Antagonise Your Copy

Writing web copy is one of the most challenging tasks I have ever undertaken. There is a lot to consider; writing style, paragraphs, formatting, headlines and more.

Keywords

The most challenging part of writing web copy for me is sticking to usable keywords. Google's Content Guidelines state that you should think about the words users would type to find your pages, and use them in your copy. However, when writing your web copy, you need to make use of those words in a manner that is useful to the reader.

Keyword Stuffing

Don't repeat your web copy keywords all over your text. Web copy. Loading your (web copy) page with (web copy) keywords is not only against the web copy rules, it is annoying web copy to your web copy readers.

Effective

A site I happened across that made great use of keywords in their copy is web-design.co.za. They managed to use the words "web Design" in their copy 36 times, and they did so fairly effectively while still making sense.

The infographic above is taken from a page on this website. It is created at Wordle.net and is an interesting tool to look at what text appears in your web copy. The larger the word in the graphic, the more often it appears.

Positive Keywords

In the graphic, the positive keywords, or the keywords that my clients would use in a web search, that are present are; advertising, business, online, media. These are words that I expect clients to enter into a Search Engine and hopefully find my website.

Negative Keywords

The negative keywords, and the most prominent, are indicative of a major flaw in my web copy. Words such as "your" and "You" indicate to me that my copy-writing style tends to be more of a lecture. Who wants to be lectured to in this day and age? I believe it is far better to plant a seed and allow the idea to come from your client so they can tell you what they want, even though you hinted at it, than to be told what to do.

Google do ignore common words in your web copy such as "and," "of," "the" and so on. I included them in my analysis because I want to see how my readers see my web copy.

Pay a Professional

If you think you can't write your own web copy, there are plenty of professionals out there who can help you. It is an important investment in your web space that makes a huge difference to your Search Engine Rankings.