Search Engine Optimization Eblog

A couple months ago, several web copywriters and I were interviewed by author Vickie Taylor as she was putting together the book "The Complete Guide to Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale - What You Need to Know Explained Simply".

Yesterday I received my copy in the mail. Sure enough, she has included my 5-page interview, along with those of the dozen or so other web copywriters she interviewed. I was pleased to see my colleague Marte Cliff there, among some other familiar names I know from the online copywriting world. Marte and the others contributed some fantastic nuggets for web copywriters just starting out.

All in all, this book is a good starting point if you:
- Want to learn what a web copywriter does
- Are thinking about starting a career as a web copywriter
- Work with web copywriters

It's not a manual that tells you how to write fantastic web copy or seo copy, so if you are already in the field you'll find it a bit simplistic. However, having said that, it's certainly interesting to read through the interviews with the web copywriters Ms. Taylor has identified as experts in the field. What diverse backgrounds and great advice for other copywriters, especially those starting out! And I'm certainly pleased to see us counted among the group, with our focus on online/seo copywriting.

For more information, see the book on Amazon

I write sometimes 8-12 press releases each month, mostly for our client businesses. I have a process I use that makes sure I'm hitting all the bases to both optimize the press release for the search engines and also that the content is newsworthy and presented in an intersting way...

But everyone can use a little help now and then. Just recently David Meerman Scott noted a new tool called Press Release Grader. I have to say it's definitely a tool worth checking out if you write press releases, whether you're just starting or you've got a gazillion under your belt. After all, the factors that make a press release successful are still evolving.

I used the tool to evaluate a press release I had just prepared, and I was relieved to see I earned a score of 87%. The points deducted were simply for not copying the ### at the end of the release into the grader, and also using the word "unique", since this can be a gobblydegook word. However that was unavoidable since it was actually part of a targeted keyword phrase in the press release.

But the tool went farther than just giving your press release a score and a couple reasons for it. It analyzes the links you're pointing to in your press release and even shows a tag cloud for keywords, so you get a visual representation of the words most repeated. There are some other nifty features but you'll have to go check them out yourself...

With technology like eyetracking heatmaps that can help us test, measure, and refine our writing, there are "truths" that copywriters can now depend on to help them write more effectively.

Anne Holland of MarketingSherpa recently wrote about two things you need to keep in mind when you're writing bullets for your online copy (and this probably applies offline, too).

She points out that the reader's eye usually only pays attention to the first, second, and last bullet points, in that order. So your least important bullets should appear in the middle.

Additionally, not all the words of those 3 bullets are read fully. The reader will read nearly the whole line in your first bullet, a few words of the second, and maybe 2 words in the last bullet - so make sure you have impactful words in those spots!

Visit Anne's blog post here.

I have another couple techniques I've used to help organize longer points for maximum impact that I'll share with you.

The type of bullets Anne talks about are often used when listing product features. Sometimes that list can become huge! To avoid your reader glossing over all the items listed in the middle, break out the long list into smaller sections each with its own subheading that helps the reader classify the bullets below. Then each may contain 3-5 bullets can apply the logic above.

For example, take this list arranged alphabetically:
Experience Writing Copy for Over 10 Industries

advertising agencies
agricultural structure construction
alpaca farms
design boutiques
equine embryo services
health drinks
men's hair regrowth products
performance supplements
SEO firms
vitamins

Now try categorizing your bullets like this:

Experience Writing Copy for Over 10 Industries

Marketing
advertising agencies
SEO firms
design boutiques

Agriculture
alpaca farms
equine embryo services
agricultural structure construction

Alternative health
men's hair regrowth products
vitamins
performance supplements
health drinks

Sometimes you may want to use longer statements in bullet-form. In this case, to avoid a paragraph-like appearance, ensure a line space is left between each. Take this common structure:

Optimizing your press releases adds value to this marketing staple:

- Journalists turn to the Internet to find breaking news and research stories, then following up on the news announcements and releases and communications that display in top results.
- Optimized press releases can show up high in search engines when ANYONE (not just media) searches on Google, Yahoo! etc.
- You can generate mentions and links from others in the industry - bloggers, editors, and authorities who will naturally present you as an emerging active industry force.

