Optimal Copy - SEO Copywriting Blog

by Karon Thackston © 2007, All Rights Reserved

In Part 1 of this series, I introduced you to Announce It!, an online candy-bar-wrapper manufacturer that was seeking professional help with their search engine copywriting. Facing an audience that consisted primarily of women who were purchasing favors for special occasions, Announce It!’s copy had to be spot-on with its communication. The primary problems were that the copy did not convey a sense of excitement or answer all the questions customers might have. It also focused too heavily on the company rather than communicating with the site visitor.

Let’s see how the changes were worked into the copy and what the results were.

The Rewrite

You can see the original copy at:

http://www.copywritingcourse.com/customcandybarwrapper-original.pdf
and the revised copy at:
http://www.copywritingcourse.com/customcandybarwrapper-new.pdf.

Headlines are one of the most important elements of advertising copy and of search engine optimization. The original web page didn’t have any type of headline — a fundamental mistake that needed to be corrected. The introduction of the text now begins with using a keyphrase and stating a benefit. The headline reads:

Creative, Custom Candy-bar Wrappers

Designed To Make Your Event a Hit!

Since Announce It!’s keyphrases all deal with candy-bar wrappers, it’s obvious that visitors who find this site are already familiar with the general product. (At least to the point of knowing what a custom candy-bar wrapper is.) The question they still have is, “Why should I buy from Announce It! instead of all the other candy-bar-wrapper sites?”

As the visitors read on through the copy, they find reassurance that their idea of using custom-designed candy-bar wrappers is a good one. Visitors are also provided with several benefits available from Announce It! that other companies don’t offer. For the sake of scan-ability, bullet points are used to further highlight differentiating factors about Announce It!. (Low minimum orders, free color proofs, free photo inclusion, etc.) This all helps to clearly explain why this site is the better choice over others the visitor may have gone to previously.)

Because the product itself is graphic, it was important to retain the product images used on the original home page. Certainly, customers would expect to see samples of the wrappers. However, to create a greater impact, each image was captioned with a short bit of occasion-specific, persuasive, keyword-rich copy. For instance:

“Custom candy wrappers are a truly creative way to send your retiree off in style.”

The finished product now speaks directly to the site visitor, sounds more professional, outlines important benefits and uses keyphrases in an appropriate way so as not to hinder the natural flow of the copy.

The Results

The results showed improvements in both conversions and rankings. According to Announce It! their conversion rate quadrupled! They also report, “[The copy] has really made a difference in the way the site is perceived and how the customer reacts. I have gone from a one-person operation to a full-fledged business with five employees. The traffic and orders continue to increase every year!”

You couldn’t ask for much better than that!

WEBSITE BIO:Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with Karon’s Copywriting Course at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.

Technorati Tags: seo copywriting, optimal copy, search engine optimized copy, search engine optimized copywriting, copywriting portland

by Karon Thackston © 2007, All Rights Reserved

The old cliché is wrong. All our lives we’ve heard, “It’s not what you say, but how you say it.” That may occasionally be true, but for the most part it’s what you say AND how you say it. Case in point: Announce It!, a custom candy-bar-wrapper manufacturer, had copy on their home page that was acceptable. It mentioned pretty much all the important things a site visitor would need to know about ordering candy wrappers. Yet the copy wasn’t pulling as well as it should have been.

The Problems

The target audience consists mostly of women. In addition, these women order favors for special occasions. That means (stereotypically speaking) you have people who ask a lot of questions and are especially cautious of buying something they can’t touch, feel or see (in person) for use at a major life event. Communication (what the copy says as well as how it says it) is vital.

The text had to convince women that they could trust Announce It! to produce something they would show off in front of all their family and friends for important occasions such as birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, weddings, showers and more. That meant answering the questions these women have as well as instilling confidence that their party favors would be the hit of the event.

Technically, the copy was OK. But it lacked excitement. No, not hype… excitement. It needed to reach out to women and make them feel welcome while also reinforcing that Announce It! was the perfect solution for them. You can see the original text here: http://www.copywritingcourse.com/customcandybarwrapper-original.pdf .

As I’ve always said, you never want to “we” all over your copy. The content needed to speak to the site visitor, not talk about the company. The old text was full of “we’s” and “our’s” and hardly even acknowledged the site visitor.

From a search engine standpoint, the site was bouncing around a good bit. According to the site owner, “For a long time, I held the #1 position for many of my keywords. As search engines evolved, my site started bouncing. It was time to hire a professional.”

The Solution

The plan was to make the text more inviting and supportive while providing information that was easy to immediately identify. I wanted to help Announce It! differentiate itself from other candy-bar wrapper and favor sites. That meant making important benefits clearly visible. In addition, a glimmer of excitement would be added to the copy to get the women in the mood to buy.

