Copywriting Tips

Google AdWords is what's known as pay-per-click advertising. You, the business (e-commerce or bricks and mortar) owner, pay Google to put your ads on its search engine results pages or on sites with relevant content that run Google content-related ads. Your ads are generated by certain keywords. Since your ad comes up in response to specific keywords, you're more likely to have your ads seen by people who are already interested in your product or service.


Perhaps the most important part of a successful AdWords campaign is choosing the best keywords for bringing up your ad. For some keywords, there will be a lot of competition, and depending on your ad budget, you may or may not be able to bid high enough for them on certain sites. That's why you should have a comprehensive keyword strategy. One common method new advertisers use is making use of the Google Keyword Tool to choose their best keywords.

There are two basic ways to find good keywords. You can enter descriptive phrases, or you can enter the URL of a site like one you would like your ad to be placed on. Either way, the Keyword Tool comes back with a very long list of keywords, plus information about each one: advertiser competition, local search volume for the previous month, and global monthly search volume.

A good starting point is keywords with global search volume numbers in the thousands or tens of thousands rather than the millions. There are usually a few of these keywords that are highly relevant and with manageable competition, meaning you won't blow your entire ad budget on one ad with a very expensive keyword. The great thing about AdWords is that you are given extensive reports that let you know exactly which keywords worked well and which didn't so that you can fine-tune your keywords as your ad campaign progresses.

Usually, visitors will find your website and its contents from a search engine, or possibly by looking through an article directory. In either case, the headlines you create for your web content, whether it's an article, blog post, or page, have a huge influence over whether people actually visit. Think about it: if you're looking through a page of search engine results it's the first few words of the result that catch your eye (or don't). You have less than a second to grab your reader's attention.

Make sure your headlines are short and relevant. If your blog entry is about avoiding tourist traps in London, it should probably have exactly that as its title. If you give it a title like, "When in London, Here are Some Areas that You'll Find to be Overrun with Tourists," your potential readers have already skipped over it in favor of a more direct headline.

Keep your titles straightforward rather than clever or cutesy. Web crawlers like the Googlebot are smart, but they don't understand puns and intentional misspellings.

Make sure your best keywords are at the beginning of the headline. This makes it easier on search engine crawlers and readers.

Make sure your title is relevant to the contents. If you use a title like "Best Gourmet Coffee Beans for Espresso" because you know the word "espresso" gets you hits, then don't have the associated article be about the best gourmet coffee beans for French press coffee. People don't like bait and switch.

Ideally, the title should inspire enough interest for them to read the entire article, but it is more important for the titles to be concise, to the point, and relevant. Once you get them on the article page, it's time to wow them with great content that will make them glad they chose your site from the search engine results.

You may have a website filled with every kind of useful and cool information, but if your visitors can't find it, then all those great web pages will remain unread. The only thing worse than insufficient navigation for your site is convoluted or confusing navigation, because in short order your visitors will click elsewhere and won't have much incentive to return. So don't underestimate the importance of good navigation design. 

There are a few things you can do to ensure good navigation design. Make sure that your homepage is reachable from every other page on your site. That way if worse comes to worse and someone gets off track, they can at least get back to the home page easily. It's fun to have graphics to help with navigation, but you should always provide text links too.

Using content to help visitors navigate your site is similar to threading a "road map" through your site, with destinations that are clearly marked and intuitive. Visitors need to answer a few questions:

• Where an I now?
• Where can I go?
• How do I get back?

No matter how deeply a visitor delves into the pages of your site, they must have a feeling of knowing how they got there and in what context they are there. That's why it is important to have a constant look and feel throughout your pages. Your home page should be the point of origin, the Grand Central Station of your site, and you need to have the equivalent of directions to all the train platforms so people know how to get to the pages that interest them.

Make your navigation labels simple and to the point. Use links in your navigation element that say things like "Home," "Shop," and "About Us." If you carry your navigation element throughout the pages on your site, your visitors will thank you. A lot of times, a visitor on a home page will think something like, "OK, first I'll look at leather handbags, and then I'll look at canvas handbags."

If they go to the leather handbag page and become engrossed in it, then try to remember where they were going next, if the navigational box is the same throughout, they can look at it, see the "Canvas Handbags" button, and immediately remember. If the navigational box changes from page to page, they only choices they have are to go back to the home page and start again, or simply go to another site and not bother.

That's why consistency is so important when you design your site navigation. Lost visitors are visitors who are not likely to come back.

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process to get your search engine to the top of the search rankings. There are several factors that will influence how high your website ranks in searches, including the domain name, the content on the site, age of the site and how pictures are labeled. A most important factor is how many links you have to your site.

