SEO, Web design and Copywriting
I was prompted to write about this topic after reading this article.
Thus, I believe that both SEO and Web design are extremely important to make a website successful. However, since I have to choose one, I will pick SEO. But I am not saying that you should only focus on SEO and ignore web design. Take your time to build the website carefully. Spend sufficient amount of time on both but spend a little more time on SEO. This way you will get traffic and still have a reasonably attractive website.
This makes perfect sense, since nobody can appreciate your design if they can’t find it through the search engines. But what if you throw copywriting in the mix? Given that the SEO and design are important elements of a web page, why does copywriting take a backseat? What if you had your web page set up to be both aesthetically pleasing, functional and search engine friendly but your copy couldn’t sell a dollar for 50 cents?
Copy is written in many forms, one of which is the often abused one-page-sales-letter. Many scams are written in this form, yet many legitimate businesses are adopting the same structure and look. Most of these pages, look very much alike; fixed-width letter-like layout, business owner’s photo at the top, personal commentary stretching at least 5 screen-lengths and a signature to wrap up.
I don’t know how much SEO was put into many of these web sites, but I do know that there was very little design to it. Yet, many businesses continue to operate successfully this way. For these businesses, they chose to depend entirely on the strength of their copy to make sales, successfully so in fact.
In general, a website owner should direct more efforts towards SEO, then their copy and finally their design. Of course, in some cases depending on demographics, a good site design is required to gain the trust of consumers so a business must first understand their customers.
With greater effort, a business can achieve the holy grail of working all three elements in tandem to create a solid sales pitch. That should be the goal of every businesses’ website.