So you’re launching a new website or you’re revamping your existing one, and you’re considering getting some help with your new copy. If you’re looking to get new SEO-friendly copy for your Home page, About page, or your service pages, you’re in the right place. And if you’d like to find out more about what happens when you hire me to write your website copy, let me walk you through the project – from start to finish.

1. Understanding your requirements

When you first get in touch with me (typically by email) and tell me about your high-level requirements, I’ll let you know if I can help. I specialise in writing copy for your:

• Home page.
• About page.
• And service pages.

Writing product pages, landing pages, or sales pages isn’t part of my core offering, but I can recommend other awesome copywriters, so if I’m not right for you, I might still point you to someone who is.

Once we’ve established that I can help you, I’ll typically give you an idea of when I can start working on your project. This often depends on my existing workload, as I have regular monthly clients (and a lot of them are podcasters) who often have strict deadlines. If you have a specific date in mind for your website launch, for example, I’ll do my best to prioritise your work, but it might not always be possible, so it’s important we discuss expectations and timelines at the start.

2. Asking you questions about your business

Once we’ve agreed to work together, I’ll ask you to pay a small deposit in advance of starting the work, so I can get stuck in! If you have an existing website (and most of my clients do), I’ll review your content to familiarise myself with your brand and what you do.

But I’ll also want to know more! Any content that you might already have (coupled with anything you’ve shared with me about your aims and your reasons for making changes to your website), forms the basis of my tailored questionnaire to you.

That’s right – I’ll be asking you a bunch of questions, and they’re not generic ones! They’re targeted to you and your business, and you can expect approximately 15-20 questions in total.

These will be around topics like:

• Your ideal customers or clients, including who they are, what problems or challenges they’re experiencing, what kind of results they expect to get from working with you, what objections they might have before they decide to take the plunge and pay you money, etc.
• Your brand story. Who are you and why do you do what you do? What’s your USP? Why should clients choose you? What makes you relatable to your clients and the perfect match for them?
• The what and the how. This is particularly relevant if I’m writing copy for your service pages, but it might also help when it comes to copy for your About page.

My questions are always specific to you and your business! 

You may find that you have answered questions around your ideal clients or your why in the past. So if you have any additional information or up-to-date supporting marketing material you’d like to share with me, I’ll be happy to go through it.

But I’ll still ask you some more specific questions! And if you find them slightly repetitive, that’s all on purpose! They’re designed to make you think about your business in a different way and elicit information that’s otherwise only in your head. What I aim to get out of the answers you’ll share with me is what makes your business unique and, specifically, the way you talk about your business. For me, in order for your copy to do its job for you, it needs to sound like you (not like me, or not like anyone else). And I work hard to make that happen!

If you want to find out more about how I do that, you can head over to my post: How can a Content Writer replicate your writing voice?

3. Sharing your answers with me

I always ask my clients to read through the questions and ‘digest’ them before they start answering them. You can make some notes about your initial thoughts, but I always recommend that you get back to them after a few days. And that’s because by carrying on with your work (speaking to your clients and getting stuck in the day-to-day), you’ll be able to think more about the questions and provide a richer and more in-depth insight into your business.

I only know what you tell me! So I want you to give me the best possible information to make your copy the best it can be!

Once you’re ready, you can share your answers in different ways:

• Write the answers down and email them to me.
• Record a video or an audio file with your answers.
• Schedule a call with me (phone or video) and go through your answers. You just talk through them, and I’ll make notes as we go.

The reason why I give you options (and why the choice as to how you answer the questions is yours) is that I want you to shine! So if you’re someone who ‘thinks as they write’ (much like me), then I invite you to write the answers down. If you ‘think as you talk’, then it’s helpful for you to talk the answers through.

4. Optimising your copy for SEO 

Now, this is an ‘optional’ step. But all my clients do this. And it’s probably the number one reason why clients reach out to me to help them write their copy, rather than writing it themselves. For the uninitiated, ‘optimising your copy for SEO’ simply means being intentional and strategic with the choice of words!

