It is important that companies define their brand tone of voice and that the writer creating their copy applies it in all of their communications. In business communications one wants to come as across as an expert in their field, so we expect their tone to be one of confidence and authority. This must come across through the copy. Here are some guidelines all writers, including businesses offering search marketing services, can follow to implement brand voice correctly.

• How to be engaging

-          Write in the present tense to bring your readers into the moment.

-          Use strong, simple verbs and short, uncomplicated sentences to make it easier to convey your brand tone of voice.

-          Keep copy brief.

-          Create a feeling of partnership through the use of brand voice by using words like we, together, us, team, join, etc.

-          Avoid technical jargon in favour of more simple, everyday language.

• How to write intelligently

-          Write in a clear and uncomplicated way that gets to the point quickly.

-          Use simple language rather than flashy, complicated jargon that may detract from your brand voice.

-          Acknowledge things that are happening in the world that are relevant to the company you are writing for.

-          Keep the company’s clients at the centre of all of the copy; focus on their needs and how these can be met.

• How to write boldly

-          This is important to show that the company is confident in what it says and stands for, which is important to convey through your brand tone of voice.

-          Avoid tentative words like maybe, could, and possibly in favour of strong words.

-          Stick to short, simple, concise sentences.

-          Likewise, use dashes sparingly. Rather break the sentence into two shorter sentences.

-          Break up large blocks of texts into paragraphs and use sub-headings.

-          Linking words with images or graphs can make the brand voice come through the copy more effectively. Discuss this with the designer during the design stage.

By incorporating these points into your copy you can use brand voice to your advantage and convey your message to your readers more effectively.

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Tips for Implementing Brand Voice

1. Q&A or a FAQ section

I know it sounds corny, but there are literally thousands of unanswered questions which relate to the product, service or topic that you are writing about. Find a suitable question (or questions) and start writing your answer and you’ll have instant online content. Q&A sections are also of use to an SEO agency as you can link your writing content to the services on their website.

2. Add specs to your product listings

If the company you are writing for sells products or offers services, you can write about the product specifications or go into detail about the services that are available. Add this content to the existing writing on the blog or website in HTML format, so that if readers want to find out about the specifications they can click down.

3. Write about something funny

You spend much of your day in the office so why not write about something the silliest, funniest or most coincidental thing that happened during your day at work. This is a great way to add web content that you readers will enjoy; just remember that your writing should be funny without being mean.

4. How about the best thing that happened to your industry

For example, when it comes to SEO content writing many writers were all about stuffing as many keywords into the content as possible. Google and its ever-changing algorithms are now focussing on fighting spam, which means content is less keyword-dense and therefore sounds more natural. Content farms are being taken care of and companies offering search marketing solutions can do their job more effectively.

So next time you’re staring at a blank screen consider these four tips to help get your creative juices flowing. As you practise your content writing more, coming up with ideas will get easier.

What do you do when you don’t know what to write?

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Content Writing Tips for Writer’s Block

I’ve been lucky enough to gain some experience as a writer in the SEO industry in recent months, taking tips from the professionals and developing my writing style. The Internet is just brimming with advice about how to produce quality SEO content, but based on my experiences over the past months, I’d like to offer a few guidelines for copywriters, from one beginner to another:

1. Keep those Keywords in Check
When I first started writing optimised copy, I must admit I prided myself on being able to cram every article I wrote full of keywords and a list of longtail phrases. However, it didn’t take me long to learn that good SEO copywriting should sound natural and rely on quality content rather than keyword stuffing. Use your keywords wisely and you’ll find your work reads a lot better.

2. Remember your Audience
While an SEO copywriting agency is focused on making content popular among search engines, remember that at the end of the day, you’re writing for people, not bots. Site visitors won’t take kindly to unreadable copy that just screams “optimised”, so it’s important that you find a way of creating balanced content that will interest both search engines and Internet users. The SEO client and their target audience will also influence your style of copywriting; find out what makes the target market tick and what tone of writing will appeal to them.

3. Do your Homework
Whether you’re writing a blog, an online press release or onsite content, it is crucial that you provide correct, honest and well-researched information, and acknowledge your sources where necessary. This will go a long way to establishing the credibility of your writing. Using SEO content that is exaggerated, incorrect or appears to be lifted from another site can seriously harm your client’s reputation.

4. Mind your Language
There are few things more off-putting when reading online copywriting than glaring spelling mistakes and bad grammar. You needn’t be overly formal or sound like you’ve swallowed a thesaurus to be a successful SEO writer, but unless you’re intentionally using slang or colloquial words, correct spelling is a must.

