How to Build a Freelance Copywriting Website Without Coding
A step-by-step guide to launching your career today
Image customized by the author on Canva.
Your website is your digital business card and shows people the “who” behind the brand. As a freelancer, you need a website that connects with clients, with brands, and above all, with people.
A well-designed website combined with persuasive content works for you as a 24/7 sales pitch, but without ever sounding salesy.
Your website’s mission is to show your visitors in just a few seconds:
Who you are
What you do
Who you help
How you meet their needs
Why you are the right fit
Even though AI is growing exponentially, remember that you are a human talking to humans, and totally relying on AI to build your website is a big mistake.
That’s because it misses that human touch, the authenticity, and the strategic thinking that belongs to you.
AI is a super valuable and powerful assistant for any copywriter, not a replacement.
And you can build a converting, responsive website without coding or relying on AI.
Before building your website, you have to define:
Your core offer: What is the core service you want to provide to your clients?
Your niche: What is the industry you want to write for?
Your ideal client: Who is the target audience you want to attract to your website and work with?
After defining your business direction, create a brand style guideline before designing your professional website.
Create a Mood Board With Your Brand Style Guide
Having a brand style guide is important for both User Experience (UX) and brand consistency.
But what do you have to include in your brand style guideline?
Be sure to cover the following essential sections:
Typography
Color palette
Imagery
Logo
Typography
Typography sets the stage for your visual identity, especially as a copywriter, and your website’s fonts must match your brand voice and the message you want to convey to your audience. So choosing them carefully and strategically is an essential step.
As a rule of thumb, a serif font for headings and a sans-serif for body text is the best choice. Never pair more than 3 fonts; choosing 2 fonts is a balanced choice.
For example, you can pair:
Merriweather → Open Sans
Merriweather: It’s perfect for headings. It’s a serif font that conveys an editorial touch and establishes trust.
Open Sans: It’s ideal for body text and CTAs.
It’s a sans-serif font, and it’s the right choice for long-form copy, making long paragraphs easy to read.
If you want to know more about font pairing, click here.
Visual Hierarchy
To allow your visitors to scan the pages smoothly, another good practice is to build a visual hierarchy with your fonts.
You can create it by using:
Font weights
Font styles
Heading hierarchy
Font sizes
Color contrast
Font weights: You can choose, for example, between regular 400, semi-bold 600, bold 700, etc.
Font Styles: You can opt for normal or italics. Use the normal style for the main copy, and italics for quotes, testimonials, or to emphasize something relevant for your audience, but don’t overdo it.
Heading hierarchy: Organize your copy using H1 for the main headline, H2 for the section headings, H3 for minor subheadings, etc.
Font sizes: Selecting the right size for every element of your typography gives them the right relevance, so your readers can scan your pages easily.
Below are the recommended sizes for each one of these:
H1: Desktop 40-48 px and Mobile 32-36 px
H2: Desktop 28-32 px and Mobile 24-26 px
H3: Desktop 22-24 px and Mobile 18-20 px
Body copy: Desktop 16-18 px and Mobile 15-16 px
Captions: Desktop 13-14 px and Mobile 13-14 px
Color contrast: It’s essential to ensure that your text stands out from the background color. For example, on a dark background, you must use light text, and vice versa.
If you want to be completely sure your color choice follows the web accessibility guidelines, you can check the combo on Adobe Color Contrast Checker.
Color Palette
It sets the tone for your brand’s visual identity.
Your website color palette must cover:
Primary background
Secondary background
Accent color
My recommendation: avoid pure white (#FFFFFF) and pure black (#000000) backgrounds, because they can cause eye fatigue, especially on mobile screens.
If you want a professional result for your website, apply the 60/30/10 rule:
60% Dominant color → Your primary background.
30% Secondary color → Secondary backgrounds (alternating sections), card backgrounds, sidebars, and borders.
10% Accent color → links, CTA buttons, icons.
When using cards with alternating sections, you can apply a color inversion technique by swapping the cards’ background color with your primary background color.
This avoids cards disappearing into the section background and creates contrast, keeping a balanced layout.
Imagery
Gathering all the visual assets you want to use on your website into a single folder or doc will save you time during the building process.
With images, a vital aspect to consider is the website loading speed. When visitors have to wait too long for a page to load, they will leave without reading your copy.
