Search Engine Optimization

Our goal is to make web pages more visible to search engines such as Google, and to improve the ranking of the page for each keyword or key phrase.

As in any direct response marketing effort, we need to determine the target audience, and write to that audience.

Typical strategy to optimize a page:

• Include 2 to 3 keywords or key phrases on each page. The key phrase is what the customer will type into the search box to find what they need.
• Find the best key phrases by checking Google Keywords Tool
• Other sources are WordTracker, or KeywordDiscovery. These are paid sites.
• Using the same keywords on additional pages that are linked to this page will improve rankings.
  
• Make sure everything is grammatically correct.
• Include each key phrase 3 to 4 times (or more) within the marketing copy.
• Include the key phrases in all headlines, titles, subheads and hyperlinks.
• Always include benefit statements, as many as practical. Why should someone buy from you rather than your competitors? Integrate these throughout the copy. Remember, longer copy pulls better.
• Use your hyperlinks for calls to action. Like "Buy Now" or "Add to Cart". Don't use phrases like "click here".
  
• Always include a call to action.
• Make your title and description compelling. The title is the stuff that appears in the blue bar above your browser tool bar. This is what appears in the search engine listing. The description appears below the listing to further describe what the page is all about.
• The title is your headline.
  
• Each page gets it's own unique title.
• Put key phrases toward the front of the title.
  
• Limit the title to 60 characters, but it can be up to 75.
  
• The title tells the site visitor what you do.
• The description is your sub head. It is the marketing statement that will appear after the title on your listing.
  
• Whenever possible, reinforce each benefit with a hyperlink to an additional page with more information about the benefit.
  

Charges for SEO copywriting range from $50 to edit a simple page to $2000 to write a full page from scratch.

Places that these skills can be applied are:

• Web pages
• Articles
• Press releases
• White papers
• FAQ pages
• Blog posts
  

How search engines work

Google is the most commonly used search engine. So most people would like their website listed high on Google searches.

The easiest way to get on the first page of web listings is to purchase a listing. Those are listed at the top of the page and along the right hand side. They can be very expensive. And a lot of people don't trust the paid listings because they don't want to be 'sold'. They just want to buy.

The main body of the listings page contains what are called 'organic' listings. They are free, but rely on the search engine for the order they come in.

Paid listings generally out perform organic listings by about 10%. Having both paid and organic listings can be very synergistic and leads to building trust.

Organic listings order is dictated by the relevance of the web site to the search performed. Google has a 'bot' (an electronic robot) that constantly scans hyperlinks to determine which websites are most relevant. They will not list a site until they are sure it is legitimate and has staying power. The more hyperlinks they find that refer to a particular site, the higher it might be listed.

Content is the most important element for determining the ranking of a site. The bot analyzes content to determine if the site is relevant to the search. Merely adding more of the words that someone might enter into the search engine doesn't work to elevate position. If the content is important enough to bring more traffic to the sight through referrals, as indicated by more hyperlinks, it will elevate the site.

The third element that affects rankings is keywords. Having the keywords that more people are searching for helps elevate the position of the site.

Google stores all the data they collect, including content analysis. As they determine that a website is legitimate, they begin to list it. This can take from 3 to 6 months. To find out if a site is listed, type in "site.xyzcompany.com" in the Google search box. That will show if it is on their list.

Search engines look first for good written content to determine relevance. Site architecture and hyperlinks are 2 other aspects they look for.

Graphics cannot be read by search engines, they only read text. Fancy graphics may be pleasing to the site visitor, but search engines will not lead them there unless there is good written content also. Graphics also tend to make it harder for the visitor to find the information they are looking for, and so may lower the ranking.

The web content writer's job is to balance the needs of the website owner, and the requirements of the search engines. It is a good idea to become familiar with webmaster guidelines.

The most important element of long term website search engine success is trust. Trying to trick the search engines or the customer only leads to failure. Google will only reduce the ranking or may even bar those that try to do so. It is bad to use invisible text to increase the number of keywords involved. When search engines find out about such tricks, they take action.

