My short answer?

Forget about the search engines and start thinking about your customer.

To understand why, there’s a quick story for you, a list of fundamental questions you need to consider and then an outline of how you can tie it all together.

Quick story:

Once upon a time, Bluewire Media’s website was nowhere to be found on Google when you typed in “web design brisbane” – a pretty competitive keyword. This was not acceptable for a web strategy consultancy, so we set out to improve our ranking.

We used 2 sources: We posed a few questions to Reload Media and read Glenn Murray’s SEO Secrets e-book.

Armed with a better understanding of how the search engines worked, we were able to get to the first page of results. It was a good step but we still wanted #1.

We then focussed on “thinking like a publisher” courtesy of David Meerman Scott’s “The New Rules of Marketing and PR”. We co-created the Web Strategy Planning Template with him and started to share much more content with our audience. The number of our back links increased dramatically and from high quality web sites like News.com.au courtesy of journalists and other visitors finding our blog and content useful.

In the process, we saw major fluctuations of our rankings and our competitors’. Some websites that had been on the first page for years vanished to the anonymity of page 4 or 5. Our own ranking bounced around as Google changed their search algorithm with countless small tweaks and a couple of major overhauls.

Ultimately our ranking improved over a few months until we were #1 for “web design Brisbane” (where we stayed for 3 years) and quite a few others. We’ve recently dropped to #2 but that’s ok, we’ll be back (my logic is next).

It’s time to consider some fundamental questions:

Why does a person use a search engine?

To find information.

What then is the purpose of a search engine?

The sole purpose of a search engine is to help a searcher find the information they are looking for.

Why will a searcher return to use a search engine again?

A searcher will return if the results of their search are useful.

How will a searcher choose one search engine over another?

Primarily by the usefulness of the results. A secondary consideration is the speed of the delivery of those results.

How does a search engine make money?

By having searchers click on sponsored links or pay per click advertising. The more people search, the more likely they are to click on the paid links. The more often people search, the more often they will click on the paid links. The more often they click, the more money the search engine makes.

Who is the searcher?

The searcher is YOUR customer, YOUR prospect, YOUR future No.1 referrer, a journalist looking for a good story in YOUR industry. The list goes on.

So if the searcher wants useful results and the search engines make money by delivering useful results, what do you think will drive your business’s long term search engine rankings?

USEFULNESS, to your customer or buyer persona, in everything you do on the web will drive your long term search engine rankings.

How can you do this?

• By genuinely knowing your customer or buyer persona.
• By understanding your customers’ problems and providing great content to help them solve it.
• By structuring your web strategy around your searcher or buyer persona not around your products (try using our web strategy planning template if you need help).
• By knowing what they a looking for and knowing what they are typing into the search engines and using their language, not some mumbo jumbo, jargon filled rubbish.
• By providing such interesting/useful/entertaining/valuable content that people will link to it and share it – thereby building QUALITY back links that create long term sustainable rankings, not junk links from an unrelated forum.
• By building content so it will be picked up not just by your customers but by journalists who will share it with a larger audience.
• By having landing pages that your customers find useful and that are relevant to what they are looking for.
• By refreshing your content regularly to demonstrate that you care about the issues your customers are facing.

Yes there is a place for Search Engine Optimisation to achieve short term results using technical changes, backlinking and other techniques. But do you seriously think trying to keep up with every change made to the ultra secret search engine algorithm by Google’s 31,000 employees (qualified by this type of entry exam) is a sustainable strategy?

Their algorithms are going to continue to refine, to reduce the impact of technical details like metadata, to build in the social proof as demonstrated by the number of tweets and likes and comments and check-ins and reviews and ratings and quality of authorship….. Then the next big thing will come along and swamp everything we know about today and demand more change from our businesses.

But the one thing you can count on is that search engines servicing their customers will be at the heart of it.

Don’t waste your time trying to keep up with every tweak made by collective brain power of the world’s best and brightest – get the basics right and then focus on your customer. If what you do is in their best interests, if you’re genuinely adding value with everything you do, then you can be sure the search engines will catch up and reward you handsomely for it.

So… what do you think? Is SEO dead?

Stephen Fry Kinetic Typography – Language from Matthew Rogers on Vimeo.

TOO PEDANTIC FOR WORDS

Sadly, I doubt Stephen Fry would like me. In his tirade against the hounds of the English language, he chides Lynne Truss with her grammar and punctuation book “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”. And sure enough, it stands—straight and tall on my book shelf—daring me to be a pedant.

