I’m curious. My gut tells me that if the design of your website or brochure is wrong for your audience, you’re wasting your money investing in copywriting.

Well, maybe not wasting it, but certainly not making the most of it.

First impressions count. And I reckon if your design’s tacky, people will conclude that your product or service is tacky too. So when they read the headline, instead of being already in harmony with you, they’re at odds with you. They’re not ready to be engaged by it, or compelled to read on. They’re ready to doubt it, and to MOVE on.

In fact, I’m convinced that this is true.

What I question is whether you’re likely to get any benefit out of copy at all, with a crap design? Again, my gut tells me that even the best copywriting will make little difference to a site that screams cheap and nasty (unless, of course, cheap and nasty is your niche). My gut tells me you’d be far better off investing some money in a new design. Better yet, invest in a new design AND new copy!

But I don’t have any stats to back me up.

What do you think?

Perhaps it’s the second coffee talking. Or maybe I’ve just been thinking about SEO for too long (*yawn*). Whatever the case, this morning, it’s time for something a little lighter.

Bring on the songwriting discussion!

A while back, I discussed how effectively the lyrics of Cold Chisel’s ‘Bow River’ captivate the band’s target audience. And how we copywriters could learn a thing or two from Ian Moss. Today, I’d like your opinions.

What songs boast lyrics that really resonate? And why? Comment away, and feel free to wax lyrical. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)

Pay $10 - $25 per blog post?! Wow! Put me down for 200 of those. I imagine they’ll be top shelf link bait! Just what I need for my SEO…

C’mon! I know blogging is hard work and takes a lot of time, but do you really think the answer is outsourcing to someone cheap? How good do you think the result will be?

(more…)

Today’s ‘Marketing Pilgrim’ announced:

Facebook Note Removes British Juror from Trial

WHO removed her?! Unless Facebook has really extended its reach recently, I’m pretty sure IT didn’t remove the juror. I think it’s far more likely a judge did that!

The problem with this headline is that it’s written in the active voice but has no ‘Actor’. The Actor is the person or thing that actually does something. Clearly that’s the judge, here, not the Facebook note.

So how does a copywriter make such a fundamental error? Probably because of a conflict between a grammar rule and a usability rule. The rules?

1. Grammar rule: Headlines should be active
2. Usability rule: Make the first two words count

So why the conflict?

Let me explain. The conventional grammarian wisdom says that headlines should be in the form:

Actor does X to Object

Now in the Facebook story, the Actor is clearly the judge and the Object is clearly the juror. Facebook didn’t DO nothin’! (Kinda ironic, huh?)

But if we followed this rule, we’d end up with:

“Judge Removes British Juror from Trial for Posting Facebook Note”
or
“Judge Removes Juror from Trial Because of Facebook Note.”

Too long, right?

What’s more, what would online visitors see if they were just scanning with the typical F-pattern? Probably just:

“Judge Removes”
or
“Judge Removes British”
or
“Judge Removes Juror”

In a legal publication that’d be fine, but in ‘Marketing Pilgrim’, the key subject is Facebook. And in the Active voice construction above, Facebook is shunted right to the end.

As you can see, the copywriter (or copy-editor) is in a bit of a bind.

Their solution? Simply bung Facebook in at the start of the sentence, in place of the Actor, and hope everyone understands what you mean! In order to avoid breaking a usability rule, they’ve broken a grammar rule, making their headline a muddy mess.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that grammar’s more important than usability. To the contrary. I believe the only solution WAS to break a grammar rule. Just not the one they broke.

I think the headline should have read something like this.

“Facebook Juror Removed from Trial”

Yes, I know it’s passive (Object has X done to it), and worse yet, there’s no Actor, but at least it gets the eye-candy up front, and it’s direct and easy to understand.

The reality is that sometimes, passive headlines just work better. Especially online. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe leading web usability specialist, Jakob Nielsen:

“Selecting the first 2 words for your page titles is probably the highest-impact ROI-boosting design decision you make in a Web project. Front-loading important keywords trumps most other design considerations.” (Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings)

Wrap up

The truth is, most readers probably COULD understand the Facebook headline in its current form… if they tried hard enough. But headlines are like ads; if they make the audience work, they usually fail.

The moral to this story? If you’re going to break a rule, break the right one. The one that’ll simply offend a few prescriptive grammarians, not the one that’ll stop readers from clicking through.

Happy copywriting!

PS. What do you think the headline SHOULD have been? Please comment your suggestions.

In today’s blog post at Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty reveals results indicating that Google penalizes sites with over-optimized internal links.

