“I need to write content for my website, but I don’t know where to start.”

If you’re here, it’s likely that thought is going through your mind! Writing content that enthrals potential customers and appeases search engines can seem like an overwhelming task. Fortunately, we’ve created a step-by-step guide and broken it down into three easy parts to help you produce thoughtful and targeted content, that will deliver traffic right to your digital doorstep.

So, grab a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit (or two!) and let’s get started with part one!

What is website copy?

In short, website copy is the term used to describe the main body of text on your website. Its purpose is to tell visitors about your brand, advertise your services or product, guide visitors around your site and direct them to what action you want them to take.

Before you start writing your content, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

1. Purpose

Before you begin writing it is essential you understand its purpose. Knowing what you want your website copy to achieve will help you craft the perfect content to support your goals. Ask yourself questions like:

• Are you trying to sell a product or service?
• Is your main goal to attract new clients and generate more leads?
• Do you want to create a community?
• Are you trying to improve customer satisfaction?

Be specific with your aims. The more you can define exactly what information you want visitors to your website to know and what action you want them to take, the more successful your website copy will be and the easier it will be for you to write!

2. Research

Research topics will vary depending on the nature of your website, however, the most basic yet vital research you should undertake is to understand your audience and know your competitors.

Audience:

The more you know about your target audience, the easier it will be to convert them into customers. Try to get into their mindset and ask yourself, who are the people coming to your website, what do they want or need and what terms are they searching? By writing copy that speaks to them in a way they can relate to or solves problems you know they have, you can create a foundation of trust that will generate loyal customers.

Competitors:

It is almost certain that visitors to your site will be looking at competitors’ websites to determine their best option. To convince visitors to choose you instead, it is key you know what your competitors are offering. Find out what they are doing, what audience they target and what type of content they are producing. This will allow you to make strategic decisions about your own website as well as spot trends you can use to get ahead of the rest.

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO can seem like a bit of a scary exhausting obstacle. See what we did there? Yeah, sorry about that. Whilst it may seem daunting at first, writing with SEO in mind is important for helping your website to rank higher for relevant searches.

• Keywords: From researching your audience, you should know what words they are searching for. These are your keywords. Whilst you should avoid keyword stuffing, adding keywords to your titles, subheadings and body text will help increase traffic to your website.
• Metadata: Keeping it to one or two sentences, write clear and enticing descriptions of your web pages to encourage click-throughs.
• URLs: Ensure your URL is descriptive yet as concise as possible.
• Interlinking: Interlinks are links that direct your visitors from one page to another within your website. Including interlinks points users towards other valuable information, (potentially preventing them from leaving your website and looking at a competitors), as well as showing search engines that you have other relevant information.

These are the absolute basics of SEO, but they are a great first step in climbing the search engine ranks and reaping the rewards of more website traffic.

Preparing to write your content may seem like a tedious task, however, taking the time to really understand who you’re speaking to and what your content needs to do will help you get some top-notch content right from the get-go.

Don’t forget to check out part two and part three of our ‘How to Write Content for Your Website’ guide, where we focus on what you need to think about whilst writing and what to do when you’ve finished writing!

If you’re wrestling with your writing and need help, give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk