Sam Cartwright

We all know how vital web content and killer copy is to the success of a website. Combined with a design layout that's pleasing to the eye and strong SEO to push you up the SERPS and get that all-important page one spot on Google, your content should be working hard on all fronts.

People's first impressions of a website take a mere 50 milliseconds to form, according to research carried out by Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. The research, initiated by Gitte Lindgaard and published in the journal ‘Behaviour and Information Technology' was conducted in 2006 and still holds true today

If you want to kill off your authenticity in your web copy and subsequently destroy any chances of people trusting your brand ever again, fill it with insincerity.

Writing effective web content isn't just about getting a good SERP on Google. It's just as important to engage with your human visitors and to ensure that your copy is effective in getting your message across by delivering engaging content that has a clear roadmap and a good call to action at the end. But is that your web content's only goal, or does it have another purpose?

Human beings are gifted storytellers. Long before YouTube and FanFiction turned us all into digitally creative and imaginative purveyors of stories, people gathered around fires to regale stories of deeds done and those left undone. Battles were described in glorious detail (by the victors, of course) and unrequited love was romanticised into feuds between Houses and suicide pacts that had audiences weeping into their Elizabethan pop corn.

Have you checked out your website visitor figures lately? Is your SERPs something to be proud of or are you still languishing in P-Nowhere on page 11 of Google? Unless you're on that front page of every search, you're missing out on a huge amount of potential business.

In the good old days of printed media when the newspaper was king and Fleet Street was still full of journalists, every newspaper office employed one person with a very special role. Their sole task was to come up with a single fragmented sentence that broke all the grammar rules going but had one primary purpose – to make people buy a copy of the newspaper.

Here's a fact that may take you by surprise. Some of the great blogs you read regularly are not, in fact, the work of the named author at the end. UK copywriters are finding that blogs are now joining the ranks of SEO web content and article writing in that it is being regularly outsourced to copywriting services. Why?

The reputation of the Internet as a source of relevant and accurate information is being called into question. The impending ‘Net2' version of the web will give everyone a voice, making more sites open source or ‘Wiki' based and allowing anyone with something to say the opportunity to write articles, content and copy on any subject.

Sometimes, UK copywriters can get a little over-confident. If you've had a good run of writing killer content, your boss, your clients and those search engine ‘bots will adore you. Everything you type turns to ‘sold'.