RELAXING AROUND LANGUAGE

Instead of strangling the English language or being afraid to be creative, Fry wishes we would all relax a little. And if you don’t have time (or an object of affection) for his suggestion of love letters and poems, how about using his advice to spice up your copy, or your blog, or an advertisement or presentation?

CONTEXT, CONVENTION AND CIRCUMSTANCE

Fry isn’t advocating a free-for-all. To him, it comes down to one simple rule, which works just as well for website copy as it does for writing a resume or a birthday card: “context, convention and circumstance are all.”

What is the most appropriate, effective way to get your message across? Consider the language that best conveys simplicity or reliability or authenticity. Consider how to convey to readers your excitement (a new product), knowledge (how you can help) or delight (the winning of an award.)

IS SHOWING OFF THE BEST MEDICINE?

What better way to show off knowledge of your own company than with a little verbal fashion parade? Take some new words for a spin down the catwalk. See what they can do for you. Buy them a drink. It’s not showing off if you’re showing them a good time.

GETTING NOTICED

Conventional wisdom says that fantastic copy is copy so brilliant that it isn’t noticed at all. But I agree with Fry on a lot of points: being subtle or unobtrusive shouldn’t border on boring. It seems nothing would be worse to Fry than copy that is mediocre or stale. Like that other master of the English language, Oscar Wilde, said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

Picture an old man who is blind and begging for money. His cardboard sign reads “I’m BLIND, please HELP.”

He gets a few coins from passers-by. Then a girl walks past, flips the cardboard sign around and writes a new message on the back.  The coins now come flooding in.

The blind beggar asks what she’s done.  In her thick Scottish accent, she explains,  ”I wrote the same….  but different words.”

What did the new cardboard sign say….?  “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.”

Remember as David Meerman Scott says, “on the web you ARE what you publish.”  Make sure the words you choose to publish are as powerful as they can be.

A big thank you to Andrea Gardner from the UK’s online content specialists, Purple Feather for this video. You can follow @purplecontent on twitter.

And thanks to our sales mentor Dave Stanley for bringing it our attention!

Glenn Murray does it with kangaroos, but it could be with anything. Try it with ice-cream, or cars. Coffee or air conditioning. If you want visitors to find your website (and find it remarkable), you need to write copy that helps them find you. Relevant, quality content and strategic, key words act as signals for your readers. And if signals are important for humans, they are doubly important for Google.

Google Knows Murray

When it comes to Google (and quite a few other things), Glenn Murray knows what he’s talking about. The Sydney-based copywriter has lent his expertise to some leading companies to enhance their search engine rankings, and has risen to become one of Google’s top ranked copywriters. And now, there’s a new ebook.

Practical SEO Copywriting

by Glenn Murray

The book begins with the kangaroo experiment: a speedy, rolling page of text impossible to comprehend. In the following pages, Murray outlines how to take an enormous number of ideas (your ideas about what you want to say to your readers) and refine them to direct clients to your website. For example, a page relevant to Google will feature lots of “kangaroos”, as well as “marsupial”, “wallaby” and “roo”.

Smart Readers

Rightly, Murray warns against liberally applying your key word to each and every page (not too many kangaroos, thank you.) Savvy readers can spot the difference between relevance and overload. The golden rule? For good copy, always have your reader in mind. As Murray puts it, “visitors buy; search engines don’t”.

Give Google a Hand

Murray admits that Google is smart, but “it’s nowhere near as smart as a human visitor.” Google can’t infer or “make sense of pictures, colours or music.” So it needs help. Google needs help to recognise the things it cares about: inbound links that indicate your popularity, frequently used words, headings, bulleted and numbered lists, links, bolded, italicised and underlined words. Murray’s tips come in a clear, conversational style that’s easy on the jargon.

Ignoring the Search Engines (for a bit)

Choose keyword frequency over keyword density. Like Sarah McVeigh showed in last week’s Weekly Round-Up, try running one of your pages through Wordle. How happy are you with the words that appear frequently?

Murray’s book proves that where the copy goes, the visitor will follow.

Want to know more?

You can follow @divinewrite on twitter. Practical SEO Copywriting is available from Glenn Murray’s website for $39.97 USD.  You can find out the lot and write quality copy like Glenn’s.

Why I like it
What I like about this ebook is that it starts off by encouraging you to know your audience, brand, objectives & keywords – BEFORE you start!  This is an absolute must but too frequently overlooked by many first time bloggers.   These ideas from the “Before you start” section of the ebook are very much aligned with what we encourage in Bluewire’s One Page Web Strategy Plan.

Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers

The best bit  (see p44)
For me, the real value of Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers is that it gives you a complete list of how to avoid making of all those annoying, little spelling & grammatical errors we always make!

You know the ones:

“your” vs “you’re”
“its” vs “it’s”
“there” vs “their” vs “they’re”
“effect” vs “affect”
“then” vs “than”
“lay” vs “lie”
“to” vs “too”
“XYZ is” vs “XYZ are”
“complements” vs “compliments”
“licence” vs “license”

In 2 weeks, Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers will be selling for $29.97 USD but as a launch offer the guys are offering this ebook for $9.97 USD.

For me it is excellent value at either price point. I use it & highly recommend it!

So what would’ve earnt Copywriting Scorecard for Blogger a 5 our of 5?  Well it would be ideal if it came with web application where you could copy & paste your blog article or URL and it would produce the report card for you!

And it would’ve earned a bonus half a point if it told me the difference between “earnt” vs “earned”?

*****
If you’re keen to see follow genuinely great bloggers, read Glenn Murray’s copywriting blog – DivineWrite and Darren Rowse’s blogging blog ProBlogger.  Great work Glenn & Darren!

Copywriting Brisbane: And if you’d prefer an additional helping hand with your blogging, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394 & we’ll apply the scorecard for you.

Writing well still the key

Since the mechanised printing press was invented in the early nineteenth century, the
writer’s craft has been crucial for communicating with mass audiences. With the
emergence of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s—and the proliferation of web
sites, blogs, and social networking—society is more text-dependent than ever.
Organisational writers today must be technologically savvy or willing to learn.
Entrenched Luddites need not apply.

The initialism-infused digital age of URL, HTML, PDF, RSS, and SEO can be a
confusing place for people who grew up before the advent of new media—those who
e-learning specialist Marc Prensky has dubbed ‘digital immigrants’. (For the uninitiated,
the above initials denote Uniform Resource Locator, HyperText Mark-up Language,
Portable Document Format, Really Simple Syndication, and Search Engine Optimisation
respectively. For clarification of these terms, please see the Internet.)

Twentysomething Sarah McVeigh is a ‘digital native’, someone for whom personal
computers, e-mail, and the Internet have always been an integral part of life. As a
copywriter for Bluewire Media, a web-strategy firm in Brisbane, McVeigh says that, no
matter what medium you are writing for, the reader must come first. “You need to give
people valuable information.”

With this first principle in mind, there are distinct considerations that arise when writing
for the web, such as optimising text for search engines. Search engines—Google being
the behemoth—are computer programs that sort through large amounts of web-site text to
find keywords, which are then indexed. When someone types specific words into Google,
it checks these against its keyword indexes and the best matches are returned as ranked
hits. Search engine optimisation means including keywords in web copy to move a web
site up a search engine’s ranking.

“You need to always have SEO in mind and always be writing with search engines as a
priority but it’s really important to only ever put it second. Your web site exists for the
human visitor and you can’t lose sight of that. When you go to web sites that are so
stuffed with keywords—because they want Google to find them—you just click straight
off them because they’re not valuable to you. A search engine won’t buy your product; a
search engine won’t engage with you,” McVeigh says emphatically.

People read on screen differently than they read material printed on paper, skimming
rather than reading closely. The presence of images, pop-ups, and hyperlinks encourages
non-linear reading. For this reason, scannability—using headings, bullet points, and short
sentences—is important.

McVeigh advocates brevity. “People have ever-shorter attention spans and you are
competing with the rest of the web for somebody’s attention. You have to be concise and
grab the reader quickly so you don’t lose out to this other site over here. I suggest you
leave long-winded prose at the door. It really doesn’t have a place on the Internet,” she
says.

“For other writing—for a magazine feature, for example—you can paint a picture and
then go into the specifics. You don’t have the flexibility to do that when writing for the
web. Lower down in the site hierarchy you can … but on that home page you’ve got to
say who you are, what you’re offering, and where [the reader] can find the information
required.”

So do grammar rules still apply to the World Wide Web, or can writers be a little more
‘creative’? “I think they should apply. Grammar is very important. Organisations want
their web sites to be professional. They don’t want their branding to go out the window.
With blogs, you can be a little less formal and the writer can use their own voice, be more
colloquial. But I don’t think the web is an excuse for sloppiness,” she says.

