Welcome to the last installment of my Wow with Web Copy series. In past blog posts I’ve discussed setting website goals, finding the most effective key phrases and setting up a web content template. Today I’ll address writing the actual on-page copy for a site.
Step 4. Write keyphrase-rich headers & body copy with anchor text links. Now that you know the primary and secondary phrases you are targeting on your page, you need to figure out how you can link to other pages within your site. Since your homepage is probably going to have the most authority in Google’s eyes (link juice to pass on), you’ll especially want to ensure you have keyphrase-rich links off your homepage.
As an example, consider the copy on the Clarity Quest homepage. We link to several sub-pages within the Clarity Quest site. We also use keyphrase-rich copy “Marketing Agency…Technology Companies” in the H1 header.
We’ve also put a small flash area at the top of the page and it’s here where we inserted our snazzy copy which is not keyphrase-rich, but eye-catching and attention-grabbing.
There is a Google penalty if you try to stuff too many links into a page, especially if you put a whole bunch in the footer. The key is to provide just enough links so you are guiding the user to particular areas of your site and not putting in links just for their own sake. If you write for a site visitor, Google rarely penalizes you.
I hope this four-part series has been helpful for those who write copy for websites. As always, I welcome any feedback.
