What is Website Copywriting? Tips for Effective Website Copywriting

I Sell Words began life in Melbourne with one mission: to be the best website copywriting firm bar none. However, the number of times I’ve attended networking meetings, handed out my business card, or described what I’ve done to acquaintances and got the reply: “Huh, so what do you copyright? Books? Films?” Not quite, no.

What Is A Website Copywriter?

Yes, copywriting and copyrighting is an example of a homophone; a word with the same sound but different meanings (English is full of them!). Explaining what I do as a copywriter – a website copywriter – goes a little like this:

“A web developer develops the code for a site. A designer produces the visuals. As a website copywriter, I write the text on the site.”

This gives most people pause to let the penny drop. Many people don’t consider the person (or team of people) that write the text for a website. The text is vital for your digital marketing – text makes up much of your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts, how you engage your audience, and how you inspire calls to action – buy now, sign up, reserve your place, etc.

If your website copywriting isn’t converting as well as it should, here are some tips for effective website copywriting that can help.

Know your copywriting end goal

Like any piece of writing, website copywriting needs a beginning, middle, and an end. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing a tagline or a novel - every piece of writing needs this. What is your website’s end goal? Are you a business to business site? Are you business to consumer? Are you looking for more leads? Selling products? Asking people to sign up to an email list? Establish a goal for your copywriting and work backwards from there.

Establish a consistent tone of voice

In my website copywriting process, establishing a consistent tone of voice throughout the site is crucial to success. Is your brand youth-oriented? A conversational style may work best. A lawyer site will need a professional and direct style. Sometimes a mix of two can work (not three, three is just too hard to get right.) This gives readers a sense of your brand and what they can expect when interacting with your business further. It engenders more trust.

Using ethos, pathos, logos in copywriting

 When it comes to written persuasion, there’s not much new under the sun. Rhetoric, or the art of using language to persuade, is as old as the Ancient Greeks and Romans - hence ethos (appeal to one’s character), pathos (appeal to emotion) and logos (appeal to reason or logic.) Any piece of writing that means to persuade people need to balance these three elements to be truly effective. For more examples, click here.

Clarity and conciseness is king

The simpler your copy, the more people can understand it. The more people that understand your copy, the more people you can sell to. Making your writing bold and clear makes it easier to read which makes it easier to remember. You should use it in all your writing, not just on websites. To help your own clarity and concision (making it short as possible) you can use the Hemingway App for free.

Search engine optimisation - keywords and copywriting 

It’s unavoidable - your website copy needs to have some kind of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) baked into it. That means researching keywords, structuring your copy, making sure you write compelling but keyword-rich headlines, and off-page SEO. For more on this, read my resource post on The Best SEO Copywriting Tips here.

Add calls to action (CTA)

Website copywriting is always asking something of the reader. At the end of the story, that means asking them to “buy now” or “contact me” or “sign up here.” Too many calls to action and you risk turning people off. Not enough, and they might pass your website by in their search for the best deal. 90% of visitors who read your headline copy will read your CTA copy according to Protocol 80 - so use them and optimise them as much as possible.

Conversion rate optimisation: A/B testing

Website copywriting is rarely a one and done proposition. Once you think you have the best copy ever, it can always be improved on. That means testing variations of headlines and CTAs using Google Optimise or similar applications. Test, track, and tweak for the best results.

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Need the best Website Copywriting in Melbourne to improve your business? Check out my copywriting services here, or click below to contact me (there’s an example of a CTA!)

How Do I Learn Copywriting?

In business, there’s many facets to being successful. It might be being an expert in business finance; sales; research and development; or administration. However one skill that gets overlooked is clear and crisp communication. Marketing copywriting is essential to the success of any business. Like other types of business skills, can you learn it yourself? If so, how do you learn copywriting?

What is copywriting?

As I’ve explained in other blogs, copywriting is the art (and sometimes science) of writing text (known as copy) to persuade someone into taking an action - usually to buy something, sign up for a list, make an appointment, and so on. There are different types of copywriting and copywriters, which you can read more about here.

