Monday 27 June 2016

If You Do Feel that you Need Longer Copy...

Longer Copy



Sometimes to answer all your visitor's potential questions, you will need to consider longer copy.  It is not a science set in stone – copy needs to be as long as it needs to be to convey an idea or benefit to the reader.

If you fall into this category, then you must organize your copy in a way that does not scare your reader away.  So do not have a long page full of heavy text.  You need to have separate paragraphs for each idea and benefit, plenty of subheadings and bullet points, to enable the reader to scan down the page to locate the ideas and information, which appeals to them.


Long copy, as with short copy needs to be easy to understand, as if a visitor does not understand what you are trying to convey, you will lose them.

Friday 24 June 2016

Should You Keep Your Copy Short and Sweet?

Sweet And Short Copy




When writing your copy, you should always bear in mind that you want visitors to stay on your site and also encourage them to return.  Here are some considerations to think about as you start to write your copy.

Try to Keep your Copy Short and Simple

It is worth remembering that unless a visitor has been forwarded to a particular page on your site, they will only read a few lines of text.  If they see a whole load of text on a page, they may be put off reading it.  So if possible, you should try to keep your copy short.

You also need to make your copy simple, so that anyone reading it will be able to understand it upon reading it just the once.  You do not want them to have to think about what you have written, in order for them to understand it.

You need to try to convey a benefit, or piece of important information in a couple of lines.  If you try to expand on that, you run the risk of making the idea too convoluted and difficult to understand.


If you do want to expand on an idea, you can anticipate that some visitors will want to know more about that idea and provide a link to another page that has more details on that idea, so that if a visitors wants more information, they can get hold of it quickly and easily.

Monday 20 June 2016

How to Use Keywords to Attract the Search Engines

Attract The Search Engines





Yet another important aspect when it comes to good web copy is being able to write good page titles and META descriptions.  These are what will be grabbed hold off by all the people who see them on the search engines, as these often will be the deciding factor on whether a person clicks through to your site from the search engines.

There are some search engines and directories that do not show the META descriptions, but they do show snippets of your content from your site.  So getting the titles, the META descriptions and your copy right are crucial.

Where the search engines are concerned, I have listed the particular areas of your site structure in order of importance, where you need to incorporate your chosen keywords to get people to click through to your site.

1.                 Page Title – this is what is usually brought up in the search engines results and is the first thing that people see when conducting a search on the web.

2.  META Description – This is usually the second text blurb that the visitor will see when carrying out a search through a search engine or directory.   Both items 1 and 2 are usually included on the Search Engine's Results Page (SERP's)

3.  Heading Tags – The search engines will take notice of heading tags within your copy, so when you put in your headline and subheads, make sure to make them H1 tags and include your keywords.

4.  Visible Content – The actual content on your site is important as well.  You can scatter keywords throughout your copy, as well as including them in the following ways:

a.               Hyperlinked Text and Title Attribute – When you have hyperlinks within your copy, you can also have a title attribute, with some keywords included.  This will show up when the cursor moves over the hyperlinked text.

b.               Alternate Text Tags – When you include an image in your content, you can also include an alternate text tag with a couple of relevant keywords included (they have to be relevant to the image – do not keyword stuff).  In the same way as the hyperlinked text, when the cursor is moved over the image, this alternative text will show.

c.                META Keyword Tags – These used to be important to the seach engines, but unfortunately, due to unethical marketers, search engines no longer put a great emphasis on these.  You can still include keywords here, but  make sure you use the same keywords in the visible content on the page. 


From this chapter and the previous one, you can see how important keyword research and putting these keywords into your site is, for effective web copy. 

After all, what is the point of writing any copy if you do not know what your visitors are searching for?


Targeting keywords is one of the most important processes in writing great web copy.

Friday 17 June 2016

Importance of Keywords

What's the Importance of Keywords





Search engines are one of the most important ways that will bring new visitors to your site.  If someone has never even heard of your site before, a search engine might throw up your site as a good match for the keywords they enter in, or it will throw up a competitors site!

