In the quest to court big search engines, many webmasters may overlook what is arguably the most important part of any website: the quality of your copy. Copy writing is an important part of any business, and it’s essential to building a successful website. After all, your site is how you communicate with your clients, so you have to ensure that you are using the best possible approach. Developing good copy takes time, editing, and is best done with more than one person. Having at least two people go over every word of your site is essential to catching harder to miss mistakes, so always have at least one person edit your writing.

When writing for your website, it is easy to focus too heavily on keywords for SEO; you have to ensure that each page of your site gets its point across. Each page is there for a reason, so make sure that a reader can immediately tell what information the page will provide them. You should also include useful and descriptive entries in your meta tags, because this information is what is shown to users searching for your site on Google.

You should be aware by now, but due to the breadth of the internet, it is likely you are in direct competition with more than a few web sites. Your site should make a specific effort to address what makes your product unique, superior, or otherwise the best choice for your customers. You have to address the issue of competition, because otherwise you won’t stand out. List what you see as your signature features, and highlight your product’s superiority at certain tasks compared to the competition. Its all about selling your product.

You should not, however, forget about Search Engine Optimization, while it often gets overemphasized, it is still important. The key is, you must make your keywords a natural part of your copy, incorporating them seamlessly into sentences, descriptions, and html titles. Use title tags wisely, they are given more weight as keywords, so take advantage of this. The key is to make your SEO invisible, its there, but the customer just reads through it, because it feels natural. This approach means you get the best of both worlds, great copy for your customers, and a good search engine rank for your site.

Finally, you have to remember to make clear what you want your customer to do and how. If you want them to read your blog and leave a comment, indicate that on your site, make sure the comment button is large and instruct the reader to post a comment if they are interested. If you are selling something, tell the reader its time to buy, there’s never been a better time, etc. and make sure your buy button is large and easy to find. By focusing your writing on your reader, not Google, you will get much better results from your site.

Posted by Ian Logsdon.
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