Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved
I shake my head every time I read one of these blanket statements. I’m amazed at how so many people still think that one size of copy still fits everyone. It’s just not true.
Here’s an example. A while back, I read, “Prospects hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages, especially on a home/landing page.” This is coming from Internet Marketing Report in relation to business-to-business (B2B) websites. I’m sorry, but I completely disagree.
Just because a website is B2B does not automatically mean every single one of its visitors will “hate being bombarded by text-heavy pages.” The product or service itself, how familiar the product or service is to the market, the target customer’s preferred communication style and a dozen other factors contribute to the decision about whether or not long copy or short should be used.
On the other hand, we have direct-mail experts who’ve taken their style of copywriting (sales letters) online. And, just like the ultra-short copy suggested by the Internet Marketing Report article, long copy has its audience.
If you ask direct marketers, they’ll swear that the long, scrolling, often hype-filled sales letters are the end-all, be-all of copywriting. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. The same reasoning applies to those who say you must use a sales letter as opposed to those demanding short copy.
DISC Helps Us Understand
You may have heard of the DISC model that categorizes people into four primary groups (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance). There are others as well, including Myers-Briggs.
No matter how you group people, the point is that everyone is not the same.
So then, how can one style of copy possibly fit everyone? It doesn’t. There’s not a one-size-fits-all answer. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, you have to know your target audience and communicate with them in the way that they will be most receptive.
For instance, people high in Steadiness traits on the DISC model prefer longer copy. What’s more, those high in Steadiness make up over 40% of the population of the U.S. Those high in Compliance crave details. They, too, would want longer copy.
Dominance types want the bottom line first and possibly details later if they deem them necessary. And Influence? Those high in Influence move at the speed of light and make decisions on a whim. They aren’t much into details either.
Combine with these four styles the additional factors that being male or female add and you’ve really got your hands full. Want to get extremely precise? Toss in some persona/profile elements that deal with lifestyle, convictions and more. It’s enough to make your head spin at times.
Use Your Judgment
Before you buy into a blanket statement about consumers – whether it pertains to writing copy, setting prices or anything else – use your judgment. Does what’s being suggested really make sense for everybody? Is it possible that all people across the entire globe respond in the same way? No.
We all communicate differently. We shop differently. We make decisions based on different criteria. We respond to different stimuli. If there’s one common denominator, it is that we’re all different.
Looking for a better way to learn web copywriting? Karon’s SEO copywriting course teaches you how to improve conversions and rankings. Complete with assignments and feedback. Get the new 5th edition today at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.
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Thursday, January 22nd, 2009 It’s a very common problem that ![]()
tags have a title attribute set. This is against the W3C standard and so should be avoided – use the alt tag instead.
SiteCara.com has had the site audit functionality changed to include checks for this issue on all pages checked. If you want a swift rank or ranking at all you must comply with all standards
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Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 Daniel Silva asked me to comment on the SEOing of his site http://www.silvaheeren.com.
First impressions:
- His home page is about his firm. Who cares? Remember the world’s favorite radio stations WII FM – what’s in it for me? I would totally swap the site around and put services first and foremost and the ‘about us’ page as a footer nav.
- Light gray text on white background is difficult to read, give that more contrast.
- Links into the content are grouped at the bottom and not in the text where you’d except.
- Terms and conditions looks to be a contract – I would remove this as its irrelevant to someone visiting your site.
- Your portfolio pages look nice, why not use Ajax to replace the screenshots instead of refreshing the screen? Shows you know how to do some of the more modern programming techniques.
- No Web 2.0 on this site – comments, blog, reviews, videos.
So far no SEO comments, and that’s deliberate. SEO is as much about usability of a site as about minor tweaks to rank it. If the site is unusable then even if you have people land on your site they will not convert, therefore your SEO effort is wasted.
So as for the SEO:
- Revisit your keyword research and found out what people are searching for. Your site links are ‘brochure’ which is vague and could mean anything. ‘Travel Brochure’ is more descriptive but probably not a good term either. How about ‘brochure design’.
- Your portfolio pages contain minimal text, as spiders do not read images you need to add text to tell them what is on the page.
I ran it through sitecara.com and got the following errors:
- Code:1265: Robots.txt – No XML sitemaps defined.
- Code:1831: Both www and non-www URLs returned http code 200 – page found. (http://www.silvaheeren.com/ — http://silvaheeren.com/).
- Code:1480: No H1 tag on home page
- Code:1501: Too little text on this page – below 300 words. (179).
In addition I ran it through CSE HTML Validator and it had a lot of HTML errors, none major but should be fixed anyway.