Search engines are not that intuitive, so they will not always give results that reflect what people are looking for.  They can only give results for what people are typing into the search engines, so you need to think about what people might type into the search engines to find a site, like yours.

So how do you find out the keywords that people might type into search engines, to find your site?

Well, there are a number of ways, with which you can beat your competitor's websites, when it comes to working out what people search for.  There are many good ways to find these keywords.  My favorite method is using the free Google Adwords External Keyword Tool, which can be found here:

Here you can enter keywords and it will give you further suggestions as to what people are searching for.  Ideally you need to find keywords that are searched for a number of times each month.  I would recommend finding ones that get at least 500 searches a month.

Next you need to go to Google and type in these keywords in quotation marks to see how many other websites are targeting those keywords.

For example, we can see that the keyword self help for panic attacks has over 1,000 searches a month:




When we enter the phrase  “self help for panic attacks” in to Google, we can see that there are 65,100 sites who can be found with this key phrase.


Now, ideally the nearer this number is to 0 the easier it is to rank on the search engines for this key term.  However, considering how many websites there are on the internet 65,100 is not such a hard target to rank in the first few pages of the search engines.  I wouldn't go for keywords that have over 75,000 competing websites.

So you need to identify keywords that relate to your website, that a fair few people search for each month, but these keywords should not have too much competition.  These keywords could be problems that your website solves – e.g how to get rid of love handles.

In the next chapter, we will be discussing how to insert these keywords into your site structure and web copy.  This will make the search engines pick up your site a lot faster and include it in the results, when people type in your selected keywords.

Ideally, you should define your keywords before you build your site, as this means you won't have to do much rewriting later.  It should be part of the planning stage.   This is an essential step, as if you don't target certain keywords, your competition will.

Monday 13 June 2016

Discover Your USP

What is USP




A unique selling proposition (USP) will often be what makes your reader decide to read more on your site, so you should spend some time considering what your USP is.

A USP clearly answers the question:  Why should your readers choose you and your website over every other website, or option they have?

You absolutely must answer this question in your web copy and all your other marketing efforts.

Really think hard about, why should your reader choose your website, over any other website?  This will be the basis of your USP.

I know that this is not the easiest question in the world to answer and requires a lot of effort, but it is so worth it.  Finding your USP can really transform your website by attracting new readers, getting repeat visitors and people recommending your site.

Here are three things that you can consider to determine your very own USP
         

 Your Customers

First, you need to think about your customers, as it is them who will make the decision to stay on your website, or visit another website.  Think about the benefits they are looking for and what frustrations your website solves.

      
    Your Competitors

Next, consider your competitors - what makes you better than them?  (Having a good USP will properly be a good start, as few of them have a well articulated USP).  Other things to think about are where is the gap in your market, or what are your competitors not providing?

    You and Your Website

Lastly, if you have not managed to find a USP, looking at your customers or competitors, then look at yourself and your website.  What are your strengths and passions? What can you offer that no-one else can?

A USP gives visitors to your website a reason to stay on your site, instead of clicking away to a competitor's site.


Friday 10 June 2016

The Plan: Knowing What Your Visitors Want to Find

Making The Plan 


A plan is a vital stage of copywriting on the web, as knowing exactly what you want to accomplish is key.

First, you need to determine your own site goals, whether you want to increase sales, build a list, give out useful information, or a product.  In order to do this, you will need to use your web copy to accomplish your goal.

To produce great copy, you need to know your visitors and exactly what they want, so you need to determine who your core audience is.  You cannot be all things to everyone,  so the copy you create needs to be targeted.  

You need to know who you are targeting, or else you will miss out on the people who are most willing and eager to pay for your help and expertise.

You can determine your target market by figuring out what particular problems, your site solves, whether you are offering a product, service or information.  You have to know your product inside out and all it's benefits and how they equate to your potential customer's problem.

