copywriting/blog/readcopy http://readcopy.posterous.com Words and stuff about copywriting! posterous.com Wed, 11 May 2011 03:20:27 -0700 Google supply guidelines to help webmasters create better sites http://readcopy.posterous.com/google-supply-guidelines-to-help-webmasters-c http://readcopy.posterous.com/google-supply-guidelines-to-help-webmasters-c http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-...

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Thu, 28 Apr 2011 04:43:40 -0700 Clean and fresh! http://readcopy.posterous.com/clean-and-fresh http://readcopy.posterous.com/clean-and-fresh Google determination to provide better improved and more up to date (or “fresher”) search results is definitely as a result of increased competition from Bing, but also from real-time information networks like Twitter and Facebook.

This competition from social networks cannot be underestimated; Google needs to supply really fresh content to drive its search results to allow it to continue to dominate the search market, if it’s index was out of date, we would all quickly go elsewhere.

The onus is now on us website owners to ensure that we provide clean, new content that Google likes and ranks highly.

But rather than been a chore, this also helps us from a conversion standpoint in that this new content will ultimately help us to have better discussion with our prospects online and help us to convert better.

So our question to you is ... how fresh is your website content?

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Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:08:00 -0700 It may be time to update your Website! http://readcopy.posterous.com/it-may-be-time-to-update-your-website http://readcopy.posterous.com/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)

 

 

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Wed, 06 Apr 2011 10:42:00 -0700 Hello from the USA! http://readcopy.posterous.com/hello-from-the-usa http://readcopy.posterous.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)

 

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Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:10:34 -0700 Please listen to Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal http://readcopy.posterous.com/please-listen-to-matt-cutts-and-amit-singhal http://readcopy.posterous.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.

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Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:43:00 -0700 How to become Panda friendly! http://readcopy.posterous.com/how-to-become-panda-friendly http://readcopy.posterous.com/how-to-become-panda-friendly

We have been approached once again about the Panda update from Google  from clients wanting to know how they can avoid Google penalising their sites or to stop their sites from losing page rank.

Our general advice is not to panic, site owners who look after their site, enter into a natural looking link building strategy and get a decent copywriter to look at their site content should have nothing to fear – for the rest of you here are a few tips to help you.

Content:
This is now KEYAVOID duplicate content completely and avoid any automated copy or content services. 
Ensure all content is fresh and as new as possible.
If you want to distribute news items to other sites then ensure you post to your site first at least a week before you release it to other sites.
If you do have a lot of duplicate content then consider using robots.txt to prevent similar content from being indexed by the major search engines.
For those of you have do have the same content under different URL’s, use the link rel="canonical" tag to tell Google that they are the same (read here for more help on this: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html)
 
Title Tag:
Ensure that you have different Title tags for all your pages; ensure that the content of the pages matches the Title used.  Keep your Title simple.

Description Tags:
As with your Title tags, ensure that they are unique on all pages and that they match the content of the page closely. 
 
Inbound Links:
Avoid linking farms and other low quality links to your pages.  This has become a major concern to Google as there has been an explosion of site getting unnatural links that can only come from a mass link building exercise.  Remember links to your sites need to look natural.
Never pay for links. 
 
Your plans
Focus on the quality of your content, and ensure that your visitors have the best experience when they get to your site.
It’s possible that in the near future Google and other major search engines mat start to look at use stats to determine what sites fair well in its results; if for example, Google has two similar sites (one with a bounce rate of just 13% and the other with a bounce rate of 86%, I know which one Google will choose to rank higher!)

If you need help with your website copy, then talk to us, we are ready to help you.

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Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:30:00 -0700 Google Farmer/Panda update http://readcopy.posterous.com/google-farmerpanda-update http://readcopy.posterous.com/google-farmerpanda-update

Google is up to it's regular trick of trying to improve the results for its users by removing spammy content from search results in its' latest algorithm update.  They reckon it could affect some 11.8% of websites!  Read more about it here.

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Mon, 21 Mar 2011 01:02:00 -0700 SEO Copywriting plays a critical role on getting more sales! http://readcopy.posterous.com/seo-copywriting-plays-a-critical-role-on-gett http://readcopy.posterous.com/seo-copywriting-plays-a-critical-role-on-gett

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.

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Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:48:00 -0700 Googles Farmer/Panda http://readcopy.posterous.com/googles-farmerpanda http://readcopy.posterous.com/googles-farmerpanda

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!

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Mon, 14 Mar 2011 06:11:31 -0700 Google loves Copywriters http://readcopy.posterous.com/google-loves-copywriters http://readcopy.posterous.com/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.

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Mon, 14 Mar 2011 04:45:00 -0700 Writing content for SEO purposes http://readcopy.posterous.com/writing-content-for-seo-purposes http://readcopy.posterous.com/writing-content-for-seo-purposes

We have a new article back on our main site, check it out now
http://readcopy.com/articles/content for seo.shtml

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Wed, 09 Mar 2011 03:09:23 -0800 You need to check your search engine rankings now! http://readcopy.posterous.com/you-need-to-check-your-search-engine-rankings http://readcopy.posterous.com/you-need-to-check-your-search-engine-rankings 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.

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