Professional copywriting tips
Copywriting tips for May 2007
May always seems to be a stop-start month to me with so many Bank Holidays that you’re forever losing track of which day of the week it is. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, mind you.
It would just help if the weather would occasionally remember that we’re now looking forward to summer and warmer, brighter days would be most welcome instead of continuous torrential rain. And yes, I know the garden needs it, but please can it be spaced out a little better? Oh, and try to avoid the aforementioned Bank Holidays if possible.
Before I launch into a tirade on global warming, we’d better move on with this month’s hints and tips, which continues our theme of SEO copywriting.
As always, if there are any areas of copywriting that you would like us to look at in more detail, email the subject or your questions and queries to info@cwrite.co.uk and we’ll address them in this section.
SEO copywriting - the art of writing for search engines - Part 2: Where to start with SEO copy
Before you start SEO copywriting
Before you even think about starting to write SEO copy for your website, STOP and put your pen down or take a step away from the keyboard.
There is no point writing anything until you know what you need to write. And the only way to establish that is through understanding the medium and research.
Writing for a website is different
First of all, you have to recognise that writing SEO copy for a website is very different to writing a company brochure.
With the latter, you have a physical object and static medium that follows a logical pattern – page one is followed by page two, then page three … you get the idea. The first time your reader reads or flicks through your brochure, he or she will usually follow the accepted method of reading, i.e. starting at the beginning and working through to the end.
With websites the reader is in control
Websites are rarely, if ever, read in this way. The Internet is an interactive medium and the person in charge of the mouse has control over what they read, how they read it and whether or not they bother to read it at all.
Exercise
To understand this concept, try the following exercise. Visit the following website www.stonesquare.com to obtain the answer to the following question:
What is the phone number for Stone Square?
It was fairly easy to find the answer, but without returning to the website can you write down anything more about Stone Square?
I’d guess the answer is probably no. Most people, who have a specific task in mind when they visit a website, want to complete that task as quickly as possible.
They skim read the text to discover which words will lead them to their goal. Rarely will an individual sit down and patiently read every word on your home page, before moving to the next page, reading that through and so on.
With the Stone Square example, you may have read the title, skimmed the paragraph below but when there were no obvious numbers your eye probably skipped to the left hand side where it caught sight of the phrase ‘Contact Stone Square’.
As you have learned through experience that phone numbers are usually located in the ‘contact us’ section of a website, you probably didn’t even pause before clicking on the link and scanning the subsequent page for a list of digits.
This example is a good illustration of how little time browsers will devote to the text on your page and how it is vital to make sure you hit them between the eyes with the right words to guide them towards performing the actions you want them to make.
Starting the research
Once you have grasped this concept, you can now start thinking about the words that visitors to your website will be expecting to see and, more importantly, the key words and phrases they will be using when searching for your services in the first place.
Keywords and keyword phrases for June
Next month we’ll be having a look at keywords and keyword phrases in relation to SEO copywriting.Find out more
If you want to know more about our copywriting services and how we could work with you to meet your copywriting needs, or for a quote on a copywriting brief, please call 077 646 854 12 or complete our online contact form.