SEO vs. Copy: What’s the Right Amount of Content for Your Website?

  • SEO

I recently had a conversation with a client that turned into a great discussion about how to strike the balance of having the right amount of content on your website homepage.

In other words, how do you have enough content for SEO purposes, but not too much copy that your target audience is overwhelmed and leaves your website?

This is where the art of copywriting (or in this case, SEO copywriting) comes into play. There is no one-size-fits-all answer. However, there are certain principles to follow that will help you know how to find the right balance.

Understand That Website Habits Have Changed

When I first started writing website content in the 1990s, the idea was to put everything – everything – on the homepage. (Some of those websites are still out there. But, hey, we’re here to help you out!)

Back then, you used the homepage to tell the entire story about your company or brand. Why?

The thinking was that your target audience was sitting down in front of their desktop computer with a nice cup of coffee, they had 20 minutes available to them, and they wanted to read a nice, long story before taking action to buy a product or reach out to your sales team.

Are you nodding along by now thinking back to that time period? You also probably know what’s next.

Nowadays, your prospects and customers are reading your website on their mobile phone, they might have 20 seconds available to read, they’re likely thinking about something else at the same time, and they frankly need bright, shiny lights to be guided through your website.

That is why a website in 2019 needs to be

And, yes, the content needs to be SEO optimized.

Writing Good SEO Copy: Utilize SEO Research

When crafting direct, to-the-point copy to guide your audience through your website, there is a temptation to use keyword stuffing tactics to pack as many keywords into as few sentences as possible to achieve SEO value.

That is not the right way to go about it. For starters, the copy will read clunky and forced, disengaging your audience. Secondly, you will likely be penalized by search engines, pushing your website out of the top spots for keywords you need to rank for.

So, what’s the best approach? Start with keyword research. Let the keyword research guide you on what your audience is searching for, which keywords have a high volume of searches and low competition, and what the most important related keywords are. Our Director of Search Marketing, Aaron Eaves, has a great way of explaining it.

“Doing keyword research prior to writing your content will help you to identify what sort of keywords or key phrases are more likely to bring in the type of relevant visitor that you are targeting,” Aaron says. “When done properly, keyword or key phrase research can be the map you use to write targeted content that will bring in relevant visitors.”

Then, the art of SEO copywriting is being able to take the data and create the right amount of copy with the right density of keywords to achieve both goals:

  1. Engage your audience
  2. Optimize for SEO.

Striking this balance of content density will help you improve your SEO rankings so that your target audience can find you when searching Google or other search engines and help you convert more sales when they arrive on your website.

Ross Hudgens, the founder of Siege Media, recently released a great resource about the importance of content density.

“If you build something that truly engages them to the end or that they are satisfied with, and is dense because of that content marketing sophistication around it — around the quality rather than just the quantity of your words — I think you will actually perform better on average,” Ross said.

Let Marketing Refresh Support Your Website and Copywriting Needs

Like I mentioned before, we want to work with your company to find the right balance of content and SEO value.

First, we want to get to know your company.

  • Do you have specific short-term and long-term business goals that you need to achieve?
  • Do you need to start from scratch with digital marketing, or do you need to accelerate your current marketing efforts?
  • Do you know your audience and how to engage with them?

The answers to these questions help us put together a marketing program that incorporates your goals and is supported by the principles of SEO and copywriting. The result? Robust website copy that improves your SEO rankings, engages your target audience, and compels them to take action.

Contact our digital marketing agency today to get started on a discussion about your company and business goals so that we can start writing optimized SEO copy for your website.

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