The dos and don’ts of SEO copywriting

Are you worried about ranking behind your competitors when people do a Google search on your industry? You’re certainly not the only one! Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a crucial tool to put companies directly in front of their audience, first.

Optimised copy answers the search intent of your audience while remaining readable and natural. The days of simplistic Google algorithms to determine the ranking of search query pages are gone, but many old SEO myths are still going strong. The ranking system has become more intelligent and complex to display the most relevant and high-quality copy first.

If you are thinking about writing your own copy rather than using professional copywriting services, we have prepared a list of tips for creating your own content.

DON’T keyword-stuff your copy

Many site owners believe that creating a relevant web page for a search query requires stuffing your copy to the brim with a target keyword as much as possible. Of course, your page needs to contain relevant target keywords, but sentence after sentence with the same word looks ridiculous and certainly makes for bad reading! Potential clients don’t respond to poor quality writing, and neither does Google.

DON’T write unnecessary copy.

It may seem that in order to cover all points of relevance to your audience, you have to write a lot of copy. Google does value in-depth copy, but you have to keep your audience in mind. Readers respond to compelling, well-thought-out text that gets to the point. If they see an overwhelming amount of copy, they might choose not to read it at all! Whether it’s a blog post or a landing page, make your copy comprehensive, succinct and genuinely enjoyable to read.

DON’T include hidden blocks of text with SEO keywords.

The ‘SEO trap’ is a common technique, but in truth, it is a waste of time and resources. The smarter Google gets, the more it values transparency!

DO take the time to understand your audience.

You can incorporate all the SEO techniques you like, but if your copy and entire website aren’t as relevant to your target audience as possible, you will not generate the traffic or leads you are hoping for.

To craft your website content to reach your ideal customer, consider what they want from your product or service. What tone are they expecting? What problems are they looking to solve? What information do they need to see on your web page in order to make contact or hit the purchase button? The more you understand your consumer, the better you can create copy that satisfies the search queries they make, and therefore rank your website highly.

DO incorporate Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

LSI keywords are semantically related to your main keyword. A lot of people think LSI keywords are synonyms. Synonyms are useful LSI keywords, but LSI incorporates all keywords frequently found together because they share the same context.

For example, ‘Apple’ and ‘iPhone’ and ‘smartphone’ are LSI keywords. However, ‘apple’, ‘juicy’ and ‘orchard’ are also LSI keywords; LSI ensures that the search query display shows pages relevant to the industry and topic your audience is looking for. Incorporating LSI, therefore, helps you better serve your user search intent.

Overtly stuffing your content with LSI keywords will, again, have you penalised by Google. Use them to help you rank, but do not let them interfere with the quality of your content. The idea of LSI is that you would naturally include the keywords as you write. You still need to create high-quality, well-written copy, but definitely with LSI keywords in mind.

Incorporating SEO into copy can take a lot of research and time – it’s completely normal to not know where to start! SEO research is particularly complex when it comes to small, niche (and therefore low search volume) businesses and products. To get it right first time and ensure the best results possible, you can bring in SEO and copy experts to optimise your site. At Creative Content, we use in-depth processes and advanced keyword research techniques to make your site as ‘optimal’ as can be!

The Creative Content process:

As a professional web copywriting agency, we make it our priority to create informative and inspiring website copy for our clients. We share our exact process for you so you can understand what is needed to complete a comprehensive plan for your business web content writing.

First, we need to understand your business including the services, the people and the company ethos. To do this we have developed a web copy questionnaire. Our goal is to understand what is unique about your business and the priorities of your potential clients. This helps us map your customer journey. We want to know how well-informed your customers are about your product or service before they visit your site, and what types of keywords you can think of that they would search to find you.

For particularly niche businesses, we have developed even more in-depth questionnaire to help web content writers create content specific to your very narrow audience. At this stage, we also do an analysis into the customer state of awareness about your product or service. For example; are your customers problem aware, but not solution aware? If so, we need to spend time explaining how your products solve their problem.

As part of our copywriting services, we use the questionnaires and work further alongside you to create the value proposition for your business. In essence, we identify why and how your customers would say ‘yes’ to your offer, and craft a succinct key message that often appears as a major heading on your home page, so readers are clear on the value of your business from the outset.

Armed with new knowledge about your business, we then utilise SEO software tools to generate target keywords and LSI keywords for you.