Findability and reputation are what create that trust. Those are built on content and links. A good website requires commitment to excellence, planning, good products or service, testing to find what works, and patience. The entire site must be easily used and contain the best keywords within good content to be successful.

It seems difficult, but in order for companies to successfully use this growing source of sales and revenue, they must take control of the process. No throwing the hands in the air and giving up. This media, when done right, is the easiest way to bring in increased sales.

Videos are growing in importance in search engine optimization. They must also have good content. A good structure, paying attention to good marketing principles, having a definite purpose, will all lead to a higher ranking and bring in more $.

SEO copywriting is not just about shoving the right words into advertising copy. It involves creating the impression in the visitor's mind that the owner of this website is an expert in the field. Traditional direct response skills are vital to the success of the effort. And these skills are vital to continued, long term success.

A good copywriter can easily put the right keywords into the text, while still being true to the architecture that leads to increased sales. Persuading a customer to buy still takes knowledge of the process. You must give the customer what they want. The customer is the most important element of the equation.

Search Engine Optimization--Keywords

Before you optimize your website or buy pay-per-click (PPC) traffic, you should make sure you are using the best keywords. Are users really searching for info about your product? What keywords are they searching for?

With the Internet, there is no need to guess whether you're using the right keywords. There are software tools that can tell you exactly how many searches were performed on them.

One keyword tool is spacky.com. It's free. And when you enter a keyword, it shows the monthly search volume for that term on Google, Overture/Yahoo, and Microsoft Network. Another keyword research and discovery tool is wordtracker.com.

Often, the keywords used most are not the ones you picked. In addition, small variations in keywords can make a big difference in results.

Let's say you want to optimize a website for people looking to buy costumes.

We can optimize the home page copy for the keyword "costumes".

And when I use spacky.com to check, sure enough there were 16.6 million searches on "costumes" on Google this month.

But there were 20.4 million searches on Google this month on "costume."

This tells me that I should optimize the home page copy for "costume" and not "costumes."

I would never have known that had I not checked.

In addition, spacky.com displays a long list of related terms and their search volumes, so you can choose the keywords that are searched most frequently.

There are three typical online marketing activities that can benefit from keyword research.

Each page on your website should be optimized for at least one keyword related to what you're selling.

Use it for pay-per-click advertising. Even a good PPC ad will generate mediocre results if you bid on the wrong keywords.

The third is determining the feasibility of new products.

Example: You decide to write and sell an e-book on how to make a costume. You think Halloween is very popular holiday, but you aren't sure.

But even if you were sure that Halloween is popular, that doesn't mean the book will sell. Remember, we are not selling in bookstores. We are selling on the Internet. And for a product to be successful online, potential buyers must be searching the Internet for information related to it.

A good rule of thumb is that the keyword must have at least 100,000 searches a month on Google to be successful online. "Costumes" with 16.6 million and "costume" with 20.4 million both pass with flying colors.

You can also check your competitors and see what keywords they're using to optimize their websites. Yeah, it's legal.

You can see what keywords your competitors are using by reading the source codes on their websites. "Source code" is the programming language used to build a website. And in optimized websites, the source codes for the pages include keyword lists called meta tags. The most important meta tags to check are the title tag, description tag, and keywords tag.

To find the keywords in a competitor's meta tags, go to his home page. Click "view" and then choose "source." A window will appear displaying the page's source code with the meta tags clearly labeled as title, description, and keywords. The keywords appear between symbols like these:

In minutes, you will know all the keywords your competitor has optimized his site for.

Knowing this can help you optimize your own website to out do the competitor, by knowing what keywords more people are searching.

Making your website work harder--21 tips

1. Tell the reader what it is that makes you the best place to obtain this product. Emphasize benefits rather than features. Use as a headline to catch the reader's attention.
   
