It may be time to update your Website!

The encounter at the airport along with the Google Farmer/Panda update got us thinking how we can help all of you guys.  We speak to so many business owners who breathe a sigh of relief when they have written their website and launched, but sites do get stale over time, we suggest that pages are checked and updated at least every 12 months, but what should you be checking!

Links:
Click on every single link on every single page. Are they all valid or do you have any broken ones? Do they all go where you want them to go or where they should go?

Forms:
If you have any forms on your pages, check them all.  Are they easy to complete?  When you fill in the details do you get to a nice “Thank you” page, what do you receive by email once you have filled in your details and pressed "Submit"?

Copy:
Read all your copy. Is all the information correct and up to date?  Are new products and services added?  Does it read well?  Are your news items up to date?
Force yourself to refresh some of the copy, change at least a third of it every 12 months.

Remember to add new content (pages) regularly – what new pages / articles etc can you add today?

About Us:
If your “About Us” page up to date?  Most visitors will look at it before buying (unless they know you) so ensure that it’s a page that will sell you well.  Put access to testimonials and any awards on there.

If you would like someone to create new regular content or articles for your site, then get in touch with us (http://www.readcopy.com)

 

 

Hello from the USA!

It's incredibly sunny over here, we are about to set off into 29 degree heat!  A far cry from the 8-9 degree we were experiencing in the UK, anyway we just wanted to post this story.

We had a nice chat with guy from Florida when we were at Manchester airport; he was a little bit interested in us when he knew we wrote for a living (he’d never met copywriters before!), but he was happy that he had all his copy sorted and didn’t need anything new writing (not that we were touting for business – we had started our holiday!)

Anyway, as the discussion progressed, Al admitted that enquiries from his website had been steadily falling over the past 12 months or so; when we pushed him a little further he mentioned that his website had been relaunched 3-4 years ago, but that the copy had never been looked at since!

Well, that could be the problem; Google love nice, fresh, new content, and if the content starts to get stale then they will start to drop a site a little in their rankings, and as the rankings fall, so will the traffic they get to their website!  When the traffic falls, so too will enquiries and sales!

At least we gave Al some word to do when he gets back into the office, and just in case he reads this – Al, remember to email us if you need any help writing that stuff ;-) (hello@readcopy.com)

 

Please listen to Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal

These guys know what they are talking about and will help you get a better ranking in Google search results.

Simply write great, fresh copy for your visitors!

Understand what terms your prospects might use to search for you in search engines and add them once to your page; but that’s all you need to do.

If your copy is fabulous and your page looks great, other related sites will link to you too, before you know it, you're doing great in Google and business is booming.

People aren’t buying!|

It happens to the best of businesses; you’ve created a website, you didn’t ask a copywriter to help you but you managed to put the copy together on your pages yourself.

Let’s imagine you sell cars, you did everything you knew you needed to tell your website visitors:

  • You have been in business for 8 years
  • You have a large range of stock
  • Open 7 days a week
  • You’re the best

It looks OK, but what would your customers make of it?

  • You have been in business for 8 years – so what!
  • You have a large range of stock – so do all car lots!
  • Open 7 days a week – so do most car lots!
  • You’re the best – all car salesmen say this!

You haven’t answered any of the questions that your visitors want to know; more importantly, you haven’t answered the single most important question!

Why should they buy from you and not your competitors!

If you had engaged with a good copywriter from the start, they would have worked out this information when they started to work with you, then they could have crafted the best copy that will actually sell your services!

This is your Proposition; and it must be available for people to read on whatever literature you write, it will help people to decide that they should buy from you rather than someone else!


 

SEO Copywriting plays a critical role on getting more sales!

Everybody in business should now know that in order to make your business even more successful you need to be online, not only that, but you also need to be found by your potential customers.

Hopefully, everyone also knows that in order to be found online, you MUST adopt an SEO strategy for your website, this will allow you to rank higher on the major search engines (i.e.  Google, Yahoo and Bing etc).  These are the places that your potential customers will try to find your business online; and if they don’t find you, they’ll find your competitors!

However, now you are reading this, you might be able to steal the edge over your competitors, because we are going to tell you about SEO Copywriting and how that can help you succeed!

SEO Copywriting
SEO Copywriting is a writing style that has been developed to attract search engines to your webpages; the better you attract search engines the more traffic (visitors) you’ll receive, the more traffic you get, the higher your chance of selling more!

BUT SEO Copywriting is more important than that, probably more important than attracting search engines a good SEO Copywriter will write great copy that is attractive and engaging for your visitors, improving your chance of converting them to customers.

So it becomes important to optimise for search engines and visitors, a skill that many SEO companies just do not have, but with ReadCopy you can rest assured that your pages are safe with us, and we will write copy that search engines will love and so will your visitors.

Working with Web Designers!

We have started to get some ad hoc work with another web designer!

We love working with the technical community and know that together we can provide clients with a great looking website and fantastic search engine optimised copy.

If you’re a web designer and you are looking for a copywriter to work with you, then get in touch with ReadCopy (hello@readcopy.com); we can show you plenty of examples of copy we have written for websites; so you can rest assured that we will write only the best for your clients.

Googles Farmer/Panda

We have been asked by a few clients why the new Google algorithm has affected some websites in the US (it’s going to be rolled out soon to everywhere else).

Our answer is simple, Google Farmer/Panda update simply targets low quality websites, it ranks sites on the quality that they provide their visitors and if this is deemed to be low – then the site will appear lower in search engine rankings.

Google’s Matt Cutts (and others) have discussed what they have done and why on various websites, and it appears that they class a site as being low quality when:

  • The website does not have enough content to be useful to visitors (or shallow content)
  • The website has poorly written content (typos/grammatical errors etc)
  • The content of the website has been copied from other sites (usually content farms)
  • The content of the website is generally not useful.

With Google's latest update, having well-written, unique content on your site will help gain better rankings in future, something ReadCopy has been forecasting for sometime now!

How to write for websites

I’m sure all the readers of this blog understand that writing for print is entirely different from writing for websites!

But we do sometimes get asked "what is content writing" and how does it differ to any other type of writing!

So for those of you that want to know, where is the answer:

  • You need to make content short – visitors want to quickly read what you want to say then move on
  • It needs to be scannable so that it can be read quicker (consider using bullets or bold text to help)
  • Be direct – don’t be fluffy with your marketing – tell (and sell) it as it is.

Use website content to:

  • Answer visitor’s questions or concerns about your company, products or services.
  • Use a common language rather than your business-speak or made up words.

Or get us to write for you: http://www.readcopy.com/seo%20copywriting.shtml

Google loves Copywriters

It’s true you know, Google is madly in love with us copywriters. You want proof?

Googles own editorial guidelines tell you that Google loves fresh content; it loves to see a website growing by the addition of well written, information rich copy.

This is what copywriters do best; they can create unique copy for your site that keeps you active and alive within Google’s search results, meaning that in turn, you get more website visitors.

If you want Google to love you too, then consider ReadCopy (www.readcopy.com) for your website copy, or simply write great, new copy for your site yourself.

Return on Content (RoC)

This may be a new phrase to a lot of you, but it’s one that we take seriously when either talking to clients or undertaking assignments on the behalf of them.

RoC is simply a measure of the return that you expect from a simple piece of copywriting or a series of copy (articles, webpages etc).

It’s similar to RoI (return on Investment) that many of you will be familiar with.

On a very simple level, website owners and businesses need to think a little more about the quality of the copy that their prospects and/or customers see; every page of copy or letter that is sent out to prospects/customers needs to have a REALISTIC value attached to it.

Let’s take the example of a web landing page that is designed to get your visitors to start a sales process; it’s unfair and UNREALISTIC to suggest that the landing page should be responsible for the full amount of revenue expected from your sales process, but we can attached an assumption (say a conservative 1%); so let’s imagine that the online sales channel is work £5m pa to your business – 1% of £5m is a healthy £50,000.

Let us now say that you paid £250 for that fully SEO’ed landing page copy, that RoC is an amazing 19900%.

I think you’ll agree that that is a very worthwhile investment.

Let copywriters ReadCopy help you and your business.

You need to check your search engine rankings now!

Google changes it algorithm (the way it decides what position in the search engines we all are) over 500 times a year, but its latest change (on 25th February) is causing problems for many websites.

