Audit your website copy and SEO with these 5 simple steps.

How’s your website doing?

Feeling good? Like a digital bag of nifty gifties?

As you and I both know, keeping things looking and feeling phenomenal requires a bit of maintenance. Just think about your hair. Or workout regimen. Or… your dog’s hair and workout regimen?

The same rule applies to your website. Whether you updated your website with search engine optimized (SEO) copy 6 months or 6 years ago, a little audit and refresh is always a good thing.

So, I, your resident copywriting person, am here to walk you through 5 simple steps to help you audit your website copy and site SEO, so that you can make sure that everything stays nifty gifty. And potentially even thrifty.

Let’s do this!

A 5-Step Website and SEO Audit for Your Next Admin Day

Step 1: Review your homepage’s mission statement/one-liner to make sure it still matches your brand.

Things change, am I right? And even if things haven’t changed for you, is there a way for you to better verbalize what it is that you do, how you do it, and who you serve in just one simple sentence?

My own one-liner has gone through a plethora of updates and changes through the years. What sounded *amazing* two years ago, makes me say “ew gross” now. So, check your one-liner!

A tip for writing your one-liner: It should fall above the fold, in nice bold, eye-catching font. Ideally, it’ll include those appropriate SEO keywords (find ‘em on Pinterest or Google for free), and will speak to what it is that you do, how you do it, and who you serve.

As you can see, I speak out of both sides of my mouth, because my own “one-liner” is really a couple of lines of copy. So, do your best to write succinctly, but know that it’s okay to break things up into a couple of sentences in order to achieve the best voice and effect! I recommend starting out with a “it has to be one line of copy” mentality, because I can assure you that it will not end up that way.

Step 2: Confirm that your problem + solution copy section exists.

You know what a lot of creatives do when writing their own homepage copy? They expend all of their energy on their one-liner, and neglect to include more contextual copy that speaks to the problem their ideal client or customer encounters, and how they (the business owner, service provider, product creator, extraordinaire) will help solve it.

In the previous screenshot of my own site, you’ll see that I somewhat smooshed my one-liner and problem/solution copy into one section. So, let’s break down the anatomy of my very own problem/solution/one-liner section below!

The one-liner: Ghostwriter for creatives + I write engaging website, email marketing, and cold email copy.
The (somewhat unspoken) problem: Getting their ideal audience to buy what they have to sell, and sounding like them.
The solution: I write… copy that’ll get your ideal audience to buy what you have to sell. The best part? It’ll actually sound like you.

Typically, I write two pieces of copy for the beginning of the homepage. First, the one-liner that speaks to the what, how, and why. Then, the problem and solution section, which gives more context, and an emotional appeal to the reader.

The one-liner should fall above the fold of your site, and the problem and solution should be the first thing your website visitor sees when they scroll below the fold. However, if you want to be fancy and footloose like me, you could smoosh it all together above the fold of your site.

Just do what looks and feels best for your layout, voice, and writing style!

An example from a site I wrote:

Another example from a site I wrote:

Step 3: Make sure your SEO title and site description match your one-liner.

So, your fancy, SEO, keyword-packed one-liner you have on your homepage should show up in two places: your homepage, and your website’s SEO title.

Your SEO title is basically the thing that’ll show up when people Google your business name. Try it now: search your name online. Does it look a little like this:

Or is it far more brief?

Updating your SEO title and SEO site description will pretty much make sure that you’re in control of what pops up when your business name is searched on Google, or when your website link is shared with others. So, head over to your SEO portion of your site – for Squarespace, it’s under the Marketing tab – and take your newly revised one-liner and insert it into your SEO site description section.

For your SEO title, you’ll need to keep it a bit more brief. So, choose a couple of the words you used in your one-liner, and turn them into… a coherent title.

In the example above, my SEO title is:

Alway Services | Ghostwriter + Marketing Strategist for Creatives

Which is basically just the first line of copy on my site, copied and pasted into my site title. Play around with it, and make it yours!

Step 4: Use a variation of that SEO title in your image ALT text for all images across your site.

The unsung hero of website SEO: image ALT text.

Okay, it’s a hero that’s been sung about, but not enough. It took me years to realize just how important updating my website’s image ALT text really is!

Your image ALT text provides context about your website’s photos, so that Google’s creepy little engine crawlers can “index” them accordingly. AKA, image ALT text helps Google use your photos as little contextual fingers (or should we say leads, because internet fingers are creepy?) into the internet that bring more people to your website, and increase your SEO.

So, take that SEO title you just created in step 3, and paste it into your image ALT text sections for every image on your site. I’ve included a super graceful example of what I mean below.

Now, depending on where the image falls on your site, you might want to change up the image text a bit! If you’re adding ALT text to an image on your services page, you might choose to get a bit more specific and use that text to summarize your services on that page. You get the idea.

Also, drawing a circle on a computer, with a mouse, is really difficult.

Step 5: Insert SEO descriptions and titles for every single one of your blogs (if you haven’t already).

+ Bonus tip: get your website claimed and approved for rich pins!

Crack those knuckles, because this one’s hefty. Unless you’ve been doing this all along, in which case, this one’s the easiest step of them all.

If you’ve been writing blogs but skipping the SEO description and title, I need you to come with me as we see the light together. That blog SEO description and title will not only serve to give Google (and people like your ideal clients who are searching on Google) context about you, your blog, and why they should read it, it’ll also help when people pin images from your blog, because that SEO description and title will populate, therefore succinctly and perfectly marketing your blog post for you, for free.

Phew, that was long winded.

It’ll take a while, but go through your blog posts and add a SEO description, and potentially even a SEO title, too. You can follow my method (pictured) of summarizing the blog with one line, and dropping in some keywords, too. Or just do whatever you want. Anything is better than nothing.

And as I mentioned in my bonus tip, get your website claimed on Pinterest and rich pin-enabled, so that your readers can pin any image or visual they’d like from any blog, and market your work for you! I recommend Googling “Rich Pins + (website provider).”

My fingers and head hurt, but it was worth it.

Just know that the work you’re putting into your site now will pay off (and hopefully make you rich), for the months and years to come! And hey, maybe set a calendar reminder to revisit this audit three months from now, too.

Let's work together, yeah?

Audit Your Website Copy and SEO with these 5 Simple Steps