5. Love What you Do
Most articles on SEO copywriting will include tips on all the best techniques, but will neglect to mention this very important piece of advice. A search engine might not be able to tell if you care about what you’re writing, but your audience certainly can. If you enjoy what you do and tackle every new SEO copywriting challenge with the right attitude, it will reflect in your work. Keep working on refining your style, and have fun!

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Slam that Spam: Five SEO Copywriting Tips

• Create an Appealing Title

The headline of your blog post is the first place people look when deciding whether or not to read your article. You need to make sure it stands out and grabs your reader’s attention. It should be no longer than ten words and should be capitalised.

• Make your Opinion Known

People often ask what do you write in a blog? The content will depend on the purpose of the blog, but as it is a personal medium, it is important to let your readers know your point of view. Pour all of your thoughts, feelings and opinions into your posts. Your readers appreciate honesty and are more likely to connect with what you have to say.

• Link to Resources

You write your blog online so why not take advantage of all available resources? Links to free resources that are relevant to the blog post will make your blog more useful, and will encourage your following.

• Engage in Discussion

Want to know how to write a blog that engages readers? Asking questions and requesting comments and mail is a good way to popularize your blog.

• Proofread and Edit

You may know how to write the perfect blog article but if it is full of grammatical and spelling errors, you lose credibility. And that’s not good. By simply reading through your copy before posting it, you can fix any errors and remove unnecessary clutter.

Keep in mind that you how you write your blog is important because you are writing it for people first and the search engines second.  Write blog posts clearly and concisely, fill them with keywords, but always make sure that they are readable.

Do you have any tips you’d like to share?

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Write a Blog with Maximum Impact

Yes, you are optimising the copy for the search engines by inserting keywords, but your primary target is still your audience – the people who you want to read what you have written, leave a comment, or mention it on a social media platform. The basic rules of writing still apply even though you are doing SEO copywriting: write well so that someone wants to read it.

Every company offering SEO copywriting services will tout the mantra “Content is King”. It is not just readers who prefer concise, well written and relevant copy; the search engines will favour it as well. Generally, keyword density should be 4-7% which will enable you to write copy without sounding spammy, while containing a sufficient number of keywords. Use your keyword in the h1 tag as well and Google et al will take your SEO copywriting even more seriously. A clever and catchy headline is the first step to drawing attention to your content. Inserting your primary keyword without losing the effect is the second step.

If you are starting out doing SEO copywriting in the UK you’re probably thinking that your copy is irrelevant in the great online world. Make it relevant, make it readable and make it rank and you will be one giant step closer to avoiding this beginner’s mistake and providing expert SEO copywriting.

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The Number 1 Beginner’s Mistake in SEO Copywriting

The most important thing to know about producing written web content is that the manner and context in which copy is consumed online is not the same as reading words on paper. If you consider the reasons people use the internet you’ll see why applying certain principles to the way you write web copy will get a more positive response from users.

Reading off a screen is 25% percent slower than reading off paper and Jakob Nielsen recommends that anything written for the web should be 50% shorter than it would be in print. This is to do with various factors such as the shorter attention span of online readers and the glare of computer screens.

When people read online, particularly copy on business websites they are usually looking for specific information, which means that instead of reading every single word they will skim over a page. Your writing should therefore be simple and navigable – Nielsen uses the term ‘scannability’.

Information should be grouped into small, manageable chunks with catchy – but clear and explanatory – headlines and subheads between every few paragraphs. Also find ways to highlight or emphasise important keywords and phrases within your copy so that readers can spot them easily and get the gist of a paragraph.

Also keep your writing style clear and informative, but relaxed and accessible at the same time. Present your most important information upfront, telling users either what they want to know, or pointing them in the right direction. Don’t be afraid to repeat words in your copy as long as they are relevant. It will make your writing clearer and can help improve your rankings in search engines.

Also where it’s appropriate you can personalise your writing – use conversational tones and phrases which convey the personality behind the words. Your users will respond better to an approachable human voice, than to formal corporate style copy. Be wary of trying too hard to be light-hearted or funny as this can come across and disingenuous and annoying.

While it is important to optimise copy for search, web writers must also pay attention to issues of style and presentation so that copy impresses both search engines and users.

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Copywriters: remember your readers

Imagine you’re creating a web page to promote one of your products or services. You have been given infinite resources and the chance to carry out an A/B test on two versions of the page. There’s just one restriction. Page A can only include images and graphics, no text. Page B can only include text, no images or graphics.

Page A would be tough to build. But with careful use of icons for buttons such as ‘buy now’, you could probably put together a decent page. With a product, you could show an attractive image – although services might be harder to depict. But how persuasive would your page be?