...and make it more readable by inserting line spaces...

Optimizing your press release adds value to this marketing staple:

- Journalists turn to the Internet to find breaking news and research stories, then following up on the news announcements and releases and communications that display in top results.

- Optimized press releases can show up high in search engines when ANYONE (not just media) searches on Google, Yahoo! etc.

- You can generate mentions and links from others in the industry - bloggers, editors, and authorities who will naturally present you as an emerging active industry force.

Byte Level Research just published The 2006 Web Globalization Report Card.

The report rates 300 web sites across 22 industry categories, using a methodology that has evolved over the last three years to include a mix of quantitative and qualitative metrics that not only improve the user experience globally but also result in Web sites that can be efficiently scaled to reach additional markets.

Byte Level Research has identified five online best practices as the foundation of its scoring methodology for global web sites, including:

Web pages display quickly

Content is in the user’s native language

Content is localized for the user’s country and culture

Localized content is easy to find

Web design and branding is globally consistent

According to the report, the top 20 web sites are:

1) Google.com
2) Wikipedia.org
3) HP.com
4) Cisco.com
5) IBM.com
6) Dell.com
7) Ikea.com
8) VolvoCars.com
9) DHL.com
10) Xerox.com
11) Cat.com (Caterpillar)
12) Scania.com
13) PG.com (Procter & Gamble)
14) AmericanExpress.com
15) Europa.eu.int (the European Union)
16) Deloitte.com (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu)
17) TNT.com
18) Citi.com (Citibank)
19) Yahoo.com
20) PwcGlobal.com (PricewaterhouseCoopers)

As online marketers are realizing the benefits of producing content for their web sites, one Wall Street Journal writer found out just where a lot of this so-called 'original' content is coming from. It's not exactly original, if you know what I mean.

As a writer myself, I can appreciate the amount of work that goes into a well-prepared piece of prose, whatever the purpose.

When Lee Gomes was hired to write 50 articles for $100 total, he figured he was working at 15 cents an hour. Though his mysterious employer, known by email only as "Whirlywinds", was impressed with his first submission of a thoroughly researched article on bird flu, he was also asked to rewrite content already produced by the World Health Organization (he only discovered it had been lifted by conducting his own online search of the suspiciously professional-looking content Whirlywinds provided as a basis for the proposed article.)

The sad point is that, as Lee says, this sort of practice is leading to junky versions crowding out the original, professionally prepared information in search results. Because at $2/article, you're not going to get professionally researched and prepared articles from even the most highly educated-but-low-paid workforce...

Read the article on original content for the Web ...

Read a bit more about SEO Advantage's copywriting services.

Jay Abraham regaled the luncheon audience on the last day of the 2005 AWAI Copywriting Bootcamp in Delray Beach, FL with very succinct advice and anecdotes.

Jay was introduced as the most masterful marketing mind, bar none, in the opinion of Michael Masterson (one of the founders of the American Artists & Writers Institute). Jay is responsible for the marketing of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series. (Astonishingly, only the Bible surpasses this book in the number of copies sold.)

Jay's own site has this to say: "As the founder and CEO of Abraham Group, Inc. in Los Angeles, California, Jay has spent the last 25 years solving problems and significantly increasing the bottom lines of over 10,000 clients in more than 400 industries worldwide. Jay has seen and dealt with every type of business you can imagine. And he has studied and solved every kind of business question, problem, challenge and opportunity."

I've summarized below a couple points from his presentation that I think can benefit your business.

