There is a constant push and pull in the website copywriting world between creativity and functionality. In an ideal world, you sit somewhere in the middle, but if you have to fall on one side or the other, it’s always better to go with functionality.
See, your homepage H1 (and any accompanying copy that sits about the fold) should tell your audience what you do, who you do it for, and how your product/service can help them. It’s no small feat for such a small amount of text. And that’s why the homepage H1 is the last piece of copy I write for a website.
A H1 serves three functional purposes
A designer will see a H1 as the standout typeface of the page. Larger text, different colour, perhaps a different font. All of the things that make it visually stand out from everything else.
A writer, like me, will see a H1 at the leader of the page. The bit of copy that tells people what’s going on and what they can expect the moment they land on a page.
A search engine will see a H1 as a guideline for what is on the page to help it categorise the page (or sometimes the whole domain) into a specific category.
So there’s a lot riding on this little bit of copy.
Why a bad H1 could lose you business
The homepage H1 is the most important heading across your entire website. So you know, no pressure. It tells the search engines what you’re about and it grounds your audience with context about your business.
Let’s play a quick game called “What does this business do?”*
Pursuing the possible. Powering more play.
- Computer graphics cards
- Corporate retreats
- Turf for sports grounds
When I put this out to the folks on Instagram, the most popular guess was sex toys. And while that perhaps says a lot about my network, it’s important to note that a lot of these people are writers. And if even they can’t see the logic behind it, how is someone with no understanding of how copywriting works meant to get it?
This H1 is so vague it could feasibly belong to three completely different industries. There is no other text above the fold on the homepage, so this is all we have to go on. And yes, this is from a real website.
Consistently vague or inconsistently usable?
Another issue we face here is that the tonal style of your headings need to be consistent across your site. So this brings us to another problem. Either all of your headings are vague and bullshit…sorry “creative”. Or the rest of them are functional, search optimised, and UX-driven and just the homepage H1 is some weird vague bullshit.
So you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place here. You either leave your audience with a mish mash of vague bullshit and clear headings or you cover the site with “creative” headings and no one knows what the fuck is going on. Whether you’re making your audiences think for a bit too long about what that actually means of your inconsistency is jarring. Either way, giving people reason to pause in any level of confusion is going to cause them to leave.
As much as you love your business, you can’t forget that your potential customers have a lot of options out there.
A poor homepage H1 can cost you rankings
Sure, your homepage is far from the only page on your website. However, it’s the first bit of your website the bots crawl when deciding what gets indexed and what doesn’t for different search terms.
A bad H1 likely won’t impact your branded rankings. But ranking for non-branded terms is how you grow your business through organic search and in an ideal world, your homepage H1 will support the types of keywords you’re wanting to rank for elsewhere.
For example, my homepage H1 is No bullshit, no jargon. Just clear, creative web copy and SEO support
And what am I trying to rank for? Terms relating to website copywriting and SEO.
A vague H1 that would feel more at home as a tagline on a TV ad than on a website homepage is going to leave customers and search engines confused.
You have to consider the context of every bit of copy
You have to write for the context of your readership. This is why ad copy sounds so different to a blog post. And blog posts (should) sound so different to website copy. Marketing copy isn’t consumed in a vacuum. You have to consider:
- When someone will see it
- Which platform and/or device they’re viewing it on
- What they’re likely doing on said platform
- Typical user behaviours on said platform
- How distracted they’ll be while viewing it
- How long they’re meant to stick around for
- How much context they already have for the information you’re trying to get across
And that last one is possibly the most important. The more well known the brand, the cheekier you can be with the copy because you’re not relying on non-branded search.
Usability should always be the top priority
Clear, well formatted copy is going to play better with audiences and search engines. Keeping your website easy to navigate, easy to understand, and clear as fuck the whole way through will help people to realise that you’re the obvious choice.
Don’t forget, a scroll through your website is one very small part of someone’s very busy day. Especially if you’re in the B2B space. You have so little time to get and keep their attention. Don’t waste it by writing vague bullshit at the top of the page.
You need to be clear, concise, and easy to understand from the word go.
All of this information is free. Imagine what we could do if we worked together. If you’re ready to sort your shit out, let’s have a chat about your website and see what we can do.
*the answer is 3: turf for sports grounds