Once you’ve made your mind up about what type of copywriter you’ll end up being, you need to learn it all. The more forms of writing you can master, the more opportunities open up for you.

How do I start learning copywriting?

When you want to learn how to write, there’s only one place to start. Reading. Reading everything from sales letters, ad copy, blogs, forum posts, books, everything. If you aren’t a reader, you probably won’t get a kick out of copywriting, unfortunately!

You firstly need a good command of written English (or your home language.) I’ve put together a list of books on improving your written English here.

For some specific books, I recommend:

• Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

• Ogilvy On Advertising by David Ogilvy

• The Gary Halbert Letter by Gary Halbert

• The Adweek Copywriting Handbook by Joseph Sugarman

• Impossible to Ignore by Dr. Carmen Simon, Ph.D.

• The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth

• Copywriter's Handbook: A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing Copy That Sells by Robert W. Bly

You’ll also have to start practising your craft by writing, writing, and writing some more! Then, editing.

How can I learn copywriting skills?

Learning copywriting skills can be learned by repetition, continuous improvement, and if you so desire, under the supervision of a teacher or a mentor. One of the crucial skills of a copywriter not only choosing the right words but knowing which ones to cut. You also need to do that while remaining professionally detached from the finished product.

Editing yourself

Much of the art of copywriting is the judicious and ruthless editing of yourself. There’s a great book by Bruce Ross-Larson called Edit Yourself which can get you started. If your writing is bloated and full of unnecessary words or sentences, you’ll need to take some time making your writing punchier and more succinct. It may be worth your time hiring a professional editor to give you pointers.

Formal learning for copywriters

As I’ve mentioned in this post How To Become a Copywriter, you can take courses in professional writing and editing. This isn’t essential but can give you a leg up if you’re a complete beginner.

Ego is the enemy

Much of a copywriter’s output will be credited to someone else - but you also have to maintain the utmost quality regardless of who takes the “glory.” 90% of the time, you’re a hired gun. Much like a tradesman, you can make suggestions based on your expertise, but ultimately, you’re hired to build from the plan (or brief, as it may be.)

How long does it take to learn copywriting?

How long is a piece of string? I’m a copywriter and I am still learning! However, to get a grounding in the basic skills should take you at least a year, possibly two if your written communication skills are basic at best.

What are the essential copywriting skills, and how do I learn them?

There are a few essential copywriting skills - that is knowing the mechanics of good grammar, syntax, and sentence construction. Knowing that verbs power writing and that you should omit needless words. That persuasion is achieved through a combination of logos, pathos, and ethos, and that a good piece of writing should be able to overcome objection in advance. As for learning them:

Hand copying the greats

This is how the famous Hunter S. Thompson (author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) did it - and how you can do it. That is, typing out ads and webpages that are known to be successful. There’s no real way around it; but it will give you a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

Stealing!

It’s true - good artists borrow, great artists steal. If you hear or find a sentence or tagline you think is really great, write it down. Save it for later. I’ve stolen about five things in this blog post already (you’ll never catch them, though!)

Following the formulas

Like genres in fiction, there are formulas in copywriting. Learn them and familiarise yourself with them. One such formula is the “FAB” formula - feature, advantage, benefit. You will get a feel for what type of formula matches the product or service you intend to sell. Mix, match, and experiment.

Formatting your copy

Formatting text for your medium is important as the words you choose. Sometimes one influences the other, such as specific UX wireframes and character counts.

Learning how to research

In SEO and content writing, you’ll likely be writing blog posts, either for yourself or as a ghostwriter. You need to learn how to research your topics and even do some original research, e.g. interview subjects or create surveys as well as interpret the results. Getting people to open up and feel comfortable during an interview is a must-have skill. Ask as many questions as possible, until you start hearing answers that sound the same.

Added to that, you should have a good working knowledge of the latest SEO techniques, analytics, and basic HTML/CSS.

