Search Engine Optimisation » copy

In Short: Feedback, Reflection and Second Guessing

Andy Kinsey — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 10:00:01 +0000

When writing content something we are all guilty of is “second guessing“, if you don’t understand what I mean think about this – When you blog about something you think people will want to read, you are second guessing the wants of your audience. Second guessing can be good and bad, it depends how well you know your audience.

Some great examples of having fun with second guesses come on April Fools day, one of the best this year was by outdoor sports company CheapTents who have an audience of outdoor enthusiasts – so what did they write for a blog post on April fools? Take a look for yourself, its here, pretty well matched and thought out.

Second Guessing happens when you are pushed to write a post, pushed for time or pushed because you don’t know what to write. Which ever it is, think twice and Reflect!

Reflection is a lovely word. It can mean what you see in the mirror or how you see that thing. Reflection in these sense I mean is more akin to the later, and the spiritual sense of finding ones self. When writing content reflection for most is just skim reading it again or proof reading, but that isn’t what you should be doing. You should be taking a look at your posts, its tone, its topic and then look at other blogs in your niche … are you really doing your blog justice with this post, is the question. Take a deeper look and see what you can add or detract from the post … quantity isn’t everything.

So reflect on your current writing, and then reflect with Feedback on your older works.

Feedback is a vital tool to any website designer, copy writter, blogger, journalist, web editor or otherwise (the list could go on and on). Listening to your users means you don’t always have to second guess what they want, you reflect on your content with the help of your users – this is how you can continue to improve your website, your blog, your forum posting, commenting, tweeting and generally being webby.

Go on – Second Guess, Reflect, and Listen.

5 Ways to Improve Your Copy for A Prosperous 2011

Andy Kinsey — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:00:39 +0000

I can hear the moans already of why am I mentioning 2011 already, when it isn’t even December yet. Well the answer is fairly simple. SEO is not something that will help overnight, what you implement today or this week may not have an effect for weeks on the search index, and this means changes to copy can take weeks and months to have an effect. So by starting to change your copy today you can help improve your revenue in the new year, whether you are an e-commerce website or your revenue is through an offline sale such as Web Design and Internet Marketing.

Some say copywriting is an art, some say it’s a science … my view is it is a bit of both. It is artistic because after you’ve done copywriting for sometime it will just flow, just like if you’ve been painting for a while it just flows. The scientific part of copywriting comes in the manner by which you must have certain aspects to the copy, and it is this science which the 5 tips below express.

Have a Killer Headline!
I won’t repeat my last post which was on this subject,
click here to read 5 ways to create an amazing headline.
Read Copy Aloud & Proof Read
Reading copy aloud ensures that the copy sounds right and flows smoothly, you want this to be an interesting conversation with what you say interacting with the thoughts of your readers. In essence you want to answer their questions almost subconsciously. Proof reading means that you look professional, have no spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. But don’t you just read it get family and friends to as well (or colleagues of course).
Benefits are Not Features
An average consumer of any product doesn’t care about what features a product has, they are likely to want it for just one or two things everything else is pointless information. Also if they have found a product or service via a search engine they will have generally searched for the features they are looking for so don’t repeat them (too much, just once is enough). Instead, focus on the benefits of this product over any other, whether that is another product on your website or on your competitions. A product is sold on benefits and not features. From this point you should also be writing from the customers point of view, write as though you are a customer, write what they want to hear and not what is in the manufacturers detailed product description.
KISS Your Content
“everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler” said Einstein and he is right. Keep your content concise and to the point, do not talk about something no body wants to hear about. Don’t fill your copy with jargon that no one understands, especially outside of “your industry”, Keep It Simple Stupid!
Offer Something EXTRA!
This sounds quite simple but isn’t always. There are 2 ideas here: 1) your copy needs to be personal, you are having a conversation and not a rant nor giving a speech. 2) give your reader a reason to stay, put an offer above the fold to entice them, extra information is below the fold as this isn’t a primary selling area (above the fold is!). Doing these 2 things will keep the readers interest and ensure they have a reason to use you over your competition.

Ok, so 5 times turned into a few more really. Scratch the surface and everything has layers. Scratch the surface of content and you will see more layers than an onion has, you just have to put them in the right order!

If you’ve any questions about good copywriting practices (or maybe you want to hire me) tweet me @andykinsey, contact me or leave a comment below.

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Introducing Compelling Content

Andy Kinsey — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:07:12 +0000

As part of my role at AK Designs I am responsible for all the copy on the “home sites” as well as the copy on many client websites. In this role with clients I often face issues (and from some staff who think the same way) … One of the biggest issues that occurs on a regular basis is simply that the website owners or the company investors seem to turn around with ideas of what the copy should be, and I have always found (so far) that all they want to do is convince the end user.

Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes this fits the site and the audience you are trying to get to understand something, but most the time it isn’t.