There are several tools available to find our what backlinks a site has earned. One is the Yahoo Site Explorer at www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ and typing your URL into the search box. Another is the online tool Open Site Explorer at www.opensiteexplorer.org. The Open Site Explorer also shows the anchor text (the words the site includes in the link), the page authority and domain authority of the site linking to your enquired site. This is valuable information because some inbound links are more important than others.

All this information is important because the more significant the site linking to you, then the more value the search engines will put on your own site. Links from paid link services or link-swapping sites can actually sink a website's search engine rank.

Inbound links from trusted and established websites are very valuable because they show the search engines that your site is useful and trusted. So it's important to build up your number of inbound links, but only using legitimate means, like asking for links from sites you like. Sometimes you'll get inbound links to your site because someone on another site found your website and liked it. These inbound links are very nice surprises (unless they happen to come from a "bad neighbourhood" on the web, i.e. porn or illegal gambling sites).

The great thing about these tools is that you can use them to also identify who is backlinking to our competitors. All this information is important to develop an effective SEO strategy.

Last month I wrote about the value of article marketing, and pointed out the importance of quality over quantity.  People have since been asking, “What makes a quality article?” 

My response is always, “Write what you know”.  An enlightening and informative article wins hands down over an article that simply rehashes what is already common knowledge.  When people invest time reading your articles they want some reward, something that helps them to expand their knowledge on the subject.

Once you have the research or the knowledge to write as an authority, the next step it to structure you article.  The trouble with experts is that they tend to go off on different ideas, because of their broad knowledge of a subject.  They try and bring a lot of ideas to the one article. A good article states, and then supports, one idea.  Everything else discussed in your article should be supporting your point.  An article that tries to develop several ideas will usually fail to communicate the idea clearly and confuse the reader.

The idea should be stated in the introduction.  However, the introduction can also be used to lead into the idea, but only ‘set-up’ your idea to build a reader’s curiosity in the subject matter.

Once you have the reader’s interest in a subject and stated what idea you article explores, it’s time to deliver the evidence.  The body of the article should be broken up in several supportive points and only one point should be explored in each paragraph.

If you are building up an argument, then ensure the flow is consistent.  If you are using terms like ‘will be address later’, or ‘as previously stated’ then you are breaking from the flow and a reordering of your article might be required.  Writing ‘as previously stated’ is a clear signal that you earlier point was not strong enough to carry the article. 

The conclusion is often tacked on, and in some cases not used at all. The conclusion is an important closer to your idea and should bring all the points together to support your idea.  The conclusion should also bring new, but related, ideas to the attention to the reader.

These are the process you need to write informative and interesting articles.  Take some time out to read quality articles and see how effective they are at engaging a reader and projecting/supporting an idea.

In the media world of old it was the sole responsibility of the editor to create the headlines of the day.  Headline writing required an experienced writer who could squeeze the most from every word, not just because of limited space but also to grab the attention of the public.

Websites need to achieve the same results with their limited space, so you can see how looking at the headline-writing process can improve your web content.

Here are five rules to headline writing, which should also be kept in mind when generating web content.

Short

A headline should not satisfy a reader’s curiosity, it should make a reader hungry for more.  Your web content should also be concise and to the point.  When you have to hook a visitor in six seconds or less, you shouldn’t be wasting space with idle wording.

Relevant

‘Free Beer!’  Now that I have your attention, have you considered life insurance? That’s not going to work.  A headline needs to be relevant to the content.  When you spark an interest, you must reward the reader’s curiosity. 

Keyword Start

Don’t muck around because your reader doesn’t have the time.  They will scan the headlines and if your keywords aren’t prominent then the reader is lost to you.

Stand Alone

A headline must be able to stand alone, and be understood without the support of the rest of the content.

Predictable

A reader doesn’t want any more surprises after reading the headlines, they want an explanation or more detailed information.  Leave the twists to fiction writers.

It seems that we are constantly bombarded with buzzwords and idioms.  Buzzwords are words, or phrases, created to give meaning to a popular idea that’s shared by a specific group of people.  Buzzwords are common in business, politics and in the media, but should they be used in your web content.

The web and social-networking websites, such as Twitter, have helped to increase the use of buzzwords, and have accelerated the move of buzzwords into mainstream language.  For example, googling has started to appear in dictionaries, and becoming widely understood and used as a verb to describe searching the internet with the Google tool.

Using buzzwords in web copy has both advantages and disadvantages and, while it is generally frowned upon, it can be a useful tool to create more meaningful content.

Advantages of using buzzwords in web content 

Buzzwords are usually created to simplify complex ideas, so they can be useful when you are trying to limit your website’s word count or to simplify the language on your site.