Page B would be built in about 15 minutes, but writing it would take days. However, it’s a safe bet that it would outsell Page A. In fact, I’d be confident that it would outsell it by at least 10 to 1, if not 100 to 1.

When it comes to conversions, content is king. Yet people still approach commercial websites from the other angle, invariably speaking of ‘designing’ or ‘developing’ a presence rather than ‘writing’ one. Often, the site will be developed before its content, leaving the poor copywriter to try and cram their words into a badly fitting suit.

Why should that be? I think one reason is a natural inclination to focus on the most tangible, sensory-rich and emotionally exciting aspects of a project. People want to see something online, not just a Word document, so they dash for the finish line before putting on their running shoes. Then, when they’re finally obliged to, they start thinking about content.

They should be focusing on conversion, not diversion. Of course, a decent design is worth having. It needs to be accessible, navigable and intelligible. It needs to be attractive enough to keep visitors on the site. And, insofar as it can, it needs to persuade them to buy (for example, with eye-catching product shots). But beyond that point, there’s really no point gold-plating your design, unless you feel you absolutely must differentiate yourself from competitors that way.

Instead, invest in some professionally produced text. There’s really no point in destroying the value of your carefully developed site with ill-considered, hastily written copy. You may choose to work with a copywriter, or you may choose to write it yourself – but either way, you need to invest the time or money for an effective result.

Since copywriters spend their whole lives thinking about selling with words, it’s often worth having a conversation with them. Good copywriters know how to insert calls to action at strategic points in the text. They know how to deploy proven, empirically grounded persuasion techniques such as social proof, appeals to authority, consistency and liking. Many will use NLP principles to make their text more powerful in the reader’s mind, or give it additional emotional punch. And, last but not least, they’ll make sure every sentence is pushing the benefits of your product or service in a compelling, forceful way. If you imagine a page written without using any of these techniques, it’s easy to see how powerful the effect of good copywriting on conversion can be.

We’d all like to think that our product or service can sell itself. But the online arena has become incredibly crowded and competitive. As long as search engines work the way they do, it’s a zero-sum game and a race for the reader’s attention. Investing in high-quality content is one of the most important steps you can take towards improving your conversion rate and turning web traffic into sales.

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Want better conversions? Get better copywriting

Are you a professional web copywriter? Maybe you’re a small business owner looking to make your mark in the world of e-commerce? Either way, if you’re involved with the web copywriting side of any online business, it is essential that each and every word of your website is carefully thought out and executed. Think of your copy as your online version of a sales assistant in a real life store, assisting customers when they need help, showing them how products work and ensuring that every visitor that walks in the door of your store walks out as a paying customer who will return in the near future.

Here are 6 essential tips to ensure that your website copywriting is perfectly optimized:

1. Identify your target audience

You need to know exactly who your website is targeted towards, and even more so, who each individual page is aimed at. Only once you know what type of person will be reading each page will you be able to strategise exactly how to best see to their informational needs and pull on their emotional strings in persuading them to buy something, be it a product or a service.

2. Do your Keyword research

Every page worth its salt is able to attract a certain amount of search engine traffic. Ensure that you figure out exactly what each page is about and ensure that the relevant keywords are inserted into the text in an optimal fashion. You don’t need to be an SEO specialist to get the right keywords, often a well written piece of copywriting for the web that promotes a particular topic will automatically contain the necessary keywords, however, you should also make use of tools such as Google Adwords’ keyword research tool or any other tools out there the identify the most effective keywords.

3. Structure your content

One of the most important tips – ensure that your page is well structured. It needs to be easily “scannable” (reader can easily spot different bits of info throughout the page at a glance) and it needs to be straight to the point and contain the right bits of info in the right places. As a web copywriter, you should make use of headings (note the use of headings to structure this article) to split up your page as it is a great way to make it easily readable to your users. Ensure that the most important content is above the fold and that the first paragraph of text could almost single handedly sell the page.

4. Write naturally

Writing on the web is nothing like answering that university essay question in your English exam. Your web copywriting should be professional but casual. Remember that your copy is like your in-store salesman would be in a real store, and salesmen use conversational language that easily and naturally communicates the product to the potential customer.

5. Be persuasive

Don’t be afraid to be a little “salesy”. As mentioned before, when copywriting for the web, your copy is your only tool in selling your products, so you need to convey a sense of pride and confidence in your product and truly believe that yours is the best product in its category. Be sure to tell your customer exactly what sets you apart from your competition and why they should buy from you and nobody else. This is an important part of web site copywriting!

