Divine Write Copywriting Blog

I was recently asked if I’d be interested in writing some articles to increase a company’s search presence. I had to turn the job down, though, because the client was only prepared to pay US $10 per 500 words. (Actually, in light of my article PR experience, they generously upped their offer to $15 per 500 words…) This wasn’t the first time I’ve been asked to work for peanuts.

It blows me away that anyone would think they’d get any real return out of this sort of investment. For your article marketing / article PR to be effective, you can’t rely only on quantity. If your articles are crap, few webmasters will want to publish them, and even fewer readers will want to read them. You also need quality. That means:

• an excellent command of spoken and written English; AND
• a sound understanding of the needs of the target audience; AND
• a sound understanding of the needs of the client’s business; AND
• consistency in style; AND
• thoroughly researched, logical arguments; AND, AND, AND…

In my humble opinion, there’s just no way you can get both quantity and quality without investing in it appropriately.

Here’s why:

In my experience, a good 500 word article takes around 3-8 hours to research, write, optimize and edit. Add another hour or so to implement changes arising out of client review, and you’ve got a total of 4-9 hours. (Many take even longer.) That works out at between $1.11 to $2.50 per hour. Based on a 40 hour week, 47 week year (and no benefits), that’s a grand total of $1,087 to $4,700 per year!

I’d wager there isn’t a good copywriter in the world who’d work for that sort of money.

You might argue that the work could be outsourced – maybe to somewhere like India? I agree that it could, but you still wouldn’t get a good writer.

A cursory scan of Indian job search site Nakuri (http://jobsearch.naukri.com) reveals that a half-way decent copywriter can earn around 4,00,000 to 8,00,000 Rupees per year. That’s around USD $9,390 to $18,780 per year + benefits. So why would they work for $4,700 (much less $1,087) per year????!

They wouldn’t.

Sure there’d probably be plenty of unproven writers willing to have a crack at it, but that’s exactly my point. How many of them would be able to research and write a quality article as outlined above. Just as importantly, how many would stick around for more than one or two. Very few.

The upshot could only be pulp. Meaningless articles churned out for keyword density and nothing more. In fact, they’re probably just re-wording existing articles. Hardly a long-term SEO strategy…

Just my gripe for the day!

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Just read some very interesting statistics presented by one of my favourite writers, Gerry McGovern. (The statistcis weren’t from his research; he was just discussing them.)

According to a February 2008 study published by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research, “Sixty-two percent of marketers believe traditional television advertising has become less effective in the past two years… [and] Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they intended to spend more ad dollars on the Internet in 2008.”

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

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‘Link baiting’ may just be a fancy name for ‘good web content’, but it’s a handy reminder that content is critical to a high search engine ranking. Simply put, it’s about making your site content so good that people can’t help but link to it. They feel they’d be doing their own visitors a disservice by not linking.

Of course, I’m not talking just copy here; I’m talking about ALL of the content on your site. Copy, videos, downloads, games, forums, survey results, articles… Anything that makes your site helpful and informative. (Think of it as reverse viral marketing.)

By way of example, take the Partner4Real online dating site. They originally engaged an SEO company to get them a high ranking for a number of terms, including “online dating”, “dating”, “personals”, “singles” and “free dating”. While this went ok, they’re now doing better by themselves, simply by focussing on link baiting. They have very helpful web content and a weekly video from a doctor of herbal medicine. For “online dating” they rank no.2 in the world when you search from Australia. Not bad considering the site’s only very new…

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Just a quick post this time… I quite often find myself recommending tools or specific applications of tools for copywriting and SEO copywriting. So I thought I’d cut out the middle-man and simply publish my list and a few comments on each tool.

So here’s my list of copywriting tools and SEO copywriting tools. If you have any extras or any comments, please feel free to reply to the thread.

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Within the HTML code behind your page, there are things called ‘meta tags’. These are short notes within the header of the code which describe some aspects of your page to the search engines. Although there is some debate over how important meta tags are when it comes to SEO, it’s generally agreed that they shouldn’t be ignored.

Whether you’re building your website yourself, or you’re getting a web designer to do it, it’s a good idea to understand the basics. There are four main meta tags you need to consider:

1. Title
2. Keywords
3. Description
4. Alt

Following is a bit of discussion of how these meta tags should look and a few tips for writing them.

Title - e.g. <title>Cheap second hand computers – Widget Computers</title>

The title is the most important of the meta tags. Try to use your keyword at least once in the title, preferably towards the beginning. Also, it’s not just important for your ranking; it also has the biggest impact on your Click Thru Rate (CTR). The text you put in the title will appear as the link text in your Google listing – the bit that people will read first and click on. Think of it as an ad headline – the better it is, the more people will click on it.

TIP: Google only displays 66 characters in the clickable part of your listing. So try to keep your Title text to a max of 66 characters.

