Copywriting  

Why are the words on your website important?

"We would like a nice clean website with only a few words on it. I do not want it to be cluttered up with too many words that no-one will read"

We literally have lost count of the number of times we have had this sentence (or one very close to it) said to us when discussing a new website build with a client!

My reply is always the same: "So, you do not want to get found on Google then?"

Google is blind so it does not care how nice your images are, although it does like to know what the pictures actually are of, of course. That is what an Alt Tag is for, by the way.

It does not care how aesthetically-pleasing your website is, it cares instead about what is going on underneath: how many coding errors are there? Is it accessible for disabled people? Is it hosted in the UK? Is your domain a UK domain and so on, there is a rather long list in total!

Anyway, assuming that have ticked all the boxes that Google is looking for, what are you left with?

The words.

Google loves to read! The more the better! If you have 500 words (or more) on each page and your competitor does not, which website do you think Google will prefer?

Words, lots of words even, can look beautiful and clean. If they did not, no-one would buy newspapers or magazines! Have a close look, next time you see one. It is full of words!

However, it is not just one massive chunk of text. This, we agree, would just look awful and be a nightmare to be able to read comfortably. This is why newspapers and magazines make use of subheadings, to break up the text and make them easier to manage. Think of a web page in that context and you can hopefully begin to understand that, if you present it in the right way, having more text is always going to be more beneficial.

Your website visitors tend to fall into 2 categories: those that are in a hurry and those that are not! For those in a hurry, if they find you on Google they may come to your website and make a snap decision on whether to pick up the phone and call, or send you an enquiry. That is why the first paragraph of each page should give them enough information to allow them to make a quick decision. Remember, it may not be the decision-maker who is doing the actual research, they could have delegated it to someone else to do initially, perhaps to compile a shortlist.

Then you might have the decision-maker who may got through your website in more detail. This is where you will be so glad that you gave more information! The more questions you can answer, the more trust you can build and make them more likely to favour you, even without having spoken to you!

However, writing a lot of text is not necessarily going to get you Google rankings and that it where our amazing copywriter, Sam, comes in. She knows how to write in a way that just works brilliantly with Google and she has a proven track record. Google will devour every word you give it, so isn't it worth going that extra mile and getting your copy written effectively?