6. Remember to have Calls to Action

All web copywriting is done for a reason, and that reason is to get the reader to perform some sort of action upon completion of reading the text. If you want the customer to buy a product, ensure that there is a “Buy now” button blatantly obvious on the page. If you want customers to contact you, have clear button that takes them to the contact page and if it’s simply an informative article, make sure that there are ways for the reader to share the article. If a page doesn’t have a call to action on it then either you need to add one, otherwise you need to re-evaluate the importance of actually having that page on your site.

If you adhere to the above general rules of web copywriting, you can be assured that all your content is serving its purpose and not wasting anyone’s time. Remember that you need to grab people’s attention and get them to click your calls to action. These are your primary objectives, do whatever you can to convert casual visitors to customers. Web Copywriting is a skill, if you don’t have the skill then hire someone who does, it will be money well spent.

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6 essential tips for effective web copywriting!

A simplified definition of semantic markup is as follows:

But let’s take a step back and think of semantics in a more general context. Semantics was originally a linguistics term and dictionary.com gives the following definition:

Now that we’ve covered that definition, you ask, ‘what do linguistics and coding have in common’? That’s an easy one. Like you and me, algorithms are all about interpreting meaning. But, like with you and me, if you don’t write in a language they can understand, they will be unable to perform the function you ultimately require from them (which is to rank, rank, rank for SEO). To give an oversimplified example, if you order something from a restaurant where they don’t speak English, you may end up eating something you didn’t want to.

This takes us to semantic markup in a coding context. Web semantics is really about using your code well to speak to the algos in a language they understand, i.e HTML. Some of us right-brain dominated copywriters like to use our enter keys when uploading content on the web, or even bolding headings so that the reader’s attention is drawn to them. This may have worked for school projects, but less so for the net.

The algos aren’t going to know that if you bold a piece of text you intend it to be the heading. They’ll simply treat your heading like the rest of your content and what will happen then is that your article won’t get indexed as it should because, hang on, there’s no heading!

This is so easily fixed that it’s almost a crime not to do it like this in the first place: simply add heading tags (H1 and H2 tags) to your headline so that both your human and machine readers will understand you perfectly.

Similarly, don’t simply press ‘enter’ between paragraphs but use ‘p’ elements to open and close a paragraph and indicate that there is, indeed, a paragraph present.

There are several more examples, such as lists and emphasising texts where using the correct elements is imperative.

Now that you understand how it works, what’s in it for you?

It makes your life and the life of your colleagues easier. Optimising your website is a doddle if the correct coding is already in place; furthermore, editing your content is now a walk in the park as you don’t have paragraphs sitting oddly on top each other and lists going haywire. Lastly, it makes the algos happy and ultimately makes your boss happy too, because you’re doing it the right way and the results will shine through.

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Semantic Markup for SEO Friendly Websites

I read somewhere that you should be able to write a blog or online article in fifteen minutes. That includes doing research, thinking about the topic, coming up with a headline, checking your grammar, writing a good introduction and conclusion, organising your ideas and optimising for keywords. Jim Estill said on copy blogger that he can do it in 20. And I like his writing, it’s concise, engaging and accessible but, with all due respect to Mr. Estill, I would still never spend less than an hour or two on a blog or article.

When I think about churning out the written word like a newspaper printing press, I think about one of my least favourite, and one the world’s most loved, writers. Barbara Cartland churned out a massive amount of pulp fiction during her long life: on her deathbed she had 664 novels to her name and when you read them you know why: they lack depth and the characters are not believable. J.K Rowling on the other hand, spent 12 years carefully crafting her popular Harry Potter series and took a few years to conceptualise the stories before putting pen to paper (or rather paper to typewriter) in earnest. Literary experts may criticise her style but my response to this is that when someone has become so unbelievably famous and rich from her written word, it transcends criticism. The extra time J.K Rowling spent on her books served to make her a far superior writer.

Having said that, everyone is different and how you write a blog depends on who you are. Jim Estill, for example, will turn over a topic in his head for a few days to allow the free flow of new ideas before he commits to anything. He also says that he is most productive when he works on several articles as the same time and I know from experience that this is the exception rather than the rule. What works for Jim, may or may not work for you or me. What I like to do is commit a few hours solely to one article and spend that time toying with various ideas and words and reading up on all sides of the story and even looking beyond my core ideas and reading around the topic. It may sound self-indulgent but it works for me.

It also depends on your subject choice. If you’re writing a technical blog and you’re a ‘how to’ girl, the fifteen minute rule could induce a nervous breakdown. On the other hand, if you have a massive general knowledge, are a veteran of the written word and concentrate intensively on the topic at hand, then I admit, it’s possible to write a good blog in 15 minutes. However, I have yet to do so.

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Writing a blog or article in 15 minutes: it’s possible but is it wise?