Web Copywriting - Writing Copy for the Web

Article Posted 2002 June 16, Sunday - Page 1 | 2 | Last modified: 2004-02-02
by Edward Lewis, aka pageoneresults™ - System Administrator

Web Copywriting, what is it? What is different about writing copy for the web, or writing copy for traditional print media? In theory, there should not be a significant difference between the two. When writing effective copy, you have a basic set of elements that make up the structure of that copy. You have a page title, you have headline text, and then you have content.

When you view a printed brochure that shows bullet points of various products and services, you are looking at the basic concepts of a website navigation structure. I'm going to assume that the brochure was written by a professional copywriter who understood the essence of writing effective and targeted advertising copy. The bulleted points may have looked something like this...

Those bullet points should have a logical structure. We are now going to take those bulleted items and convert them to a hyperlinked navigation structure. This structure could be part of a category entrance page that leads to more focused content on individual web pages targeting those keyword sets.

The opening paragraph of the brochure is usually preceded by headline text or a page title in some form. That may now become the <title> for your web page. It may also become the heading <h1> that precedes your first paragraph of content.

There is an order of importance for the structural elements on a page. How you build your content from top to bottom is critical when writing copy for the web. The opening paragraph plays a key role in optimization and that is why effective web copywriting is essential for the development of your content. How the paragraph is worded, what elements are used to emphasize text, and how the keyword phrases are built into the copy is all part of the optimization equation.

Not only do you need to focus on the core content, but you also have to look at the text link navigation structure. I feel all websites should have a text link navigation structure. It could be at the top, left, bottom, or right hand side of the page. Those links should be developed using a web copywriting theory. Meaning, your targeted theme phrases (Level I) should be used along with any sub-theme phrases (Level II). The structure of your links and how they are presented will also have an impact on your pages ranking highly.

Effective web copywriting is a learned skill.
Its not something that everyone can do, not even traditional copywriters. You first need to understand the basics of the web and how it works. You need to understand the way a spidering robot reads html code and what elements it looks for, and in what order they should appear.

Let's not forget about the consumer!
We typically scan information when we perform searches. Elements that are bolded, in a different color, set off by bulleted or numbered lists, are usually the things that we see first. This is important, if we don't see the terms we are looking for, we then move on to other websites to find the information that we are scanning for.

This SEO article on Effective Web Copywriting contains two parts. Follow the link below to view the second part.

Web Copywriting - Writing Effective Web Copy

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Last modified: 2008-09-25T07:25:50-0700

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