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Improve Your Web Copy

Good web copy should elevate your search engine rankings, attract traffic, and retain customers. It should also be a virtual salesperson capable of closing deals.

Note: This article originally appeared in the Yahoo! Small Business newsletter, Insights. A wide variety of other informative articles is available in Yahoo!'s Small Business resources page.

All the sophistication and flash in the world can never substitute for good writing. Concise, lively copy can make even the simplest site sing. Use these writing tips to make your site more compelling, user-friendly, and sales-driven.

Vivid Product Descriptions
Product descriptions should create a tangible image in your customer's mind and briefly explain the virtues and benefits of your product or service, even if they include product photos. To describe your product, use the five senses (taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell) when possible. If your business offers a service, use descriptive adjectives to differentiate your service from other businesses. Writing persuasive product descriptions means knowing your customers, their language and styles, and being able to identify and render the imagery surrounding a product or product line. Knowing your target audience tells you what tone to use, what style to apply, and whether to be sober, serious, informal, or over-the-top.

Online stores typically offer two levels of description for any given item. The initial description provides a brief overview of the product. It should be short and sweet, yet enticing. Also, include a more complete description that customers with piqued interest can view by clicking on the product image or a "more details" link. When organizing product copy, always predict customer questions and answer inquiries before they arise. For example, never omit essential details like price or important product specifications unless you have a tactical rationale.

Regular Updates
How often do you want to update your site's content? Who will be responsible for doing so? You can have your designer update content for you, outsource the work to a web content editor, or do it yourself. According to the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, updating site content gives your site more credibility. Even a small change, such as a new message from you or one of your employees, will tell your members that your site is dynamic and changing.

Headlines and Subheads
Headlines attract attention, whet the reader's appetite, and encourage investigation of subsequent text. Subheads break long blocks of text into smaller, less intimidating pieces and provide a content summary to the large number of readers who will scan your text. They are standard features of articles and brochures, yet remain underused on the Web, where they have an additional advantage: The formatting devices used to distinguish heads and subheads, such as bold print, italics, or a larger font size, give them added weight with search engines.

Keyword-Rich Links
Text links enjoy a privileged status on the Internet. Search engine spiders value the text within them more than ordinary body copy. More importantly, good links direct your readers to the destinations they seek. But when they're poorly composed, your readers may overlook important content or be misdirected to irrelevant pages.

Instead of "click here for more information," load your link with appropriate keywords that tell readers what they can expect upon arrival, such as "compare laser printer prices," "features and print speeds," or "download Whiff & Poof's top 10 life science stock picks for the upcoming quarter."

Keep Your Home Page Concise
Today's web surfer has a short attention span. The home page needs to cut to the chase or risk losing the reader. Don't waste a lot of time giving details and background. A good size is 200 to 250 words. That should give you enough space to tout your biggest benefits and also encompass those all-important keywords. Save lengthy, detailed copy for inner pages.

Proofread Diligently
It's easy to find errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation on the Internet. We've all seen them. But that doesn't make them right. Nothing detracts more from your professionalism than misspelled words or sentences that don't make sense. Typos and broken links decrease a web site's credibility, according to the Persuasive Technology Laboratory at Stanford. Proofread your work and ask others to do it, too. An extra set of eyes may catch mistakes you miss.