7 steps for writing good website copy

One of the hardest parts of designing a website is writing “copy” — that is, the text that appears on each webpage. Writing in general is really tough, but writing about yourself and your business? Phew… pour a glass of wine already.

Ok but seriously, it's tough but you can do it!! Here are my best tips to help you, below (and actually, let's add having a glass of wine as an unofficial 8th step because it really can help grease the wheels 😅).

1. Organize your website structure.

Before you start to write, make sure you have a solid plan for your website in place. First, list the pages that you need to have on your website. Then, list the content that you need on each webpage — create an outline.

2. Create a copy deck.

Let's get everything in one place. In a program of your choice (e.g. google docs) create an individual page for each page of your website. Then, divide each page into sections based on your outline. Write ALL of your website copy in this document before you put it on the website. Keeping track of your copy in this way helps to make sure your writing follows a clear structure, without being distracted by the design.

3. Just get it down on paper.

Writing is hard AF, especially when you're writing about yourself. The best way to get started is to just start writing and see what comes out without overthinking it. Once it's all on paper you can go back and edit from this starting point.

4. Speak directly to your audience.

Speak as though you're in a 1:1 conversation with your target audience to build a personal connection. Show some personality and avoid writing like an academic. Also, know that your audience wants to spend as little time reading as possible — so be clear, direct, and concise.

5. Focus on transformations rather than process.

The best way to connect with your audience is to illustrate that you understand their pain points and how to solve them. They care more about the results they can get from working with you than the process it takes to get there. Sell them on your value by illustrating results.

6. Include calls to action.

What do you want your reader to do? Make sure your copy is nudging your audience towards taking a specific action — whether that's purchasing a product, signing up for a newsletter, or contacting you. Tell them the specific action you want them to take and make it easy for them to do that through a link, button, form, etc.

7. Optimize for search engines.

Make it easy for search engines to “crawl” your webpages by using heading tags to structure pages like an outline. Webpage copy structure includes Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and body copy:

• Heading 1 tags serve as the title of the page. Ideally there should only be one per webpage as it will serve as the page title in search results.

• Heading 2 tags are subheads that give search engines more information about what’s on the page. Try to limit H2 tags to just 2-3 per page.

• Heading 3 tags are subsections of H2 tags.

Consider researching which search keywords you’d like to try to rank for and place those keywords strategically in the heading tags & body copy.