Entries Tagged 'copywriting tips' ↓

I have written several posts in the past about the importance of search engine optimisation. For a newcomer to SEO arena there’s a lot to take in:

• Keywords
• Alt tags
• Header tags
• Title tags
• META descriptions
• Links

It can be very daunting trying to get to grips with what each of these terms mean, how to find the keywords your target audience are searching for and that’s even before you get round to thinking about how to produce SEO Copywriting that works, is relevant and interesting to your reader.

Have you got a headache yet?

So how can a complete beginner start to grasp the basics of SEO?

Well I could write an extremely long post about the intricacies of each elements but that would be boring and you’re unlikely to have the time to wade through it all. But, as it would just so happen, I stumbled across a superb post by Mike Mindel of WordTracker that takes you through all the main elements in a very simple-to-understand way.

In previous posts you would have seen me refer to Google’s keyword tool, well WordTracker is a similar tool to help you easily research and discover the keywords you need to target. It is a pay-to-use tool but you can try it out for free with their 7 day risk free trial. Check it out, it’s well worth it.

Anyway, back to the really important stuff. Mike has put together a video that runs through the basics of how to SEO your web pages. It explains in simple language how to find your keywords and how to use them in your title tags, META descriptions, heading tags and image tags as well as the importance of using diverse keywords and linking.

It’s about 19 minutes in length so grab a coffee, sit down and take a look by clicking the button below. It could be your first step to great rankings.

We all make promises. But how many of those promises do you keep?

Take my teenager for example (please take him). When I ask him to do something the usual response is: “Yeah, I’ll do it in a minute.” An hour later, when the task still hasn’t been done and I start to get annoyed with him I get the rolling eyes followed by “I was just about to…”

How many times has you made a complaint only to be assured by the staff member that “I’ll pass your comments on to my manager”. Do they really do as they promise? Very unlikely.

You’re probably wandering what this has to with website copy. Well, within your copy you’ll make various promises to your reader. In fact the benefits of your business are promises. So they are things like:

• Being available 24/7
• Smart and polite staff
• Getting things right first time
• We can’t be beaten

But when putting together your website copywriting, if you merrily add in loads of benefits like this without thinking too hard about them, you could be doing yourself a lot of harm.

When a promise becomes a problem

It’s the small things in life that matter.

You may offer a great guarantee, free postage etc., which you can easily fulfil. But if you can’t get the simple things right, are your customers going to believe your bigger claims and promises?

If you say your service is available 24/7 and when a customer phones they get placed in a queue constantly being told by a disembodied voice “your call is important to us” even though it doesn’t get picked up for 15 minutes, you could lose customers.

I tried to get in touch with a well known UK business recently. I didn’t want to send an email because I needed a quick answer so I decided to call them. Oh boy, what a palaver. The phone rang and immediately found myself in an automated system. After about 5 minutes going through umpteen menus, I finally got to speak to a real person. In all fairness they dealt with my query promptly, but it took some perseverance on my part. The thing that really annoyed me was they gave the impression that they didn’t want to speak to me because the first thing I heard as I entered the automated system was:

“You can find answers to your questions on our website…”

If I could find the answer to my question on the website I wouldn’t need to ring!

This was supposed to be a company that welcomed queries and were ready to help in any way they could – as it turned out, that relied on the customer’s ability to navigate their way through a (seemingly) never ending list of menus in order to speak with a real person.

Customer service is for life not just for Christmas

People are always talking about how good service is a thing of  the past.

These days when you’re in a shop, the staff are more interested in discussing what happened to Tracey and Dave the night before than serving customers. And, worse than ignoring you, they serve you while still discussing the latest gossip breaking off momentarily to take your money.

Customer service is vital which is why you must be able to carry out all  the promises you make on your website.

