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Is Your Home Page Written for You or for Them?

Written by: Ed Delia

Article Overview: We’ve seen it many times: beautiful flash openings, vibrant graphics, and “catchy” catch-phrases. This is the stuff that many people believe is the heart and soul of a quality website. While it may be eye-catching and engaging, the question I often ask is: Which is more important to your online brand - Looking cool or being found?

Is Your Home Page Written for You or for Them?

We’ve seen it many times: beautiful flash openings, vibrant graphics, and “catchy” catch-phrases. This is the stuff that many people believe is the heart and soul of a quality website. While it may be eye-catching and engaging, the question I often ask is: Which is more important to your online brand - Looking cool or being found?

The truth is, gaining rank in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN are considered “the big three”) often starts with homepage copy content. Obviously, viewers looking for you by company name will certainly find you if your begin your homepage copy with “ABC Company provides this, that and the other thing . . .”. But note that a host of web searchers that don’t know your company by name (or that you exist for that matter) will have a better chance of finding you if you opened with a description of services offered, and the region you serve. Think less about terms that you feel comfortable with, and more about terms – and phrases – that your target audience would be likely to use when doing a search.

There is a balance to be struck between search-friendly copy and reader-friendly copy. You are also trying to establish the unique value of your brand on the homepage. So you can’t simply offer up a bullet-point list of what you do and call it a day. Begin your site with good descriptive copy, and you increase the likelihood that your brand will rise in the search ranks and be found.

Establish your homepage copy in a search-friendly format first and foremost. THEN you can focus your efforts on “looking cool.”

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