2. Use the introductory text after the headline to clarify what you do.
3. Help the visitor find what they're looking for. Make navigation clear and easy. Categorize links, with a maximum of seven or eight per category. Use a standard search bar across the top. Make a comprehensive categorized column of links on the left side. List your most frequently purchased products prominently in the main body.
4. Tell people what to do next. For example, "Click here to learn about our exclusive club." Or, "Download our seasonal catalog." Direct them with active verbs at the beginning of declarative sentences.
5. Maximize the number of visitors who do something. You want them to do something from every page of your website. Make it clear and easy for them to do it.
6. Make your first time visitor feel welcome and comfortable and confident. Display security features or third party seals or endorsements. Display a toll-free number or other easy way to be contacted. People trust you more if they know they can easily contact a live person.
   
7. Fight those involved in the company who want to complicate the web page. Position the product as the hero, not the company. People don't buy the company, they buy the product.
8. On a sales or landing page include an emotionally felt benefit in the headline. Then tell them how you intend to fulfill what they felt from the headline.
9. Include a big promise in the headline.
10. Format the sales page as a single column wherever you can. Converting from 3 or 2 columns almost always increases sales, 80-90% of the time.
11. Make the copy blocks short and easy to read.
    
12. Make your call to action descriptive and specific. Draw attention to it by making it look good, make it stand out, make it look special. Make the order form as short as possible, and on the same page as the call to action, whenever possible.
13. Give your call to action button a strong background color. Orange, blue, red, etc.
    
14. Give people one or more credible reasons to act now.
15. For e-mails and e-newsletters keep the subject line short. Studies show that subject lines less than 49 characters draw much more than longer ones.
16. Achieve recognition. People open e-mails from someone they know, first. The subject is less important.
17. Tell readers what's in it. Right up front, tell them what the e-mail or newsletter contains.
18. Set up the sale with a box at the top, before the salutation, that shows what's in it for the customer. Information overload causes people to want to know quickly if this information is for them. They don't want to, or don't have time for reading in depth to find out what it is you have to sell.
19. Make your e-mail topical and urgent. Never fake the urgency or you lose credibility. If you have hyperlinks to a sales page or web site, imbed the urgency into the hyperlink.
20. Place Key links early in the sales letter or e-mail. Earlier links almost always have a higher click-through rate than later links. But a single link will usually get better click through than several links combined.
21. Add subscription invitations at the end every time you write valuable content in the e-mail or newsletter.
    

E-Mail & E-Newsletters

E-mails-- are like flyers that a company might distribute. They are usually focused on a single product. The should be personal (But not too buddy-buddy or you'll turn off anyone who doesn't know you.)

E-newsletters --are more like a mini-magazine with a regular mailing, and a list of contents. It may be used to sell several products and often contains educational or informative content. They have a fixed format.

Welcome e-mails (welcome to our website or welcome to our newsletter). Surprise them with a gift for signing up. Offer a gift for signing up, then surprise them with an additional gift when they do so.

If they buy something, be sure to offer help in how to use the product. Offer other products that complement the original purchase. Do it with an honest desire to help the customer.

About 40% of the those who receive and open an e-mail, do so because of a good subject line. Finding a good subject line requires testing. Two similar subject lines can have widely varied results. Testing is the only way to find out which is best. Send out several versions to 10% of your list the first day of the promotion. Track to find out which works the best. Send the best to the other 90% the 2nd day.

Use text primarily. HTML uses graphics. Tracking with html is easier. (If you restrict html in your own e-mail in box, the sender has a harder time tracking, and it will reduce spam.) We expect e-mails to be like a letter, so we're more likely to read it if the graphics are not obvious.

Companies should put thought and effort into e-mail responses to take advantage of great opportunities to improve their marketing results. A copywriter writing those e-mails can help a company improve their bottom line.

The e-mail response can start to build a great relationship with customers, which can be expanded over the next weeks and months. The goal of building this relationship is to help the customer reach his own goals.

Be relevant to the prospect's needs. Be respectful of the prospect's time and space. Be persuasive in your desire to help the prospect.

An opening paragraph that paints a picture for the prospect where they can see themselves in a situation where they would want it is a great way to start. Make it short, 3-4 sentences-- such as: "Sitting in their office, with a difficult listing on their desk, can cause worry lines in the faces of many real estate pros. Ever happen to you? We have helped move some of the most difficult, and we'd like to offer our services to you."

