.

This isn’t as easy as it seems. As humans we have a tendency to over explain, thinking our audience isn’t going understand what we’re talking about. There is an art to it and it does take practice.

Remember that your short paragraphs also have to hold important information that is also entertaining.

 

3. Bullet Points

Need to explain more about your product or service than just what’s in your short paragraph? Break it out into bullet points. Bullet points are easy to digest, don’t require much explanation and have a high readability score.

 

4. Highlighting Your Keywords and Phrases

So you’ve done your research on what main keywords to put in your website copy to help rank on Google and understand what phrases your audience is searching for. 

These should be added into your headings, short phrases and bullet points wherever it suits (remember not to over do it, this is called Keyword Stuffing and Google will punish you for it.)

To help your audience find exactly what they’re looking for as they scan the page, highlight them. It can be in bold, underlined or in a different colour.

 

5. Tone of Voice

Know who you’re writing for and stick with it. Using the wrong tone of voice can quickly put people off going any further into your website.

If you’re writing for business professionals for example put yourselves in their shoes. What do they want? Do they want beautiful words that make them FEEL something? Probably not, they are more likely to respond to short, sharp and clear sentences.

If you get stuck with this check out your competitors sites and how your audience interacts on platforms like LinkedIn.

Now that you have a few of these tricks up your sleeve, take a look at your current website and have a think about how you can easily improve for a better experience for your audience.