We follow proven structure elements that make your site easy to navigate and optimise it for search.

The ideal web copy structure

Headings that name the product in a way your target readers will understand.

Sub-headings briefly describing the benefit of the product to your market.

Summaries providing all essential information about your product. These have to be extremely well-crafted, as often people won’t read beyond summaries! The text needs to address the problem your product solves and why yours the best solution.

Quotes from you showing the human side of your company and the ethos behind your service.

Customer quotes describing how they experienced the benefits of your product – we help collect these testimonials.

Calls-to-action that encourage and provide avenues for readers to take the next step. In order to get more conversions, you need to get more potential customers to carry out a specific decision on your website. Usually, that action revolves around accepting an offer or contacting you.

We discuss our SEO copywriting strategy further here.

SEO copywriting is crucial to making your small business site as visible to your potential customers as possible. Correctly implemented techniques generate a surprising amount of traffic and leads for your website. You’ll be quickly convinced by the results of your new SEO strategy!

If you’d like to discuss SEO copywriting with us further, or find out how our professional copywriters can help you, get in touch with us.

Check out our other tips for small business marketing here.

How Content Marketing Creates Leads

Marketing in 2019 is impossible without great content.

As a marketer, I see my clients struggling to identify where they should spend their energy (and budget) to get digital leads, especially if they have a B2B service.

Marketing is becoming increasingly complex, with a range of platforms to choose from to speak to your audience.

Is your business still supposed to be posting on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram? What type of content should you share? How does creating social content actually generate leads?

As a forward-thinking entrepreneur, you know there has to be a better way.

Enter content marketing.

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach. It focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action.

Content marketing aligns with the new ways people engage with brands and content and develop brand loyalty. It’s integrated, intelligent, and customer-centric.

With content marketing you’re not simply pitching your products or services in traditional marketing copy. You’re providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects to help them solve their issues.

In some ways it is similar to what we see with the rise of the “freemium” product model. Now that people can access high-quality free advice and content online, it won’t cut the mustard to simply promote how great your product or service is. Your content needs to put your customer’s concerns first. This is especially important in light of the way Google serves any search query with the most relevant answers; your content needs to be accurately centring your customer’s questions if you want to appear on their Google search results.

Content marketing works to build the respect and admiration of your audience, but this will take time. First you need to earn their trust. You need to prove you have the relevant knowledge and (even more importantly) that you have integrity. Then you can become a guiding light that people turn to for authority in the noise of too much available information.

The authority you gain then transfers to your products or services, making customers that much more likely to choose you over the competition.

Regardless of what type of marketing tactics you use, content marketing should be part of your process, not something separate. Because of the complexities of the communication strategy required, it’s also something that I would recommend that you engage a content marketing agency to do for your business, rather than attempting it on your own. Quality content is now part of all forms of marketing.

So, what are the other benefits to your overall marketing strategy?

The Tangibles:

Site traffic: Traffic may be the obvious benefit, but it’s also one of the most important. Great content will bring people to your site, where they’ll also find information about your company and your products/services.

Improved SEO: The benefits of content for SEO are far too numerous to get into here. Great content attracts editorial links, which tells Google you’re important and authoritative. Google can also crawl your content, getting a better idea of what your company is about, which allows it to return your site for more relevant queries (including a great many long-tail queries). The list goes on, but it can be boiled down to this: without content, what is there for search engines to optimise?

Social media marketing: content marketing strategy comes before your social media strategy. An ideal mix of content for social media is always a mixture of unique and curated content based on the themes that relate to your audience interests. So high quality content based on informing your potential customers is ideal content to share on social media. It can also become great “lead magnets” if you are creating a Facebook ad funnel for inbound inquires.

PPC: for Pay Per Click to work, you need great content behind it. Content marketing is not direct sales copy- that is what landing page copy is designed for, but your content marketing is supposed to warm up your audience handling all of their objections and answering all of their questions before you make the direct offer in an adwords campaign. It is also useful in your Adwords remarketing campaigns, if someone doesn’t call or email from your initial ad then you can remarket to them to take them to more information where your content page may address common objections and give the information required to inform the potential customer of the process.

PR And Brand awareness: content marketing is all about championing the customer and solving their problems. It involves storytelling and providing useful and relevant customer-centred information. A flow-on effect from creating high-value content is that you can now position your brand as an authority on solving your customer problems. So, you can begin commenting on the “state of your industry” and sharing this as an opinion piece to your local media or business networks as an opinion piece to increase your brand authority.

