The Importance of Being Obvious in Web Copy for SEO

Let me share a quick SEO story that has nothing to do with my professional life, but comes from my personal projects. It’s instructive, I promise.

I run a website devoted to board games and tabletop roleplaying games. I regularly write for it in my free time, and as a result it’s slowly grown a bit of an audience as I begin to be picked up for various search terms. But it’s a personal, side project, so I’m not devoting the same amount of time to it that I would to a professional client.

Related, I have a public list on a popular board gaming website where I post links to my reviews. Visitors to this site can subscribe to the list, then click through to my personal site to read the reviews.

Last week that list showed up as the #1 ranked item for the search term “board game reviews” in the United States (on Google’s search). I’ve also clocked it in the top 10 for the same search terms in other countries.

Wait, what?!

That was my first reaction. I was doing nothing to promote this list. Further, similar lists from other creators exist on the same site, and many of them have been running for longer, contain more reviews, and are more frequented by subscribers. By contrast, my list was an obscure corner, frequented only by handfuls of people on a regular basis, not the dozens or hundreds of visitors that other lists routinely get.

So why was it ranking highly on Google when others weren’t? There isn’t a single answer, and we’ll dive into some of the specifics below. But a big reason relates to being obvious.

I’ll explain.

What’s in a Name?

What would be a better name for the list I described above? I’ll give you some options:

Mark’s Ludological Musings
Mark’s Board Game Reviews & Blogs
The Bold & The Beautiful: On Games & Gaming
Board Game Quest
The Game Hole: Reviews and Ramblings

Think about it for a minute if you need to before coming up with your answer, though this article’s title probably gives it away.

Ok, did you say the second bullet point there? Good job. That’s basically the actual name of it, for reference.

And I suspect that the reason - well, one of the reasons, but we’ll get to that - that it ranks above other, similar lists is because the name is direct. You know exactly what it is without having to read further.

This is good for users who need to make quick decisions, and also for search engines trying to figure out what your page - or entire website - is about.

Web Copy: Be Obvious

Let’s apply this idea elsewhere. You run a roofing company, and it only does residential roofing. What’s a better header line for the homepage of your website?

Dave’s Master Roofing: Specialists Since 1975
Peace of Mind You Can Trust, and a Place to Call Home
We’ll Give Your Home a New Roof. And You’ll Love It. Guaranteed.

The last one, right? Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s so refreshingly straightforward.

In fairness, the first one isn’t terrible either, but it’s less about the customer (which you want) and more about the business (which you don’t want). It also doesn’t let the reader know that it’s residential roofing.

Either way, you instantly know what the company does. No second-guessing, no flowery marketing language about having the “complete home experience” or whatever other buzzword the marketing or leadership teams want to promote. Just straight talk.

Why This Is Hard

The reason this is hard is that a lot of business owners want the “peace of mind” line above, or something similar to it.

I firmly believe that if your business does {X} (whatever {X} is), one of the better homepage headers you could have is “We do {X}.” That’s it. Nothing else. No, not that sub-header you’re imagining that comes after a colon and is in a slightly smaller font. Just that. We. Do. X.

Simple and to the point.

Can you make it less terse and still get the point across? Yes, of course. But in trying to talk about everything that a company does, or in trying to talk about company values or mission in a tagline, businesses often bury the lead, which is what they actually do.

Company values and mission statements are important, for clarity. You should talk about those too. But not right away.

“Get to the damn point” is another, less kind way of putting it, but if that shakes you out of a stupor and helps you - or your company’s leadership - to see the light, then maybe it’s the perfect way to put it.

You want to know how I know this is hard? Because we're guilty of it too! Leadflask's current homepage isn't stellar in this regard. "Understand the science behind the screen" is a pretty bad tagline to tell people what we actually do. While we'd workshop it internally before going live, something like "Website design, digital marketing and business automation services for small and mid-sized businesses" would be a lot better.

In fairness to our team here, to-date we've gathered clients through word of mouth and frankly haven't put much development time into the website itself. We're too busy making sure our clients' needs are met. But as soon as we loop back around to changing the web copy here, you can bet that line is going to be changed.

Web Copy: Easy Unless You Make It Hard

What do you do?

For who?

What’s the process?

What’s the next step someone should take to get what they want?

These are the questions your web copy should be answering almost immediately for any visitor, on any major page. If they aren’t, you’re losing customers.

And, it turns out, you may be losing search rankings as well. Which is another way of saying you’re losing customers.

Other Ranking Factors

I’m not the only person to come up with an unimaginative name for a blog about games. So why aren’t any of those others ranking?

It’s because while being obvious is important, it’s not the only thing you need. Let’s talk about some of the other factors.

We’ve talked about SEO ranking factors before, and likely will more on this blog. But in this particular case, here’s what I suspect is in play beyond just the name:

The site that the list is on is a well-known gaming site with millions of yearly visitors. So it has a high site authority. So I’m borrowing some SEO equity; it’s not fully “my” ranking.
The list links to my website a bunch of times, and my site’s authority isn’t shabby either since I’m doing a lot of small things to optimize SEO in ways that other bloggers aren’t.
The reviews are all “obvious” as well. They have names like “Carcassonne Board Game Review” rather than something more oblique and evocative. I save the more nuanced writing for the reviews themselves.
I’m reinforcing the idea that the list is dedicated to board game reviews throughout the list, not just in the title. Basically, if you scraped the entirety of the copy, it would read like an optimized - albeit scattered - article that focuses on exactly what the title says it will: game reviews by some schmuck named Mark.
The reviews themselves are often long-form deep dives, which is a darling of search engines, so it’s pointing to valuable content, at least from an SEO perspective. One of the disappointments of modern SEO is that the best content isn’t always the highest ranked, but ideally it can be both.

Basically, other ranking factors, some of them out of my control, are contributing to the ranking. Not just the name.

But if I changed the name to “Mark’s Game Thoughts,” I’d expect to lose that ranking quickly.

Case in point, one of the same site’s most popular and long-running review lists is called “The Space-Biff Historical Journal.” It points to a site run by a guy named Dan Thurot. He’s a really good writer, and he’s been writing a lot longer than I have about games.

But his list name paints a very different picture. If I only showed you the name, it’s unlikely you’d guess it’s about games at all. This is what I mean about being obvious and direct. It’s important for a variety of reasons.

So literally, that may be the only reason my list is at #1 and his isn’t. In this instance, I’m not getting paid for my reviews, so I’m a bit unconcerned about whether or not something ranks.

But professionally speaking, where I do get paid to know about SEO and help websites rank for key terms, it was exciting and informative to me. I hope it is for you too, because I see too much bad web copy to think this isn’t a lesson worth learning.

Further Reading: