Copywriting Classes

In the last few years, search engine optimisation copywriting in the UK and around the world has changed beyond recognition, as has the way sites are optimised by their design, coding and links. However, the biggest changes have been with SEO copywriting. Some of the same old mistakes are being made, and with all the changes to the ways search engines rank sites, fresh pitfalls are appearing. This article looks at some of the most common mistakes and omissions in SEO copywriting - and how to avoid them.

1. Too much time on the look, not enough on the content. If, like me, you’re in the business of SEO copywriting, this is a perennial bugbear. The content of your website is more important than its design, and it’s going to be even more key in the future. Search engines rank websites for what’s in them. You’re almost certainly paying your site design people a great deal of money - but you’re wasting it if your copy is an afterthought and few people visit your website. Invest time and money in copywriting. Better still, talk to your copywriter while the site is being designed, rather than ask him or her to fill in the empty spaces afterwards.

2. Lack of keywords. Keyword selection is the most critical single factor in search engine optimisation. Yet all too often businesses ignore it. If you’re a blue chip company it rarely matters - people are going to come to your site anyway. But any small or mid-size company ignores it at their peril. If your site isn’t optimised in the way it’s written (not just in the way it’s coded) then you’re losing out on customers - big time.

3. Optimising keywords that no-one is searching for. Your company may pride itself on its great service, but it’s pointless to optimise ‘great service’ or anything along those lines, as no-one will be searching for it. (In fact it can be positively counter-productive, as some search engines treat ’service’ as a stop word and mark down accordingly.) You can find a free search engine query tool at www.overture.com, or you can pay for a more detailed and comprehensive one at www.wordtracker.com. These will tell you which terms have been searched for recently and how often.

4. Optimising keywords that everyone is searching for. You need to be specific in what you optimise. If you’re selling jewelry (or ‘jewellery’, as it’s spelled in the UK), then it’s no use simply optimising for the word ‘jewelry’. Be more specific. Even phrases like ‘antique jewelry’ or ‘beaded jewelry’ are searched for many thousands of times a month. Find out what people are searching for and see what you’re up against by going to a couple of search engines and entering those terms. If your competitors are all optimising for a specific term, it’s probably best to avoid it if you can find an alternative that will still bring in the traffic.

4. Alternate spellings and endings. Think laterally, think creatively, think how others would spell or term something. Are you going to optimise for ‘jewelry’ or ‘jewellery’ - or both? How about ‘website’ or ‘web site’? - both versions are common. And so on. Don’t try and cover all the bases - but do try and check them against what’s being searched for and how many times and in what context you’ll find that keyword on the internet. That way you’re more likely to make the best choices.

5. Keyword density. The general rule of thumb is to try and get them in headings or subheads, and early on in the copy. Two to five times overall on a page, with an absolute maximum of three different keywords per page is what to aim for. Some pundits recommend keyword density of up to 5%. This is almost certainly too much, and some search engines will actually penalise you for it.

6. Clumsy use of keywords. Beware of your copy becoming awkward if you try and repeat your keywords too often:

If you’re looking for wonderful widgets, this is the best place for wonderful widgets. Our wonderful widgets are better than any other wonderful widgets you’ve heard of”

Copy like that puts off anyone reading your website. And nowadays, when keywords are crowded in like that, it’s putting off the search engines as well.

7. The amount of text. Opinions vary as to exactly how long a page should be. Your homepage should be no longer than around 250 - 300 words, but you can easily double that if needs be for other pages. All pages should have clear headings, subheads, and short paragraphs. A page could be as little as 100 words. What it won’t be, if it’s optimised correctly, is a single paragraph of 30 -50 words.

8. Missing the extras. Text links within your site and anchor text pointing to it are important elements of search engine optimisation copywriting. Text links between pages in your site make it easier for search engine spiders to travel across the whole site. You should therefore always look to include them within your site, unless your site is too complex for it to be practicable, in which case your site needs a hierarchical structure. Anchor text is the visible text in a hyperlink - as in the following:

“Effective search engine optimisation copywriting is essential for getting the most out of your website.”

Of course, the anchor text that helps your site up the rankings is actually on a hyperlink from an outside site - but good anchor text is text that’s written in the right way, with the correct keyword. So get your copywriter to suggest anchor text with which outside sites can link to yours.

9. Doorway pages that aren’t proper pages. Doorway pages are - or were - simply pages within your site that were optimised so that very often they were the first pages that visitors reached. However, the phrase ‘doorway page’ nowadays tends to refer a page that has very little to do with a site, but is merely optimised for a couple of key phrases and aims to immediately redirect the visitor to the site proper. There’s nothing wrong with optimising several pages on your site - in fact it’s generally an excellent idea, as it allows you to cover many keywords. Just make sure that each optimised page has original content, is a genuine part of your site, and is shown on your sitemap.

10. Resting on your laurels. This is perhaps the most common failing of all. A properly optimised site should get you up near the top of the rankings. But you’ll need to keep working on it if you want to stay there. Every day around 7 million items - documents, pages whatever - are added to the internet. Your competitors are going to be choosing keywords and optimising websites of their own. One way to develop and keep high rankings is with relevant links. Another is by adding original content, such as articles or newsletters - so keep your copywriter busy.