To speed up your website’s loading time, on both desktop and mobile devices, you have to:
Optimize and compress your images before uploading them into your website builder. You can use web tools like TinyPNG, Compressor.io, and Squoosh.
Download or convert your images into WebP format to compress them without losing quality.
If you don’t have all the images you need, you can search for professional royalty-free images on websites like Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay.
Logo
Last but not least, your logo.
You have to decide which kind of logo best matches your brand voice. You have two options:
A Wordmark Logo: A text-only logo perfect for copywriters because it highlights your business name and style.
A Graphic Logo: It blends visual elements and text.
Before uploading your logo to your website builder, remember to download it in PNG format with a transparent background.
Scale down a version of your logo or create another one with your brand’s initials to use as your Favicon, the website icon displayed in search results, so it stays visible even on mobile screens.
Buy a custom domain
The next step before building your website is buying your own domain. A custom domain helps you build trust in your brand with visitors and for SEO.
You can opt to buy a custom domain from the website builder you choose.
Or if you don’t want to buy a domain through your website builder, you can buy it from other domain registrars like:
Namecheap
Spaceship
Porkbun
Important note about choosing your domain
Choose a name that is easy to remember and simple to write, especially on mobile devices.
Keep it short, no more than 3 words, avoiding double letters.
You can choose between:
A personal name-based domain
A brand name-based domain
For your domain, opt for “.com” because it’s more trusted by users.
Check your domain availability. If the “.com” extension is not available, you can choose your country extension, for example.
Write All Website Pages In Advance
The secret to speeding up the process is planning and writing all your content before you start building your website.
It’s also highly recommended to create a separate doc with all the links you’ve planned to add throughout your website.
Must-Have Website’s Pages
Your header main menu must have the following pages:
Required:
Homepage
About
Portfolio
Services
Contact
Recommended:
Blog
A blog page is not mandatory, but it is great to showcase your ability to write engaging long-form content, and it works as a portfolio too.
My honest advice: I strongly recommend adding a blog page to your website.
How to Create a Spec Portfolio
If you don’t have real projects to share but you need to prove you can write, you can build a spec portfolio.
That doesn’t mean you’re cheating potential clients; quite the opposite. A spec portfolio proves to them your ability to handle a project from ideation to completion, and demonstrates your strategic thinking.
Your portfolio page is your “what” you can do for a potential client.
But how to build a curated spec portfolio that looks professional?
You have two options:
Pick existing projects and rewrite them
Create your own projects from scratch
First of all, you have to decide what kind of projects you want to add to your portfolio, the niche you are interested in, and the clients you want to reach.
You can use different online tools to create your portfolio.
For example:
Canva, one of the best for designing different projects and for mockups
Systeme.io for complex projects, like sales funnels or landing pages
Before designing, write the text for each project, so you can save time when you start designing.
Remember: Never build your freelance portfolio using AI.
If you are serious about your career, you have to be honest and create your own projects even if you’re just starting out. Don’t forget that every master was once a beginner.
Potential clients want to see if you can do the work they are paying for and if you can think strategically. No one will hire a copywriter without a portfolio or with an AI-generated one.
The Best Website Builders
Now the most important step is choosing the website builder that meets your needs. The most reliable are:
Squarespace
Copyfolio
JournoPorfolio
Squarespace
It’s an all-in-one website builder for everyone who wants to build a professional online presence.
It has a learning curve easier than other website builders, and it has all that you need to build, manage, and scale your business.
You can start with a 14-day free trial and then upgrade with the plan you need.
These are the different plans:
Basic: $20 → to start
Core: $28 → to grow your business.
Plus: $49 → to take your business to the next level and get a lower payment processing fee.
Advanced: $92 → to scale and get the lowest payment processing fee.
You can also opt for a yearly solution. Click here to see the other prices.
Copyfolio
It’s an all-in-one toolkit to build your website and showcase your portfolio. You can customize your template to match your brand’s voice, buy your domain, and set up your SEO settings to rank on Google.
You can start with a 7-day free trial, and then upgrade to the Premium plan for $15 per month if billed monthly, or $9 per month if billed yearly.
JournoPorfolio
On JournoPorfolio, you can build your portfolio website to showcase your work, customize pages, import your work in different formats, and even protect your portfolio with a password. You can also track your progress, sell your products, etc.
