With content playing such an important part in determining search engine rankings, we take a look at 7 ways a Copywriter can help improve your SEO.
You won’t need me to remind you of just how important content is for the success of your site. It is an informative guide, sales pitch and global marketing strategy all rolled in to one. As such, the Internet is awash with content. Good or bad, in vast or minute quantities, the written word is the universal language that every site shares.
In terms of SEO performance, it isn’t just what you write, but how you do it and where you position it. A natural tone is a must, but so too are anchor text links, keywords and a call to action. It can be a confusing process, which is why you might consider enlisting some additional help. If you need any more convincing, here are 7 areas that a copywriter can help boost your SEO:
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Websites attract a diverse audience. Your content has to be able to speak to each visitor in a manner that they can easily understand. As you might expect, this isn’t easy, but it is essential.
First of all you need to make sure that you don’t alienate anyone. This means that you should avoid using too much jargon and steer clear of complex words. If you try to be too clever, your message could get lost in translation. Keep it simple and appeal to a wider audience.
Reduce the length of your sentences too. Punchy text is easier to read and is less likely to deter visitors. Don’t go overboard, just work out which words are needed and which aren’t. Be wordy when you need to, avoid it at all other times.
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Avoid the fluff and give your visitors more of the good stuff. Plain English is the new ‘keyword optimised’ for online Copywriters, so it’s time to make it easier on yourself and your readers.
There’s no mystery to producing good copy. First of all you need an understanding of your audience. Next you need to have a reasonable vocabulary to communicate your message. Finally you need a way to instantly engage with the visiting public.
The last of these can sometimes be the most challenging though. What are they looking for? How can you write in such a way to entice them to explore your site further? More often than not the answer is to keep it simple and succinct.
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As a Copywriter, I’m continuously surprised at how many websites still overlook the fundamental principle of business – effective communication.
There’s a lot to be said for projecting an image. That’s why salesmen in the offline world wear smart suits and have immaculate presentation. Websites are the same; an attractive design can show professionalism and intent, drawing in inquisitive visitors. But behind the aesthetically pleasing first impressions, there needs to be some depth.
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There are occasions where we look to simplify things, or make them clearer through ‘real-world’ situations. However, SEO and its incumbent offshoots, including analytics, link building and, perhaps most excessively, copywriting, appear to have been almost entirely overrun with mysterious euphemisms, metaphors and analogies.
We’re all guilty of it. You won’t have to search too far through the Impact Media blog to find a tenuous link of some sort. Unfortunately though, whilst some analogies help shed a little light (yes, another metaphor) on a subject, others just serve to confuse it further.
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A call to action is arguably the most important part of any piece of sales copy. The headline and opening paragraph may grab the reader’s attention, but it is the call to action that can turn a visitor into a customer.
Think about your copy as a joke. Okay, that’s a bad analogy to start with, but bear with me. A joke will often start with a hook, just as a product page ought to. It may then meander for a while and add a little flesh to the bones; this is the informative part of your sales pitch. But all this is leading to the crescendo that is the punch line, your sales pitch, your call to action.
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We’ve all had situations where we just can’t find the right words. In most professions this isn’t a major stumbling block; unfortunately, copywriting isn’t one of these.
Whether you’re a professional copywriter, journalist, blogger or just creating content for your own site, the problem of a writer’s block is always the same. Sometimes you might have ideas, but have no idea how to express them, on other occasions the complete opposite may be true. The best thing to get you out of the lexical doldrums though is confidence.
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Copy is far from being a one size fits all solution. Depending on what your website is promoting or who you’re targeting the tone and wording can differ hugely.
Ecommerce is understandably one of the most competitive markets online. With so many stores offering the same or similar products and services, you have to be sure that yours stands out from the crowd. Pricing and other additional incentives can swing the balance in your favour; however, to really close the deal, copy can be your greatest marketing weapon.
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How about that for a headline?! What would a world be without Google? For the likes of Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz it might well be a much brighter and happier place; for others the reality would be far more confusing, particularly with the transposition of Bing as the generic term for search.
Of course, the title itself is ludicrously inaccurate. There are very few companies who would decide to surrender a 90% world share of a hugely lucrative market and, needless to say, Google certainly aren’t one of them.