Specifically, she examined the effect of linking to the Home page using keyword rich anchor text. These results are very instructive (thanks Ann!), and they make a lot of sense. Google is right to penalize sites with over-optimized internal links. Here’s why…

When a visitor first arrives at your site, one of the first things they’re gonna try and do is find the Home page. (Jakob Nielsen: Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability) And when they do, they’ll look for a link, menu or button that says “Home” (or they look for a logo at the top left of the page). They won’t look for a link that says, “Computer Spare Parts Home” or “SEO Copywriter Home” or “Red Tennis Shoes Home.”

So by optimizing links to your Home page, you’re certainly not improving usability. Your optimization is purely an SEO tactic with no visitor benefit. (Indeed, if you replace all straight “Home” links with optimized links, you’d be actively undermining usability.)

Why should this affect your ranking? Simple. Google wants quality, helpful sites in its SERPs. If you make your site less usable, that’s not gonna reflect well on Google, so it makes perfect sense that your ranking will drop as a result.

I hate to say it (well… err… no, actually, I don’t ;-)), but Ann’s results reinforce what good SEO copywriters have been saying for years: “never sacrifice readability for searchability.” It’s also what Google’s been saying all along.

And, although Ann’s results relate to Home page links only, the usability message (and maybe even the penalty) applies to all links. Don’t over-optimize them. Here’s just a few reasons why:

1. 79% of users scan; only 16% read word-by-word. (Nielsen: How Users Read on the Web)
2. People look for links when scanning a page. (Nielsen: How Users Read on the Web)
3. Concise copy is 58% more usable, and scannable copy is 47% more usable. (Nielsen: Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web). Over-optimizing links makes them both less concise and less scannable.
4. Low-literacy visitors don’t scan effectively. They tend to read word-for-word. And if the text gets to dense, they look for the next link, often skipping important info in the process. If that link is also dense, they’re more likely to skip it too, resulting in more info skipped. (Nielsen: Lower-Literacy Users)
5. The first two words of scannable items, like links, are vital, because they’re often all the visitor sees. They should be words that carry the most information. (Nielson: Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings, Writing Style for Print vs. Web and Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005) And that generally won’t be your keywords. In most cases, the visitor is already on a page related to your keywords. Starting a link with those same keywords really only tells visitors that the destination page is related to the current page. It doesn’t tell them anything notable about the destination page, so they can decide whether they want to read it. Knowing that it’s related to the current page isn’t enough.
6. People love clicking on links; it’s the Internet’s most used feature. (Harald Weinreich, Hartmut Obendorf, Eelco Herder, and Matthias Mayer: Not Quite the Average: An Empirical Study of Web Use) So you want to make it easy for them to do what they like, and to find what they’re looking for when they do it.

Maybe Google is already taking all of these usability issues into account, maybe it’s not. One thing’s certain though: your visitors sure are!

I just watched the ‘Rank is Dead’ video interview of Bruce Clay over at WebProNews. Very interesting and, above all, entertaining!

Bruce made some very interesting points, but ‘cmon, everyone has to recognize that he’s just beating up some buzz!

His claims that sites with ‘engagement objects’ (e.g. videos) will outrank sites without, simply because of those objects, is ridiculous. And he knows it. Video can be crap too, and even the best vidoes aren’t scannable the way text copy is. What’s more, Google’s ability to ‘read’ video is still in its infancy, whereas its ability to read text copy is well advanced. So, even if it’s just playing safe, Google will give quality text the benefit of the doubt for a long time to come.

Also, all this hype about SEOs needing to consider traffic and conversions and analytics, etc. Another beatup. Those things have always been important, and always will be. Some companies increase your rankings, some monitor and address analytics and conversions. Some do both. Those companies that just work on rankings will always be important. No matter how the rankings are determined, someone will always have to work on that aspect.

Don’t let Bruce suck you in!

That said, it’s all good food for thought, and I’m sure it’ll all contribute to some degree to the future of SEO.

What’s more, the comments, alone, were worth the read. So thanks WebProNews!

This is a question a client asked me a couple of days ago. And the answer is most definitely, no!

Your tagline is the written spearhead of your brand. You want your customers to remember it, and to always associate it with your company, your products and services. But it doesn’t need to explicitly refer to those things. (It CAN, but it doesn’t have to.)

It’s important to remember that your tagline is a branding vehicle. Like a brand, it needs to engage your audience. And one of the most effective ways to do that is through emotions.

Naomi Klein says it best in No Logo:

“… the product always takes a back seat to the real product, the brand, and the selling of the brand acquired an extra component that can only be described as spiritual. Advertising is about hawking product. Branding, in its truest and most advanced incarnations, is about corporate transcendence.”

