With so many web pages and only so many hours in the day; potential customers will spend only seconds looking at your site before moving on – so how can you make those seconds count?

Your readers will be looking for web copy which is easy to scan, signposting key messages quickly and clearly. We’ve frequently discussed the importance of using clear and concise language on this blog and it comes into play again here. Potential customers need to be able to understand what you are saying or selling instantly; hence jargon-free, simple, effective prose is required.

For each page of web copy, you should be looking to front-load your content by putting your key message at the top of the copy, rather than reserving it for the conclusion; as is more common across traditional media.  This enables readers to decide instantly if they are on the right page or not and captures their attention. Sub-headings can have a similar effect by clearly signposting the site’s content and allowing users to find their target quicker and easier.

Once you have your content, there are several formatting steps you can take to achieve maximum impact, such as emboldening key messages. This instantly draws the eye of the reader to what you want to say. This will naturally happen on links, so make sure that your linking text says something you want to be read, not just ‘click here’.

By applying these simple steps you can be sure you’re web copy is more likely to turn a roving eye into a ready customer.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article PR or SEO copywriting. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

Including keywords in your web copy can be a delicate balancing act: too few and you’re invisible to search engines, too many and you get thrown straight in the spam bin. Add to this the fact that with any given website there are hundreds of keyword possibilities, and it’s no wonder you want to reach for the headache tablets!

Start with the message you want your web copy to convey.  Which words and phrases immediately spring to mind? Remember to keep your audience in mind: how would they describe your products and services?

Once you have your list, you need to check which keywords people are looking for. Google has a fantastic tool, free to use, which gives up-to-date search statistics. Often small changes in keywords can make a huge difference – ‘child’ vs ‘children’, for example. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring localities: many people run localised searches, e.g. “children’s nursery Ipswich”, and it’s the websites that have included local place names in their copy that are going to be displayed in these search results.

If you have website analytics, these will also help you identify which keywords are working for you. Although they won’t help you develop new ones, knowing what has worked previously can help you move forward and build on your existing success.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

If you’re looking to get your site picked up by the major search engines, then your copy needs to help attract their attention. The process of creating your content with the search engines in mind is called SEO copywriting.

The easiest place to start is with the title of your page or article. Search engines will initially look here, as this is the quickest and easiest way to judge content. Therefore, you need to know your target keywords and ensure these are incorporated.

As with most elements of web copy, conciseness is a virtue. The perfect title is 72 characters or less as this length enables search engines to display its entirety in their results, encouraging potential clients to click through.

Search engines are also very friendly towards unique content which is frequently updated. This means you shouldn’t duplicate your SEO copywriting across pages and create a regular update scheme for your site, such as a blog. Size also matters. Search engines are more likely to find individual pages if the copy is a substantial length – try to ensure all your pages have at least 200 words of text.

Throughout your content, it helps to have your keyword repeated a limited number of times. However, search engines also look at the number of times you’ve used your keywords in your SEO copywriting. While keyword density is a hotly debated topic, you should steer clear of excessive repetition. The search engines are wise to it, and it’s off-putting for readers too.

Talk to Write My Site if you would like to explore business blogging, article marketing or web content. All work is covered by our Quality Guarantee to ensure you’re 100% satisfied with your content.

For optimum website content, you need to achieve a very fine balance between copy and images. This is especially important as web content must be as concise as possible and the temptation to replace words with images can be remarkably strong.

Before giving in to this, you need to consider the drawbacks of losing web copy. You can’t have ‘key pictures’ as you would key words. Images are not picked up by search engines in the same way (although you can add an ‘alt’ tag to tell the search engines what the image is about). This instantly cuts down on your visibility to vital marketing outlets.

If you are worried that your site will appear text-heavy then keep paragraphs short, with plenty of white space in-between. This makes for more memorable writing, allowing your key messages to jump out at the reader.

When selecting images make sure they have an obvious relevance and are not open to misinterpretation. The relationship between words and images is crucial and should amplify meaning rather than confuse it. An excellent but apocryphal example of how not to choose an image comes from a baby food company, said to have put a picture of a baby and no text on their tins, only to see their sales drop in Africa as people assumed they were selling canned babies.

However, when used correctly images can add visual interest to your web content, emphasising key messages of the copy to create a more memorable experience for potential clients.

“Googling” may have become a verb in its own right, but that isn’t stopping other search engines from trying to steal the Internet giant’s crown.

Yahoo and Microsoft, which handle 20.4% and 8.2% of all Internet search queries respectively, are both on the cusp of unveiling new technology that will enable their results to be displayed in relevant groups rather than a list of links. Microsoft’s new search engine is rumoured to be called Bing, and will replace the current search engine Live. Not much is known about Bing yet, although Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is due to speak at the All Things Digital conference later today, so he may soon reveal more. A search for “web copy writer London” (we’re sticking with the industry we know!) via Bing may display information about how to write for the web, alongside details of copy writers local to London, and web copywriting blogs. Such a search on Live.com currently generates a list of links related to copy writing – some relevant, some not - that users have to go through individually in order to find what they’re looking for.

Yahoo’s strategy is similar: the company aims to display images and answers from databases instead of a series of links. It is no surprise, then, that Yahoo and Microsoft are in talks to tackle Google by collaborating with each other on search. In fact, Sandeep Aggarwal, senior Internet research analyst with Collins Stewart LLC, thinks there will be a Microsoft-Yahoo search deal by the time the companies report their quarterly results in late July.

If competing search engines think Google is resting on its laurels, however, they could be in for a shock. New improvements are being made to the Google Suggest tool which was recently introduced to give users more control over their search results. Suggestions will now be provided when users make additional search queries from results pages whereas previously they were only offered when making a query from the Google homepage. Relevant past searches will be displayed when users have web history enabled, so they can repeat some of the searches they carry out most frequently. Sponsored links will also appear in the list of suggestions, which could help companies who want to target users most interested in their products and services with search engine marketing and pay per click ads.

Could web writing soon be transformed by a plethora of new terminology? For example, if I were to publish an online article in which I claimed to be a “nonebrity” would you know what I was talking about? Apparently it would mean I had celebrity status for no apparent reason. We can now all point at Katie Price a.k.a. Jordan and shout “Nonebrity!” the next time we see her. She, of course, might point back and shout “Nomophobe!” which is a person who fears being out of mobile contact.

More than 100 new words and expressions entered the English language last year, from the now-commonplace “credit crunch” to the rather more obscure “moofer”, which is an acronym for a mobile out-of-office worker. The most popular word from 2008 was, however, the dated expression “cripes”, which became Boris Johnson’s trademark expression of surprise as he campaigned during the London Mayoral election. Those who object to 2008’s most popular word being an old one might take comfort in learning that they themselves are known as “doomers” - a brand new expression to describe pessimistic individuals.

Next month we can all look forward to reading masses of web copy about “glamping”: the term refers to the luxurious form of camping undertaken by “nonebrities” such as Peaches Geldof at Glastonbury.