Entries from October 2010 ↓

With more and more companies turning to online marketing and advertising, is there still a place for the humble brochure within your marketing armoury?

Local search and SEO are huge today and many businesses are (quite rightly) investing heavily in these areas. After all, more and more people are turning to the internet when looking for products and services. Plus, with 85% of all search traffic clicking on organic listings rather than the sponsored links (PPC), it’s not surprising that this is where the focus on online marketing is these days.

So has the company brochure really been consigned to the rubbish bin once and for all?

Let me leave this with you

However much I hate it, face to face networking is here to stay. Nothing can replace meeting someone in ‘the flesh’ and connecting with them on a personal level. Personally I am not a fan of networking as I’m the type of person who is terrified of being in a room of strangers. Walking up to a group and breaking into a conversation is harder for me than undergoing root canal surgery.

But it is something I force myself to do every once in a while.

When you are in that situation, having a brochure often has more impact that handing over a business card. There’s a lot more room to get your message across for a start. But that doesn’t mean you should fill it with boring, pretentious nonsense that’s going to turn the reader off.

Think brochure, think web copy

I’ve often written about the importance of getting your website copy right.

You have to grab their attention with a great headline, sell the benefits immediately, talk to them and then tell them what to do. Compiling your brochure should take the same approach.

It should make the reader sit up and think ‘Wow! These guys are great. I must phone them immediately.” OK, a bit cheesy but you get the picture.

Your brochure should:

Look great

That doesn’t mean it has to be bold and colourful. Some of the best brochures I’ve seen have been very simple. Whatever look you go for, make sure it fits with your brand and company image. Try to make it fresh, eye-catching – something that’s tactile that they’ll want to pick up and read.

Talk the talk

Just like your website, never, ever begin your brochure…”We’ve been in business for 40 years and pride our selves on…”

Who cares?! Certainly not your reader.

Think benefits, think offer, and think like your customer:

• Tell them what you’re going to do for them
• Sell them the benefits of your business
• Tell them why your products or services are the perfect fit

A brochure isn’t your soap box from which you can shout about your achievements. It’s your website in their hand. It’s a piece of marketing that they can keep with them and refer to whenever they need to.

Tell them what to do next

All too often a great brochure is spoilt by one omission – a call to action.

Your brochure is designed to be taken away which is why it’s even more important than ever to have a compelling call to action within it. There can be several – one after each section if you like. The main thing is when your reader has absorbed its contents, they know exactly what to do – call you, email you or visit you.

Why you need to know this

With today’s online world people are forgetting traditional off line marketing tools. A brochure may not seem technologically advanced, but there is still a place for them for many businesses.

However it’s important to make them fresh, compelling and different. If you want to stand out from your competitors you’re going to have to get creative.

Sally Ormond – freelance copywriter

The art of Search engine optimisation is enabling businesses all over the world reach a greater audience online.

Done well and it can achieve amazing results, often slashing marketing budgets as expensive off line marketing campaigns and PPC are no longer needed.

But many people are still tempted to cut corners, impatient for results.

Don’t let temptation get the better of you. SEO will take time, but if you try to take short cuts, Google could slap you with a penalty.

Natural Link Building

Links to your website are very important. They act as an indicator to Google showing how relevant your site it for a particular topic. Each link is seen as a vote, so the more you have the more relevant you are perceived.

Buying links is a very bad idea and can be very damaging to your website. If you build your links naturally and ensure they come from related sites (i.e. the same industry/topic) you won’t fall foul of Google.

You can attract good links in a number of ways. For example:

•    Create a good Google local profile and fill it with relevant information about your business
•    Contact your Chamber of Commerce and enquire about having a link from  their website
•    Ask your suppliers/clients if they would be prepared to link to you
•    Issue press releases
•    Add your details to influential online directories in relevant categories
•    Write blogs and articles on your industry and link back to your website

Don’t be lazy about back links

Generating back links is often one part of SEO that is forgotten about.

Yes it takes time and is a constant process, but one that is vital if your SEO strategy is going to work. If you find it too much for one person to deal with on their own, get a link building team organised and share the workload.