Take Nike’s tagline, for instance: ‘Just do it.’ No mention of sporting wear. No mention of sport. Instead, Nike associates itself with athleticism and perseverance. It’s leveraging emotion and aspiration, not the features of its products.

Some other examples of famous taglines:

• Because you’re worth it (L’oreal)
• like.no.other (Sony)
• Choose Freedom (Toshiba)
• Come Together (Nortel)
• Hello boys (Wonderbra)
• Impossible is nothing (Adidas)
• I am what I am (Reebok)

That’s all for now. Gotta get some work done!

Happy copywriting!

In his acclaimed book, The Adweek Copywriting Handbook, copywriting big-gun Joseph Sugarman likens sales copy to a slippery slide. He says the sole purpose of the headline is to get the reader to read the first line of copy, the sole purpose of the first line of copy is to get the reader to read the second, and so on, until you’ve got the reader nodding and saying “yes”. Then you introduce the call to action. The idea is that you’re not luring them into the call to action, or pushing them, you’re letting them jump in of their own accord.

Now, one of the copywriting tactics that Sugarman discusses for ‘greasing’ the slippery slide, is what he calls ‘seeds of curiosity’. He often ends his paragraphs with things like, “But there’s more” or “So read on” or “Let me explain.” These are explicit meaning-based cues that encourage the reader down the slide. But they’re not the only way to create momentum.

In fact, when you’re dealing with sophisticated audiences, explicit cues aren’t always the best approach. Sophisticated audiences can be quite sensitive to explicit greasing techniques. And they don’t always like being greased; it can make them feel like someone’s trying to sell them steak knives!

So sometimes style-based cues – not meaning-based cues – are what’s required. What do I mean by style-based cues? Well, I’ve used three of them already, in just four paragraphs. “Now” links para two back to para one, “In fact” links para three back to para two, and “So” links para four back to para three.

I could TRY to explain why these two elements work, or how they work, but I’d probably fail. I’m a copywriter, not a grammarian! An easier – and much more effective – way is for you to read the first four paragraphs WITHOUT “Now”, “In fact” and “So”. Read them out aloud. I guarantee you’ll find it a bumpier ride.

Of course, there are plenty more where they came from. Try a few of these on for size:

• “What’s more”
• “Nevertheless”
• “Of course”
• “Needless to say”
• “And”
• “But”
• “Still”
• “Importantly”
• “Just as importantly”
• “Additionally”
• “Furthermore”
• “No matter which”

These are all tactics that successful copywriters use daily. And they’re just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Should be enough to see you through all but the longest pieces of copy!

In coming posts, I’ll be discussing additional ways to keep readers on your copywriting slippery slide. So stay tuned. In fact, why not subscribe?!

Please comment.

Happy copywriting!

PS. All of this applies to blog copywriting too!

Last week on Twitter, I irritated Jill Whalen (@jillwhalen). And I was mortified. This is the person who set me on the path to becoming an SEO copywriter! Her ebook was the first SEO-related ebook I ever bought. She’s a genuine celebrity in the SEO world, and someone I really do look up to. And, from what I can tell, quite a nice lady, to boot. She’s certainly not someone I’d ever WANT to irritate.

But, after thinking about it all weekend, I’ve decided I wouldn’t change what I did.

So what did I do? I used four Tweets to convey one message:

Tweet 1: ” ‘Squidoo raises big money for charity… by donating money from the ads and links you see on every page.’ Google told me this is a no-no???”

Tweet 2: “ ‘If you’d like to donate a portion of your earnings to charity, you are welcome to do so, as long as you refrain from advertising this fact’ “

Tweet 3: “That was from the The Google AdSense Team, in an email sent Fri 29/06/2007 8:48 AM.”

Tweet 4: “Has Google changed its policy on advertising sharing of ad revenue?”

Then, about a minute later, Jill Tweeted this:

“I think tweets that span across more than one tweet should be banned…can’t say in 140 characters then don’t say it!”

Now I may be flattering myself; perhaps Jill was referring to someone else’s Tweet. But she does follow me, and the timing was just right. (In any case, if she was referring to someone else, her sentiment applies equally to me.)

In any case, after thinking about it all weekend, and mulling it over on two runs, I decided that I just don’t agree with her. IMHO some things simply can’t be said in 140 words. Especially when you’re quoting someone else’s words. I reckon Twitter’s bigger than its 140 word limit. It’s about community, dialogue, sharing and learning. If my message requires more words, I’ll use more words.

And that got me thinking about the whole question of etiquette. Of other people’s expectations versus my own. Of followers versus communities.