Many companies still fail to see their website as being  their business. It isn’t a separate entity, and it’s quite often the first impression customers will gain of your business. If you say you answer all calls within 5 rings, do it. If you say you reply to emails within 2 hours, make sure you do – it sounds so simple but you’d be amazed at how many companies get it spectacularly wrong.

Promises like this are made just to look good. But if you can’t fulfil simple pledges like those, how are you going to convince customers you can fulfil your bigger promises?

So when you are writing content for your website think very carefully about what you promise. Ask yourself if you can really live up to what you’re claiming. You have to be able to fulfil every claim – if you can’t you’re leaving yourself open to a barrage of complaints.

Image is everything. Make sure yours is a good one.

One of the hottest debates in the SEO copywriting world is word count.

As a freelance copywriter, I have worked on many SEO copywriting projects. Many are direct with my clients others are for SEO web designers and companies. Most clients realise that I know quite a lot about SEO copywriting and in particular how it works. I have written copy for many sites that rank on the front page of Google for their chosen keywords – not least my own website which is on the front page of Google for ‘copywriter’ (out of about 6 million results). So as SEO copywriters go, I’m pretty good – even if I do say so myself.

Of course, that’s not to say my clients’ success is totally down to my writing. Obviously it plays a big part in it, but other off page factors such as link building are also a major contributing factor.

But anyway, back to SEO copywriting.

Most of my clients leave me to it when it comes to writing copy for them. They know I’ll come up with something that will not only help them rank well, but will also convert visitors into sales.

However, many SEO companies that I work for are fixated on word count. When talking about SEO copywriting, phrases such as density and word count probably impress clients, but I have a real problem with them, especially word count. There is a saying in the copywriting world that basically goes:

Copy is as long as it needs to be

As soon as you start placing limits on its length problems start.

Word Count Won’t Affect Your Rankings

I’m about to make a bold statement – there is no evidence whatsoever to support the thinking that more words will result in greater ranking success.

Despite this, I am often asked by designers to produce a specific number of words per web page (usually in the realms of 500 to 600 words). The copy may well call for that number of words but, if it doesn’t, imposing a limit on words plays havoc with my creativity.

The truth is the copy has to be led by the product or service it is to sell. There are web pages with as few as 70 words that rank just as well as pages with 600+ words. There is no rhyme or reason to it. But what matters is that I am not forced to work within strict boundaries.

If I have to write 700 words, but the product or page subject matter only calls for 300, the remaining 400 words are just going to be padding. And that’s bad.

Every word on the web page has to be there for a reason, and that reason is to sell. As I mentioned earlier, your rankings are not going to be just down to words, there are many other factors that will determine how well your site performs (site navigation, META tags, ALT tags, link building…).

Plus you have to think about the reader. How many people are really willing to sit and read a web page that is 600+ words long? Not many. For most people, if you haven’t convinced them within 200 words you’ve lost them.

So what I’m saying is don’t commission me to write a certain number of words for you; commission me to write fantastic SEO website copy that is interesting to the reader, sells the product and converts web traffic into sales – because….

It’s the quality that counts

As with many things in life, it’s the quality that counts, not how much of it you’ve got.

It’s very rare to find a web page that contains mountains of text that is actually interesting all the way to the very end.

Time is a rare commodity these days so people don’t want to be reading the equivalent of ‘War and Peace’ just to find out whether your product/service is for them. They need to find answers quickly – something short copy is very good at.

The effectiveness of the copy must be measured by its conversion rate. A niche market will mean low levels of traffic, but if that traffic has a 100% conversion rate you’re laughing. Your web copy is there to target a specific audience. If it does it’s job, the traffic it brings will convert. After all, what’s the point of having 1000s of visitors a day to your website if your copy doesn’t convert them?

Why you need to know this

Imposing word limits is counter productive. It will either force your copywriter to pad with unnecessary words or they’ll have to ruthlessly cut their text which could seriously damage its impact. Either way it will lead to ‘unnatural’ copy that, however good your SEO copywriter is, will read strangely having a detrimental effect on your conversion rate.