Google is determined to ensure that when a user of its search engine wants to find something on the internet, they only see the best quality and highly relevant sites, this means that if a website has copied content from other websites or uses aggregated content from a ‘content farm’ or has copy that is just lightly spun from ‘content farm’ articles then they will be penalised.

They are also now penalising sites that do not have regular new content added.

Whilst this might be bad news for lots of sites out there, it’s great news for our website and our clients sites; you see as copywriters, we only write fresh, original copy that Google loves, meaning that all of our pages are indexed well for the keywords that search engine users actually use.

So check your ranking now using these easy steps:

1. Think about the keywords/phrases that a real search engine user would use to find your products and services (i.e. if you sell beds, maybe in the manufacturers brand names, or ‘kids beds’, ‘bed frames’, ‘slight beds’, ‘bunk beds’ or even ‘comfortable bed reviews’!).

2. Do your own search on Google to see if you appear; if you don’t appear on the first two pages then give up, 99.9% of users would have given up by now too!

If you don’t rank anywhere but you would like to, then you need to get in touch with ReadCopy (www.readcopy.com), we’re here to help you.

Everyone is a comedian!

It’s official, everyone thinks that they are a comedian – or at least they believe that their businesses brand personality is comedic!

The research was carried out as part of our usual business processes that we have developed to try to get under the skin of our clients; this enabled us to provide the very best creative copy for them.

Read more here: http://www.readcopy.com/articles/everyone is a comedian.shtml

Writing great SEO copy isn't enough!

Writing great words for your website is essential, adding subtle keywords to help SEO is also vital, both of these activities will get you on Googles radar and help any visitors to become interested in what you have to say or sell and start that conversion process.

But probably even more important is to get that traffic in the first place.

Working with ReadCopy, we can do all the SEO keywords and copy, BUT we can also start to generate links from other related search engines, directories and websites; these links are seen by Google as a positive vote for your website and they will rank you higher.

So when you are ready to rank better on Google – contact us for our help (www.readcopy.com)

What are keywords/phrases and how do you use them!

When you search for any information online; whether it be product or services information, or information on a company, you're likely to visit one of the major search engines - Google, Bing or Yahoo! etc.
You will then type in a some words relevant to you completing your search. These words are your keywords!

For instance, if you need somewhere nice to eat in Leeds and simply type in "Restaurant". Ok several million results are too many to go through, plus this will show you results for all over the world!

You might search on "Restaurant Leeds city centre", or a more accurate "Cantonese restaurant Leeds city centre". Your search results are now more manageable!

Focus!
As a business trying to attract web traffic, you need to focus on these more accurate keywords (phrases) and these are the ones likely to be used by potential diners who want to find you!

From a business perspective it is vitally important that you focus on these terms that are actually used; very few website visitors will type your business name into a search engine, they are more likely to type what services you offer and where you are!

Don't ignore your name just include it in the copy once, so for example "A Taste of Cantonese: The finest Cantonese restaurant in Leeds", "Cantonese dining at its best in cosmopolitan Leeds", "Join us in Leeds for exquisite Cantonese dining." Etc

Accurate keyword phrases
A word of warning - never guess the phrases your customers will use to search for your products or services.

Always check that any phrases you come up with are actually being used by real and potential customers searching the web. The very first step is to generate a list of potential keyword phrases.

For instance, for ReadCopy might decide that our keyphrases include: copywriters in Yorkshire copywriting services, uk copywriter, web copywriter, website copywriter uk copywriting, business copywriting, copywriting agency, seo copywriter, yorkshire copywriter, marketing copywriter, web copywriting, online copywriter, advertising copywriter etc etc
We would then ensure that a number of these best keywords were included in the copy on our pages to help bring traffic from the major search engines.

If you need help determining what your keywords/phrases should be and how to put them into your pages then contact us (www.readcopy.com) for your copywriting needs.

SEO Copywriting

SEO copywriting is the fine art of writing great webpage copy that it is both appealing to human readers, but also allows you to rank well for specific search terms in search engines.

Search engine technology and algorithms has now become so sophisticated that too few keywords or placed in correctly can mean the difference to been seen in the search engine results or not!

Getting this right is now fundamental, ReadCopy are experts in SEO Copywriting; if you want it doing right, you want ReadCopy!