Next steps:
- Address usability
- Re do keyword research, pick 10 or 20 terms you want to rank for. Add a localization to it for now i.e. instead of ‘webdesign’ use ‘webdesign miami’, smaller set of searches but more chance to be #1.
- Re optimize your site.
- Download CSE HTML Validator trial edition and validate your HTML. http://www.htmlvalidator.com/
- Add your site to Site Cara and run the site audit, fix any issues found.
- Add your keywords to Site Cara see where you rank now.
- Go out and get some links (a whole article in itself). Most web designers gain links from their client sites in the footer, these can really help.
Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 By Karon Thackston © 2009, All Rights Reserved
At this time of year, it’s hard to resist making predictions about what the coming days hold. Financial analysts, doctors, politicians and experts from virtually every industry in the world give insights into what they think may happen during the course of the next 12 months. Although my mother always warned me about following the crowd, I’ll chip my two cents into the pot anyway and give you a couple of predictions about the future of SEO copywriting.
Looking Back Before Gazing Forward
In the beginning was the word. The keyword, that is. And when it was placed into the keyword META tag of any web page, that page received high rankings. Then the Internet boom raged throughout Cybertown. It soon became a greater challenge to rank in the coveted top 10. Enter search engine copywriting.
As algorithms changed, a need arose to use keywords (and soon,
keyphrases) throughout a page’s copy in addition to its tag set.
Here’s where typical Internet behavior set in. The online marketing mindset that is so common took hold: If one is good – 1,000 is better. Well-meaning copywriters began to shove keyphrases into existing text willy-nilly. It didn’t take long before site owners and their customers began to baulk at the way SEO copywriting sounded.
But, with theories about keyword density and fears of keyword stuffing floating through Cyberspace, copywriters did their best to find balance.
Coming Full Circle
Due to unceasing demand by site owners for copy that sounded natural while still being optimized, SEO copywriters began to flush out ways to write content that didn’t sound “like that.”
And so, we came full circle – from virgin copy that was written exclusively for the site visitor to copy that was butchered horribly in the name of higher rankings to natural-sounding SEO copy that pleased everyone.
Seems as though all is well and SEO copywriting has settled into an acceptable balance, right? Yes. But other changes were taking place behind the scenes that should influence the future of SEO copy.
Search Engines Get New Skills
Along the way, Google and other engines have been picking up new skills for indexing and evaluating copy. Many years ago, Yahoo!
and other engines gained the ability to read PDF files. As time went on, SEO taboos – including frames and the dreaded Flash – became less fearsome as engines adapted, acquiring the technology to read these formats as well.
Prediction #1 about SEO copywriting is this: Search engines will begin to index the copy that is superimposed on the screen of videos, in video voiceovers and in audio clips. The technology actually already exists for the most part. Closed captioning for the hearing impaired could easily be adapted for this purpose. Search engine copywriters take note: You’ll soon be asked to write optimized voiceover and audio scripts.
Rather than simply optimizing the web page that hosts these files, the scripts themselves will require a search engine touch. This will make it all the more imperative that copy be written naturally. It is annoying enough to read something like
this:
Texas Web Design Firm in Dallas, Texas
Welcome to our Texas web design site. Our Texas web design staff is highly skilled in creating beautiful and functional sites. When you need a Texas web design firm to help build your Internet presence, one of our Texas web design specialists will be glad to speak with you.
Ugh! Can you just imagine having those words spoken as part of a voiceover? The old tip of reading your copy out loud to see how natural it sounds will absolutely become standard practice once scripts are indexed.
Prediction #2: Latent semantic indexing will continue to evolve, making the use of synonyms in SEO copy vital. Early in 2008, Google announced it was indexing synonyms (although not heavily from what I’ve seen). I think this practice will be put into full force in the next year or two. For example, we’ll begin to see results from a search for “handbags” that contain that term as well as “purse,” “pocketbook” and “bag.”
I also believe that Google and other search engines will consider the overall context of a page more, in addition to the keywords and phrases that are used. Hopefully this will alleviate much of the elementary SEO copywriting that goes on now. (See Texas example above.)
As with everything online, change is inevitable. While certain core practices and techniques will remain foundational to SEO copywriting, advancements in search technology and site visitor preferences will continue to alter the face of this copywriting niche. Adjust, adapt, advance!
See Karon Thackston live in Boston April 2-3, 2009. Get info at http://www.highrankings.com/seo-workshops Or buy Karon’s SEO copywriting course and learn at your own pace.
http://www.copywritingcourse.com
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