When you want your website to target a particular market, then buzzwords can help you to increase the relevance of your website to the target market and their web searches.  Buzzwords can also help you to connect with your target audience. 

Disadvantage of using buzzwords in web content

The biggest disadvantage of using buzzwords, and usually the main argument for leaving them out of web content, is that only select groups of people understand the meaning of some buzzwords.  SEO is widely used on the internet, but if many of your visitors are new to internet marketing then SEO might have little or no meaning.   It might be more meaningful to explain in full that your processes will help a website to improve its ranking with internet searches.  

Buzzwords can also date your web content.  Buzzwords which are popular one day might fall out of favour the next.  This can do more damage to your website than good.  Also the meaning of some buzzwords can change over a short period of time or can be ambiguous and using them can confuse your web visitors. 

If you decided to include buzzwords in your content, then you should always ensure that your target market clearly understands the definition.  You don’t want to include a glossary of terms on your website just to get your point across.

I often get asked: ‘How often should I add new articles/content to my website?’  It is a question that also created a lot of chatter on leading copywriting forums.  There is a consensus and, although it is a little vague, it does ring true. The more articles or new content you can put on your website the better.

There is no doubt that article marketing is one of the best ways of directing targeted traffic to your website.  If your articles are interesting and the information is relevant you will also increase the number of return visitors to your website.  Articles should be an important cog in your website marketing machine. 

Quality Articles over Quantity

You should always choose quality over quantity.  The more the better, but when quality is being compromised then it is time to scale it back.  It is quality that will deliver the results you want from article marketing. 

Set Writing Goals

If you decide to do article marketing, then you should understand that it requires commitment. Doing a few articles sporadically is not going to achieve great results.  The same can be said for dumping a heap of articles at once and disappearing for many months. 

For the best results you should write and publish regularly.  Initially you might want to set a goal of writing and publishing at least one article a week.   You can then increase this rate once you have established your content management systems.

Establish Your Article Distribution Network

So you have your article that will change the world, but how to get it out there.  You can take the passive approach and simply put it on your website.  You can be almost certain that search engines will read it, but without visitors it will fall well short on potential.  Another option is to develop a mailing list to kick start word of mouth. 

The third option is to publish your article on a third-party website and draw visitors to your own website with witty and engaging articles.  Spend a little time research your options, and regularly review the effectiveness of your distribution network.  After all, you want to get the most from every word.

To catch a fish, you must first think like a fish. What does this old fishing proverb have to do with writing press releases?

If you want to generate interest in your release, you first have to deliver the message your reader wants to hear. 

So what does your reader want from a press release?

I have seen too many press releases fail because the writer was not thinking about who was reading it. What every reader wants from a press release is newsworthy material.  

This might seem to be such a simple idea, but often this initial step is overlooked.  So many releases dive deep into a sales pitch.  This might be interesting to the creator of the press release, but to a reader it’s nothing more than a waste of five minutes in a very busy day.

It is important when writing a press release to also think about your reader's motivation for reading it.  You want your release to develop ideas that your reader will find interesting.  For example, an editor will only want material that’s relevant to the readers of their publications.

It is also important to cover all necessary information.  Journalists usually are after the why, what, when, where, why and how of a story.  This structure is commonly referred to as the 5 Ws and an H.  A press release should cover all these questions to give the reader a complete story.  

The specific nature of these questions will depend on the angle of the story.  If you feed the reader with the right information, then you have more control on how any follow-up story will be covered by the editor/writer.

‘Buy now to avoid disappointment’, ‘buy now and save’ and ‘this is a limited-time offer’.

Here is a selling device you should be using right now to stop sales from slipping through your fingers.

One of the most effective tools to help you close that all-important sale is to create a sense of urgency.  Whatever you are trying to sell, when you create urgency you are building up the customer to take action.

Your aim is to get people to click that ‘order now’ button at a feverish pace.

How you deliver this message is paramount to the success of this selling device.  The first rule to creating a sense of urgency is to understand you customer and how your product or service can best fit their needs.  For example, if you are selling a wealth generation product, then you want your potential customer to feel that any delay will cut into any returns, or instant action will help them change their life... well instantly. 

You need to identify what someone wants from the product or service, and that can only be obtained if they take action immediately.  This tool is regularly used to sell property.  An agent will often claim that a lot of buyers have shown interest in the house, or it just came on the market and at this price will not be available for long.  A buyer cannot disprove these claims, and since the house is one of a kind a buyer needs to take action immediately to secure it or they will miss out.

Urgency can be built into a sales pitch in a variety of ways.  Some offer instant gratification for the customer if they buy now, while other claims the best time to buy is right now.  Whichever you choose depends heavily on the type of product or service you are selling and your sales method.  It is no use offering a limited-time discount when price is not an issue for the customer.