Website Copywriting Service

Your website doesn’t need more words. It needs the right ones in the right places.

A website can be beautifully designed, technically immaculate and remarkably quick to load.

And still leave somebody wondering what the company actually does. Good website copy starts before the writing.

What does somebody need to understand when they arrive? Where are they likely to go next? What questions will they have? What might stop them getting in touch? Which pages do you actually need? And what does each one have to accomplish?

Then we can worry about the sentences.

I’ve been writing professionally for 30 years, for organisations ranging from small businesses and start-ups to government departments and international brands. I write and rewrite websites of every size, helping businesses work out what they need to say, organise it properly and give people a reason to keep reading.

Before the words, there’s the thinking

Writing a website page by page can produce perfectly decent individual pages and a rather confused website. I prefer to look at the whole thing first.

Who are we talking to? What are they looking for? What do you want them to know, think or do? Which services need their own pages? What information belongs together? What can disappear altogether?

That last question can be surprisingly useful. More content isn’t automatically better content.

For a new website, I can help plan the structure and messaging before the writing begins. For an existing one, I’ll look at what’s already there and decide what deserves keeping, rewriting, moving, combining or quietly putting out of its misery.

People don’t read websites in order

Nobody arrives on your homepage and dutifully works through the navigation from left to right.

They arrive through search results, advertisements, recommendations, social media and links. They might land on a service page first. Or an article. Or the About page.

Every important page therefore needs to make sense in its own right while still belonging to the same website.

The homepage needs to establish what you do and give people somewhere useful to go.

Service pages need enough substance to answer questions and build confidence.

The About page needs to tell people something worth knowing about you rather than simply announcing the year the company was founded.

And calls to action need to appear when somebody might reasonably be ready to act.

The website is a journey.

Unfortunately, visitors don’t always take the route you planned.

Make it easy to understand you

Businesses spend years becoming experts in what they do. Then they try to explain it on a website.

That’s often where the trouble starts. Internal terminology creeps in. Every service sounds equally important. Familiar concepts are explained at enormous length while things an outsider actually needs to know are barely mentioned.

An external writer has one useful advantage. I don’t already know what you mean. I’ll ask the questions a potential customer might ask and keep asking until I understand the answer well enough to explain it clearly. That doesn’t mean dumbing anything down. It means removing the unnecessary difficulty.

Give people a reason to choose you

A surprising number of websites say essentially the same things. Experienced. Innovative. Customer-focused. Tailored solutions. Exceptional service. Trusted partner. None of those things is necessarily untrue. They’re just not very useful if everybody else can say them too. I’ll look for the specifics.

How do you work differently? What do customers particularly value? What experience matters? What do you understand that a competitor might not? Is there evidence to support the claims? Is there something about your process, people or thinking that gives somebody a genuine reason to choose you?

Sometimes differentiation isn’t about finding a cleverer adjective. It’s about finding a better fact.

Search engines are readers too. Sort of. SEO matters. If search is important to the website, we need to understand what potential customers are looking for, the language they use and which pages should answer which searches.

That can influence page structure, headings, terminology, internal links and the subjects the site needs to cover. But a page written primarily for an algorithm usually makes fairly grim reading for everybody else. I use keywords where they belong, structure content clearly and make sure important pages have a recognisable subject and purpose.

Depending on the project, I can work with existing keyword research and SEO strategy, collaborate with your SEO specialist or undertake appropriate search and competitor research as part of the brief. The aim is to help the right person find the page. Then make the page worth finding.

Copy and design need to talk to each other

Words aren’t something that should be poured into whatever spaces happen to remain after the website has been designed. A headline might need three words rather than twelve. A complicated service may need more room than expected. An important message might deserve its own section. Two pages might turn out to be one. One page might really need to be three.

I’ve worked with designers, developers, agencies and marketing teams throughout my career, and I’m happy to become involved while the structure and design are still taking shape. The earlier everybody talks, the fewer awkward compromises there tend to be later.

Website copywriting services

I can help with a complete new website, an individual page or something in between, including:

homepage copy;
service pages;
landing pages;
About pages;
sector and industry pages;
website content planning and structure;
messaging and content hierarchy;
SEO website copywriting;
website rewrites and content refreshes;
editing existing website content;
calls to action and microcopy;
meta titles and descriptions; and
content for large corporate websites.

I can work directly with you or alongside your web designer, developer, SEO consultant or agency.

New website or old website?

Starting from scratch has its advantages. We can decide what the site needs to say before anybody becomes attached to what’s already there. Existing websites have an advantage too. They provide evidence. We can see what pages exist, what information has accumulated, where repetition has crept in and what may no longer reflect the business.

You don’t necessarily need a complete rewrite. Sometimes the proposition is right but buried. Sometimes several pages are competing to say the same thing. Sometimes the structure needs attention more than the sentences. I’ll tell you what I think needs changing. Including when the answer is less than you expected.

Thirty years of getting to the point

I started in journalism, where readers were under no obligation whatsoever to reach the second paragraph. I later wrote speeches in government, where complicated subjects had to make sense when spoken aloud. Since becoming a freelance copywriter, I’ve written website content for businesses and organisations across sectors including finance, law, healthcare, technology, energy, property, construction, education and the public sector.

Different audiences. Different subjects. Different objectives. The basic discipline hasn’t changed very much. Understand what matters. Work out what needs saying. Then get to the point.

Got a website in need of words?

Perhaps you’re building a new site. Perhaps you’re rebranding. Or perhaps you’ve looked at the website you’ve had for seven years and realised it describes a business you don’t quite recognise anymore. Send me the site, the brief or whatever you currently have. I’ll take a look. Then we can work out what needs writing — and, just as importantly, what doesn’t.

Website copywriting FAQs

Do you write complete websites?

Yes. I can help with the structure and messaging as well as writing the individual pages, whether it’s a small business website or a much larger corporate site.

Can you rewrite my existing website?

Yes. A rewrite can range from improving individual pages to reconsidering the structure, messaging and content of the whole site. I won’t recommend replacing perfectly good copy simply to give myself something to write.

Do you provide SEO website copywriting?

Yes. I can incorporate supplied keyword research and SEO recommendations or undertake appropriate search and competitor research as part of the project. For specialist technical SEO work, I’m also happy to work alongside your SEO consultant or agency.

Can you work with my web designer or developer?

Yes, and preferably before every design decision has been fixed. Copy, structure and design affect one another, so collaboration usually produces a better result.