A complete change of focus for the copy would also happen. Rather than “we” and “us” the copy would be directed toward the visitor while still communicating important benefits about buying from the company.

Lastly, correcting an elementary mistake would help the copy read better and assist with SEO. The hope with SEO was to give Announce It! some stability, as it had a history of bouncing back and forth between the first and second pages in the SERPs.

The overall goal was to increase conversions for this site. As the site owner herself said, “Without conversion, your rankings don’t mean as much. You really have to convert the visitors once they get to your page.” Oh so true!

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll look at the rewrite and the results of this copywriting makeover so you can see firsthand what effect the changes had for Announce It!

Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors with Karon’s Copywriting Course at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Already know how to write, but need help using keywords? Get Karon’s report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

Technorati Tags: SEO copywriting, copywritingcourse.com, copywriting course, Karon Thackston, optimized copywriting, search engine optimized copywriting, portland copywriting

By Eric S. Gregory

You’ve heard about it. You’ve been told it’s absolutely essential to your company’s web-based success. You may have even sniffed around potential providers, curious as to what it means exactly, how much it costs, and what you get in exchange for your investment. There are some of you out there who have actually gone ahead and contracted a consulting service with the specific goal of improving and securing your firm’s internet visibility. SEO–I’m talking about Search Engine Optimization, a historically recent internet marketing strategy, designed to optimize your firm’s web presence, ensuring high search results (hopefully top 10), hits, and visits. As with any hot marketing trend just bubbling under mass awareness, the SEO field has quickly become engorged with not only those interested in paying for the service but a dizzying quantity and variety of providers.

So why even utilize a service such as SEO for your company’s website? Simply put—to stay competitive in an age when business is increasingly conducted via online channels. A smart SEO provider can focus and edit your website verbiage, helping you lay out and design your site so as to maximize effective readability by popular web search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc. And many claim to do just that—often leveraging hyperbolic guarantees against improbable expectations. But a quickly growing (and confusing) array of SEO providers simply means that your firm needs to go into the provider search armed with knowledge, forethought, and patience.

Excellent SEO service includes close attention to copy editing—scripting SEO keyword verbiage and weaving the keyword text into the site so as to maximize search rankings. So unless you’ve got an in-house copywriter who’s got time to spare and a facility with keyword optimization and follow up writing/editing, you’re going to want an SEO provider that makes SEO copywriting a top priority—and does it well. So if you notice misspelled words, poor grammar, and/or confused syntax in the text of a potential SEO provider’s website, you’d be wise to move on to the next contender. A poor grasp of language is obviously an impediment to confidence. So even if an SEO provider guarantees (and even fulfills) competitive search rankings, those guaranteed “hits” probably won’t turn into return visits if your copy looks and reads like sh*t. This should be obvious, but in an age where txt msgs r cnsdrd aok as means of communication, a gentle reminder that proper grammar still means something can’t hurt. Skillful writing can compel and elicit powerful and sustainable interest.

For those firms with either qualified in-house copywriters or the gumption to try SEO copywriting independently of an external provider, I’ve provided some excellent online resources for how to get the job done well. The links below are not free, but for usually a nominal charge, one gains access to the basics (and typically more) of SEO copywriting 101. Like all human practices, writing takes practice. So once you’ve secured the fundamentals, nothing but trial and error will ensure successful (and well-written!) SEO copy.

• www.successworks.com Heather Lloyd Martin was one of the first SEO copywriters in the field and continues to do premier work, offering training courses through her successworks website.
• www.highrankings.com Jill Whalen offers an expansive array of SEO services, but her special reports (found under the SEO Writing & Editing header) are especially rewarding for the DIY SEO copywriter and editor.
• www.copywritingcourse.com
  Recommended by Jill Whalen by way of her site’s forum, Karon Thackston’s course covers step by step fundamentals accrued through years of writing professional copy.

If you’re one of those many firms that have neither the time nor interest in writing your SEO copy independently, there are numerous highly qualified national (and quite probably, local) SEO copywriting providers that would be more than happy to take your job on. Below are some pertinent questions you might want answered before you sign on the dotted line.

• How will services be charged? By the page? By the hour? A flat rate?
• Do you have ownership rights to the completed copy? Is it licensed? Can you make your own addendums and corrections?
• Is the copy being generated by a being made of flesh and blood? Or is it simply processed through a computerized copywriting program?
• Will they provide title tags, meta-description tags, meta-keyword tags as well as body copy, saving your firm extensive and costly programming hours?,/li>
• Be sure to review a portfolio of prior copywriting work and check previous client references.

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