“What’s more”, “Nevertheless”, “Of course”, “Needless to say”… Why do some reviewers think these devices are too informal for sentence-starters? Oh, and let’s not forget “Importantly”, “Just as importantly”, “Additionally” and “Furthermore”!
I wouldn’t say it happens all the time, but enough to make me wonder. After pointing to something in my copywriting portfolio and saying, [...]

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’. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

If there’s one piece of advice I’d offer to copywriters (other than embrace SEO), it’d be, “Use more contractions!”
I’ve lost count of the number of freelancers who’ve sent me samples chock-full of things like “we will” and “you are” and “we are”. Even fairly conservative audiences like to read the way they speak (within limits). [...]

It’s been a while since my last post. Sorry! But I have a good reason, honest…
As you’ve probably already guessed from my headline, Divine Write has launched a copywriting forum. It’ll interest copywriters, business owners, marketing managers and webmasters most, but ‘regular’ writers will also find it useful (I hope). Current forums include:

General copywriting
SEO copywriting
Web [...]

Although you shouldn’t get too hung up on keyword density (see my previous post on SEO copy keyword density for an explanation), if you’re aiming for a density of around 2-3%, you’ll find that this isn’t easy to achieve, without compromising the readability of your copy.
The easiest way to do it is to be specific. (In [...]