Peter Wise is an advertising copywriter, website copywriter and SEO copywriter based in London, UK. He also writes direct mail, brochures, newsletter articles and press releases. You can reach him at +44 (0) 7767 687524. For further information, please visit http://ideaswise.com/.

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Copywriters: whether you’re in-house, small agency or even a temp gig-hopper, chances are you’re working alongside designers who use Quark Express. So there will definitely come a time when you’re required to open up a Quark document and make changes to the text. If you’re smart, you’ll realize that the more comfortable you are in Quark, the less of a chance you’ll have of peeving your coworkers by destroying what’s already there.

Quark Express is a phenomenal program that you can FLY AROUND in, provided you know what you’re doing. The tools are there, all it takes is a little practice. Wouldn’t it be great to know you’ve got the edge over the typical non-Quark copywriter? Following are seven Quark Express tricks that are guaranteed to have you breezing through those copy changes in record time.

1. Zoom In, Zoom Out.

Why You Need It: headline creation. Most likely, your job requires you to “pop in” several headlines and subheads on a single-page, tabloid-sized ad. A good copywriter knows that her headline themes shall not repeat each other, so if you’re able to zoom in, type the text, zoom out again and view the entire page, you’ll be primed for a speedy eagle-eye headline review.

How to Do It:

Zoom in: Start with a view of the whole page. With your cursor on the Move Tool (looks like a big asterisk), hold the right mouse button down and drag it downward on the diagonal. This is how you “marquee” around a section of text you want to look at up-close. What you’re doing here is simply creating a viewing window.

Zoom out: (Command-zero) Put your right thumb on the COMMAND (or open apple) key and your index finger on the (0) zero. (Not to be confused with the letter O, which if you hit that would open another document.)

Put these two together: Command-zero for a panoramic page view, marquis around on specific area. Command-zero, marquis. Do it again. Do it one more time. Are you getting the hang of the zoom in, zoom out? It’s pretty handy to know.

2. Clicking Through Stacked Layers.

Why You Need It: most copywriters know the sinking feeling of trying to click a text box in Quark and being unable to “get at” the text. What’s going on here? There’s probably another, transparent text box covering the text box. Here’s what to do.

How to Do It:

Put your left three fingers on SHIFT, ALT and COMMAND (again, COMMAND is the apple key) and hold down. While depressing these keys, use the right hand to click the text box you’re trying to get at. Repeat clicking until you see those little “grabber corners” appear on the box you want to change. What the “chord” does here is allow you to click down through the layers and get to the text box to make your edits. Be sure that you click the Text (T) tool before typing your changes. When you’re done, just click away and move on to the next task.

3. Moving Around the Page Without Scrolling.

Why You Need It: Sure you can scroll, but who wants to wait for the page view to catch up with a redraw? An easier method for “scooting” around in your Quark document follows.

How to Do It:

Click the Move tool and then “zoom out” for a view of the entire document. (See Tip 1 if you don’t know how to do this.) With your left hand, press the COMMAND key and keep it engaged. You’ll notice that the cursor has changed to a little “hand-grabber.” Drag the mouse in any direction, and the page moves with you. Pretty cool, eh?

4. Duplicate Text Box.

Why You Need It: You may want to type a new headline into a designed group of text boxes, but you’re afraid to mess up the design. So rather than destroy what the poor artist took hours to create, you can “duplicate” their text box to get the exact text specs you need to work with. You can then drag your duped text box onto the pasteboard and let them know you’ve placed the new headline there.

How to Do It:

Just click any text box, and press COMMAND-D. The text box will multiply by one, and you will see an identical text box right next to it.

Note: if you want to get fancy, double-click the new text box, change the background color to something flashy like yellow, and then hit F5 to “bring it to the front.” Then place your new headline on top of the old one. Be sure to tell the designer you did this just in case he objects or has a better solution. If it turns out he loves your method, use the Duplicate trick in Tip 4 to dupe your new “headline text box,” cover your next headline with the new box and type in the next headline.

5. Group and Ungroup.

Why You Need It: Quark designers often use “double” text boxes stacked one on top of the other to create shadowed headlines. The top text box contains text in one color, and the box beneath it contains text in another. The bottom text box is shifted just a skoche. When viewed together, this looks like text with a shadow! You will find the trouble happens when you try to change the headline - why can’t you get at the box underneath!?

The reason is because the boxes have been grouped together. You can see two or more grouped boxes because they’ll be framed with a dotted line. When you grab for one box, they all move together.

How to Do It:

Try this: Click the Text tool. Create a text box and type in short headline using one of the thicker fonts. Now make sure you’ve clicked the box and then use COMMAND-D to duplicate it. You now have two identical headlines. Select one of these, and highlight the text, then change the color to white. Go back to the first text box and position that one so it almost totally covers the white text (but leave a little shadow room). If you can’t get the darker-colored box to sit on top of the white, click the darker box, and hit the F5 key. This will “bring to front.” When both boxes are positioned the way you like them, group them as follows:

Put your left index finger on the SHIFT KEY. With the right hand, click the headline. You will see that one of the two boxes will show “grabber” tabs. While keeping shift held down the entire time, click again and this time BOTH boxes will be designated. With the left, do a COMMAND-G. Now your two text boxes are grouped together! You can move them wherever you’d like. To UNGROUP, simply do a COMMAND-U.

