A Home Page Costs More Than a Landing Page?

This is an important question that comes up on a daily basis, and therefore needs to be addressed in depth.

Your website’s Home page is one of the most valuable pieces of marketing material you own – plain and simple. It’s what your customers, clients, competitors, leads and the search engines initially judge you by. It’s the mother of all first impressions. (Pardon my early 90’s humor.)

Search engines index the Home page of a website first, and then they display it first. And some SEO experts say search puts more emphasis on the first half of the page. So in this tiny amount of copy (often 200 words or less), copywriters must tell the engines exactly what your business is about with the right keyphrases, while impressing your viewer with an interesting and impressive intro. It’s a tricky piece to write.

A Home page that’s doing its whole job (feeding the search engines valuable information and getting the viewer to stick around to investigate further) needs to have a well-thought out marketing message that speaks in a way that resonates with the intended target audience. And this takes research – a lot of research.

At Word Refuge, Creative SEO Copywriting Services, we do in-depth research on your target market, market segment, industry, competitors, clientele, and of course, keyphrases – all before we begin writing.

A good SEO Copywriter takes a considerable amount of time sharpening their pencils before writing, so to speak. Writing is as much about research, planning, investigation and concept development as it is about putting words on a page.

A Home page costs include the time it takes to complete all of these vital preparation practices:

* Content Review and Strategic Proposal
* Industry, Target Market and Branding Questionnaire
* Keyphrase Research
* Final Marketing Message, Concept and Creative Brief

To learn more about the Word Refuge project process, read this article: Our 3 Step Work Process Revealed!

If a copywriter says they can quickly write a fantastic Home page for you in an hour, simply by looking at your brand name, logo and website, run like hell. They’re no good.

A Home page is a delicate balance between story telling and SEO food for search bots, direct marketing and an intriguing welcome that introduces the viewer to your company. That’s why we study the lay of the land, in depth.

Our marketing strategists see what your industry competitors are up to and look for an inspiring concept that will stand out in the crowd. We ask a lot of questions and then find the answers to all of them by completing an in-depth questionnaire and developing a strong creative brief…again, all before we write a single word.

Our target market and branding questionnaires are not only imperative for us, they’re incredibly useful for you. A lot of our clients have been thrilled to have our investigative research neatly drawn up for them in a tight creative brief.

The creative brief can then be referred back to throughout the course of a long SEO content campaign (including writing landing pages) – always ensuring that designers, copywriters, sales teams, management and clients are on the same page.

All of the research that we do in preparation to write your Home page is vital to your entire advertising campaign. Developing a clearly defined marketing message is an imperative step, and it naturally costs a little extra money.

If you’d like to know our SEO Copywriting rates, please contact us today and we’ll send you our Pricing Guide.