19th May 2007

Here are some of the more important issues around creating copy for a web site, from a visitor's perspective, a brand perspective and a search engine optimisation perspective.

The first mistake that most people make is to copy and paste text written for their brochure into their website.

Copy written for literature tends to be too long and poorly structured for websites.

This is because when people use websites they tend to scan the page quite quickly and text in smaller 'bite sized' chunks is easier to digest when browsing in this way.

There are of course exceptions to every rule and this idea of 'chunking' information is more important closer to the visitor's entry page, as when someone has delved deeper into a web site, they want to be rewarded with more in depth content.

Tone of voice for web sites.

Tone of voice tends to differ between web sites and print work, with a more personal, honest and friendly tone being preferred on web sites.

Literature text can sound 'stuffy' and 'corporate' within the context of the internet.

This stuffiness can also infer a naivety of the medium and make a company sound out of touch.

Search engine optimisation.

Search engine optimisation is also an important consideration when writing copy for a web site. I'm not going to go into search engine optimisation in too much detail here, as it's really beyond the scope of this article. But if you follow these simple rules you should have a web page that is inherently well structured from a search engine perspective.

It is important to understand that the text in your web site pages is one of the main criteria for generating a well optimised site.

Firstly, decide on the specific search terms you want to optimise the page for, these should be search terms commonly used by potential visitors to find the kind of web page you are writing.

The Page Title.

Your web page should have a page title that accurately reflects the web pages content, the web page title used by search engines as the main link through to your site in a search results page, and the inclusion of search keywords in the web page title is a necessity.

The Meta description.

The 'description' Meta tag is used by many search engines as the page précis placed below the title link in a search results page and so should provide more clarity and ideally a call to action.

Headings.

Section headings within the page should include search key words, and it is important to ensure that heading tags are used to denote them in the page code.

When your page is complete and has been uploaded, check the keyword density with an online site checker, and if it's a little light, look at where you can increase it without making the page sound like search term soup.

So there are some of the basic considerations for writing effective copy from a visitor, brand and search engine perspective.

Further reading:

Writing for the web guide