4 Opportunities for a Breakthrough in your Business
Change one of these components, and you change your results:

Marketing

Strategy- must understand the difference between tactics and strategy

Innovation - doesn't have to be high tech - just gives greater value to the marketplace

Management

12 Pillars of Strategic Business Growth
Build your foundational mindset on these pillars to build your business:

1. Continuously identifying and discovering hidden assets and overlooked opportunities in your business.

2. Mining cash windfalls each and every month of your business.

3. Engineering success into every action you take or decision you make.

4. Building your business on multiple profit sources instead of depending on one single revenue generating source.

5. Being different, special, and advantageous in the eyes of your customers and clients.

6. Creating real value for your clients and employees for maximum loyalty and results.

7. Gaining the maximum personal leverage from every action, investment, time or energy commitment you ever make. (Be sure to test your approaches systematically. Testing conducted for phrases used in customer greetings in a furniture store showed that greeting the customer with the phrase "What ad brought you into the store today?" resulted in a 300% increase in sales over any other greetings!)

8. Networking, masterminding, brainstorming with like-minded, success-driven people who share real life experiences and shortcuts with you.

9. Turning yourself into an idea generator and recognized innovator within your industry, field or market.

10. Making growth-thinking a natural part of your everyday business philosophy. (Most people don't reach their goals because they don't have a clear idea of what they want to accomplish or, if they do, they're not doing anything to reach it.)

11. Reversing the risk for both you and your clients in everything you do (so the downside is almost zero, and the upside potential nearly infinite).

12. Using small, safe tests to eliminate dangerous risks and adopting funnel vision instead of tunnel vision in your thinking.

Abraham covered much more ground than I can go into here, like the 9 Business Drivers, Items You Can Leverage and Maximize, The Power of Testing to Multiply Results, 5 Keys to Winning Business Around the World, and even more. If these topics whet your appetite for more, I suspect you would enjoy his books.

Our opening keynote speaker on Thursday, Brian Tracy, also recommends books by Jay Abraham and other marketing legends on his website. (Brian Tracy is the most listened to audio author on personal and business success in the world today.)

Here are a couple reviews of Jay Abraham's services and prices:
Review 1
Review 2

Access Jay Abraham's site
Jay's MASTERMIND Marketing System
A newsletter produced by Jay Abraham

Saturday morning at the AWAI copywriting conference got us thinking about using stories in our copy for more selling power.

It's a given that people like stories. It gets your audience's attention when you're talking - and when you're writing.

Creating your sales message around a story can help your letter overcome the barrier of too much information, make facts easier to absorb, and make your promises more real to the reader.

7 Sales Skills to Improve On holds some great tips for everyone who has to persuade or sell. And one of the tips tells us:

"Great presentations get the prospect's imagination involved. The best way to involve the imagination is through storytelling. Stories rich in descriptive detail get the prospect picturing them using your product and evoke that "I Gotta Have That" reaction."

John Forde presented some of the elements of a good story:

Relevance

Can start in the middle of the action

Has an underlying message

About people

Rich with detail

Shows an arc or transformation (begins in one place and ends in another)

Builds surprise, saves the best for last

Entertaining

Just long enough

Storytelling through Case Studies

One concept that wasn't covered in the presentation is the use of case studies. Of course the conference was focused on direct sales letters, but copywriters often have opportunities to write many, many forms of communications for clients. One opportunity to tell a good story is in a case study.

Case studies are used often as a teaching tool. (During my MBA, case studies were a huge component.) And the reason is that people can absorb information and concepts better through real-life examples.

Here's an article that outlines the basics you need to know about writing case studies: the 3 main sections, how to include the benefits, and more: How to Write a Case Study

You can see a short case study about one of SEO Advantage's clients here: http://seo-max.com/case-study-waltersbuildings.php.

By the way, John Forde produces an online newsletter that I recommend to every copywriter. Sign up here: http://jackforde.com

When you read more about this speaker at the 2005 AWAI (American Writers & Artists Inc.) conference, you're going to wonder why he would be speaking at a conference forcopywriters.

He runs a "Politically Incorrect Kick Butt-Take Names strength training and Combat Conditioning website".

But the truth is, Matt Furey makes $7-8 million every year. On a typical day, he brings in $25,000 from just one email. And he credits his renegade style of copywriting for it.

He told us that every morning, he gets up and then just taps out his thoughts. When he writes, he writes just as he speaks, without editing. (Although he admitted he spends more time with his sales letters and other promotional materials.)

You'll see what he's talking about when you visit his website promoting the Chinese Long Life System

It's not polished, professional-sounding copy. And in my opinion, that's why it sells.

Too many business owners think that to sell, your copy has to use big words and sound like it's been edited by an English teacher.

But the truth is, people respond much better to a message that comes from your passion, your gut. Talk to people in your online communications as if you're sitting down over a coffee with them. Let the things that really matter to you show in your words. This is what a copywriter taps into when they write to your audience.

See Matt Furey's site here: http://www.mattfurey.com

During the AWAI conference, I had the good fortune to see my absolutely most favorite master copywriter present several sessions. When I visited his blog, though, I was a little taken aback by one of his recent posts... although I could see where he was coming from. Read for yourself what he said and my response below:

Why I Don't Believe in SEO Copywriting
Bob Bly

"SEO (Search Engine Optmization) copywriting requires that the copywriter concern himself with strategic placement of key words within his Web copy to optimize search engine rankings of the pages he writes.

The problem is that to create really powerful copy, you have to have a single core audience in mind ... and concentrate all your effort on writing to that one audience.

When I write copy, that audience is the prospect ... the potential buyer of the product I am selling.

But with SEO copywriting, you are pandering to another audience ... the search engines ... and not the reader.

And by creating copy thats optimal for attracting search engines, you are, to some degree, weakening that copys power to sell ... diluting its strength ... because you are worrying about two audiences: the reader and the search engines ... instead of focusing every word on the customer.

And thats not how to write copy that sells.

I think the best approach is:
1. Write the strongest selling copy you can aimed at the human reader ... and forget the search engines.
2. Once that copy is finished, go back and check to make sure key words are appropriately placed, but....
3. Never change a word of strong selling copy if that change will make it even one iota weaker ... even if SEO best practices would endorse that change.

In other words, write for the customer ... and not SEO.

My small poll of top copywriters writers with a proven track record of writing winners agree.

"I'd rather invest my time and energy in [writing] interesting, informative, and fact-filled copy", says Gary Bencivenga.
Parris Lampropoulos doesn't even think about search engines when writing copy: "When I'm writing the copy, I'm working at one task and one task only: to get whoever is reading it to place the order."

To which I add: Right on!"

Okay, Bob, although I think your writing is totally fantastic, you're missing the boat on SEO copywriting. Here's how I responded:

"Copywriters can easily write copy that appeals to search engines without sacrificing one word of the sales message. In fact, this is one area that traditional offline writers seem to be lagging in knowledge. The more knowledge you gain of search engines and online user behavior, the more its going to help your response rates.

Studies show that when the keywords used in a search by a customer appear on the page they click through to (especially in the headline) they are more likely to convert. A thorough keyword study can give you incredible insight into the words that your target audience is using, i.e., their motivations, fears, hopes, etc.

Proper SEO keyword research is a sadly underused part of research that can help any copywriter create more compelling online campaigns.

There is certainly much more that a copywriter needs to be aware of regarding search engines, but keep in mind that their goal is to show results that match what the customer is looking for. The closer that is to your site, the better your site will rank, and the more likely your site is to convert. So copy that supports a search engine strategy should be focused 100% on the customer - and if you're not considering the search engines, then you're not focusing on the end customer as much as you can.