If Jill chooses to unfollow me because I didn’t meet her expectations, so be it. I’d be very disappointed to see her go, because I like to think that she might be interested in what I have to say (and I feel honoured that she’s following me in the first place). But if I reckon Twitter’s a place where you should be true to yourself. People will follow you if they like what you have to say (and how you say it), or they won’t. If I spend my time worrying about how my followers expect me to express myself, I’ll be constraining my expression. And that goes against one of the core rules of social media: be authentic.

I use Twitter to genuinely engage with people. (I work alone, so that’s very important to me.) Yes, I value my followers, but if I change how I express myself to please them, then they won’t be following the real me at all. Eventually I’d only disappoint them – by slipping up and doing something they don’t like, by seeming fake, or just by being boring.

Nope. If you follow me, you get me. Warts ‘n all.

So what’s my point? I suppose I’m saying that if you spend all your time worrying whether your followers are going to like what you say – or how you say it – it’s possible that you’ll develop a big following, but it won’t be a true community. You’ll only ever build a community if you true to yourself. (Exactly as Jill was being by criticizing me!)

In fact, that’s really what people in social media communities really want. People. They’re there to engage with you as a person, not a figure-head, not a PR practitioner, not a spin-doctor. If that weren’t the case, why on earth does Jeremy Schoemaker (aka @shoemoney) have 7000+ followers? (If you follow him, you’ll know what I mean!)

I’d love to hear your comments…

“Out him! Out him! Out him! People have a right to know!” Sounds very familiar, doesn’t it? But if you think I’m talking about lifting the lid on the personal lives of the Neil Patrick Harrises and T. R. Knights of this world, think again.

I’m talking about exposing black-hat SEOs for the depraved, oiled-up, muscular, leather-clad, handle-bar-moustache-sporting, night-club-going evil-doers they truly are!

What’s that you say? I’m just jealous that they rank better than me, and I want them hung, drawn and quartered so I can have a bigger slice of the pie? Preposterous! People have a right to know, I tell you! (Did I already say that?)

OK, I know I’ve stretched the analogy a little too far, but you have to admit, black-hat ‘Outers’ do share a few things in common with your garden variety Outer of homosexuals. If you don’t believe me, show me one who didn’t Out a black-hat for his or her own benefit… (And yes, personal satisfaction counts as a benefit!)

But surprisingly enough, that’s not really what this post is about. (The headline got you reading, though, didn’t it?!) And it’s by no means a defense of black-hat SEOs. If they’re silly enough to back themselves against the world’s best math brains and algos, they deserve all they get. No, this post is really about what Aaron Wall neatly describes as “the arbitrary and uneven nature” of hand editing for black-hat tactics.

Put simply, when a site is Outed, it’s far more likely to be unjustly penalized. Search engine algorithms aren’t sensitive to public opinion – not directly, anyway. Google’s PR and legal teams, on the other hand, are. As soon as a site is Outed, you can be guaranteed there’ll be a lot of negative publicity surrounding it. I agree with Aaron that this publicity makes Google far more likely to err on the side of caution and penalize a site that might otherwise have been considered fine, rather than risk being publicly branded soft.

Imagine if it happened to you. Can you say with 100% certainty that you have never employed tactics that could possibly be construed (in a public de-construction) as black-hat? How would you prepare a defense when the public wants a scalp taken? Especially given the inherent muddiness of Google’s ‘rules’:

1. The rules are ambiguous – Google says, “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings” and “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank”, which includes “Links intended to manipulate PageRank.” C’mon! Can they be any more ambiguous? Every SEO is into link building, and we’re all trying to increase rankings and manipulate PageRank. Does that mean we’re all black-hat? Google also advises us to avoid “Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging,” but it doesn’t say what constitutes ‘Excessive’.
2. The penalties for breaking the rules are unclear – I just did a quick search of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, and couldn’t find any mention of specific penalties, much less an indication of what offence will result in which penalties. And I’ve been reading the Guidelines quite a bit recently. (I’ll qualify this by adding that it’s waaaaaaaayyyyyyy past my bed time!)
3. The penalties don’t distinguish between intentional and unintentional black-hat.
4. The penalties often impact people who were not responsible for the black-hat – Like the client of a black-hat SEO.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not condoning black-hat. I’m just saying that they’ll eventually get what’s coming to them. They can’t stay a step ahead of the mathematicians forever. The system will get them in the end. More importantly, ‘offenders’ will treated a little more impartially by the system than they will be by the PR machine.

Now I’m going to bed!

EDIT: Check out Patricia Skinner’s Outing blog post for a slightly different perspective (still anti-Outing).