Copy & Web copy
Here you can learn more about how to write web copy that gets your website seen on Google.
To read about SEO instead click here
Web copy contains many parts
When writing copy for the web, there are many things you need to be aware of in order for Google to show up your website.
Page title
It is important to include the keyword in the page title for Google to understand the content.
Headline
The headline explains to both Google and your visitors what your page is about.
Right amount of text
You don’t want to be inferior to your competitors. How much text your page should have is an important thing to consider when writing web copy.
Focus
Each page on your website should be about one thing or topic, not several things or topics.
Search intent
Your text must match the search intent of your customers if you want Google to show your page when they search online.
Why it’s important to work with web copy on your website
Do you want your website to show up well on Google so that customers looking for what you offer find their way to your website?
Then you need to work on copywriting and make sure your texts are up to scratch.
Google uses hundreds of different ranking factors when deciding which websites to display in search results. These ranking factors are part of Google’s algorithms and you may have at some point heard someone working in SEO say something along the lines of “Google has updated its algorithms” or similar? What they are talking about is that Google has changed something about how they work with their ranking factors.
If you want to know more about Google’s algorithms and how Google works to evaluate websites, you can read their Webmaster Guidelines, which go into detail about what to consider when you want your website to be seen online.
Google is constantly updating its algorithms to better display the right websites to users of its search engine.
Not all ranking factors used by Google carry the same weight, some metrics are more important than others, so it’s important to focus on the most important ranking factors first.
The content of your website is one of the most important things that Google looks at.
If you have little content on your website, it will be difficult for you to appear in the search results.
If your website contains text that is not of a very high quality or does not explain things in a simple and clear way, you will have difficulty appearing in the search results.
Copy, web copy,
content and substance
There are many concepts regarding content and copy and it can sometimes be difficult to understand how they are related. That’s why we’ll briefly go through the different concepts so you know what’s what.
Is copy and
web copy the same thing?
Copy and web copy are, according to some, the same thing, you write copy whether it’s text for the web or text to be used offline.
That approach is correct in the sense that both are about writing copy, but there is a big difference between writing classic copy and web copy.
When writing classic copy, you can focus entirely on writing text that gets your intended audience interested in your offer.
When writing web copy, you need to do the above, but you also need to write the text so that Google understands it and thinks it’s worth showing in search results.
In this way, web copy is more difficult to write than classic copy because you need to know what kind of information your customers want, and you need to know what Google wants the text to contain.
If Google decides that your text is not relevant to a particular keyword or term, they will not show your page when someone searches for that keyword.
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Web copy explains to the search engine and the visitor what the page is about
Content
and substance
So what is content and substance? Are they different things or two concepts describing the same thing?
Content and content are the same thing, content is simply the English word for content.
So what counts as content?
There are four primary types of content on the web:
• Text
• Image
• Video
• Sound
The most common type of content is text and is also the most easily understood by Google.
For example, Google doesn’t see images. It’s not Google staff who visit your website, but software that reads the code on your site.
This means, among other things, that the image file information must be correct as code is the only thing that Google “sees” when they visit your website.
Nor do they see video or hear audio; the information describing the video or audio file must be correct for Google to understand the content.
How to write texts that
makes your website visible online
The text on your website is (as we mentioned earlier) one of the most important ranking factors that Google looks at.
A page that contains little text, that does not explain the topic or help the reader understand the content has a very difficult time appearing well.
Google’s ability to make money is directly linked to as many people as possible using their search engine.
It is therefore very important for Google to display websites with relevant information when someone searches for a particular word or term. A very important part of getting Google to perceive your website as relevant is to focus on writing the right kind of text.
If your page has poor text, which may also be a copy of text found on another website, it will be difficult for your website to convince Google that it is relevant to show up in the search results.
To make it easier for you to write texts that both Google and the visitor appreciate, below is a list of things to keep in mind:
• Each subpage on your website should be about one thing or topic
• Include the keyword in the page title
• Include the keyword in the main title
• Check search intent so that your text matches what Google expects it to contain
• Type the right amount of text
Every subpage on your website
should be about a thing or a subject
When creating subpages, it is important that they focus on a specific topic. It is not uncommon to see websites where a sub-page is called “our services” and the content on that page is about many different things/services.
This way of building a sub-page is not optimal as the content of the page is about many different things and therefore will not be very relevant to anything mentioned on the page.
Let’s take an example.
Say you have a cleaning company and you have a subpage about the services you offer.
If the page then contains a couple of sentences each about “business cleaning”, “private cleaning”, “window cleaning”, “moving cleaning”, “laundry”, “lawn mowing” then the page is not very relevant for Google to show up on any of these search terms.
Especially not if a competing website has a subpage for each area that describes each area in detail.
In other words, it’s important that every subpage on your website focuses on one thing or one topic.
Include the keyword
in the page title
The page title is one of the most important signals to Google. In other words, it is very important that the keyword you want that particular page to appear on has the keyword in the page title.
Since the page title is what Google displays in the search results, it’s also important for your customers to see the keyword so that they understand that your website is worth visiting. Let’s continue with our previous example and pretend you run a cleaning business. If you have a sub-page that is specifically about “removal cleaning”, the word moving cleaning should be included in the page title.
Below is an example of how Google could display your moving cleaning subpage:
Include the keyword in the main title
Another important signal to Google about what the page is about is the headline. Just as the headline of a newspaper article should explain what the article is about, the headline needs to explain the content of the page. This is important information both for Google and for your visitors.
Check search intent so that your text matches what Google expects it to contain
When creating subpages, it is important that they focus on a specific topic. It is not uncommon to see websites where a sub-page is called “our services” and the content on that page is about many different things/services.
This way of building a sub-page is not optimal as the content of the page is about many different things and therefore will not be very relevant to anything mentioned on the page.
Let’s take an example.
Say you have a cleaning company and you have a subpage about the services you offer.
If the page then contains a couple of sentences each about “business cleaning”, “private cleaning”, “window cleaning”, “moving cleaning”, “laundry”, “lawn mowing” then the page is not very relevant for Google to show up on any of these search terms.
Especially not if a competing website has a subpage for each area that describes each area in detail.
In other words, it’s important that every subpage on your website focuses on one thing or one topic.
Type the right amount of text
You don’t want to be worse than the other websites that Google shows up for a particular keyword. That’s why it’s important to keep track of how much text (and images/videos) the competing pages have.
To keep track of how much text you need to write for a given keyword, visit the top 5-10 websites that Google shows and see how many words they have written. While you’re there, you can also check how many pictures they have and what they write about. Once you’ve done this, you’ll know how much text you need to write, how many images you should include, and what others are writing about that shows up well on the keyword.
Conclusion
When writing web copy, there are many elements you need to keep in mind to increase the chances of Google showing up your page. Copywriting is often a complicated process and when writing copy for your website, you need to be clear about your message, page headings, content and much more to ensure that both Google and your visitors appreciate your copy.
If you want help with writing texts that rank or have questions about web copy, you are always welcome to contact us at Effektify.
