When it comes to writing good content for your website, it’s all about balance – a balance between writing for humans and search engines that is. Crafting compelling content that resonates with your target audience but also appeases search engines is an art form, but completely achievable.
In this blog, we share everything you need to know about how to copywrite for both humans and search engines. We’ll share some top tips and best practices for optimising your content to appeal to your human readers while also boosting your SEO efforts.
Why is the content on my website so important?
Writing content for your website is often an overlooked area of web design, but it’s just as important as crafting the design of your site. If you have a flawlessly designed website, but it contains minimal content, or it’s irrelevant to your audience, there’s a high chance your visitors will not stay around for long.
Engaging and informative content not only helps to capture the attention of your audience but also boosts your website’s visibility in search engines. When you incorporate relevant keywords and provide valuable information, you improve your site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive more organic traffic to your site.
As well as that, high-quality content that is well-written and easy to read enhances user experience and encourages visitors to stay longer on your site, which potentially leads to more conversions. As the saying goes “content is king” and adding compelling content to a well-designed website will maximise your overall efforts.
Where to start with copywriting for your website
Before you start writing the content for your website, there are a few key things to do beforehand to ensure you’re fully prepared and you’re maximising your copywriting efforts.
Define your tone of voice
The first place you should start with your website’s content is defining your tone of voice. This will be based on how you wish to be perceived by your target audience. For example, do you need to be formal or informal? What words do you want to use and be associated with?
Setting the right tone of voice and writing style should fit in with your overall brand message and placement. You could take a look at your competitors to see how they’re presenting themselves to give you some inspiration.
Review your site map
Once you’ve defined your tone of voice, the next thing to do is to take a look at your site map. This is a diagram showing all of the pages on your website and how they interact with each other. Reviewing your site map enables you to understand the purpose and function of each page. Most pages will often fall into the following categories:
- Informational – these are types of web pages your visitors are looking for more information about a particular topic, such as your blog pages.
- Commercial – these are pages your audience are looking for your products or services, such as your product or service pages.
- Transactional – this is where your customers will complete an action, such as purchasing your products or services, signing up for a newsletter, or sending an enquiry.
- Navigational – these are pages that take your audience to a specific page on your website, such as your blog area.
As each of these pages will have different purposes, they will require different forms of writing styles to fulfill those purposes. They may need to convey different messages which your content will support. It may help to jot down your general ideas on your content angle for each page so you have an idea of where you want to be.
Conduct keyword research
Next, you should begin conducting keyword research to identify relevant terms and phrases that align with your business and what your target audience is searching for. The best way to do this is to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Think about who your ideal visitors are and what kinds of information they are looking for when they land on your site.
Tools like SEMRush, SE Ranking, or Ahrefs can help you discover high-traffic keywords and phrases that you can target. When choosing your keywords, remember to consider the search intent behind it so you can attract the right visitors to your site.
Copywriting for humans
Copywriting for humans requires a special skill. That’s because how humans interact with content on a website is very different to how they interact with personal content such as an email, or a text message for example. When reading an email or text message, they’ll more than likely read every word that is written, and this is not the case for website content.
Users often ‘skim read’ website content, and if they aren’t engaged within the first few seconds of landing on your site, they will move away and find a different place to get the information they’re looking for.
Tips for copywriting for humans
So, you may be wondering how to copywrite for human readers to ensure you’re engaging them and hopefully converting them too. Here are few top tips for copywriting for humans:
- Use subheadings – as users will often skim read content, using subheadings is a good way to break up your content and allow them to find the information they need quickly.
- Be concise – using bullet points and clear language is a great way of keeping your content from being long-winded. Avoid passive language, slang terms, or technical jargon unless it’s absolutely necessary. You should also try to include one concept per sentence.
- Front-load your content – this essentially means that you put the conclusion for what you are trying to say first. Adding a summary of the content is a great example of this as it helps users understand what the content is about.
- Make sure it’s interesting – make sure what you’re writing is relevant and to the point. Writing in an interesting way or taking a different angle on a topic is a great way to engage your audience.
Copywriting for SEO
Copywriting for SEO requires a strategic skill of cleverly incorporating keywords and phrases throughout your content. Search engines will send crawlers (also known as a web spider or web robot) to your site where they will look over your webpages, analyse code, content, and hyperlinks to determine where your page will rank in search engine results.
The keywords and phrases you include in your content will help crawlers understand the context of the page and how relevant it is to a user’s search query. The more relevant your content is to what users are searching for, the higher you will rank. Best practice is to combine long tail key phrases with short tail keywords as it will allow you to rank for specific questions and broader, more general searches.
Tips for copywriting for SEO
There are many other factors to consider when copywriting for SEO, which is where speaking with professional SEO experts, like Fifteen, can help. As well as advising on the best keywords and phrases to target, they can integrate other strategies and techniques to boost your ranking.
However, with that being said, here are some top tips on how to copywrite for SEO:
- Find a phrase or keyword to target – make sure you’re considering what your users are searching for to find the information they need.
- Use that phrase or keyword throughout your content – use your target keyword in headings and throughout the main body of your content. Be very mindful to not overuse or stuff your copy with your keywords as this can work against you and be classed as spam.
- Use your keywords in your meta tags – be sure to add your target keywords in your meta title, meta description, and images. The easiest way to do this is through your CMS system.
- Incorporate links in your content – add both internal and outbound links in the body of your content as this will not only encourage users to click through to other areas of your site, but also encourage search engine robots to crawl through these other pages too.
Get in touch for more expert advice
We hope our guide on how to copywrite for humans and search engines has been helpful. It’s all about balance and being aware of the different potential types of visitors to your site. Getting the balance right will put your website on the path to success.
If you’d like professional help in copywriting for SEO and humans, so you can climb the rankings, don’t hesitate to contact us today. Our dedicated team of SEO, content, and digital experts are all on hand to help grow your website and help you achieve your goals.
