Google’s Head of Spam, Matt Cutts, recently revealed what SEO copywriters have known for years: including generic product copy (e.g. manufacturer supplied) in your product descriptions can cause problems with your search ranking. So yes, you’re far better off writing your own product descriptions. Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds! I know [...]

Copywriter-in-training Shae Baxter emailed me today with a question. I thought my answer might be useful to others. (Sorry, I’ve done this twice in a row now!) The Question Is web content writing different from web copywriting? Are there different skill sets involved? My Answer Thanks for your email. Unfortunately the answer is yes. Some [...]

I don’t read many writing blogs. When you write for a living, a writing blog has to be pretty good to keep you reading. But there’s one writing blog I’ve very quickly come to like. So much so, that I actually look forward to its daily posts (ruly-truly). In fact, I even went to the [...]

I received an email, yesterday, from a lady named Janelle, who failed to step back quickly enough when her boss asked who’d like to volunteer to write the company e-newsletter. Janelle wanted to know… She wanted to know if I had some sort of template for writing e-newsletters, what’s required if she re-publishes a free-reprint [...]

Monique Choy and Angus Gordon are great copywriters. I often refer prospects to them. Like yesterday… I got a call from a gentleman — let’s call him John — who wanted 6 pages of copy. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the ins and outs of the job, and I also offered some [...]

I’ll keep this short ‘n sweet: I’ve FINALLY release my new ebook, ‘Practical SEO Copywriting’. It captures most of what I know about SEO copy. Not just the theory, but the practice. How to do it right. How to handle the difficulties. And most importantly, how to balance the needs of Google against the needs [...]

Before I started Divine Write, I was a technical writer in the software industry. I wrote online help and user guides for 9 years. I wrote about highly technical stuff, like SCADA systems, accounting software and access control systems. I worked closely with wildly intelligent coders and engineers. I handled all the localization of the [...]

In her recent excellent post, Is Quality Copywriting Worth the Expense?, copywriter Angie Haggstrom suggests that copywriting clients who accept poor quality (i.e. cheap) copy are endorsing that poor quality. They’re associating it with their own offering and brand – “it’s a reflection of you” I couldn’t agree more. But I think it’s important to [...]

By Karri Flatla, snap! virtual associates inc. If you’ve ever shopped for a web copywriter (I cringe to use the word “shop” but that’s what it is), you’ve no doubt come across an apparent oddity in the fee structures. That is, homepage copy costs a great deal more than other types of website copy (services [...]

When you have a pool built, you don’t simply point to your backyard and say, “Put a pool there!” (Believe me, I know!) You have to spend quite a bit of time telling your pool builder what shape you want, what style, what construction, what size. You have to discuss depth, lining, tiling, lighting, steps, [...]