We’ve yet to meet a small business owner who tells us they love writing—and we get why. It can take forever to get your thoughts on the page. You probably doubt that what you did write is even good. And (let’s be real) trying to write might make you feel stupid (which you definitely aren’t!!). All these messy feelings about writing are a big reason why a lot of small business’ websites are real light on copy—basically y’all are avoiding it. But website copy is crucial to having a website that a) gets found on the internet and b) directs people to buy from you. So today, we wanted to share our best practices for writing website copy with you—so you can do a great job yourself or when working with a copywriter.
It starts with SEO keyword research
If website copy gets written without any SEO keywords will it ever get found on the internet? The answer is uh, maybe in a long shot. So, before you type your first word (or before someone you hire types it), you have to have done your SEO keyword research.
Pro-tip: Check out this SEO guide for small business owners to learn the basics!
Create a content strategy
This is the other thing you need to do before writing your first words. Because great website copy isn’t something that just gets slapped together—great website copy is strategic. So for each page of your website, sit down and outline what needs to be strategically communicated as well as what story needs to be told. This literally can be an outline like you learned in elementary school with bullet points—just be sure to break things into different and skimmable sections to keep people engaged.
Pro-tip: Your content strategy should include notes about which SEO keywords to use on each page as well as define where your CTAs (calls to action) are and what they link to.
Write for your customer
The biggest mistake we see made with website copy is copy that it talks about you more than it talks about your customer. And we get it—you know a lot about yourself, your business, and your products or services. What seems less clear is knowing exactly who your customers are as people.
But your customers are on your website thinking about whether or not they are going to buy from you, and they need to trust you before they do. So when you make your customer the main character of the story, you are demonstrating you know who they are and what they are struggling with—and are way more likely to get them to buy in fast.
Pro-tip: When you create a marketing strategy in Enji, you get a customer persona too! Build this out to define their problems and the solutions you offer and use that to inform your website copy.
Make your copy skimmable
As much as we’d like to think our potential customers and clients are going to read every word on our website, they don’t (wah wah). So, even though you want to have at least 350-500 words on each of your website’s pages to make the search engines happy, you’re doing yourself a major favor by not just having “walls of text”.
Make your copy easy-to-read and skimmable by using headlines and short copy blocks. And make your main point in the headline (read: don’t bury the lead) because this will ensure people are getting the important information.
Use calls to action (CTAs)
Your website copy is meant to inform people, but it’s also meant to direct them. So, it is definitely a best practice to include calls to action (CTAs) that essentially tell people what you want them to do or where you want them to go next. CTAs can be linked text but they are most effective when they are linked buttons.
Writing your website copy is something you can totally do yourself, but if you have even a little bit of hesitation about it, this is absolutely an area that is worth hiring a professional copywriter! Just make sure they understand your industry and have a foundational understanding of SEO too.