E-newsletters should be personal. Write like the interesting guy at the party would talk. The information in the newsletter should be useful and relevant. Don't use them strictly for hard promoting of your products.

One of the best ways to make a newsletter is to compile or aggregate information from several different sources. That way the customer only has to go to your source to get the nitty-gritty of what is available.

Telling a story, and telling it well, at the beginning of the newsletter can get your letter read, and passed on to other readers. That expands your readership and increases sales of items that are promoted. If the promotion is secondary to the story or other interesting information, the sales will come. And they will likely increase because the potential buyers are less likely to unsubscribe because of lack of interest.

Use humor. Just joke around about things that are going on, without trying so hard to just sell. This relaxes the reader and makes them more open to the power of suggestion. Then the soft sell generates more sales that the hard sell.

Give useful information, handy tips, interviews, case studies, Q & A sessions, guides, without being promotional. Giving value builds your reputation. Selling all the time spends your reputation.

Always be honest.

Do a Q & A where you answer one question each time. Use the other questions to decide what to emphasize in future site development.

Another way to interact is with a survey.

Review all automated e-mails to improve response.

What to say on your website

Come right out and say what the visitor can expect from your website. Search engines will find you more easily if you do this. Don't try to be clever, just say what you do.

If you don't get the purpose of the page right, everything you say will be wrong.

If your product is complex, start at the top with the simplest, most basic thing it does, then "teach" the visitor more with short, easy-to-read text, short paragraphs, bulleted lists, pictures where helpful, build from the top of the page down.

Just work on one product at time. Give the visitor just a couple of choices, (1)First, the one you'd most prefer them to do, and (2)another choice which might take him back to the first choice.

Tell the visitor how to find what they want. Use a familiar format to the page so they don't wander all around looking for anything. Keep them moving from here to where they can find what they want. Start each command with an active verb: for example, "Sign on...", "Save money...", "Win a prize...", "Take a trip...".

Lay it out in MS Word, use text boxes to get each separate idea in the place you want it.

Links to other pages should give a basic idea of what's on that page so search engines can find them. For example: "Research grants for conservation", or " Research Grants for Education".

When you give the visitor a call to action, like "Order Now", give them one or more alternatives if that's not what they want to do, like "More information", or "Check out this other product". Let them "call a toll-free number", or "send us an e-mail for more information.."

Use conversational language, use the human touch, don't use "institutional language". Make the customer smile.

More on Writing for the Web

A/B split testing is valuable in efforts to constantly improve website sales results. You might change the headline or some other aspect of the sight, then assign it a slightly different URL. Have your website alternate each version for anyone who clicks on that page. Then use Google Analytics, which is free, to backtrack from the sales to see which version resulted in better sales.

Decide what the customer is looking for when he comes to your home page. Give them what they want so when they see your web page they say, "Yes, I'm at the right place." When the customer opens that page he's got something he's looking for. Make it easy to find that thing.

What do you want the site visitor to do? Decide what they want, then ask them to do what you want them to do to get what they want.

Plan for the first time visitor. Think that they are completely unfamiliar with your site. Keep it simple and easy for them to find what they want. Simplicity is important, focus on one thing for each page.

Think about what is in the customer's mind just before they click on your page. Speak to that thought. The person is wondering if they are going to the right place. Answer them in a way to say, "Yes, you are in the right place."

If you are trying to get the visitor to sign up for a newsletter, or regular updates on products or regular contacts of some kind, the less information you ask for, the more you'll get to sign up.

Be totally honest, respectful, don't treat the visitor like a fool.

Web Site Content Writing

Writing for the web is different. It is all about ordinary people connecting. They are all participants in marketing.

The main difference between web sites is what is written in them. Trained web writers are very important to the success of a company marketing on line. The only way to differentiate between companies, is with words. Each company has unique qualities that will attract customers. Those qualities can only been presented with words.

The sales writing must talk to the customer from you to a friend; as if you are a good friend sitting with them in person. That's the way they read it. If it doesn't talk to them that way, you are most likely to lose them.

