Website copy is all the written content on your website, covering everything from blogs and FAQs to information about your services and biographies of your key staff.

Website copy is vital to the success of your business, because the better your website copy is, the higher your conversion rate will be. One of the best ways to improve your marketing is to improve the quality of your website copy.

Your website should clearly explain what services you offer, who you offer them to, how clients are better off after using your services and why you’re so good at delivering them. Your website should also provide answers for all the questions you typically get asked and objections you typically hear.

There’s no ‘right’ number of words or pages you should have on your website, but it’s probably more than you think. You should include as much copy as necessary to explain what type of clients you serve, how you serve them and why your business is so good; to answer all the questions you typically get asked; and to overcome the most common objections you hear. The more detail you provide, the more likely you are to achieve those goals. That’s why, with website copy, it’s generally a case of ‘more is more’ rather than ‘less is more’.

Regularly. One of the big mistakes businesses make is to think of their website as a static creation rather than a living, breathing organism. Regularly updating your website copy will send a positive signal to potential clients, because it will make your business look active and professional. It will also send a positive signal to search engines like Google, because they tend to give higher rankings to websites that regularly update their content.

Good website copy is clear, concise, easy to read, optimised for SEO (search engine optimisation) and aimed directly at the target audience. Bad website copy is confusing, verbose, hard to read, not Google-friendly.and often irrelevant to the target audience.

To make your website copy more persuasive, do these five things. First, appeal to your target audience’s self-interest by focusing on their goals, fears and problems. Second, prove the value of your services by highlighting their benefits rather than their features. Third, make your copy easy to read by being concise and using simple words. Fourth, build trust with readers by giving them case studies and testimonials. Fifth, let readers know what to do next by including a clear call-to-action.

Keyword stuffing is when you gratuitously add specific words or phrases (i.e. keywords) into your website copy in an attempt to improve your SEO (search engine optimisation). In fact, Google and other search engines punish keyword stuffing, because it provides a bad user experience. Instead, they prefer it when keywords naturally appear in website copy.

The secret to writing SEO-optimised copy without keyword stuffing is to give your clients the information they’re seeking – by solving problems, answering questions and busting myths. That way, you won’t have to force keywords into your content; instead, as you write, you’ll find you’re able to insert them naturally.

If you’re an excellent writer and you have the time to write high-quality, in-depth content, you don’t need to hire a professional copywriter. Otherwise, you should get professional help, because the more enticing your website content is, the more sales you’ll make.