When you have determined who is your targeted audience, you can then start hunting them down and create a profile of the people who would benefit most from your help.  You need to use strong web copy to explain what the site can do for them specifically, with strong benefits as bait.

If you need to target different types of visitors to your site, with different problems, then create separate pages for each of their requirements.  If you don't provide exactly what a visitor needs and quickly, they will go elsewhere and you will be forgotten.  You need to offer something of value that is useful, especially if it is free.

You can consider visitors to your site as goldfish, except they have an attention span of 15 seconds, which is why they need to be captivated by something they can use.



There are four simple questions that your core audience will need answered in your web content immediately. 

They are:
1.     Is this the site I want?
2.     Can I find what I am looking for?
3.     What's in it for me?
4.     Is it easy to find what I need?

You can answer these questions to a certain extent with your site's navigation and design, however you should use your copy to explain them, as well.  These answers need to be blatantly obvious to first time visitors, as well as regular users of the site.

By now, you will have already decided your core audience and what it is that they really want, now you will need to work your copy to achieve your goals and theirs.   Here is a strategy, you can use.  Bare in mind, each point is as important as the next:
1.                 First of all, you need to write about what your customer wants and needs
2.                 Your tone needs to appeal to your target audience.
3.                 Your copy must be uncomplicated easy to understand.

If you do not follow these rules, you will lose visitors - as half will not bother trying to work it out and the other half may find it too difficult to find the answers.

You should always remember this KISS!  Keep It Simple Stupid

Monday 6 June 2016

The Copywriting Masterclass

How to Create:
Successful Web Copy Which, Enchants Your Visitors & Outsells Your Competitors




How Web Copy writing Differs from Traditional Copy writing

Copy writing is never easy, especially when people wrongly think, that writing traditional copy writing is the same as web copy writing. It isn't.

One way of looking at web copy is that you are providing the reader with what they want to see, not what you want to sell.  Of course, what you want to sell does come into it, but with web copy writing, readers are more concerned with what it can do for them.


So the first factor with web copy, to take into account, is that the reader is active, not passive.  They need to find a reason to stay on the site, so if they don't find what they want, most web users will click off within 15 seconds, never to return. 


This means that web users do not read websites in the same way that they would read a sales letter received in the mail. 

The length of text that you use on the web should be much shorter, than any copy writing blurb, you or anyone else are used to.  However, you still must back up any claims made on the website.


One of the main differences with web copy is that most people will find it via a search engine, which means they are looking for someone like you, or a specific product, service or piece of information. This is very important, as they have a huge choice and can control which sites they visit and the content they see. 


Remember 15 seconds!

Think of the questions that anyone visiting your site, via a search engine may have, such as:

·        Have I found the right site?

·        Is what I am looking for on this site, or page?

·        Will I have to jump through hoops to complete my task (e.g. do I need to sign up for anything, before I get the advertised freebie), or is it right in front of me?


It is imperative that you address these questions, within the headline, any sub headlines you have, bullet points and content, as quickly and easily as possible.  This is to ensure that your reader stays on your website. 

Once again, the 15 second rule applies here.

So, to summarize your content needs to give good, quick and visible answers to your visitor, to show them that your site is exactly what they are looking for.  This can be done by assuring them, that they have found the right place and encouraging them to read on.

Some basic copy writing principles will remain the same, in whatever the format, as long as you are aware of the basics and the differences, you will be able to produce good web copy.  The purpose of this eBook is to teach you these basics and the secrets to successful web copy.























Friday 3 June 2016


In Closing...





You should now have a good general idea of what it takes to be a successful blogger. You should have enough knowledge to get your first blog off the ground and making money in a short amount of time.

This guide only skims the surface, but your knowledge and expertise will grow the longer you work on your blogs. You can read as many guides and eBooks as you want, but that alone won't be enough to make you any money. Only through taking action and learning by trial and error will you be able to become a truly successful blogger.

If You Would Like Me To Cover Any Information, Please Please Put In The Comment Or You Can E-mail Me At ......................... rita_mal@outlook.com