So, you want to be a copywriter. But just what is web copywriting? It would be best if you found out because writing for websites and other online products will be a massive part of what you do.
Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without; half of 18 to 49-year-olds get their news and information from the web, and people now see double the number of ads a day that they observed in 1984. So it’s a solid industry.
You can divide copywriters into two groups of people. First, some copywriters specialize in writing to get people to take action. These people often focus on retail content. Then some content writers write to inform. These people are usually great at background and blog materials. Lots of copywriters have abilities in both and switch and change between the two.
What type of content do copywriters produce?
Website copywriters practice writing high-quality text and materials that sell an idea or product. This is often placed on website pages or blogs, but there’s a host of other skills that will make you hireable. For example, you might be excellent at the text you see in sponsored posts or Facebook ads. You might be great at email newsletters. Anything best place to buy modafinil online that’s put online to advertise or sell products and ideas counts as web copy.
You’re likely to get the bulk of your task, at least initially, from writing simple texts for websites. These pages are the nuts and bolts of a company or personal website and cover us, services, and other information pages. This work is about guiding people through a website and telling them what they require to know. You might also find quick success in writing promotional materials. That could be press releases, blogs, backgrounders, or reviews.
How to write for online
The first thing you need to know about excellent online writing is that you have more than one customer. The humans that visit your site require to be wooed and convinced of the quality of your product. Make it worthwhile to them and better than what they could see via Google.
But so do the search engine ranking spiders that regularly scan web content to assess if it’s relevant and valuable. Writing your content in a way that these spiders appreciate is called search engine optimization (or SEO) and is a specialized art and professional writing skill.
Content that’s optimized for SEO will contain key phrases. These are the type of words the people you want to target are likely to put into a search engine to find details. For example, the keywords for this piece are “what is web copywriting.” Notice how that phrase appears high at the beginning of the article? This helps push your content more up search engine rankings and get more visitors. It’s essential to understand how SEO works.
The skills you require to develop will be making SEO copywriting quality writing. Sometimes you’ll require to work with unusual key phrases, but you’ll need to integrate them in a way that feels normal and natural. Your primary consumer is always humans. Write to them.
Goals for online writing
When you’re working as an online copywriter, it’s essential to remember the goal of your pieces. Excellent content for websites is the sort of thing that drives up online rankings and is clear and concise. It needs to share all the relevant information. But when you’re writing for blogs, the goal is to encourage people to share across their networks. Did you ever notice a website page go viral? The goals and structure are quite different.
Blog posts have two functions for your customers. First, fresh and regular content updates which use popular key phrases help Google recognize active and valuable websites. Second, this helps increase search rankings.
Blogs are also a great space to create a relationship with potential consumers. These should also be informational and targeted, but also user-friendly. It’s also necessary to integrate your content into the sea of other online material. Link back to authoritative sources to improve the spider’s understand of the quality of your material. There’s more on quality blogging, including how to begin a blog post on our site.
Top tips for web copywriting
Write actively
If you’re not up on your grammar, then it’s worth spending some time researching before you start. Excellent web copy uses active voice. That’s where the subject of the sentence does the move– it’s not acted on. Sentences that follow this structure are robust and easy to understand. Active voice sentences can also begin with a verb, as in command, and this can be useful for copy where you’re trying to get people to do something. For example, ‘learn more about the new catalog here.
Get the details right
People utilize the internet to get good information quickly. You’ll need to assure your content hits the who, what, when, where, why, and how of your personal or company story. Get all the details in, and your material is automatically more trustworthy. Read these fabulous tips for writing better web copy.
Write great headlines
Writing online implies a struggle between your words and those of the millions of others producing web content. It would be best if you made yours stand out. Great headlines attract visitors to click-through and take action.
Get the sense across quickly
Once you have a visitor on your page, you need to quickly give them the information they need. Online readers don’t read everything – they look for guides and markers that take them to the elements of the content they need. This means you need to make your content simple to skim. Some of the best methods to do this are:
- Applying headings and subheadings, particularly if you can fit your key phrases into these
- Build lists for the key points (just like this one)
- Follow long sentences with lots of data with shorter ones. This makes your material accessible and interesting to read, just like this.
So what are the takeaways from this little foray into the system of writing for the web?
- Keywords are king, but make them work for you – not run the show
- Remember who you’re writing for and precisely what they need
- Write in a way that’s easy to digest and simple to scan
The breadth and scope of writing for the web make it a lot of fun. You’re never quite sure what will come along next or how to fit that following phrase or link into an engaging and helpful discussion. It’s a hurdle, but if you’re up for it, it can be advantageous.