As the new year creeps up, one of the best things you can do for your business web site is to look over your content and copy. Not only will customers judge your professionalism and services by what they see, but your word choice can make a significant difference in your search engine ranking. Here's a quick checklist for what to look for as you review your site:

Grammar and spelling: Are there any misspelled words or grammar mistakes? Make sure that your copywriting reflects your professional standards.

Conciseness: Try to reduce the amount of copy that you have on landing pages and other marketing areas of your site and make what you have VERY clear. The exception to this rule is if you have informative pages -- product specs, support information, etc.

Write for scanners, not readers: The vast majority of web users scan unfamiliar pages. They don't read every word. They glance at images, headings, bullet points, and emphasized text to get a sense of the page and whether or not they want to spend their time on it. Keep this in mind and rewrite your marketing copy to make use of bullets, headings, subheadings, and the like.

Be smart with headings and emphasized text: Some search engines may look at the words inside your headings and emphasized text and give them more relevance. In the HTML, be sure that you're using headings/subheadings (

,

,

, etc.) properly -- using them in nested order (go back to your elementary school outlining lessons) and making sure your keywords and key phrases show up. Also, use strong () instead of bold () and emphasized () instead of italics () to provide more "meaning" to your copy. Rework your meta keywords and descriptions: Too often, the same meta tags are used on every single web page regardless of the page's content. For best effect, fine tune your meta tags so that they accurately reflect the content on the page. Search engines give your page more relevance if the keywords and the words in the description are actually ON the page somewhere (and even better, inside a heading or subheading).