P.S. I just wanted to clarify that my comments certainly weren't meant to criticize Bob. I'm most likely one of his biggest fans! But I do think that when copywriters hear the phrase "Writing for the Search Engines" they too often hold a narrow view of what that entails...

I welcome your comments... And you can read his post and all the other comments here.

Presented by Herschell Gordon Lewis

I was really looking forward to this session, as I got my copywriting start writing for catalogs produced by NTT DoCoMo in Tokyo. Now, my catalog writing skills come in handy for our clients online shopping systems. But this is a fabulous chance to learn from the master of catalog writing himself. (By the way, the points I've summarized from Herschell Gordon Lewis presentation below mostly apply to both online and offline catalogs.)

Lesson #1: Start your descriptions with strong words
You can always begin a message with a stronger phrase than "there is" or "there are".

Lesson #2: Writing numbers
Use figures in numerical form rather than written out: e.g. use 5 instead of five.

Lesson #3: Words that don't motivate
Replace these words with more exciting words.

Features

Needs (as a noun)

Provides

Designed to

It (a featureless word that should never be used as the first word of a catalog description)

Lesson #4: Word choice for quantities
Express quantities with units of measurement that convey a perception of less or more, as appropriate (e.g., we ship within 24 hours vs. 1 day - the expression in hours conveys a feeling of less time)

Lesson #5: Who should head up catalog development?
A sales-oriented person will yield more results heading up a catalog department than someone who is well-versed in the product, all things being equal.

Lesson #6: The Clarity Commandment
When you choose words and phrases for force-communication, clarity is paramount. Don't let any other facet of the communications mix interfere with it. (e.g. product names that are descriptive of the actual product)

Lesson #7: Sell on the cover
Hint: For web-based catalogs and shopping systems, this is the equivalent of your home page.

Lesson #8: Hotspots in a business catalog
Hotspots influence decision to keep catalog on desk and items in hotspots sell best.

The cover

Inside front cover (consumer catalogs often have presidents letter)

Back cover

Center spread (if stitched)

Pages adjacent to the

order form (should be impulse buy).

Lesson #9: The President's Letter
Why not put it on page 2 and use inside cover for selling? B2B catalogs don't require a letter.

Lesson #10: Catalogs aimed at seniors
Not type smaller than 10 point. Make response easy. Appear to appeal to logic. Don't make a long story short.

Lesson #11: Catalog headings
The 4 types:

Name the product

Describe phylum - description of product

Describe product use

Indicate product benefit (often sells best)

In product headings, use the active voice, give immediate benefit, show last chance, include a great motivator (fear, exclusivity, greed, guilt, need for approval; soft motivators include convenience and pleasure).

Lesson #12: Benefits
Describe absolute benefits before comparative benefits when the typical reader has no prior recognition of why he or she should be interested.

Benefits precede bullets, which are features (tell them why it's a good product for them, and then back it up with factual information in the bullets).

Lesson #13: A Few Differences to Consider on the Web

Product pages need to be more straightforward, because they often appear to customers who are specifically searching for your product.

Dont use PDFs or any devices that require the customer to put in extra effort to access your catalog.

Keep headings short

Use bullet copy more than in print

Keep order system easy - streamline it to get the order

The company logo is not so important - focus on the deal on the home page.

Staccato writing is more likely to hold the web visitor than narrative writing.

Salesmanship takes precedence over announcements, technical expertise, gadgetry.

Lesson #14: Benefit/Benefit/Benefit Principle
This will guarantee the effectiveness of catalog copy.

First-level benefit. E.g. Statement of superiority. Here at last is a silent dishwasher.

Second-level benefit. E.g. Relate to reader. Kitchen noise and clatter are gone forever.

Third-level

benefit. E.g. Tell reader how the superiority brings an improvement to his or her life or business. For the first time, you can have a civilized kitchen conversation, or play quiet music...and actually hear it.

Read more about Herschell Gordon Lewis at his website here: http://herschellgordonlewis.com/