Dragonfly Media Curacao

When you’re writing copy for a website you can basically write for three different ‘groups’. These groups are your prospective clients, the search engines and yourself. If you want to sell a product or a service you should, of course, write for people that might be willing to buy from you. But then again, if you want to rank high in Google and the likes shouldn’t you write for them? And you probably also want to put something of yourself, something specifically you, in your copy.

So, who do you write for and who should you write for?

First, let’s look at those three groups and how you write for them.
The prospective clients (let’s be positive and call them clients from now on) are the people that you want to sell your product/services to. So, when you write for them, you will want to tell them all about your products, give them testimonials of people who love your products and give them an all out pleasant experience. This is good and this is how it should be.

The search engines are the primary way in which people find the information they need on-line. So, if you want people to find you with search engines, you will need to write your copy for them. This means that you need to make sure that the keywords you want to be found on are present in the text. And if you want people to find you with a specific phrase (like we would want to be found on: curacao web design or web design curacao) it would be wise to incorporate these as well.

Your company has an identity and a brand (already well-developed or not). This identity is most likely closely connected to who you are. The bigger the company, the less you there is, but then you usually have a brand book in which the brand and its ‘personality’ is defined. When you write anything there always something that transmits a part of who you are and you should cultivate this. This is what sets your copy apart from the others writing about the same subject and/or selling the same product.
(That’s the reason I always give when somebody tells me to change something on this blog ;) )

You probably understand from the above that I was going to tell you that you should write for all of them (a bit obvious isn’t it?). The point is that the trick is in balancing the three. You don’t want to write copy that nobody is going to find, you don’t want to write content that only the search engines like and you should definitely avoid writing about your 10 year old sick cat (unless you’re a vet of course).

My view on this is that you should primarily write for your clients. They are the ones who you want to buy something from you and should be treated as such. To accommodate the search engines you should try to put your keywords in your text wherever you can, but don’t overdo it! Try not to use too many synonyms because not all search engines know that a cel and a mobile are the same. While you are writing you will always put your own spin on things and you have your own view of your products. A personal touch also makes reading a (large) piece of text more interesting (for reference, see: Lisa Barone’s writing at bruceclay.com) so don’t be afraid to inject yourself in your writing.
For the geeks out there who need the numbers: I think the ratio should be 80:15:5 for clients:search engines:yourself.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am and is filed under General, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.