Those who have tried their hands at business copywriting will testify that it is much harder than it seems. Copywriting for your business is far more than simply writing down just a couple words on a webpage and hoping for the best. So whether it is enhancing a headline for a blog post or the call-to-action on a landing page, then below are some simple-yet-effective methods for better, clearer copy.
- Ask why
Consider a site’s content. Is it useful? Why is it there? Deciding the ‘why’ in content production is the beginning of making a business digital strategy. There is absolutely not any use posting articles, which do not encourage visitors to keep on your site and make them interested in your company, products or services. So how do you check if your web copy is functioning? A high bounce rate (a bounce is when somebody clicks on your website but then leaves immediately) can be due to bad copy.
- Do not duplicate content
Duplicated content can cause canonical problems, which happen when a search engine tries to get a badly redirected site using multiple URLs. Additionally, duplicated content may render a site less authoritative. Search engines such as Google have the ability to punish or blacklist a web site and tag content as spam. As an example, if you owned a Melbourne nursery, you would not want to end up in the bottom of the page for questions ‘nursery’ and ‘Melbourne’, simply due to some duplicated content.
- Do your research
Human error is sometimes unavoidable, but site mistakes can cost a small company dearly. To prevent website mistakes, allocate time to editing all page content correctly. Create spelling and grammar checking, and link-checking integral areas of the writing and publishing phases. In a world where newsrooms are decreasing, and editors have become more and more obsolete, it’s more important than ever to triple-check your site’s content.
- Do not be wordy
Generic phrases and those cringe-worthy clichés are often over-used and can densely pollute a page. Composing best practice avoids wordiness whatsoever costs. Both sentence examples below demonstrate the efficacy of a couple of decisive cuts.
- Do be consistent
Webpage consistency means page structure and style. Uniformity in titles, subtitles, headings, and body paragraphs can also be part of an excellent content strategy, along with maintaining web content. Also, look at spelling preferences; a site should conform to either a UK or US dictionary. Your copy may be fantastic, but if it’s difficult or onerous to read or scroll through, users will not stick around.
- Use your active voice
Writing in active voice rather than reneging into the passive voice can be complicated if you do not know what to search for. Without becoming too grammatical, the active voice refers to a sentence in which the subject of the sentence performs the action stated by the verb. The topic must come before the verb in the sentence.
- Do not use jargon
Jargon refers to particular words or expressions used by a particular industry group. Digital marketing agencies, for example, might use phrases and words in which refer to specific search engine optimization terms and other similar modes of communication. While this could be okay for people ‘in the know’, for others, knowing these phrases and words is difficult. Thus, when writing for your site, think about the wisdom of the reader. It is dangerous to assume that your readers will know everything that you write.
Very good content creation is a vital part of a website content strategy, and should not be dismissed. So if it comes to copywriting for small companies, it could be worth consulting a digital agency for information. Website content requires time and effort, so do what you can to make it count.