If you’re looking for help to market your business, get in touch with our Content marketing team. We can help you to create a content strategy that will transform your sales and marketing activities. Contact us now.

10 of the most useful apps for creating digital content

If you run a business, it’s likely you have to do some of your own marketing. This might be as simple as creating Facebook content or as in-depth as building a website. If you’re creating content without the help of a professional graphic designer, it can be a challenge to make your content look consistent and professional. Whatever your marketing needs, this list of 10 of our favourite digital marketing apps and Chrome extensions is for you. These are the apps that will ensure efficiency with everything from design to organising to communication. And even better, they don’t cost a thing.

Page Ruler

This Chrome extension is simple yet surprisingly handy. Page Ruler lets you measure pixel dimensions and positioning of any webpage element. This is useful for creating or recreating the look you want and keeping consistency throughout design elements. The ruler is a great tool for producing much tidier work, especially when you’re building your website.

Snip

Snip is a faster, easier way of taking screenshots – just click the snips and away you go.

The app has a feature that allows you to write or draw on the ‘snip’, which comes in handy for things like communicating edits to someone digitally, or showing your mum who lives 700 kilometres away where the ‘save’ button is.

Snip saves your screenshot image to your chosen file as a PNG, so you can insert it into documents, emails, social media, anywhere else that lets you add a picture. This app is a Windows feature, but if you are running on Mac there’s a similar version available in the App store.

Nimbus

Like Snip, Nimbus is used to take screenshots, but more specifically for web. The big benefit is that Nimbus allows you to capture shots of entire pages in one click. Similar to Snip, you can save the image as is or write and draw on it within the app. You’ll then have it saved as a PNG for later use, which is a major asset if you need to clearly explain specifics to web developers, designers, or clients.

Eye Dropper

Ever wanted to know what shade of blue the Google ‘G’ is? Or maybe you need the exact colour used on your webpage, but can’t get hold of your designer. Eye Dropper is a Chrome extension that allows you to pick, view, and copy colours from the web. Simply click the dropper on the colour you’re after and it will save to the app. It then shows you the colour formula in a range of formats so you can match it in any program you need.

WhatFont

Have you ever met a designer who can just look at a font and tell you what it is? Well, this is the more efficient (and less intimidating) app version.

WhatFont temporarily converts your cursor into a font detector that shows the name of a font as you hover over text. If you want to know specifics, simply click and it’ll show you the font family, style, weight, size, line height, and colour. This is super handy if you want to borrow another brand’s aesthetics (imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all) or if you’ve simply lost your style guide.

Loom

We’ve talked about Loom before in our Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business, but it’s so good it’s worth another mention. Loom can be used to create quick videos of your desktop as you use it. It’s great for creating walkthrough videos that you can then share or link to. We use it to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face, but it’s also great for communicating clear, concise instructions or for creating social media content.

Lasso – Bookmark Manager

Lasso wrangles selected pages to bookmark, helping you herd them efficiently either into folders or by searchable tags. Each bookmark is saved under a ‘card’ that gives a brief, editable visual and description of the page. The interface of the app is a much more user-friendly way of managing bookmarks, especially if you have so many saved you forget what they all are (or why the heck you saved them in the first place). The dashboard also allows you to invite individuals or ‘teams’ to access chosen bookmarks or folders.

Reshot

Finding great stock images is key to creating good content. But if you have to post a lot of social media content this can get pricey if you’re paying $10 – $15 an image.

Enter Reshot: Reshot is a stock photo site that avoids cliché stock imagery.

Unlike the standard stock image libraries, the photos on Reshot reflect a photographer’s point of view. This means the photos are generally more interesting and higher quality than those on many other free stock photo sites. The site uses a simple license and terms that give you a lot of flexibility for using the photos.

Reshot photos are free, although you can also find photos for sale from Reshot partners. To browse the images or learn more, visit the website.

TinyPNG

If you are uploading images to your website, app, or social platform, you need to compress them to a small file size so they don’t slow down your website. Web app TinyPNG is an online PNG conversion tool that does just that. It makes your PNG image files tiny – or at least tinier then they were. It does this by selectively decreasing the number of colours in the image, which in turn reduces the file size. The visual changes in the image are practically undetectable and it can preserve any transparency (i.e., if it’s a clear-cut logo). TinyPNG can even convert animated PNGs. Converted PNGs can be used on your platforms but will use much less bandwidth, meaning they will load much faster.

