How to Reach Your Best Customers by Writing Web Content

Writing for the web isn’t difficult at all - when you know what your visitors are looking for.  But how can you find out, and more importantly, how can you write in such a way that your best customers find your site - instead of your competition?

A recent article in InformationWeek revealed a helpful new strategy for web copywriting.  As it turns out, the people more likely to buy from your site are using 4-word searches to find what you have to offer.  For example:

Stage One - The Casual Browser

This is the “I’m just looking” customer - the kind that probably won’t stay but 5 seconds on your web page.  Their keywords aren’t specifically targeted. Maybe they’re looking for a good cup of joe and type something like “coffee” into the search engine.   Very broad and general - they’ll get millions of results.

Stage Two - Getting Specific

Your coffee customer has realized that there are a lot of sites out there selling coffee, talking about coffee and probably even running on coffee.  So she decides to be a little more specific in her search by typing “gourmet coffee” into the search engine.  Still a general term and there will be heaps of results to show for it.

Stage Three - Narrowing it Down

This is the point where your customer sees that just typing in “gourmet coffee” won’t cut it.  There’s Kona coffee, Italian coffee, Arabica coffee, coffee from South America, coffee pods, beans and who knows what else.  She’s really looking for gourmet ground coffee, so typing that in will narrow down the results significantly.

Stage Four - the 4-Word Search

Customers who search using 4 or more words are most likely to find smaller, more targeted websites that specifically deliver what they want.  Our java-hunting customer might type in “freshly ground vanilla coffee”  The end result? Just 48,000 competing sites (which is terrific as most results number in the hundreds of thousands!)

As a side note, one of the top 3 results for this search had “freshly ground coffee” specifically in its web address.  How’s that for a targeted search! 

Think about what specific keywords and phrases your visitors would use to search for your product.  Don’t forget to target local searchers too!  The more specific and focused they are, the more likely you’ll be to get better-targeted traffic to your site.

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