Keywords - e.g. <meta name="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="cheap second hand computers" />

Search engines used to look only at this tag to identify a site’s subject material. This isn’t really the case any more, but some search engines still give it quite a bit of weight (such as Yahoo). There are various ‘rules’ about how many characters you should include in this tag. The most recent I’ve been working to is 300 characters (including spaces). I’ve never been too strict about enforcing it though.

IMPORTANT: The most important detail about the Keywords tags is that Yahoo pays quite a bit of attention to it. If you do it wrong, you’ll be penalized. I learned this the hard way. You need to ensure that your Keywords tag is aligned with your web copy. By that, I mean that you shouldn’t include keywords that don’t appear in your copywriting. And I’m not talking about arbitrary stuffing or spamming here. I’m talking about legit keywords. For instance, I used to use my suburb, Bateau Bay, as a keyword for every page of my site. However, “Bateau Bay” hardly appeared at all in my web copy. There were quite a few other examples like this, too, like my state (NSW), and some of my neighboring suburbs. After ranking really highly in Google for about a year, I couldn’t understand why I was ranking so poorly in Yahoo. Turns out, this was the reason. I made the change, and my ranking shot up about 60 positions!!! And I don’t mean from position 1000 to position 940 (that wouldn’t be noteworthy at all). I mean I shot up from about 80 to about 20 (then gradually moved onto the first page).

Description - e.g. <meta name="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="Cheap second hand computers for sale – keeping your business running efficiently without breaking the bank." />

The search engines pay some attention to this text when identifying your site’s subject material, so make sure you include your keyword at least once in the Description. Also, most search engines use this text as their description of your site (i.e. it’s the site snapshot that follows your link in the search results). Make sure it’s informative and compelling. Think of it as the copy for an ad.

TIP: Google only displays about 160 characters including spaces. So keep your Description text to a max of 160 characters.

Alt - e.g. <img xsrc="filename.gif" alt="Cheap second hand computer in use" title="Cheap second hand computer in use">

The Alt tag is designed to help visually impaired people use the World Wide Web (WWW). They use software to read out loud the content of your website. When the software encounters a picture, it looks for the Alt text to learn what the picture is, then reads that text out loud. The Alt tag is relatively important to search engines because they assume that your pictures have something to do with the subject material of your site. But like the visual aid software, they can’t actually see the picture, so they look at the Alt text as well. Try to include your keyword at least once in your Alt text.

Summary

You can use the same meta tags on each page, or you can make them unique. It all depends on how many keywords you’re targeting. If you’re targeting a different keyword in the copy of each page, your meta tags for each page will be unique (i.e. you’ll target that page’s keyword within these meta tags).

TIP: If you have any high ranking competitors, take a look at the way they’ve done their meta tags, and follow their lead. You already know they rank highly, so chances are they’ve done a good job.

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Whether you’re an SEO copywriter or not, you’ve probably heard plenty of rules (accurate and otherwise) regarding how many words you need on each page of your website. Chances are, the loudest voices in the clamor are those advocating HEAPS of copy. But remember, the person with the loudest voice isn’t always right…

While I definitely agree that ‘content is king’, there is no need to write volumes. You can reach the top of the search engines with a page wordcount of between on most pages. As a rule of thumb, below 100 is probably too little for the search engines, whereas above 1000 is definitely too much for your visitors.

Don’t be intimidated into writing pages and pages of copy for your home page (or any other page where short, succinct copy is required). When it comes down to it, Google and the other search engines don’t count your number of words and strike you off the list if you’re too high or too low. They’re only interested in your word count insofar as it’s an indication of the helpfulness of your website. Typically a helpful website will have a lot of words and an unhelpful website will have very few. (It’s a very limited way of looking at the world, but you have to remember that search engines aren’t as good at assessing the relevance and usefulness of a website as humans are. Also, remember that they use other rules to help them decide what sites should rank highly.)

When it comes down to it, the one and only thing that you should absolutely do is write for your visitors first. After all, they may buy from you; there’s absolutely no chance the search engines will!

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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 copywriting (non SEO)
• Direct Marketing (DM) copywriting
• Advertising copywriting
• TV, print & radio copywriting.
• Grammar, punctuation, etc.
• Copyright of copywriting
• Copywriting as a career
• Critique my Copy

You can register by clicking the ‘Register’ link at the top of the main page. Hope to see you there!

Anyway, that’s it for today.

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When you’re writing your SEO copy, chances are there’ll come a time when you’ll wonder whether you should target the plural of your keyword or the singular.

e.g. Do I target “tennis shoe” or “tennis shoes”?

To answer this question, the first thing you need to do is find out what your target visitors are actually searching for. If the vast majority are searching for “tennis shoes”, then you’d target that, and forget about “tennis shoe”.

However, in the real world, things are rarely so black and white. More often than not, the number of searches for each will be similar, and you’ll still be left wondering which would be the more effective keyword.

