Professional Copywriter Provides Tips: Website Source’s First Guest Blogger

Editor’s note: Up until now, the content of the Website Source blog has been written and edited in-house. Today, we open up our blog to Paul Lalley, a professional website copywriter who offers some writing tips from the professional’s point of view.

Web Hosting Blog Provides Tips from Guest Blogger

Tips From a Web Copy Professional: First, I’d Like to Apologize…

Paul Lalley

Before I begin, I owe you all an apology. I’m a web copywriter and, yes, I’m responsible for some of the hard sell copy that litters the cyber landscape, and for this I am truly sorry. It’s a way to pay my mortgage. Any way, I want to provide some tips for writing good web copy. Think of it as a peace offering. And if you keep these suggestions close at hand, maybe, together, we can stamp out the mind chatter that clutters the web.

Okay, tip number one: Write like you talk. You don’t say “I will be right back.” You say “I’ll be right back.” The difference is subtle but it comes down to this – write words people hear and don’t write words that people read.

“You will learn all the secrets of….” No.

“You’ll discover the secrets of…” Yes.

Tip number two: Write in the present tense. Which of the following sentences is more compelling:

“You will see revenues double when you use our software.”

Or

“Your revenues double when you use our software.”

The first sample is written in future tense, “You will see…” Kind of tepid when compared against the present tense, “Your revenues double…” Present tense makes your site text more compelling, immediate and actionable – and that’s what you want your site text to do: command action. This helps.

Tip number three: Don’t write about features, write about benefits. Features don’t sell but benefits do. Who cares about the horsepower of the “New LawnTrac Mower?” Only lawn mower fanatics. However, if you point out that the mower cuts in half the time to undertake this loathsome chore, that’s a benefit any weekend warrior will appreciate. In turn, you’ll sell more lawn mowers.

Tip number four: Make liberal use of headlines. Headlines should be intriguing, intriguing enough to compel the site visitor to stop to read more. Use headlines to point the spotlight on the benefits of your product or services and be sure to use important keywords in these “big and bold” letter strings.

They attract human visitors’ attention, and they identify important text to search engine spiders, so by including keywords in headlines, you provide the mindless search engine bot with more easily interpreted data to ensure that your website is accurately indexed back at search engine HQ.

Tip five: Forget SEO. Write for SEM.

Frankly, I think the relevance of search engine optimization is highly over-rated. Even if you optimize your site to the max, you’ll still show up on page 23 of Google’s search engine results pages and when was the last time you clicked that deep conducting a search. Like never?

SEO text is written for search engine spiders NOT human beings. I hate it, but it is a necessary evil until search engines become smarter. SEO text follows a specific formula: five out of each 100 words must be keywords (keyword density), keywords must appear in the first sentence of each paragraph, keywords must appear in headlines and on and on. These restrictions limit the creativity of the writer who writes words for bots not humans.

SEO is one small part of search engine marketing and given the growing interconnectivity now found on the web, it’s just as likely that a visitor will find your site via syndicated content, an RSS (remote site syndication) feed or a paid link (pay-per click or PPC advertising). That’s why SEO is losing relevance. Unless your site is listed on the first or second page of the SERPs, you won’t see much organic site traffic – traffic driven by the links that appear on the left side of any SERP.

Your site text should appease search engine spiders and you should try to adhere to SEO writing conventions - web hosting provider tips. But here’s the thing: don’t be bound by them. The rule of thumb 5% keyword density dictum can be modified to produce text that describes your site to spiders but also converts visitors to buyers. Remember, humans buy. Bots don’t.

Tip Six: Make every word count. Which is more compelling?

Learn the secrets of micro-cap investing

or

Discover the secrets of micro-cap investing

“Learn” sounds dull and boring – a lot like school. “Discovery” is rich with possibilities.

Site text should be friendly and useful – serve a purpose. And it should be kept to the absolute minimum. The days of the endless hyperbole and inaccessible use of text sizing in the typical long-form sales letter are over.

Today’s user wants the who, what, where, when and why now. So, if it isn’t absolutely necessary, redline it and make every word count.

And finally, copywriting tip seven: End each sales component with a call to action. The call to action should be instructional, directing the site visitor to take a specific action. The call to action should, again, be based on benefits to the end user. NOT product features. Which is more important to you, the hypothetical, independent website builder?

This program cuts hand-coding costs by 90%!

or

Designed to Function on Most Networks

Did somebody say something about a 90% percent cut in hand-coding costs? The feature may be a selling point but it’s no where near as compelling as the benefit. And that’s our job – to compel site visitors to take action.

Thank you for taking a moment to read my suggestions and, again, apologies.

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