SEO website copywriting continues to develop each and every day.  As more people turn to the internet to find local services, more and more companies are relying on their organic search engine results for a higher percentage of sales. This will ensure that search engine copywriting will continue to be in demand.

Why?

The number of searches done on the Internet is in the hundreds of billions annually and it is much harder for your website to be ranked highly without being optimised for the search engines.

The number of pages on the Internet has grown to over 4 billion so increasing importance has been placed upon the fact that your web page is easy to search and is indexed by search engines.  Of course, you can buy traffic to come to your website but you’ll be missing out on an important piece of the sales ‘pie’ by not focusing on organic traffic.

How?

To get your website indexed within the search engines, you must have original content that is in high demand.  The search engine spiders are looking for many different factors but the key is your website’s content. The information must be valuable both to the search bots so they index you as well as to your readers.

This post has given you an overview of why SEO copywriting for your website is so important. For more information about SEO, take a look at SEO, Keywords and Stuff – 3 Golden Rules.

Sally Ormond, freelance copywriter and internet marketer.

For your sales writing to have an impact on your reader, it has to be interesting. The best way to do that is to speak directly to your reader and don’t lecture them – and keep your writing active. Not sure what I mean? Read on and all will become clear.

What do I mean by keeping your copywriting active? Well, I don’t mean filling it with adjectives which simply increases your word count without actually adding any value.

Still not sure?

Think back to the best years of your life – your school days (well, apparently they were the best years of your life, although I’m not entirely sure that applies to every single year of my academic youth). What did your English teacher constantly bang on about?

“Verbs are ‘doing’ words”

Like a stick of rock, if you cut open a freelance copywriter (not that I am suggesting for one second that you should) those words will go right the way through them.

Just as they were in fiction, verbs are important in your sales writing. They drive your writing; they make it active and vigorous. Copywriters love verbs.

But there is a tendency in some in-house copy to turn perfectly good verbs into nouns.

I think an illustration is required:

Nouns

“Our specialization is the provision of high quality IT solutions” (10 words, 55 characters)

Verbs

“We specialize in solving IT problems” (6 words, 31 characters)

I think that speaks for itself. So remember keep your copywriting active – it will have a much greater impact.

Briar Copywriting’s Sally Ormond is a professional freelance copywriter who offers a comprehensive range of copywriting services to businesses and individuals across all industry sectors.

First things first, if you are writing a sales letter, your attention grabber is an effective headline. If you are writing an email then it is the subject line.

For the purpose of this article I shall be looking at writing a sales letter. Your headline will be at the top of your letter but, to create instant impact, it can also be on your envelope as this will be your first opportunity to grab the attention of your reader.

So what type of headline works best?

• One giving news?
• One promising a benefit?
• One that arouses curiosity?

One that sells or promises benefit will always be a winner, but the most powerful one is the one that is a combination of all three.

If you are stuck for ideas try starting it with ‘How’ or ‘Now’:

‘How this copywriter will increase your sales conversion rate’

‘Now, even better quality, even lower prices’

One tip is to come up with several headlines and then pick the best one. You may find that different ideas occur to you at different times in the writing process.

Forget the full stop

Never, never, never end your headline with a full stop.

Why? Well, what does a full stop tell your reader to do? That’s right, stop reading – that is last thing that you want to happen.

How long should it be?

Quite simply, as long as is necessary to get your message across. But be sensible. A headline that goes on forever will be a complete turn-off.

So that about wraps up how to grab your readers’ attention. If you have any other ideas why not post a comment? It would be great to hear someone else’s take on this.

Sally Ormond

As a professional website copywriter, SEO copywriter and advertising copywriter, Sally Ormond has extensive experience in B2B and B2C copywriting markets. She can be contacted at +44(0)1449 779605 or at sally@briarcopywriting.com for any copywriting project you may have.

Guess what? People don’t like sales letters and mail shots. They see them as an intrusion and believe that their only benefit is that they can be recycled and made into something more useful.

It doesn’t matter how long you spend writing that letter, if it is unsolicited it is unlikely to be read. So what have you got to do to grab your reader’s attention? Well that’s simple, write the best sales letter known to man.

The quality of your letter begins even before you have opened a new blank document. Let me ask you a question; before you write do you sit down and work out a plan? You would be surprised at the number of people who don’t. Think back to your school days, I bet your teacher always told you to plan your essays and when you finally took that advice your grades began to rise. So why not do the same for your sales writing? Let’s face it writing without a plan is rather like wading through treacle.

Remember, whatever you write must evolve around your reader. Think about who they are, what makes them tick, where they shop, what is their lifestyle like in fact create a picture of them in your mind.

Now think about this:

• Who am I writing to? – this is your ideal reader, you know, the image that is now in your head
• What do I want to say? – focus on your reader’s needs not yours
• How much space do I have? – know your word count before you start
• How do I want to come across? – friendly, approachable, authoritative, unbiased…
• What’s my deadline? – always important to know
• What do I want to achieve?

The last one is the holy grail of your letter. Is your letter designed to make your reader change their mind about something? Do you want to motivate them into an action? Do you want them to buy something?

Your plan is taking shape. You know who they are, you know what you want them to do, now you can tell them why your product/service is right for them and what it will do for them (the benefits) and you know how to tell them what to do next (call to action).

There, that wasn’t so hard after all. Planning is important. If you are time-limited it is tempting to skip it and dive in – be warned, you will do so at your peril and your letter will be turned into a paper cup.

Sally Ormond

Freelance Copywriter

If you have been involved in the making of a product or service, the chances are you think it is the best thing since sliced bread. You have nurtured it from the initial brain storming sessions and through its infancy. You were there smoothing out the troublesome teenage problems until a fully matured product emerged. In fact you are so close to it, all you can see are its features and that will be all you want to talk about.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing because we all want to know what something can do. But if you want to be a great sales writer you must understand that what the potential reader/buyer wants to know is how it is going to benefit them. What is it going to do for them? Why should they spend their hard earned cash on your particular product or service?

For example, you have made a pair of football boots, your sales copy reads like this:

• They are made from a unique leather 
• They have titanium tipped studs
• They come in a range of colours
• They mould to your foot

What is your reader going to think? Shall I tell you? They’ll say ‘so what?’ turn over the page and start reading the latest celebrity gossip.

Now if you sold them on the basis that by wearing your football boots your customer would become a better football player, that is a benefit. The features will help your buyer rationalise their buying decision but it is the benefit that will get him to pull his wallet out.

People want to know WHY they should buy something, not WHAT they are buying.

Sally Ormond

Freelance Copywriter