The web is truly a democratic place - if you have an idea or topic that you want to share with others, you can get it online and whammo! you’re on your way to building a community, or a market for your product or service. Some people put their heart and soul into it, lots of money, get a little lucky and end up Internet millionaires. Others throw a site together in half a day, don’t spend a lot and can’t pay people to come to their site. Of course, there are people who throw a site together and still make a lot of money. This is usually driven by a great idea. There are also those that put everything into it and don’t do well. Following the logic here, that’s usually because of a bad idea - or poor execution. Whether you are the one that invests a lot of time, money and resources into your site, the one who doesn’t or someone in between, there are certain pages that are important to know specific details about from a copy perspective.
Which pages are most important from a keyword perspective? The Home page, Products and Services, Why Choose Us? and FAQ’s. These are the pages that you’ll want to be sure to optimize for high impact search rankings. Sometimes they will be landing pages too. As some of the most important pages on your site, they also need to appeal to your potential customers from a sales conversion point of view. They need to really “speak” to the customer. More on that later.
For now, let’s get into it and discuss the individual pages…
Which Pages are Most Important?
You know what I’m going to recommend as being the most important page of any site, right? Yes, the Home page. The Home page is like the foundation of your house, without it, your house isn’t built right, could fall down and faces an uncertain future. With it, your home is stable, secure and strong. Same goes for your site. The Products or Services page would be next in line. If they don’t know what you’re selling, how are they going to buy? Because getting your customers to pay is also very important for your business, an Ordering or Payment page, integrated with a shopping cart is also critical (If you have something to buy on your site).
There are certain copywriting things you’ll want to focus on here. A page about the people (or person) behind the business is an underrated and under-utilized web site page. Whether you call it “About Us” or “Our Team” or something else, it should be a part of every business website. Other pages that have specific and important SEO copywriting elements to them would include FAQ’s, and Contact Us.
The Home Page
The number one problem I see with new clients’ sites is this: they have an absolutely beautiful (or maybe not so beautiful) Home page with nice images, a good look and feel, contact information and only three sentences of copy. They ask me, “Why can’t I get ranked on the search engines?” My answer is easy - build more content! Make your site content rich! Many of these clients have great off-line businesses, selling hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars of products to customers around the world. They may have just recently put up a website or aren’t looking to drive massive sales off the web. Some of them could though, many of them overlook the potential.
One of my clients who comes to mind is a manufacturer of piping equipment. They have been around for over 50 years and are number two or three in their industry. But, having a website was just never that important. They did have a site, but the home page was exactly as I explained it above: they just slapped it together with a few bad sentences. By revising the home page and the rest of the site, they could expand into new online markets.
I think you get the point - the Home page represents a big opportunity.
When we think about the copy that needs to appear on the Home page, what comes to mind? Well first, it should be the most generic or broad in terms of scope. Let’s take the example of a toy manufacturer. Instead of talking about your specific toy lines, you would write more about the benefits that your toys provide children. You also want to use your most important and broad keyword phrases here as well. This is the page that you want the very highest ranking for on the search engines. In terms of headers and sub headers, you want them to read almost like headlines - make them stand out, create interesting and thought provoking headers. I’m a big fan of creating three copy sections or paragraphs on the page with three headers.
Call it my individual style, but it’s a pattern I’ve used for many clients over the years. Basically, it’s a paragraph of 100-150 words in block form first, followed by a bulleted list, followed by another 75-125 word block paragraph. The call to action falls at the bottom of the page. This format has been very popular and helped many of my clients Home pages jump from the 20th page to the 1st or 2nd in a period of a few months. It also is great for scan reading and does a good job of balancing the page design with the page copy, another strategy that I always preach.
About Us Page
One thing I routinely see is a non-existant About Us page. People seem to forget that even though the Internet is just words and images and not a real person engaging them (like at a typical brick and mortar retail store), people still like to know that there are people behind the business. They want to know you care, about how you got into your business and what drives you. Perhaps have a picture of the management team on the page. From a content perspective, it’s not one of the keyword heavy pages, but the words you use are still very important. You’ll want to use this page to put a “face” on the business.
You’ll want to make the copy familiar and warm, put some emotion behind it and try and connect with your customers. The other thing about this page - it can mean the difference between a customer choosing you over one of your competitors or not. Why? Well, if it comes down to two sites offering the same exact service for the same price, some people will naturally go with a company whose people they know a little bit about. This brings up another good point - a service business, like a law firm, CPA or copywriter needs to definitely have a page about themselves. Those are people businesses!
Products Page
So, what are you selling? Do your customers know? Even more than what you are selling, what are your customers going to get out of it? What are the benefits of your specific products? From a copy point of view, there are a few things you’ll want to focus on. First, you’ll want to do a quick analysis of what you are selling and categorize it somehow so your customers aren’t confused. If you are new to this, you’ll want to draw a tree diagram and then for each limb coming off the tree, create a separate page around that product or product group. The product page is where you want to use good keyword phrases and specific language so you can answer your customer’s questions before they ask. Assume your customers don’t know anything at all about your products and you need to teach them about it. Who, what, where, when and how. Give them all the necessary information they need to help them make a buying decision, or at least a decision on narrowing down the competition.
You’ll also want to use some good call to action copy on the page, asking them (or recommending to them) to take some action right now! Whether it’s a “Ready to order?” or “Call us now for more information!” or “Take a look at what our customers have to say!” This is also a page where you want to have really good balance between the images of your products and the copy that explains them. As you have scanned the web over the past few years, have you seen a few sites that only have images on their product pages and no feature/benefit copy to speak of? I bet you have - it’s one of the biggest problems with websites today. There’s a picture of the product and a “click here to order” command. This just doesn’t cut it anymore. If you have a very loyal customer base, then maybe you can get by with a little less, but you really should assume that your customers don’t know anything about your products.
Product Features. Not nearly as important as your product’s benefits, but still important. Make sure you write copy that focuses on what your product does and looks like. Some technical specs may be good too, but don’t go overboard. What many companies do, especially those who know very little about good copywriting, is write only about features. Although this is better than having no copy, it’s still a long way from optimum. Men are more often guilty of this than women. Women have a much more intuitive feel for how the product can and should integrate into someone’s life. They usually - not always, make better SEO copywriters, partly because of this fact. And here’s the other thing about writing features and benefits: people seem to have a hard time knowing the difference. They confuse them all the time, or simply don’t know really how their product impacts their customer’s life. Here’s where one of the other all-important tenants of copywriting comes into play - ask them how your product benefits them. They will tell you. When they do, turn their answer into some great, hard-hitting, conversion friendly product website copy!
Services Page
Most of the same things mentioned above in the Products page will also apply to a Services page. Writing about your company’s services does have some important differences. The first thing to consider before you write is whether your service is a commodity or not (Think law services). If it is, you’ll want to typically have less specific copy on the page and try to get them to contact you - either by email or phone so you can sell them in a more personal way. If your service is not so commoditized (think a dog walking service), then you’ll probably want to be more detailed in your copywriting so people who don’t understand what it is will get their questions answered up front.
It also helps to sell them or qualify them a little up front. Of course, you’ll also want copy that tells them how to contact you for inquiries, but if they found you, they probably are already pretty well qualified. Also - with a non-commoditized service, it could be relatively new, so you may not have too many competitors. Getting them to contact you for the sale won’t be as important.
Local search. It’s been all the rage in the past couple of years. For a service like a barber shop or pet groomer, you’ll want to definitely use geographically specific keyword phrases like “Springville barber shops” or “Missoula pet grooming” in your Service page copy. This is where most, if not all, your customers will be coming from, so you want to be sure to do this.
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