At DBS I get asked this most basic question over and over again. I am going to give two responses to the question from the point of view of both: ·Human visitors ·Search engines
Human visitors
There are a few concepts to get your head around to with regards to human visitors. The first one (and please don’t take offence) is that your web visitors probably won’t read all of the words on your pages. It’s more likely that your visitors will read headlines, glance at copy and form an opinion of whether this is a company they want to telephone, email or submit an online form to. Whether you engage a prospect from your website depends on many factors other than the words on your page but, for now, we will concentrate on the copy and then just list the other factors with examples. Remember that all of your prospects will be asking themselves the same question which is: “What’s in it for me?” So, put yourselves in your prospect’s shoes and write copy from their perspective. Think about it. I’m not expecting you to be reading this article because you have an avid interest in DBS Internet Marketing or David Clarke. You are doing it because you want to use something (in this case knowledge) to your advantage – not mine. So don’t bore your prospects with stuff all about you – write your copy from their angle. It’s fine to have an “About us” page but don’t cram the action pages of your site with this type of information. Put it in a place where your visitors will go if they are really interested. People have short attention spans so present information in bite size chunks such as bullet points so that your pages are: · Easy to read · Snappy · To the point · Don’t look cluttered
Search engines
All search engines have spiders whose job it is to read and index your website’s content. There are some big do’s and don’ts that include: Do
·Write at least 300 words of unique copy for each page ·Write a page of copy per service or product as a rule of thumb
Don’t
·Rip off content from another website – search engines don’t like this at all and may penalise you heavily ·Use a “cookie cutter” approach to the pages of your website ie if you have a page for buckets and a page for spades make sure that you don’t just interchange the words bucket and spade
Other factors
Other factors apart from copy include: Credibility
eg Members of the Chamber of Commerce, Established since 1986 Images
Can people quickly and clearly see what products and services you offer? Ease of contact
Does your site have a prominent telephone number displayed no matter how far a prospect scrolls down your web page? Calls to action
Do you encourage prospects to interact by using online forms such as “Arrange A Callback” or ”Get a Quote”?
If you would like a free, no obligation chat about your current website or a new venture please contact David Clarke of DBS on FREEPHONE 0800 988 8366.
