Website Copywriting – 4 Do’s and Dont’s

When I research a business or industry, I look at competing websites, rankings and keywords to see what’s working and not working in basic SEO. Sometimes I’m surprised, to my annoyance.

I can lay out the top 3 – 5- 10 -X things “To Do” and “Not To Do” and then get foiled by search rankings.

For example, I was researching event planning sites in Ohio. I found a beautiful site that had some of my favorites:

• Current Blog
• Compelling Copy
• Clear Offer
• Relevant Keywords

Unfortunately it was on page ten.

On the other hand, one of the top 5 sites listed for “Event planners Ohio” had the following:

• Out of date blog
• No meta-tag keywords
• Cookie-cutter content
• Hard to read copy
• An annoying contact page that had no contact info, just a form for the visitor to fill out. No thanks.

So what was different?

The one significant difference I could find in a cursory look was that Company #2 had been in business for over ten years, whereas #1 was less than two years old.

There are a lot of factors that go into rankings, some not under your control, and you could go nuts trying to outwit the search engines. I enjoy playing the SEO game, and happily do it for my clients. But it’s not for the faint of heart.

Bottom Line: Focus on creating interesting relevant content repeatedly, and in time you’ll see results. Nothing happens overnight.