Web Copywriting

We write for the web…and it’s a little bit different…

People read magazines and news articles but they treat web pages quite differently…they tend to scan them first, then read when engaged…and search engines read web pages in an even more different way.

The key to great SEO copywriting is finding that ideal balance between delivering content in a way that is rich, captivating and engaging for the visitor and in a way that a search engine can understand, index and rank well for a targeted keyword phrase or subject.

you’ve got 3 seconds

That’s how long people take on average to decide whether they hit the “back” button and “bounce” off your web page or not. You need a compelling headline that matches their search term, an engaging sub-heading that draws a visitor to explore, a bullet point list or important phrases in bold or as headlines to act as “eye stoppers” or pause points on the page and a summary with some kind of call-to-action.

and then you have to connect

You web copy may well be ideally formatted for reaching the top of the search engine results but search engines rarely sign up for offers, join email lists and never get out their corporate credit card to buy stuff…once you have caught a visitor, your website has to reel them in.

We’re not necessarily taking about Shakespearian quality content however, today, online visitors to your website want more than just the facts…they want to connect with you, your products and services and your brand. They want to know why they should buy, fill out that form or pick up the phone and call, and feel good about their decision.

web pages, not websites

Most people don’t realise that more than 70% of a well-optimised website’s traffic doesn’t arrive via the home page…they land on a page that is very specific to their search phrase.

Search engines index web pages, not whole web sites, so each page needs to be focussed on a particular theme and a related group of keyword phrases. The fancy term is “latent semantic indexing” or LSI which refers to a search engine’s ability to determine the theme of a page based on the overall language, rather than just looking for exact keyword phrase matches.

about our web copywriting

We start with a Client Briefing Document, which we supply and walk you through, which asks a few simple questions about your company, your services, your positioning and your competitors.

Next we jointly identify with you the key pages on your site that you are seeking to enhance and the keyword phrases that should be targeted.

We then conduct some research, both online and offline, so that we broadly understand your target market…and then we start to write…usually one or two pages to begin with which we review with you early on so as to ensure we have the right “tone of voice”….then we draft the rest.

notice that we haven’t included any SEO stuffyet

As we said earlier, it’s about engaging your visitor when they land, so that’s what we work on first…then we analyse the SEO opportunities within the copy and optimise accordingly…and it works! You get the best of both worlds…rich original, on-theme content that appeals to the search engines and high quality, engaging content that turns visitors into buyers.

how much

Clearly, writing great copy for a website has a wide range of variables – the subject matter, existing content, the online competition and more – so fees vary from project to project. Generally, for 200 to 400 word web pages (this page is about 600 words) our fees are $125 per page with a minimum of five pages.

Our web copywriters are all experienced professionals and are carefully selected based on their work and areas of specialisation. Each is formally qualified in communications and has several years experience as journalists and print feature writers.