Crop Photo

Crop Photo allows you to easily crop pictures without fiddling around with Adobe or other editing programs. Crop Photo features a bunch of templates designed to make cropping images for social media super easy, or you can use custom dimensions for your own projects (i.e., cutting an ex out of an otherwise great photo). You can then choose to save your image to your desktop, Facebook page, or Google Drive account.

So that’s our rundown of the 10 most useful marketing apps and extensions for digital marketing. Whether we are building a new website, creating digital content – or, let’s face it, just geeking out – we use at least one of these apps every day. For more great tools check out our previous blog Top 10 Apps to Market Your Business. And if you’ve got any projects that need a professional touch-reach out to us at Creative Content, we can help you to build your website, create great content and increase your online profile. Get in touch with us Here.

Top 10 Apps To Market Your Business

The online marketing world can be daunting, at Creative Content it’s our job to make marketing easy for our clients, so we love it when we find useful tools that make our job easier. Luckily there are many simple and inexpensive apps that make it easy for you to market your business in the digital age.

Apps can be amazing tools to help you streamline processes. And with the right set of tools, you can spend less time managing campaigns and more time developing effective messages. They can also create a more enjoyable experience for your clients so that people are more likely to recommend you to others.

Check out our list of the top ten apps that we use every day in our agency that will help you with marketing your business.

1. Loom

Loom lets you create quick videos that display a desktop view of your screen. You can create a simple walkthrough video in a couple of minutes and easily share it by email or via an embedded link on your website. This is particularly good if you want to provide advisory services to clients who can’t meet face-to-face. You can also use Loom to create social media content to share.

Get it now: https://www.useloom.com

Cost: Free!

2. Canva

Canva is an incredibly simple platform to create professional-looking graphic design elements in minutes. If you need a quick graphic for a social media post or to jazz up a presentation or report for a client, you can create it in Canva in no time.

Canva has hundreds of pre-made templates for all kinds of professional uses. It also comes with handy images and font suggestions so that even the most design-challenged among us can create something classy and professional.

Get it now: https://www.canva.com

Cost: Free to use, with some premium fonts, templates, and images having a nominal cost.

3. ContentStudio

ContentStudio allows you to organise all your social media marketing from a single place. You can curate engaging content, share it through multiple channels, and strengthen your content marketing.

A popular feature of ContentStudio is its ability to fetch fresh content from over a thousand sources, meaning you can delve in and compile trending content from any niche or market. You also have the ability to compose unique posts and schedule them to be published through your social accounts, helping you create better-looking posts at a faster pace.

Get it now: https://contentstudio.io/

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

4. Asana

Asana is a simple project management tool designed to help teams organise their workload and get more done. In Asana you can map out steps, assign work, see what’s currently in progress or what still needs to be done, track due dates, and see visually how work is tracking. It’s a great tool to help your team manage their workload and to give you visibility over how client work is tracking.

Get it now: https://asana.com

Cost: Free to use, with premium packages offering advanced features.

5. Biteable

Biteable is an awesome site where you can create unique video ads, explainer videos, animations, infographics, and much more. You’re essentially able to create pro-quality video in the time it takes to drink your coffee. You have the ability to choose from hundreds of styles, insert your own digital content, choose high-quality soundtracks, and easily share it through multiple channels.

With a lot of social networking sites becoming more video-centric, this is the app you should be using if you want to set your business apart in the digital world.

Get it now: https://biteable.com/features/

Cost: Free package available with a limit of 5 projects per month or a premium package offering unlimited use.

6. Yesware

There’s no doubt that you send and receive a lot of emails. This clever app allows you to use simple email templates, and then see who actually opens your emails and clicks on any links. It also offers other useful email tools and shortcuts. It integrates with Gmail and Outlook, so you don’t have to learn a new tool.

Get it now: https://www.yesware.com

Cost: $12 per user per month, with a free trial period.

7. Trello

Trello is a project management tool much like Asana, but it’s probably even simpler. It’s great for small teams that don’t need a ton of tools or features, but just want to get more organised and have visibility around their workload.

Trello works with a system of cards – like virtual index cards on a big virtual pinboard. You can move and arrange the cards any way you like and add due dates, files, and collaborators.