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Every now and then the value of the written word is called into question. With the major technology-based epochal shifts that have occurred in the past few decades, it’s hardly surprising that each new medium is seen as the beginning of the end for copywriting.
When I say copywriting of course, I mean the long-standing form of the profession. Years before the computer came into existence, a time when the web was still something that spiders made; copywriting was a way of marketing services, products, or just your own ideas. Whilst keywords, embedded links and H2 headings weren’t a requirement for this form of printed copywriting, most of the conventions have been passed on to the world of SEO and online marketing.
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People who aren’t natural writers don’t always have the easiest time when it comes to producing persuasive sales copy. Econsultancy yesterday featured an interesting look at how e-commerce site owners often toil with the concept of creating product copy that will really sell.
The aforementioned article raises some important points, not least about how you can overcome that initial fear or even ambivalence towards copy and its role as a sales device. But it also got me wondering how we can simplify the process and remove more of the misconceptions surrounding sales copy. Here is Impact Media’s simple(ish) guide to creating perfect product copy.
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Copywriting is a vital part of the overall SEO process, there can be little doubting that. However, it isn’t necessarily a part of SEO itself per se.
Take, for example, a football journalist. It’s their job to read the game, understand what is happening on and off the pitch and formulate a report as an end product; but that doesn’t make them a footballer. Copywriting, particularly when done online, is exactly the same.
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On reading the headline ‘SEO Copywriting is Dead! Here’s Proof…’ this morning, I was understandably a little taken aback. As a copywriter working in the online marketing sector, SEO is invariably a large part of what I do personally, and of course what Impact Media do as a company.
But behind the headline, there is in fact a very good series of arguments that suggest heavily optimised copy is no longer the force it once was. Whilst some of the points within this article may be stronger than others, the key message is one of quality above keywords.
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It’s often not until you’ve actually tried to do copywriting yourself that you realise just how difficult it is. Of course, in essence, it is much the same as any conventional form of writing. However, there are so many additional factors that you have to consider – not least balancing readability with SEO strength – that it is a far more complex skill than some give credit for.
There’s a fine line between a categorical success and a stratospheric disaster; particularly when it comes to marketing your own website. So to help you steer clear of lexical limbo, we’ve put together this list of 5 copywriting faux pas that you should look to avoid:
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If you’re looking to portray a professional, cutting edge image, the last thing you want is for old content to undermine your website’s credibility. Both from a visitor’s point of view and that of the search engine crawlers, new content can be hugely beneficial.
In terms of search engine rankings, fresh copy and relevant new pages are a great way of getting a major boost for your site. New content means that there are additional keywords bulking up your potential organic search pulling power. Plus, whenever you add fresh copy to a site, the search engines send out what we call crawlers or spiders, which will then process the information and index the page.
Boost Search Engine Rankings
Bearing in mind that potential visitors and clients can search for pretty much anything, it almost goes without saying that having additional related keywords and phrases on a site can only be a positive move. As with all things though, it has to be done in moderation. Having a sprawling site full of hundreds of pages, each one containing a wealth of copy overloaded with keywords, will more than likely put off any users once they’ve arrived.
News feeds and blogs tend to be a very popular and highly successful way of boosting a website’s content without cluttering up key pages. They update regularly and are a great for providing additional internal links, whilst also drawing in casual visitors. You can also show off your industry expertise and really add some value to your website’s message with.
Maintain Your Website’s Credibility
From a purely stylistic point of view though, content updates are essential on a number of levels. For example, would you buy from a site that still had Christmas banners in the middle of May? Or one that proudly boasts having products that were ‘Brand New for 2007′? Whilst these may be extreme examples, there are thousands of sites on the Internet suffering as a result of not keeping copy right up-to-date.
To maintain a credible image amongst visitors, every aspect of a website needs to be considered. From the design of the Home Page to the content of the copy, it all needs to be up to scratch. Thorough checks of your copy can be time consuming though, particularly if you’re operating a large site; however, the benefits of doing so are clear. You don’t want to be losing customers due to a typo filled product description, or suffer in search engine rankings as a result of continued inactivity; so content really is key.