Web sites can have millions of pages. They can need multi-page upgrades.

People go on line to quickly find information. They're not interested in fancy, just speed. They won't read typical marketing language. They will quickly scan the page and then move on, and then they seldom come back. If the page doesn't contain info that they want, and doesn't show where they can easily find it, they're gone.

Always think about what the customer wants. He is looking for specific information. What you want to do is anticipate what that specific information is, and have it readily available. Writing and design go hand in hand to make the experience satisfying to the customer. That makes it profitable for the vendor.

On-line visitors want every website to look the same, so they can find their way around easily. You want the customer to find what they want, so you want to be familiar looking to them.

Testing a new page against an existing page is easy on the web. Using Google Analytics you can find out in a day or two which one is more effective. So there is almost no risk to trying a new approach.

Twitter is a good research tool. Many people are available to answer questions at almost all times. To learn how, use www.twitip.com. Other tools are websites that compare products, with ratings of those products, and bloggers who talk about those things.

Writing a Headline

The headline on any sales letter, website, campaign, etc. has a couple of main purposes. First, it is to attract the attention of the person who needs your product. Second, it is to let the others, who do not need the product, know that this is not for them.

The headline should make the prospect curious. It should make him wonder how you can help him. It should make him continue to read, or continue to watch your message. Put a picture in the customer's mind that will make him want to read further.

Effective headlines often follow the four "U's":

1. Urgency. There should be a reason the customer should act now, not wait until later.
2. Usefulness. The headline should show the customer that you have something that will help him, will improve his life.
3. Uniqueness. The headline should show or imply that your product is somehow different than everything else out there.
4. Ultra-specificity. You can't be vague. There must be a specific benefit that the customer wants.

If you can somehow get all four "U's" in the headline, and at the same time make him curious to know more, your sales will undoubtedly increase.

Architecture of persuasion

Sales campaigns and sales letters are more effective when using a plan, a format, that has proven successful. This format will usually be as follows:

1. Get the prospective client's attention with a well written headline. Get to know the customer and then write to one person. Take a lot of thought in writing this headline. In practice, it may be wise to test several different headlines to see which will draw the most attention.
2. Learn what the prospect's problem is, and address it. This will often be expressed in a story that the prospect can identify with.
3. Provide a solution to the problem. This would be the product you are marketing. Show how your product is the best way to solve the problem.
4. Prove that your product is the best solution with testimonials, benefit/feature lists (with emphasis on the benefits), case histories, lists of satisfied clients.
5. Ask for the order. Provide an easy way for the customer to make the purchase. Use phone numbers, web sites, fill in the blank order forms. Make the offer very clear and easy to understand.

This can be summarized as the "5 P's". Problem, Promise, Picture, Proof, and Push. Identify the Problem, Promise to solve it, Picture the resulting benefits, Prove that your product will do the job, Push the client (gently) to buy.

Copywriting Fees

As a beginning copywriter I should be charging 60 cents per word for most writing projects. If they require a lot of research or interviews, I should charge $35 per hour.

Typical services would be charged as follows:

• Brochures $150 per page;
• Press releases $750 for 2 pages;
• Ghostwriting $25 per hour;
• Business letter $30 per hour;
• Proofreading $25 per hour;
• Newsletter $150 per page;
• Audiovisual script $100 per minute of running time;
• Feature story 60 cents per word;
• Website home page $500, additional pages $250 each;
• Print ads $250

For any new clients, I should offer a discount for the first project. That would be 10% to 25%, depending on the complexity of the project.

Blog Purpose

I need to review what I've learned about copywriting, in order to make myself valuable to those I would serve as a writer. I enjoy writing. I like to communicate. I love to work. I enjoy helping others.

As I review the stuff I've learned about copywriting, I will blog daily about it. This will help me to fix in my mind what I need to be doing. If anyone happens across this blog, I hope it will help them in their own businesses. If you are reading this, and you want help with your marketing efforts, please contact me at jimhippen@att.net.