How to Write your Website – The Complete Guide – Part 1

Not sure how to write your website? Then you’ve come to the right place. The words on your website are all-important. Aside from your website’s design, they are the one element a visitor can use to gauge the type of company you are, or at least you’re trying to be.

Different writing styles are appropriate for different types of businesses. If you’re a financial advisor, then prospective customers will expect professional, reassuring and informative copy. On the other hand, visitors to a marketing agency’s website might hope to see something unique, some clever wordplay and copy that’s capable of building a brand and differentiating from the competition.

I hope this ‘how to write your website’ guide will provide everything you need to know to give it a darn good go,  from creating that all-important metadata to writing kick-ass copy that converts. And, if you’re struggling, just drop me a line and I’ll happily do the hard work for you.

Choosing your keywords

The first step in writing your website is keyword research. If your website does not show for the terms visitors use to find the products or services you offer, then without a well-known brand name, your website will be extremely difficult to find. That’s why it’s crucial to spend some time identifying the terms prospective customers use to find your products or services online. This is called keyword research.

This guide includes just about everything you need to know to perform keyword research for your website.

Carrying out keyword research will tell you how many times a particular term is searched for on Google and the level of competition for it. For example, if you’re a men’s shoe retailer, the most searched-for keyword in your industry might be ‘men’s shoes’. Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner tells me that this term is searched for 110,000 times in the UK every month.

Now, it would be fantastic if you could rank #1 in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the keyword ‘men’s shoes’, but of course, this term is highly competitive, and the top spot is likely to be dominated by much larger, more established websites.

At the time of writing, the top three search results for that particular term are Clarks, Schuh and Next. Do you have the budget to compete with those names? Probably not. So, what you need to do is carefully balance the search volume and competition for each keyword.

What you’re looking for are keywords that still attract a good number of searches every month but are less competitive. That will make it much easier to appear in the first positions in the SERPs.

Once your keyword research is complete, you should have a list of keywords which will include terms like:

• Men’s brown leather shoes
• Casual men’s shoes
• Men’s walking boots

You can also increase your chances of ranking for these terms by localising your search. That can massively reduce the level of competition. For example:

• Men’s shoes in Winchester
• Casual men’s shoes in Winchester

Once you have chosen your keywords, the next step is to distribute them throughout your website.

Writing the metadata

via GIPHY

When writing your website, using metadata is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT (yes, it’s caps lock important). Metadata tells the search engine what a particular web page is about. Search engines use this data to determine how relevant a page is to a visitor’s search query. The more relevant your metadata to the search query (along with a number of other supporting factors), the better you’ll rank in the search engine results.

TITLE TAG

Your title tag may only be around 65 characters long, but don’t underestimate its importance. It tells search engines what your page is about and is usually displayed as the clickable headline in the search results.

The good news is that you don’t need to know any code to add one. Whether you use WordPress, Wix, Shopify or another website platform, there should be a dedicated field where you can enter your title tag. If you’re a WordPress user, installing the free Yoast SEO plug-in makes adding this data a breeze.

Each page of your website should have its own unique title tag. In WordPress, the title tag is called the SEO title. You have 65 characters to play with; any longer and your title tag will not be shown in full on the search engine results pages, which can affect the number of clicks. 

When writing your title tag, include at least one of the keywords you have assigned to the page, followed by your business name for branding purposes. You can use a pipe bar to separate the two elements. In practice, your homepage title tag should look something like this:

Men’s Shoes in Winchester | TYHC Shoe Company

The title tag for your walking boots page would be something along the lines of:

Men’s Walking Boots in Winchester | TYHC Shoe Company

If there’s room for a verb before your primary keyword, such as ‘Buy Men’s Shoes in Winchester’, you can always add that too, but only if your keyword research supports it. 

META DESCRIPTION

Your meta description is the two or three lines of text displayed under the title tag on the search engine results pages. The meta description should be both user- and search engine-friendly. It should entice prospective customers to click while also including keywords and describing the page’s content to search engines. Once upon a time, the meta description carried plenty of weight as a search engine ranking factor, but nowadays it is primarily for the user.

When writing your meta description, you have around 150 characters to convince a browser to click on your website. As with the title tag, any more characters than this will not be shown.

So, for your homepage, you might choose something along the lines of:

Handmade men’s shoes in Winchester, from brogues and loafers to casual shoes, boat shoes and more. Get free delivery and a 10% discount on your first purchase.

Here are some more pointers courtesy of Yoast.

HEADING 1 – H1

Your H1 is the first heading that’ll appear on your web page and the first element I’ve dealt with so far that’ll actually appear on the page itself. H1s are a natural place for your keywords to appear; after all, what better heading for a page advertising men’s walking boots than ‘Men’s walking boots’?

Your H1 is the most important heading on a web page for SEO and usability.

In terms of SEO, your H1 provides several important signals, including:

• Relevance

  Search engines use your H1 as one of several signals to understand what a page is about and how relevant it is to a search query. Your H1 should therefore accurately reflect the page’s main topic.

• Keyword alignment

  Including your primary keyword or a close variation in your H1 can reinforce the connection between the page and the searches you want it to appear for. It should fit naturally rather than being forced in for the sake of SEO.

• User experience

  Your H1 helps visitors quickly understand what a page is about when they arrive. A clear, descriptive heading makes it easier for them to find the information they’re looking for and decide whether the page is relevant to them.

Here are a few rules of thumb when writing H1s for your website:

1. Always include an H1
2. Don’t jam as many keywords as you can into the one heading – one will do
3. Don’t use a keyword that you’ve already used on another page of your website

And that brings us to the end of the first part of my ‘how to write your website’ guide. Part 2 deals with the meaty business of the body copy, so make sure you stay tuned.