If you want to know more, click here.
You can start for free and get:
A subdomain
Homepage
10 Portfolio Items
You can choose among different plans:
Plus: $8 per month
Pro: $12 per month
Unlimited: $18 per month
One-Page Website Tools
If you need a one-page website to showcase your work, here are my recommendations:
Canva
Carrd
Canva
It’s the easiest, most reliable, and constantly up-to-date design tool to build your online presence across multiple channels.
If you need only a basic one-page portfolio, without a blog, to feature your work and land clients while saving money, Canva is what you need.
For plans and pricing, click here.
Carrd
You can create a responsive one-page website with the essential sections:
About
Portfolio
Services
Contact
You can start for free, and for more info about the different Pro plans, click here.
Clippings.me
On Clippings.me, you can create and publish your online portfolio for free. SEO-friendly and easy to customize, it’s great for displaying your work, and you don’t need any technical skills. You can also upgrade to Clippings.me Premium for $9.99 per month.
Basic SEO Best Practices
Is SEO still relevant in the era of AI? The answer is a big “yes”. Even more than ever. It's evolved, but it’s still an essential part of any Digital Marketing strategy.
The new SEO strategy also includes:
AEO: Answer Engine Optimization
GEO: Generative Engine Optimization
Now more than ever, E-E-A-T is still a relevant framework for Google to decide the credibility and quality of content.
It stands for:
E: Experience
E: Expertise
A: Authoritativeness
T: Trustworthiness
SEO techniques now don’t rely only on keywords, but they aim to match user search intent, providing answers for all levels of queries.
There are 4 different kinds of search intent:
Informational
Navigational
Commercial
Transactional
Informational: people search for info about a product or a service, or they search for tutorials or articles because they need to learn “how to do” something.
Navigational: in this case, people know what they are searching for and go directly to the website they need.
Commercial: it’s the search people do before buying something to compare options, to find out more about a product or a brand.
Transactional: in this kind of search, people know well what they want and search for a store online to buy the product directly.
Basic SEO best practices for a freelance website are:
Custom page title
Meta description
Image alt tags
A custom page title is the clickable headline preview in the search results. It helps search engines find relevant keywords to rank and identify the topic of the page. The ideal length is under 60 characters.
A meta description is the snippet below the title in search results and helps people understand what the page is about and if it is relevant for their search. The ideal length is under 155 characters. Use long-tail keywords instead of simple ones, because they better match user search intent.
Image Alt Tags are important to improve accessibility, making screen reading easier for visually impaired visitors. It’s also relevant for Google indexing and to figure out the subject of the image.
Google Search Console
Once you have built your website, you have to add your website to Google Search Console. It allows you to:
Submit a sitemap
Find indexing errors
Manually request indexing
But above all, it’s important to track what keywords people use to find your freelance website on Google Search, and to track traffic insights, like, for example, your CTR (click-through rate).
Connecting your website to Google Search Console is easy and depends on which verification method you choose.
There are two methods:
URL Prefix Verification: It tracks one exact URL variant.
Domain Verification (DNS Record): It tracks your entire domain, including all subdomains, and it’s perfect for freelancers.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
It’s the most accurate tool to track how your website performs. Even if you’re just starting out and for the moment you’re not planning to run ads, Google Analytics is a great and useful tool to install.
For example, you can track:
how long people stay on your website
which page they leave without taking any action
which page they visit the longest
which buttons and links they click
audience demographics
Gathering that data allows you to understand what is working on your website and what isn’t, so you can improve your site and land more clients.
To Wrap Up: Launch Day Checklist
Once you’ve built your website, a crucial step before launching it is to double-check everything carefully.
Click on every single link, test the contact form, and most importantly, check your website’s mobile responsiveness to be sure the layout and the content display perfectly.
And remember to check the spacing, the images, and each CTA button too.
If everything works flawlessly, you can launch your website, be proud of your achievement, and start pitching clients.
So, that's my guide for you.
Disclaimer: This article includes links, but they are not affiliate links, so if you click on them or make a purchase, I do not receive a commission.
Have a copywriting project in mind?
Whether you have a question about this article or want to discuss your next launch, I’d love to connect. Click below to request your free audit and start the conversation.