Website Copy: Branding, Conversion, SEO, and Can AI Write it?

Website copy refers to the written content on a website and can range from single landing pages to complex structure of e-commerce platforms. Regardless of its size, such copy must have a clear objective, and copywriters are skilled at understanding that aim and producing texts that don’t only sound good, but are unique, targeted and effective. We’ll delve into what such content ideally includes, but let’s start from the end.   

Can AI Write Website Copy?

The short answer is: yes, technically it can. The question is whether it will be any good, and here the answer is a lot less resounding. AI can also write a love letter to your girlfriend. We don’t recommend you try that out. Because the thing with artificial intelligence is that it does a damn good job at copying from its existing data, but it’s absolutely terrible at creating something new. And what are you writing website copy for if not to promote your unique product or service?

So AI is failing the first and ultimate test when it comes to website copywriting. But what exactly does this mean and what is important to consider when writing content for websites? There are several factors at play and content creation has evolved into a multidisciplinary art.

What Matters When Writing Website Copy?

Once upon a time, website writing was a fairly straightforward task, and all one had to do was to find someone with a knack for writing who could eloquently express the aim of your organization. That is ancient history, however, because today, websites are more than just glorified digital business cards. Websites, operating in tight and competitive landscapes, must differentiate your organization from your competitors, it must rank on search indexes, it must establish expectations for how you operate, and most importantly, it must convert leads into customers.

In simplified terms, there are three pillars of website copy:

1. Branding

As is the case with every individual, every brand has a unique voice. Finding and articulating it is the first step when writing website content. Professional copywriters are not only skilled at writing but are good interviewers and analysts that will do just that – something that lies way beyond the capabilities of artificial intelligence.

Branding doesn’t only consist of text – much of it belongs to the visual sphere. But unique and consistent brand messaging will result in audiences recognizing your brand voice, even without visuals. Therefore, before putting pen to paper (or screen), your copywriter will put much thought into finding your branding sweet spot – and then milk it throughout your entire website (and other documentation).  

It is this first pillar of website copywriting where the discrepancy between human writers and artificial intelligence is the most significant, as it requires independent, creative, and analytical thinking. To establish a brand voice, one must understand the business – the market it operates in, its unique selling point, its employees – and channel all these into compelling content. It’s a gargantuan task, but incredibly rewarding for all parties involved when done right.

2. Engagement and Conversion

Besides presenting, explaining, and promoting your products or services, your website has one main task: to turn audiences into clients. Therefore your copy should from the get-go be written with the intention of accommodating your target audience, establishing an emotional connection, speaking to their needs, and offering a solution.

On top of the demanding first step above, in this second step you must now integrate your brand messaging and combine it with your prospectives’ pain points, explain how your solutions apply to them, and guide them towards conversion. This includes structured narrative, targeted language, effective CTAs (calls to action), and optimized conversion paths.

While this may sound convoluted, these strategies become naturally innate to experienced copywriters. In comparison, while AI is good at assembling and analyzing endless examples of existing copy, it does not understand the thinking behind it. It can therefore produce relatively nice sounding copy, but it will not be strategy-based.

3. SEO

Ensuring your website offers a great user experience is key to make the most of your digital presence, but what about getting users to your website in the first place? Search engine optimization (SEO) is a critical component of a copywriter’s toolbox nowadays, and even the best writers can be considered useless if they don’t know at least basic SEO practices.

SEO is deeply complex and contains a huge and growing checklist of creative and technical elements to implement across and beyond your website. From understanding the roles of subheadings to keywords to link-building and how to construct an effective blog, the basic goal of SEO is to ensure your website ranks high in search indexes for phrases relating to your business. The only caveat is that SEO is not an exact science, and nobody knows the entirety of the algorithm behemoth behind it.

Different SEO specialists will weigh various elements differently based on their past successes, but there’s no guarantee of what works best. A good SEO professional will avoid making unequivocal claims, and instead understand as many influencing factors as possible, and use them to their advantage.

Of the three steps, SEO might be where AI is most proficient. AI can easily analyze keywords based on competitors’ analysis, although it might sin with keyword stuffing (using too many and in an unnatural way), it will be good at structuring the copy, and it can certainly write meta titles and descriptions. AI is good at a lot of what is important to SEO, but again, it’s the creative and independent approach applied by human professionals that will truly result in successful SEO.

So What Content or Copy Can I Rely on AI For?

Artificial intelligence is a great assistance tool for all your writing. Writing block? Let AI write up that copy, and just from reading that your creative juices will start to flow. Not sure about how to structure content? Again, let AI do it, then do it better. Ask AI to fill in the blank when you can’t access that one word sitting at the back of your head.

But AI is also great at technical writing. product descriptions, FAQs, manuals – the less creative, the better artificial intelligence is at it. That is not to say one can rely blindly on AI for such content. A human will ALWAYS need to edit or at least review AI content. Also legal or medical documents, while among the least creative, are not suitable for AI (you must surely have heard of the lawyer relying on fake precedents made up by AI).

AI is fast, cheap, scalable and very very convenient. But ultimately, when it comes to most content, especially website copy, that needs to combine branding, conversion, and SEO, it’s still best to rely on human professional copywriters for the best and most unique results.