At Bluewire Media, McVeigh’s workdays are spent creating copy for clients’ web sites,
re-writing—which she describes as “webifying”—supplied content, and writing articles
for Bluewire’s blog. She says that she uses her own writing style only for the blog. “You
use lots of headings, bolding, bullet points, and image captions when writing for the web.
It’s very different to how you’d write for an offline publication. For the blog, the style is
conversational. I’m discussing things, such as SEO, that people may not be clued in on,
so I write it in a way that they would understand. That casual style is mine. The actual
structure of web copywriting is a learned thing, as opposed to a style thing.”

McVeigh, who aims to become a professional journalist after completing her Bachelor of
Journalism degree at Queensland University of Technology, is finding her courses
relevant to her part-time copywriting role. “They go hand-in-hand. My degree covers
sub-editing, search engine optimisation, the use of blogs, and having a real understanding
for writing for the web, as opposed to, say, writing for a newspaper.”

For organisational writers taking their first steps into the unknown world of the web,
there are resources available. McVeigh suggests Glenn Murray’s e-books on SEO
copywriting, which are available online. “Glenn Murray’s e-books are really insightful.
He was a technical writer before he was a web copywriter so he knows how to explain
things.”

Murray majored in English literature and linguistics at university and describes himself as
“no techo” who, accordingly, understands “the importance of explaining things in
layperson’s terms”. His e-books cover strategies to increase a web site’s search engine
ranking, but not at the expense of readability. Like McVeigh, he emphasises writing
helpful content. “If you write for your reader first, and you do focus on quality, you’ll
find you won’t have to do much optimisation of your copy at all.”

The World Wide Web is the new ascendant. Although the medium has changed in the
two centuries since the mechanised printing press revolutionised mass communication,
the principles of good writing have not. Effective communication through the written
word still connects the writer and the reader. Nevertheless, organisational writers have
additional factors to contend with in the digital age. For McVeigh, writing for the web
presents one unique challenge. “Not being distracted by the Internet,” she laughs.

As a writer, I see my way around a fair few of the things, but today I was reminded of how few of the words on a page we actually read.

People scan to a certain extent when reading books, identifying key words and then automatically linking them together to form meaning – but on the web it’s a whole new story.

I wondered what amount of copy on a website actually gets read, so I ventured into the Googlesphere to investigate.

Over at Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox I read a study that suggests that site visitors actually only pick up on 28 per cent of words on a page – at best. (A more likely figure is 20 per cent.)

Now, blogs and articles are obviously a different story – you’re targeting a smaller, more interested  niche. But when it comes to general web copy, it’s time to cut down.

It’s been standard practice to write concisely for the web since day dot com, but how to do this and still get the message across can be less straight forward.

Here are three tips on how to emphasize the important bits when you’re contending with an average visiting time of 4.4 seconds per 100 words:

1. Use your site hierarchy as a guide

• Keep landing page copy very limited. Think of it as a place to greet your audience and offer them a menu.
• The next level of pages in the site hierarchy can have more information, but don’t go overboard! Here, you’re dividing your audience into sections.
• If your visitors click through to another level, it’s obvious they are more interested in finding detailed information. Now, it’s time to provide it.

Glenn Murray gives the following guide for word count:

• 100-150 words for a homepage – it’s important for most valuable information to be “above the fold” (in view without needing to scroll down),
• 250-500 words for pages lower in the site hierarchy – this might include product or service pages or “about us” pages; and
• 300-1000 words for blog posts

2. Use sign posts

If you’re telling someone how to get somewhere, you’ll give them some landmarks or sign posts to look out for so they know they’re on the right track. Do this with your writing, by making the important bits stick out. Here’s how:

• Bold
• Headings
• Bullet points

These devices break up the copy and make it easier to read. What’s more Google uses bold words, headings and bullet points as important sign posts too!

3. Be conversational

Your tone will be somewhat dictated by the topic of your website, however writing for the web affords you a bit of linguistic leeway. Even if it’s a corporate website, a personal, easy-to-approach feel is going to keep your visitors around longer.

If you’ve got 4.4 seconds to start a conversation you don’t start with jargon or wordsthatarejusttoolongthatpeoplecan’tbebotheredreading.

Instead, you say hello and hand over a menu. That’s service.