The battle generally means I turn around and compromise, I mention AB testing of the copy to see what will produce the best results. They agree to the testing and 95% of the tests end to come back in my favour. So to help everyone get to grips with this idea I’ve created 5 directives of writing compelling copy.

5 Directives to Write Compelling Copy

Know Your Audience
Think of each page or email newsletter as being read by a single person, a person from your target audience. Give him or her a name, an age, a relationship status & maybe a background story. Now write you copy for this person alone, you are not wanting to convince her of anything but rather to feel compelled to visit again, tell a friend or even better to follow your call to action… if your audience feel preached too or spoken down too then they will switch off… where as if you can engage on a one-2-one basis then you will get some real business.
Use a present tense and Positive subject line
Imagine reading “10 websites were developed” … sounds boring and doesn’t attract your attention really, you don’t feel compelled to click and read it… now think about the line “We developed 10 New websites” notice it draws your attention it was us (we) the company and they are “new” so this implies a sense of importance, improvement and excitement. Other good words include “exciting”, “exclusive” and “introducing”.
Avoid sitting on the fence – it gets you no where
If your wanting to sell something, wanting to compel them to take an a particular action, be definitive. you are the “expert” otherwise they wouldn’t be visiting your site! So don’t use words such as “should”, “could”, “maybe” or “possibly” they have negative implications on most audiences, they make them question you and your product or site.
Be Concise
Don’t ramble on endlessly, get to your point quickly and clearly. Cut the rubbish and the jargon, no one wants to hear it or see it … it confuses the average person which is why there are so many sites claiming to be jargon busters or having jargon busters built in… save you and your customer sometime.
Connect
Connecting with your audience will never be easy, it will never be 100% successful even if you’ve got everything right on your site. What you need to think is that your customers will have something else on their mind, maybe someone is in hospital, maybe someone just knocked on the door or maybe they are hungry… a tiny little thing can distract and you will loose a sale (or however you call to action is built). So connect, make the user think positive thoughts, so even if they are distracted they will feel compelled to return.

I know these tips will help many of the website owners I know, and I know it will help your site be a success.

This article has been republished at boagworld.com

Redesign or Optimise – Which Suits You Best?

Andy Kinsey — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:00:18 +0000

Over the past few weeks I’ve found that more and more people are asking for a full website redesign… When it is my belief they should actually be asking for their site to be fully SEO optimised, especially during this time of recession.

Now i’m not saying every case that a redesign isn’t what is required because sometimes it is, what I am saying is that you should cover all bases before considering a redesign. If you really think you may need a redesign then you may want to read a previous article i wrote.

Sometimes a better option than redesign is to Optimise Your Site. This yes involves SEO (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog), but more so it involves some fundamental changes to the site structure and climate. This means that you can adapt your current site to your current situation, at a much lower cost than a redesign. Ok I confess the tweaks to yoursite maybe in the design and templating you use… but its more so to do with optimising and speeding up your codebase, your images and most importantly your copy!

So make your content sell your products & services, make copy your salesman today!

Copy is your salesman, make it pay

Andy Kinsey — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:58:30 +0000

Believe it or not, copy is read by your readers …see you are reading my copy!… and copy is what sells your services.

No really, it is.

When you visit a website in order to purchase a product or service, you want to be assured the company is professional, of high a high skill level. If that wasn’t enough the visitors are also looking for that personal touch, and looking for honesty… this can inlude the fact you have failed a client for whatever reason.

When writing copy you need to think that there is no friendly or personal sales person to help the prospective consumer… Just your copy – So make it pay.

So your copy must not only be grammatically correct (not always…depends on your website) but also be able to reach and every reader on an individual level. Take yourself for instace, is this article reaching out to you? is this article what you expected? and further more is this article making you want to look at our services? Further than this your copy must be written in such a way that it will assist your SEO efforts.

So with this in mind, Does your SEO measure up? For your potential clients, current clients and for search engines? or is your copy failing you?

A professional and expert copy writer will give you a new perspective, within a few minutes of conversation. Writers block is often what causes repetitive language within text, making it seem forced and un-natural both to users and your search engine. A great copy writer can spend 2 minutes looking at 100 words and soon after write a much better, highly convertable script which will sell your products and services.

Comprehensive Copywriting Services

Whether you need one page or 1 million pages writing or re-scripting AK Designs offer SEO copy writing at all levels, from copy-writing as part of our monthly packages to getting single pages re-written, or maybe you just want some consulting on your copy on how to make it better. Contact us today about our services, and get low-cost and effective SEO services from AK Designs.

15 Days Til New Year!!!!

Andy Kinsey — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 11:00:20 +0000

With just 15 days left until the New Year I thought I would give you yet another list!!! This time not quite so harsh to follow. Doing just one of these a day (maybe two or three if you want a day off) is the simple way to improve your search rank.