Knowing your audience

This is as much psychology as it is writing. If you want to write compelling characters in fiction, you need to get inside people’s heads. What do they want? What are they motivated by? What would make them need this product? What would make them want it? This means getting a handle on your own emotions and motivations - which is no easy feat.

Ask for help

When in doubt, ask for help from a professional or your mentor.

Improving your copy

This might seem overwhelming - but don’t feel stressed! This can take many years to master. To start, you should try to make your everyday communication as punchy and concise as possible. That means emails, reports, and blogs. Don’t know how? Don’t worry - I have you covered with my online Skillshare course, Write Like a Boss right here! It covers all the essentials of clear and memorable business writing. Best of all, you get one month of Skillshare free.

The next steps - how to become a copywriter

If you believe you have the skills and are ready to take on the world of copywriting, click here for my comprehensive blog on How to Become A Copywriter.

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Is one or two years of copywriting training too long for your liking? Hire one of Melbourne’s best copywriters to do the job for you instead! Check out my copywriting services here, or click below to contact me.

The Best SEO Copywriting Tips

Not everyone is a writer. That said, no one is born a writer – let alone an SEO copywriter. I know when I first had a pen in my hand, search engines, let alone the World Wide Web, was a pipe dream.

Even so, the art and science of copywriting has evolved over time – and now we have SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation copywriting.

Google Search Console.

What is SEO Copywriting?

SEO copywriting is straightforward – it’s writing copy, or text, for your website or webpages and optimising it as much as possible for search engines. That means picking relevant keywords without “stuffing” them and getting penalised, adding the right metadata, headlines, internal links, and title tags.

SEO copywriting is finding a balance between what algorithms like and what people actually find useful.

To be successful at SEO copywriting, you need to research keywords and the competition.

Keyword research

Content writing for the sake of it doesn’t help anyone. Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, etc. categorise websites by relevance. If you search for copywriting, the webpage should explain copywriting in detail to help fulfill your query. You can see what your website already ranks for by using Google Search Console. This takes a few minutes to set up. After a few weeks, you’ll see what incoming search terms your site or pages rank for.

Analyse the competition

Not all keywords are created equal. Some keywords are highly competitive. An industry insider once told me that “lawyers” or “compensation lawyers” as a long-tail keyword would cost upwards of $100AUD per click on Google Ads! Use SEMRush or SearchAtlas to see what content ranks and how to leverage that to your advantage.

What are other people searching for?

Another way to look at keywords and searches is to use Google Trends and see the volume of searches for long-tail queries such as “how do I write better?” or “who can write a blog post for me?” and go about answering those questions as best as possible – better than your competition.

Journalistic rigour and creative flair

You don’t need to be a journalist first to be a copywriter – but it helps. Articles online need to be timely, relevant, and factual. Disinformation and misinformation is rampant; so don’t add to it by being lazy in your research. Think and write like a journalist: if possible, try to cross-verify claims by finding two independent sources for your content (e.g. two primary sources, not secondary sources that may reference one another). Above all, be creative! Just don’t open the forbidden door: plagiarism. Plagiarism is not only IP theft but a known SEO penalty. If you’re unsure, use a plagiarism checker.

What is Google passage ranking?

Google’s algorithm is smart enough to rank certain parts of pages for relevant content – so everything in your page needs to be informative and relevant. Separating subjects into sections by using headings and paragraphs can go a long way in helping rankings. For more information on Google Passage ranking and how it works, click here.

Off-Page SEO

Many modern Content Management Systems such as WordPress, SquareSpace (which is what I use!), or Kajabi offer off-page SEO tools such as creating custom headlines, snippets or excerpts, title tags, metadata, and social images. Use these to your advantage. Don’t pack your off-page metadata with keywords and hope for the best: use strategic keywords so your content ranks better!

What’s next

Does the thought of filling up a blank screen fill you with dread? Contact me and get Melbourne’s best SEO copywriting and content done for you! Click here to contact me.