Don’t indulge in the dark arts

Whatever you do, don’t succumb to using black hat techniques. These are activities that Google frowns upon. They are used by unscrupulous SEO companies to try and get quick results. But they could land you in hot water.

Black hat techniques cover things such as cloaking, using link farms, invisible text and keyword stuffing (more about that in a moment).

No keyword stuffing

The art of SEO Copywriting is quite complex and it pays to get a professional to create your copy for you.

Many people believe that by cramming as many instances of their keywords into their copy as possible, they’ll achieve magnificent rankings.

Well, if you do that, all you’ll achieve is unreadable text. What’s the point in good rankings if:

•    People can’t read your copy
•    People are completely turned off by your copy
•    Your copy doesn’t convert

A professional SEO copywriter will not only create compelling, benefits driven copy that will convert, they will also know where and how to use your keywords in a natural way.

Don’t repeat yourself

In a rush to own as much of the internet as possible, some companies are tempted to cut and paste text from their website into as many directories and online profiles as possible.

Don’t! Google frowns upon duplicate copy. If you fall into this trap you’ll earn yourself a hefty penalty so make sure you only add original content to your website, blogs and directories.

Don’t forget to keep the momentum going

Even when companies manage to avoid all the SEO hurdles I’ve mentioned, without constant maintenance their strategy will fail.

SEO isn’t a static entity, it’s very fluid. You must constantly monitor and tweak it to get the best out of it. Back links must be generated constantly to maintain and improve your rankings.

Your hard work will be rewarded by higher rankings, more targeted traffic and a reduction in your marketing spend.

The semantics of understanding

Before I get into the nitty gritty of this post I want to clarify something. It saddens me to say the term ‘keyword density’ hasn’t yet been confined to the rubbish bin.

It is a term that’s still freely banded about by ‘SEO experts’ who claim to understand the inner workings of Google. Well if they did, they would know that ‘keyword density’ is nonsense.

Its origins come from this kind of mindset:

“The more I mention a phrase the higher the keyword density; the higher the keyword density the more relevant my page will be to Google. Therefore the more keywords I can cram into my copy the better.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

By thinking this way you completely disregard the competition from other pages – so what do you do? Take a look at them, work our their keyword density (total number of words divided by the number of times your phrase is repeated – expressed as a percentage) chuck in a few more instances of your keyword so your density is higher and, bingo! You’ve created the spammiest website known to man.

As a result all legibility, usability and clarity diminish.

If you are a die-hard KD fan and think I’m talking a load of c***p, let me ask you this – if KD was how the search engines calculate the relevancy of your web page, surely all you’d have to do is fill your page with your keywords. But if you did that, no one would use the internet because it would be full of gibberish. Hello? Are you getting it now?

The search engines aren’t stupid. Keyword density is useless – it totally ignores the contextual relevance of your page to your subject matter let alone internal links, back links, navigation, usability etc.

So how do you create SEO copywriting that the search engines love?

Its semantics Jim but not as we know it

Your keywords (and the quality of your keyword research) are important. But you don’t need to stuff your copy with them. When writing naturally you automatically build meaning by using keywords, synonyms, verbs and nouns.

Of course, placing your keywords in optimum places is very important – META tags, title tags, headings (H1 etc), navigation and links. But that alone won’t indicate to the search engines what your page is about.

For example, if you’re writing about ink, you have to give Google some help so it can determine how you are using that term.

The answer is semantics.

How to research related words

There are 2 ways you can go about researching related words. You can either guess, or you can use the Google Tilde Search.

I find the latter works best.

So how do you use it? Well simply type your keyword into Google immediately preceded by the tilde sign (~). You will then see several pages of results with the related terms in bold.

Going back to our word – when you search “~ink” Google shows us the following terms:

Inkjet
Cartridge
Inks
Toner
Paint
Pen

And that’s just from the first two pages of the search results.

Then all you have to do is drill down by picking the relevant terms and doing a Tilde Search on those too. Eventually you will have a list of related words that, when used within your text, will enhance the SEO on your website.

Why you need to know this

I should think that’s pretty obvious!

By using semantics within your website copywriting, you will be boosting the relevance of your pages in Google’s eyes. And the more relevancies you show, the higher your rankings.

But remember, this will only work in conjunction with a well planned SEO strategy.