Your next step is to think about why visitors search for one and not the other. It may be that people search for “tennis shoe” when they’re researching whether to buy a tennis shoe or a running shoe. On the other hand, people may search for “tennis shoes” when they want to actually buy a pair online. In this case, if you were selling tennis shoes, you’d most likely choose “tennis shoes” as your keyword phrase.

Still no closer to a decision? Maybe you can target both… If the only difference between the singular and the plural is the addition of an “s” or “es” on the end, you can simply target the plural. You’ll be targeting the singular in the process. e.g. Target “tennis shoes” and you’ll be automatically targeting “tennis shoe” at the same time.

But if your plural is more than the addition of an “s” or “es”, never fear. In reality, you can target either and still enjoy a high ranking. Google is smart enough to identify the relationship between plural and singular. It knows that people who search for the plural may still get some value out of sites that target the singular. It’s true that - all else being equal - when a user searches for the plural, a site that targets the plural will outrank your site that targets the singular. But you can swing the balance in your favor simply by working harder on the number and quality of your inbound links. e.g. Take, for example, the distinction between “copywriters” and “copywriter”. My copywriting website, Divine Write, targets “copywriter”, but it still outranks most sites that target “copywriters”. That’s mostly because I have more inbound links.

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The short answer is no.

The long answer follows…

As soon as you start optimizing your web copy, you’ll realise that it’s quite difficult to repeat your keyword again and again, without your copy becoming very unfriendly to readers.

This is particularly problematic when you’re targeting very specific keyword phrases. For example, for me, targeting “copywriter” is quite easy, but targeting “SEO website copywriter Australia” is a lot more difficult. If my web page has 200 words, my keyword has to appear six times for a keyword density of 3%. That’s fine if it’s a single word, because there’ll still be 194 words of normal copy left. The keyword won’t be so noticeable to readers. But if there are four words in the keyword phrase, there’ll only be 176 words left. That would make the keyword phrase a lot more noticeable.

What’s more, exact keyword phrases are difficult to incorporate into your copy in a natural way.

Fortunately, however, you don’t have to actually target the exact phrase. You can simply target the individual words. So instead of me repeating the exact phrase “SEO website copywriter Australia” six times, I’d simply repeat “SEO” six times, “website” six times, “copywriter” six times, and “Australia” six times. These individual repetitions could appear anywhere on the page.

Using this approach, I can achieve the density I’m after without sacrificing readability.

I will qualify this: it’s my understanding that when someone searches for “SEO website copywriter Australia”, all things being equal, a website that targets the exact string “SEO website copywriter Australia” will rank higher than a website that targets just the individual words. But when are all things ever equal?

As always, the important thing to remember is that human visitors are more important than search engines. What’s more, keyword density is not the be-all-and-end-all of SEO. (Please see my previous post on keyword density in your SEO copy.)

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If you’re targeting exact strings in your SEO copy, you’ll find it difficult to effectively target more than 2 keyword phrases per page. This is particularly true if you’re targeting very specific keyword phrases.

For example, let’s say you want your tennis clothing page to rank well when a customer searches for the following phrases (i.e. they type EXACTLY what you see below).

• “blue tennis shoes in California”
• “green tennis skirts on the West Coast”
• “purple tennis hats”
• “fastest tennis shoes in the world”

Let’s also assume your tennis clothing page can’t exceed 400 words before it becomes too text-heavy (and looks like a spam site).

Now, if you try to optimize your web copy for ALL of these exact strings, you’ll find that it becomes very difficult to read. Assuming you’re aiming for a keyword density of 3%, you’d need to include each of the above phrases more than 10 times. That would mean approx half of the copy on your page would be keyword strings!

There are two ways to work around this:

1. Don’t target exact strings – Instead, target the unique words from the phrases, not the phrases themselves. In the above example, the unique (and meaningful words) would be: blue, tennis, shoes, California, green, skirts, West, Coast, purple, hats, fastest, world. (Notice that I didn’t include “tennis” or “shoes” more than once, and I also didn’t include words like “in” or “on”.) If you include each of these words approx 10 times anywhere in your copy, you’ll achieve much the same result as if you had targeted each exact string. (I say “much the same” because when someone searches for “purple tennis hats”, all things being equal, a website that targets the exact string “purple tennis hats” will rank higher than a website that targets “purple” and “tennis” and “hats”.) But even if you do this, you’ll still find it difficult to make the copy readable because over a quarter of your page will be keywords!
2. Create additional pages – This is normally the best way to go. Just make your pages more specific. Have one page for “blue tennis shoes in California”, one for “green tennis skirts on the West Coast”, one for “purple tennis hats”, etc. This way, you only around 10% of your copy will be dedicated to keywords. This results in much more readable, natural-looking pages. And in the above example, it would also result in a much more logically structured site; a well structured site typically wouldn’t discuss all of the above items on the same page.

NOTE: When thinking about keyword density, please bear in mind my previous entries on keyword density in SEO copy.

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