The SEO bros so often love to tell us that we need more content. More words. More videos. More keywords. More pages. But that simply isn’t true. In fact, so much of my job as a website copywriter is to detangle and simplify my clients’ websites.
Why? Because duplicated content across 20 industry pages isn’t helping you rank. Dozens of hidden pages within your sitemap don’t help people find the information they need. And because overcomplicated waffly copy doesn’t convert.
That’s the TL;DR. Let’s dig into it.
Confusing navigation = lower conversion
If folks can’t get to the information they need, why would they ask you for help? No matter what service you’re offering, if people can’t find what they need quickly, they have no reason to trust you. Your business exists to solve a problem. Therefore, you need to prove with your website that you can make their life easier.
There’s a lot of competition out there. Keep things simple to keep your audience on side.
Duplicated content = penalties from the search engines
Google in particular loves to penalise duplicate content. One of the most common forms of duplicate content I see on B2B websites is the dreaded “Industries” section. Where some bright SEO spark told them that they need an individual landing page for each individual industry they work with. Because keywords, right?
Wrong. There is only so much you can do to make what is essentially the same content slightly different 12 times over to target different audiences. And Google in particular is quick to punish websites who do this. Sometimes it’s just that those pages don’t get indexed. And sometimes the whole domain gets punished and devalued in the SERPs.
Long ass pages = no one cares
One of the hardest pills to swallow as a copywriter is that no one will read everything you write, even within one individual project. The chances are, you’re not reading this entire blog. You’ll skim the headings, read the first sentence or so of each section and decide if it’s worth continuing with.
According to this 2021 article from Hubspot, the average time on page for websites across all industries is 54 seconds. And more recent data from 2024 suggests that this has fallen to 52 seconds.
That’s not a whole lot of time to read through your waffle. So keep it simple, keep it well formatted, and make sure all key information is easily available at a glance.
If you bury the lead, the leads won’t come. And if people aren’t hanging around on your website, it can get devalued by the search engines.
Content chunking = old news
Another gem from the SEO bros is that content chunking is some kind of revolutionary way to get AI to site your content. Except all it is is long-standing SEO best practice with a shiny new name. See what I’ve done here in this blog? Short sections with H2s? Technically this is content chunking.
They love a definition-based chunk. You know, the same boring SEO shite we all hate when people give us a definition of something we definitely already know because of the keywords. It’s tiresome. And sure, it may get you cited in an AIO, but that basic ass search isn’t going to lead to traffic or even brand awareness.
Anyone else miss the days of featured snippets? They still exist of course, but without adding -ai to your Google searches, they are very rarely visible. And they were much more worth while from a traffic and authority building point of view.
Speaking from experience
In case you think I’m talking out my ass, now seems like a good time to share a couple of case studies with you.
Firstly, I worked with IT support company totality services to condense their website down from 40+ ages each with over 1000 words of content on them to 7 core pages. Plus I worked on some additional pillar pages and blog content to support their SEO efforts over the following months. Lo and behold, their rankings improved and their conversion rate increased.
And last year, I worked on a great website transformation for legal advice company Expert Answers. We started with more broken links than I’d ever seen in a single website, keyword stuffed copy that was giving black hat tactics circa 2009, and an absolutely fucked navigation.
Sometimes you just need to burn it down and start again and that’s exactly what I did. Redesigned the navigation, simplified the copy, created wireframes for the design team, and streamlined the whole website experience. The result? Better rankings and more conversions. This is why my website copy timelines are a little longer than you may be used to. Website copy is just one part of the overall project.
The simplest advice is always the best
Keep It Simple, Stupid. Also known as KISS is a well known practice in the writing world. And it is spilling over more and more into marketing as a whole (thank god). Don’t overcomplicate things. Your website will often perform better with fewer pages, a simpler navigation, and less of those Penguin-era SEO tactics.
Don’t forget, it’s people who pay for your services. Not the search engines.
I help SMBs like yours detangle their chaotic websites and get their shit together. If you’re ready to improve rankings and conversions, let’s have a chat and discuss the plan to fix your website.