Working out how long it takes to write website content is like trying to guess how long is a piece of string.

If your website contains just a few pages that promote your services as a self-employed accountant, it would probably take two or three days.

But if it’s an ecommerce website of a company that sells a range of products, the answer will be much longer:

• Each product will require a detailed description, technical specifications, features and optimisation (digital techniques that ensure online effectiveness).
• Each category will require its own page that will need to be optimised. 
• The website may need a product brochure to download.
• You’ll need blog content to promote your products, build authority and push your website up the Google search results.
• You may also need to create dedicated ‘commercially-focused’ landing pages for paid campaigns.

The time it takes to write the content for your website will depend on how many products or services you’re selling, how complicated they are to understand, and the level of research required.

Writing content for a medical or scientific website would take longer than writing content for an online clothes store.

But even then, in a competitive digital world with thousands of fashion websites, you’d be advised to spend sufficient time writing and researching your content in order for it to stand out.

How long that sufficient time is depends on the above.

Misconceptions About How Long it Takes to Write Website Content

A common misconception we hear time and again is people thinking it’s easy writing for a website.

Just because you can tap out an email to a work colleague in three-and-a-half minutes doesn’t mean you can write a page of effective website content.

Well you probably can but chances are it won’t achieve what you need it to (sales or rankings).

No matter what kind of site you’ve got, when it comes to the writing, the fundamental thing is to make it clear, easy and understandable:

• Good grammar is essential.
• Short sentences and paragraphs make content easy to digest.
• Simplicity is king. Digital attention spans are short (especially on mobile devices). You have only a few seconds to grab your visitors and reel them in.

Great, you’re thinking. Simple sentences using short words. It’s a cinch.

Wrong!

Writing website content can often take much longer than you think.

6 Considerations For Effective Website Content Writing

If you’re not ready to outsource your copywriting yet, then there are six key areas you should consider when writing your copy in-house:

1. What’s the objective of your website?
2. Who’s your target audience?
3. What problem do they have that your services or business can solve?
4. What’s your tone of voice?
5. How simple is your subject matter?
6. Is it a new website?

1. Website objective: If the objective is to increase sales you’ll need to show you’re a trusted authority if you want Google to push you higher up the search results.

That’s achieved through a mix of online marketing techniques, customer reviews and trust apps, and content (like blogs or articles) that demonstrates your expertise.

2. Target audience: Knowing who your audience is helps you target the groups you want to reach. It’s no good writing your business messages for a faceless mass.

In order to be relatable, you’ve got to know who they are, what motivates them and the language they use. Only then can you sound authentic when you try and persuade them to hire your service or buy your product.

And how do you know who your audience is? You dig around. Do your research and pound the data software programmes.

Don’t know how to do this or don’t have the right technology? Perhaps a firm of web specialists (like us) can do it for you. 

Doing this part of the marketing properly will help speed up how long it takes to write your website content.

3. The problem your business can solve: Perhaps you’re selling dazzling sequinned handbags made especially for carrying tiny dogs.

Your target audience is probably young, single women whose pets are fashion accessories. They’re wondering how their tiny pooches will accompany them to that glamorous summer party and you’ve just provided the perfect answer.

That’s how you need to present your product – as something that’s helpful to your customer. 

4. Tone of voice: The way the doggy handbag website will write its content will be very different to the way a business hiring out refrigerator vans to butchers’ shops will write its content.

The style and language used is called tone of voice and this is a critical part of the website content writing process.  

5. How simple is the subject matter? We’ve touched on this above. If your website promotes cookies and cupcakes, the writing will be more straight-forward (and therefore quicker) than were the website to sell radiation equipment to hospitals.

6. New websites: If it’s a new website, there are a number of other aspects to get in place in order to build online authority. That’s where advice from digital marketing experts like us helps.

Do you see why the answer to how long it takes to write website content really is as long as a piece of string?

Advantages of Using an SEO Content Writing Service

The best content writing services know that good writing is only easy once you understand the basics. Like any skill, it requires practice and perseverance. 

Keeping sentences short means chopping out unnecessary words (a.k.a the fluff). That’s not something everyone can master mostly because people have a tendency to go into needless detail, especially when they’re passionate about the product.

Trained copywriters know how to write all different forms of content and for different audiences.

If you have a trained copywriter to hand, the time it’ll take to write your website content will be much quicker than were you to pass the task onto your marketing assistant in order to save on budget.  

Many of our clients don’t have the time or patience to learn how to write good copy. 

They prefer to outsource it to an experienced sales and SEO copywriting team. The advantage of this is that it means they can concentrate on growing their core business.  

An example of this can be seen with one of our own clients, UK timber garage manufacturer Passmores who adopted this very strategy. They invested in our SEO services to sell their wooden garages, and it is paying dividends many times over.  

Check out how we transformed their slow sales into a customer order backlog and phone lines that rang ‘red hot’ during the Covid lockdown.

Even in our own company, we play to our strengths. We also use external sources to bolster what we have in-house. It makes business sense to do so. 

Need Help With Your Website Copywriting? 

While we’ve not been able to give a clear answer to the question of how long it takes to write website content, we hope this post has given you some ideas to mull over.

There are many things to think about before starting the website content writing process. You can certainly do it yourself but you need the patience and drive to maintain momentum and get results. It’s not an overnight fix. 

If you don’t fancy the idea of embarking on this yourself, then why not get in touch to learn more about our website copywriting services?  

Our in-house copywriters write for e-commerce and business services. Our content is search-optimised as standard and can also deliver a commercial tone, if required. 

Get in touch on 0207 112 4866 or 07789 754 289. We’re here to help.