3 Useful Copywriting Tips for Traffic Generation

This guest post is by David Harfield of iPhoneAppCafe.com. The author’s views are entirely his own and may not reflect the views of FreelanceCopywritersBlog.com. If you are interested in producing a Guest Post for this blog, please get in touch with your ideas.

After spending five years in the freelance copywriting game, I’ve had to iron out a fair few bad habits as well as learn a few good ones.  I’d like to share with you a few pieces of advice that will help turn any rusty copywriting skills into pure gold.

1. Know your audience

OK, this sounds like a fairly obvious point, but when you take the time to think about it, it is actually the most important thing to remember; if you want traffic to be directed towards your blog, you have to appeal to the people that make up that traffic.  So, if your blog or website tends to attract younger people or is based around a theme that is typically associated with the younger generation, consider this when you are wondering what vernacular to use.

Perhaps you could throw in a few ‘cool’ colloquialisms or reference some zeitgeist pop star to show them that you have the common touch.  On the flip side, let’s say that you work for a technology site; your audience is going to appreciate it if you have a decent grasp of technological terminology, so don’t be afraid to do a little research in this area.  Remember, a little can go a long way.

2. Make your titles ‘clickable’

In the blogosphere, one of the most important elements of your article will be your title; seeing as this is what your audience is going to initially be attracted to, it has to be particularly attractive.  So, let’s discuss what’s attractive.  I’ll bet that you clicked on this link because you thought that it would be a short, brief summary of copywriting tips that you could digest before moving on to doing something else (and you were right!).  If I had entitled it ‘If you want to improve your copywriting skills, this article can help’, most of you would have clicked off by the fourth word.

What I’m trying to elucidate is that short, snappy, keyword rich titles work best.  Don’t use language that alienates your audience, but definitely use specific niche keywords that they will be drawn to.  Numbered lists are very attractive too, as are ‘How To…’ titles; basically, most people are short on time and if they want to read an essay, they’ll buy a book (or at least go to a library…).

3. Proof, proof and then proof again!

Once again, this seems like a fairly facile point to make, yet you would be surprised at how many writers do not proof their work.  I like to encourage people to submit each piece of work that they write to the ‘Read Out Loud’ test (I’m pretty sure that you can work out how this test works); if it doesn’t sound right when spoken, it’s certainly not going to read fluidly and your audience will click off as soon as they are bored.

Concurrently, Google has recently altered its algorithm for ranking sites, meaning that user experience counts for a lot more than what it did previously; this means that if you want your site to rise up the rankings, you have to rid your articles of any (and I mean ANY!), grammatical and spelling errors.

David Harfield is the editor at iPhoneAppCafe.com where he reviews the Best iPhone apps and accessories.