Create meaningful title tags for each page
Make use of the description meta tag
Make use of the keywords meta tag
Try to implement SEO URL’s
Improve your navigation (make your site easy to follow)
Use keywords for both internal and external linking
Improve use of header tags
Use Alt tags for images
Can you shave bytes from your images? if so do it
Use your robots.txt file effectively
Beware of using rel=”nofollow” links
Use social networks effectively
Use effective call to actions
Create good copy
Promote your site where possible – but be responsible

The keen eyed amongst you will have noticed I have previously covered all of these topics at www.andykinsey.com in the past few months.

Lessons From the SEO Practice

Andy Kinsey — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:33:36 +0000

After many conversations with many people, a lot of whom read this Blog (hello there). I have decided to write a brief post on the top 5 lessons I have learnt whilst being a SEO practitioner.

So what are these Search Engine Optimising lessons?

Creating multiple pages of the same content, or copying content from another site (dupe content) means search engines can and will ignore you!
Patience is a virtue, so although you update daily remember your one of billions of pages that is indexed daily.
All links need to work, if not for the users then for search engines, they dislike broken links an awful lot.
The importance of headings should never be under estimated.
Ensure you have a sitemap and that it is updated on a regular basis.

Want to know more, why not look back over my previous postings about SEO or contact me admin*at*andykinsey.com

Further Postings at AndyKinsey.com:
At the moment we are very busy and so our schedule of posting has slipped somewhat, please allow for some extra time in our postings. Want to get the latest post but not sure when to check back? subscribe to the feed, select how you want to receive the feed (through feedburner) and hey presto your away

SEO Tips – Appendix B – Copy

Andy Kinsey — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:59:50 +0000

This post is the second part of appendix b, concerning itself with Copy. And in particular copy Writing and Editing. There will be one further section of appendix b.
Copy is special, this is to say that getting your copy wrote and edited correctly is of paramount importance. Get this correct and your in the door, put simply visitors will stay on your site for longer, will find better content and link to you, they will share your site and SE’s will pick up on this. In addtion to this good copy can mean SE’s will index your site correctly and understand what your site is about.

Copy Writing
Your website (or blog) should be written for both humans and robots (Search Engines). You need to keep enough lovely keywords in there for Search Engine robots (so they escape back to thier home and help your ranking). However you also need to maintain contact with your normal visitor and give them the real content they want. Remember SE’s are important, but they dont carry the cash cards.

Visitors – You have ONLY around 8 to 17 seconds the capture the attention of your visitors, so whilst images and the such are all good and well, your textual content must be to the point and concise. It must be readable and easy to follow, it should not use jargon, and if it does link out to a website with explanation (you dont have to explain it and it wont effect your ranking). Simply tell your visitors what your products are, why they should choose them and how to get them, be short and sweet, do not beat around the bush.
SEO Copy Writing to AK Designs is something of great importance, we pride outselves on the fact we can offer some of the best copy skills around, giving your site all it needs to succeed not only with visitors but also those pesky search engines.

Search Engine Robots (SER’s) – SER’s are a bit special interms of copy writing, but the concepts are simple. All you need to do is get your balance correct. (as with everything seo balance is everything). You must balance your keyword population / ratio between 5 and 10% and not keyword stuff, but whilst doing this you must keep the attention of your visitor, so be careful!
SER’s are looking for these keywords, your heading tags, your emphasis and strong tagging, clean source code and links on your page. But they are also looking for trends between pages, and between websites. Another key factor for SE’s are your links, you should never link with a “click here” or “more info” or even “read more” all links for both SEO and accessibility should be as descriptive as possible (for example “our work” or “AK Designs”). You must also be careful not to Keyword stuff this is very much Black Hat as is duplicate content.

Copy Editing
So you’ve hundreds of pages, sit back relax enjoy they day. But wait you find that certain pages like “FAQ’s” and your “about” page have hundreds of possible keywords (i’ve seen almost 400 in some cases!). This needs sorting surely? Well, yes. However instead of simply changing your keywords look at the copy, this is what needs ammending you should nothave the need for this many keywords, you shouldn’t even have more than 10 keywords! So rewrite the page!
but how? Well in simple terms, take what you have, half it and then half it again. Plan your content and then cut it down, give only the detail a customer could want, not what you want to give them. Don’t leave them with any questions except “can you help me?” or “I have a project…”.
Also from a visitor POV you should have a continuous writing style, you should not change from one style to another in a matter of sentences, this will leave any visitor dizzy and confused. continuity means people will visit again, make something easy to read and you will be handsomely repaid by visitors. In addtion to this, you should use “call to action” links, this is to say your links should be of the copy like “find out more about….” or “learn more about ….” or “contact us now for …”.

And thats it for copy, its not complicated at all, you just have to get the balance of entertaining the purse and the Search Engine.

In Appendix B.3

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