A good SEO copywriter will understand:

• Conversion
• Keyword usage
• The importance of tags
• The optimum places for keywords

Trust their judgement and leave them free to produce the copy for your website. They naturally arrive at a word count that suits your product or service.

Usain Bolt’s coach wouldn’t impose a time limit the runner isn’t allowed to break, so why clip your copywriter’s wings with word count?

I’ve been working as a freelance copywriter now for about three years. Over that period I have been frequently contacted by new copywriters asking advice about how to get their fledgling freelance careers off the ground.

One question that I am always asked is whether they should ever do work for free.

Is free work beneficial?

When starting out you immediately find yourself in a Catch 22 – you need to find clients to build up a portfolio, but potential clients want to see your previous work. So how do you get those first few clients?

It is a difficult one, especially if you are coming to freelance copywriting without any specific previous experience. If you have worked as a copywriter within a company or agency, you at least have examples of projects you worked on. But if you are new to the industry, the chances are you have nothing.

So should you work for nothing?

My usual reply is ‘no’.

So have I ever produced work for nothing?

Yes.

Rather contradictory? Yes, but I have only ever done a freebie under certain circumstances. It looks as though I’m not the only one too as this post by Lorraine Thompson shows –

Copywriters: Should You Write Copy For Free? 5 Cases For Working Without Pay

The only occasions I would consider free work are:

• As a donation to a charity I support
• As a barter
• When it’s a great portfolio enhancing opportunity
• For friends and family
• To self promote

But if you are approched for free work and you’re tempted, stop and think about it.

Will it help you? Will your business benefit from it in some way?

Make sure you are doing it for the right reasons otherwise it will be an expensive use of your time – that you won’t get paid for!

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

Every now and then it’s a good idea to give your website a fresh look. Whether it’s because your company focus has changed, you’ve undergone re-branding or simply that your old site is looking tired, a fresh new image will breathe life into your online marketing.

Of course, along with a new design, fresh content is always a good idea so hiring a good SEO copywriter is always a great investment.

But getting back to your website – there are certain things that really should be avoided when you are considering a revamp:

Don’t over complicate

We all like an easy life so your website has to be simple to use. If your reader lands on your site and they can’t navigate around it, they’ll leave. Make sure your navigation is clear and very easy to follow. Also don’t over do the number of links on your website. There’s nothing worse than being faced with text littered with links and – more to the point – vast quantities of boxes in the sidebar containing links and asking them to do umpteen things.

You don’t want confused readers, you want relaxed readers.

Make your navigation simple and logical.

Dare I say it? Flash

Once upon a time, Flash was unreadable to Google and therefore did nothing for your SEO. Today, although Google has developed the ability to crawl some Flash, it will still limit the effectiveness of your search engine optimisation so it’s important to keep its use to an absolute minimum. So rather than filling your site with it, how about utilising your white space to add some great content instead.

Images

Everyone loves pretty pictures but, just like Flash, you can over do it.

Images that enhance the text are great. But if you have too many your reader won’t know where to look first. Keep them to a minimum and make sure you choose wisely. A bad image can kill a website.

When used well, images can also help you with your SEO.

Loading

If your website takes a long time to load it will turn off visitors faster than Jonny Vegas in a jock strap, and it will also have a detrimental effect as far as the search engine spiders are concerned. Google likes sites that load quickly as this post from the Google Official Webmaster Central Blog shows.

What’s your offer?

When redesigning don’t get so wrapped up in making it so pretty that you forget what your website’s there for in the first place. Many website owners are so obsessed with SEO they completely forget what is it they want their readers to do. Yes, SEO and organic search results are important, but so is your offer and call to action. If  you neglect those you will end up with an ineffective website.

Keeping your image fresh is very important but just make sure you always have your website goals in mind when redesigning your site. Don’t be tempted to go OTT – simple and effective is the best way to do.