6. Show Invisibles.

Why You Need It: Invisibles are a copywriter’s best friend. If you turn yours on, you can see every single space and every carriage return vs. soft return. So if there’s an extra accidental space or unintended hard return, you’ll be able to see it and fix it easily!

Note: Carriage returns and soft returns affect your text leading. If you want to set the leading for one paragraph of text, place a hard carriage return at the end of the first line of text and at end of the last line where you’d like to retain the leading. Any other forced returns within that paragraph should be “soft returns” (press SHIFT and RETURN together).

How to Do It:

To Show Invisibles, simply do a COMMAND-I. To shut off invisibles, do a COMMAND-I again. Easy enough!

7. Shrink or Enlarge Text Proportionately.

Why You Need It: In Quark, you can specify each aspect of your text design including size, font, color and leading for every letter or line. Once you’re happy with the proportional arrangement of your text within one box, you may decide the proportion is a-okay but the size is all wrong! To make every single item in that text box larger or smaller, use the below technique.

How to Do It:

Put your left hand in “chord” placement again. (Press the COMMAND-ALT-SHIFT keys together and keep them held down). With the Text tool highlighted, grab the corner of the text box and either pull out or in, depending on if you want to scale the item bigger or smaller. Notice how everything in the box gets larger or smaller yet retains the same proportions! Now that’s a handy trick.

These are just a few of many more Quark tricks designed to make your life easier. Instead of getting horrified looks from your coworkers, wouldn’t it be great to hear excited murmurs of “The copywriter knows Quark!” from the design team? Of course it would. So start practicing and with any luck you’ll be a Quark Master by next week!

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

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Web marketing and advertising is so different from traditional
marketing and advertising that many people with expertise in
traditional marketing find the concepts employed in copywriting
for websites and internet marketing to be unusual. Many even deny
the reality that web marketing and advertising on the internet is
different from traditional marketing and they attempt to apply
traditional marketing techniques rather than proven copywriting
techniques that are successful for web marketing and advertising.

The main difference between traditional sales copy and web copy
for web marketing and advertising is that traditional sales copy
is usually deemed to be more effective if it is brief and to the
point. Copywriting for web marketing and advertising; however, is
unique in that it is not intended to simply captivate the
audiences’ attention and prompt them to take action such as
picking up the phone or visiting a store.

Copywriting for web marketing and advertising actually serves to
fulfill the entire advertising and sales process. Because
internet business is generally automated, the sales copy is much
more than material for web marketing and advertising, it is the
“sales person” that introduces website visitors to your products
and services, highlights the features and benefits of your
products and services, counters objections, asks the reader to
act, and closes the sale.

Because the role of sales copy for web marketing and advertising
is so much more involved than that of traditional sales and
marketing materials, being brief and to the point is not usually
the best approach to preparing your web copy. Short web copy can
be useful if you have an online catalog and you are simply
providing product descriptions through your web copy. However,
most ecommerce businesses need long copy to persuade website
visitors to become customers, to make sales, and to generate
ecommerce revenues.

Crafting useful web copy for your web marketing and advertising
using long sales copy techniques begins with planning. You must
know your target audience, prepare a unique selling proposition
that will appeal to that audience while setting you apart from
the competition, develop a pricing strategy and bonuses that give
customers the perception of value, and identify keyword terms and
phrases that your customers will use when searching for your
products or services.

Using the information from your research and planning efforts,
you can begin to write sales copy for your website which will be
the base for your web marketing and advertising as well as your
storefront. Start your copywriting with the creation of a
headline that grabs the attention of website visitors and a
subheading that sparks their interest. Be sure to focus on
benefits to the customer and to build credibility throughout your
sales copy by including testimonials and credentials.

Use bonus items and freebies to add value to your products or
services. Create urgency to prompt action by offering “limited
time” discounts or special offers. Finally, set your website
visitors’ minds at ease by providing a strong, no-risk guaranty
and ask for the order.

Another technique that is useful for web marketing and
advertising sales copy is to offer a free newsletter or a free
report somewhere within your website copy. While this doesn’t
contribute much to the actual sales process, it will provide you
with an opt-in list of customers and potential customers so you
can continue marketing to those website visitors that do not
convert to buyers on their first visit. If you don’t get the
sale, at least you will get a lead if website visitors subscribe
to your newsletter or request a free report.

Be sure that a disclosure is made or an option is given that
makes it clear to website visitors that they are agreeing to be
placed on your opt-in list to receive communications from your
company if they subscribe to the newsletter or request the free
report. Using the techniques suggested here in creating your
sales copy for your web marketing and advertising provides a
strong foundation for building your internet business.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope,
fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing
advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing,
or a website owner who wants to make more money from your
website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your
internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

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