Search Engine Optimisation helps you maximise your chances of being found in Google when your prospective customers and clients ask specific questions that relate to your business or to the problem they’re experiencing. Understanding what words and phrases (or keywords) they use when they head over to Google or other search engines to find information out allows you to include those same keywords in your copy. And doing that gives you better chances to appear on the first page of the Google search results.

In order for me to include the right keywords to help you perform better on the search results though, I will need some help. And this comes in the form of an SEO expert. If SEO is important to you, I can recommend my own SEO expert, but if you already know someone you trust, you’re more than welcome to reach out to them.

All I need to optimise your copy is:

• The longtail keyword that you want to optimise each of your pages for.
• The semantically-related keywords I should include in the copy.
• And the minimum word count for each page.

This information can only be obtained through specialised SEO tools, which is why I outsource this to an expert.

5. Writing the first draft of your copy

Once I’ve spent some time reviewing your answers to my tailored questionnaire and I’ve received the SEO reports for each of the pages you want to create, I’m ready to get writing.

My challenge at this point is to make sure that all the components below work together beautifully in your new copy.

So I’ll consider:

• The content – I need to make sure your new copy is a reflection of you and your brand. The copy needs to speak directly to your ideal customers or clientss in your voice.
• The keywords – words and phrases that need to be included to give you the best chance to make an impact in terms of SEO.
• And the word count. Sometimes (for SEO reasons), the copy is longer than both you and I would like it to be, so it’s important that what we do choose to include is relevant to the purpose of your page.

Once I’ve created the first draft of the copy, I share it with you in a Google Document, invite you to make comments, and we take it from there.

Some copywriters (especially those you find on online marketplaces like Fiverr) limit the number of edits or reviews you can ask for. But I don’t. I don’t believe in that, much like I don’t believe in charging per word! So, as long as you’re not all of a sudden changing your brief or your requirements, we stop the back and forth of comments when you’re 100% happy with your copy.

But what about web design?

What your copy will look like once you (or your web designer) upload it onto your website is out of my remit. If you manage your website yourself, I might be able to give you some recommendations or ideas to make sure the copy looks nice once your site is live. If you’re using a specific or existing layout, for example, I’ll do my best to break down the copy and structure it in such a way that matches your design. But this might not always be possible. ‘

If you’re working with a web designer, I’m happy to liaise with them directly if you need me to and discuss how to best structure the copy so that it looks great on your website. But ultimately my priority is the copy! I’ll always be flexible and follow your recommendations and wishes, but if you’ve worked hard to make sure your copy is optimised for search, then I’ll also recommend that you stick to the SEO recommendations we’ve been given.

So how long will it take for you to write my website copy, end to end? 

End-to-end, your website project should take between 4 and 8 weeks. But it might take longer. How long it will take exactly depends on a few factors.

First things first, it depends on my existing workload but also on how long it takes you to:

• Provide me with the answers to your tailored questionnaire.
• Agree (with the SEO expert) on the keywords you’d like the copy to be optimised for (if you’re going down this path).
• Review the draft copy and provide me with your feedback.

It also depends on how many revisions and edits you will need (and on how big the changes will be).

How long a copywriting project may take me varies widely. To give you an idea, I’ve done Home page + About page projects in 6 weeks and others in 6 months! All I can say is that I’ll work as efficiently as possible to make sure you have what you need by when you need it!

How much does it cost for you to write copy for my website?

If you’re looking for my latest prices, check out my Pricing page – you’ll find the price and a short breakdown of what’s included in the service on the table under Web Copy Package. I offer a Home page + About page package that works out cheaper than buying copy for one page at the time, so check that out!

Would you like my help? 

If you would like to see an example of my work, head over to Margaret Guillen’s website – she’s one of my fab clients, and we’re both very proud of how her copy turned out. It’s a perfect example of optimised copy that 100% reflects the voice of the business owner. And if you would like my help to write copy for your website – whether it’s your Home page, your About page, or any of your service pages – you can get in touch via my website or send me an email at hello@sarabussandri.com, and we can get this process started!