Content writing · 23 May 2019 · 5 min read

Writing web copy that sells: readers first, search second

Thousands of visitors and almost no sales is a common problem, and it is usually not a traffic problem. It is that the words on the page do not move anybody toward becoming a customer.

What a good salesperson does, and copy has to do too

Ask what makes someone genuinely good at selling. Product knowledge? Appealing words — free, long-lasting, the best in the business? Being likeable? All three help, and almost every salesperson has them. None of them is what separates the best.

The difference is reading the customer: understanding what someone is actually after, which is a skill built through years of trial and error. Crucially, they know that what a customer needs and what they want are not the same thing.

Someone shopping for a phone needs a way to stay in touch. What they want might be fast internet, good games, and a design their friends will notice. A good salesperson sells to both. Your copy has to do that without being in the room.

Look at your existing copy honestly

Does it hold attention? If the opening lines were not written with the customer in mind, nobody reaches the call to action, however good the offer behind it.
Did whoever wrote it understand how the audience buys? Most web copy underperforms because it was written by somebody who never sat in the reader’s chair — the features, the benefits, and above all the hesitations that matter to an actual buyer.
Is it aimed at the right register? Formal, jargon-heavy language reads fine to some visitors and sends others to a competitor one click away.

Get organised before writing

Know what visitors are looking for. Traffic is not the goal; conversion is. Content should answer the questions a prospective customer already has, which takes research into what those questions actually are.

Know the language buyers already use. Someone shopping for an elliptical trainer is drawn to phrases like “cross training”, “low impact” or “calorie burn rate” without consciously choosing them. That is the vocabulary to write in.

Ask for the business more than once. Most readers never reach the bottom of a page, so a call to action after every strong point beats one buried at the end. Make it specific: a travel company converts better on “plan my tour” than on a generic prompt.

Fitting keywords in without repelling the reader

Well-written SEO copy reaches search engines while still connecting with a person. Weak targeting means nobody finds the page; copy that reads like it was assembled around a keyword means nobody stays on it.

Solve the reader’s problem first. Whatever the tone, if the page does not answer what brought them there, nothing else about it matters.
Write something original. Content that gives a reader something worth taking away earns links, and links raise rankings. That is the whole mechanism.
Let keywords fit the sentence, not the other way round. Copy written by someone who understands search can work terms in without distorting them.
Make it scannable. Plain language and real subheadings are what get a page read at all. The headline decides whether the rest is.
Follow through. Readers respond to a business that delivers what the page promised. That is where trust turns into a customer.

Content that earns the sale later

Advertising used to drive sales directly. Buyers now research before deciding, and publishing genuinely useful, non-promotional information does several jobs at once.

It builds the brand. Consistently useful information signals that a company is stable and knows its subject.

It travels. Readers share what they find useful, which takes one piece well past its original audience.

It educates. Posts, guides and videos give a prospect a clearer picture of what you do than a pitch does, and build confidence faster.

It compounds into trust. Trust rarely comes from a single visit. Readers who follow a company over time are the ones who eventually get in touch and tell you exactly what they need.

It earns visibility. A search returns millions of results; the quality of a page is largely what decides whether it is one of the few people find.

When to bring in a professional

Most people in a specialised field can describe their work to each other. Few have the time or the skill to turn it into something a layperson can follow, and poor documentation makes a good product look bad.

A technical writer translates the logic of a product into readable text for brochures, manuals, websites, case studies and media kits. Three reasons it pays:

Clarity. Engineers, scientists and developers are experts in the subject, not in writing for a non-expert. Those are different skills.
Speed. Writing concisely is a technical writer’s core skill, so they produce usable content faster than someone doing it as a side task.
Fewer support tickets. Customers who do not understand the documentation call support instead. A writer whose job is to think like the customer heads that off before it starts.

The short version

Write for the person, structure for the search engine, and be honest about which of those your current pages were built for.

Content and search are one team here rather than two — our digital marketing work covers both, usually for the same clients whose sites we also build and host.