Twitter Grader:

Blog Grader: supposedly judges your blog according to length of posts, frequency of posts, reading time per post, but it was a bit difficult to make sense of the results.  It gave us a 21 (but didn’t say what it was out of…) so I left a bit confused. http://blog.grader.com

Website Grader: assesses content, site structure, inbound links, traffic, social popularity, readability and frequency of updates to give you a rating out of 100.  Bluewire ranked quite well for this and got 98.4/100. http://websitegrader.com

Gobbledy Gook Grader: was invented by David Meerman Scott as a tool to assess whether your copy contained any over-used, cliched, jargon or hype filled words — aka goggledy gook!  Luckily we got a score of 100/100 for our home page copy.  http://gobbledygook.grader.com

How does your website fare…?

PS. Since first drafting this article, I’ve discovered that these tools are provided by Hubspot. Interestingly, their CEO is Brian Halligan – author or Inbound Marketing – the next book on my “to read” list since it was recommended by both David Meerman Scott and Verne Harnish.  Small world.

Managed Web Strategy: If you’d like to get your Grader scores up in the  nineties, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394

Reality Marketing is based on adding an extra step to the marketing cycle – Lieberman & Keiles argue that going straight from an ad to a sale just isn’t realistic anymore. Instead, it takes more to take the cake: Mix advertising, public relations & referrals, add a free resource, and then go for the sale.

Customers want more bang for their buck than ever before, and the Reality Marketing crew say that you won’t be in for a chance until you stop talking about yourself & start focusing on the needs & wants of your customer.

Self focussed marketing strategies, (think “we’ve been in business for 75 years” or “we’re family owned & operated”) don’t address the customer’s needs. And whilst you may feel sentimental about your own family operated business, chances are customers won’t.

Instead they care about themselves. What makes their lives easier.

What to do?

First, you need to get to know your customers. Find out what their problems are & work out how to fix them. Then rethink & rewrite.

Take your sales copy – whether it be on your website or in a flyer or newsletter, & circle all the times you talk about your own business in red. Words like “we”, “us” and even your company name. Then, circle every time you refer to the customer in blue.

If your marketing material is dominated by red circles you know you’re not solving the customers’ problems. More blue circles on the other hand, means that you’re talking to your customers, you understand their problems & you know exactly how to fix them.

Sounds better, right?

Copywriting Brisbane: If you would like effective sales copy for your website, blog or e-newsletter get in touch with Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

When I interviewed Sarah about what she does, I found that she has great insight into the world of copywriting, but also that these skills can be applied to any area of writing.

What is so good about Copywriting?

Sarah has always loved writing of every kind and found throughout her schooling that it was a skill that came fairly naturally. There are lots of different areas of writing to master, so it’s always suitably challenging and you can move smoothly across a wide variety of media and careers. The mark of a good journalist is that you can write well about a whole range of things.

For Sarah, writing is all about taking an idea and then figuring out how to communicate it to an audience in the best possible way. Writing for web is just a new challenge and an exciting new area to tap in to.

How did you get involved in Copywriting?

When Bluewire was looking for a candidate for a Sales and Marketing position, Sarah applied because she had some marketing experience and was looking for a job that wasn’t hospitality. During her interview Sarah revealed that her passion was not so much for marketing, but for writing. Adam and Toby were so impressed that they created the new role of Copywriter.

Sarah set to work reading up on writing for web and SEO and steadily worked her way through her first project. And from there continued to grow in skill and professionalism.

What are the top 3 things that someone should know in order to be successful in Copywriting?

1. You need to have a direction in mind before you start writing – it’s important to know what you want your work to achieve.
2. Use language and tone which is suitable for the topic and the audience.
3. Edit your work a million times.

What is the best way to get started?

Keep a blog. This is a really good way to practice writing work that can be openly scrutinised. A blog is also a great ready-made example of your work that you can show to people.

Can you think of anyone who has set a good example or given good copywriting advice?

Glenn Murray, the author of SEO Secrets, is a Copywriter who managed to work his way to the top of the Google listing for search terms “seo copywriter”, “website copywriter,” “advertising copywriter” and very impressively, “copywriter.”

His book and his blog are great resources for writing search engine optimised web content specifically, but also general copywriting tips.

If you had one secret to give about Copywriting, what would it be?

The secret is that there are no secrets – everything you need to know is easily (and often freely) available on blogs etc.
Success in this area all comes down to practice and a certain amount of natural ability.

What sort of things can someone do to stay on top?

The most important thing is practice. Also keep on top of what other people are doing – blogs, books, workshops etc. Having a mentor is a good idea as well.

Can you recommend any further reading?

• Divine Write
• The Copywriter Underground
• Good Copywriting
• copyblogger