Not necessarily. You see, as well as being your shop window or even the whole shop, your website is also an advertisement for you, your products or services. And like all advertisements, it should aim to stand out from the crowd.

A search engine may take potential customers to your site, but it's up to the site itself to keep them there. Eye-catching, effective design can certainly help - but dull copy will definitely hinder.

You wouldn't dream of running a boring advertisement, and you've probably paid a designer a lot of money to produce an eye-catching, effective design for your site. So how about adding some creative website copy?

How do you make a creative website?

For instance, I wrote half a dozen different short stories as introductions to a Scotch whisky distillery site. You can read them by going to www.edradour.com and refreshing the front page a few times. I also spiced up the main body of the site with some facts and anecdotes about whisky in general.

But there are plenty of other ways to liven up a site. Like Do's and Don'ts. Or Top 10 lists. They're just little extras, but they don't need to be

Creativity breeds traffic.

To keep your website up the rankings nowadays, it can't just stay as it is. Content truly is king. Adding lists, anecdotes and so on is a good way of generating extra content. (If appropriate, you can even optimise them with a few keywords while you're at it.) You'll soon find that the search engines appreciate it as much as your visitors.

So next time you're considering revising your site (and if you want to stay in favour with the search engines you need to do it often), why not consider adding a little creative copywriting around the edges?
About the Author

Peter Wise is an advertising copywriter, website copywriter and SEO copywriter based in London, UK. He also writes direct mail, brochures, newsletter articles and press releases. You can reach him at +44 (0) 7767 687524. For further information, please visit http://ideaswise.com/