Get it now: http://www.trello.com

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

8.Pixel Me

Pixel Me is a great way to track and measure the links you’re posting and who is clicking on them. This means you can track the audience of the content you’re posting and target them again through remarketing. It gives you the opportunity to speak through different ad platforms to your custom audience and increase your brand awareness.

Get it now: https://pixelme.me/

Cost: Basic to comprehensive paid packages available

9. Missinglettr

Missinglettr increases traffic to your website’s blog by creating strategic, automated social media campaigns. It automatically pulls snippets from your blog posts to create promotional content – your only job is to review the content and choose how long you’d like to promote it.

Missinglettr markets the unique content you’ve created by connecting your social channels and running your campaigns for you. This provides regular social updates to your clients and encourages clicks to your content year-round.

Get it now: https://missinglettr.com/

Cost: Free, with personal and business accounts available.

10. Full Story

Ever wanted to know what your website visitors do once they land on your homepage? Want to find ways to convert more leads with your site design or copy? Then you need to try Full Story.

Once installed, Full Story tracks website visitors and shows you what those visitors actually do in a recorded video you can replay. It also shows you where your site traffic comes from and highlights areas of your site that cause visitor frustration. It’s great if you want to improve your online marketing and understand the effectiveness of recent online marketing campaigns.

Get it now: https://www.fullstory.com/

Cost: Free, with premium packages offering advanced features

These are the ten online marketing apps we love the most in our agency. With new apps appearing almost daily, there countless possible solutions to boost your online marketing and communication efforts. What are some of the apps that you use that we haven’t mentioned? Send us an email if you have a tool that you think we have missed! Contact us

Five tips for effective web copy

It’s downright hard to write succinct and clear web copy. And copywriting can also be very time-consuming. But if you nail your copy, you can increase traffic to your website, the amount of time people spend on it, and potentially your conversion rate.

You might think it’s best to list as much detail as possible on your website. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Listing a lot of information is effective for print publications, but it’s ineffective for a web page. This is because web pages have unlimited space but their readers have very limited attention.

To help you combat the challenge of copywriting for web, check out our top five tips for developing sharp and concise web copy.

Place your most important information first

Web copy is different from other types of writing. On a web page your most important information needs to come first. Often a simple statement of what you do and how you can offer value is the key piece of information needed.

This style of writing is called the ‘inverted pyramid’. Here the most noteworthy information always comes first before detail and background information. Journalists use this structure of writing so that you’re able to understand the bigger picture of an article from the first paragraph.

Your customers also want to understand the big picture first. Your web copy needs to succinctly convey from the outset what you can do for them.

Avoid large paragraphs

Copy on each page of your website should be short and to the point. Large blocks of writing can be off-putting for browsers and can come across as clunky. Browsers are often scanning or looking for a quick answer when reading web copy, so it’s best to give them what they want rather than have them leave your page to find it elsewhere.

Keep in mind that you should also have around 250-300 words for SEO purposes so that your page can be optimised correctly and be discovered. Although 300 words may sound like a small number, you’ll be surprised how dense 300 words looks on a published web page.

Use customer testimonials

Reinforce the value of your business by putting client testimonials on each page. From a customer’s point of view, you are not the most credible source of information about your service. Testimonials from your clients will add to your credibility and increase the value of your proposition. They are a form of social proof with high persuasion powers.

Include a call to action

A call to action is vital. What steps do you want your browsers to take? What are they meant to do next? This could be simply a link to another piece of content you have, an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter, or a pop-up contact form asking them to get in touch. If you highlight what you want your browsers to do next, it’s a lot easier for them to engage.

Top tip: Always incorporate a ‘contact us’ link or contact details on every page so browsers can easily get in touch. Don’t make your visitors work hard by scrolling through every page searching for ways to make contact.

Establish a value proposition

Your value proposition is your conversation starter. It’s something that gets the reader’s attention and makes them want to learn more about you. Highlighting your value proposition enables your readers to understand your services and how you can benefit them. The quicker they can understand your abilities and why you’re better than the competition, the more likely they are to remember your business or product.

People looking at your website are often in a hurry and make quick decisions about whether you’re right for them based on your website content. That’s why it’s best to have your value proposition clear, concise, and credible.

Keep these top five pointers in mind to make sure your content copywriting is effective. Remember: don’t treat your visitors like information-hungry sharks. Position your information clearly and always get straight to the point. If you’re in need of a more professional copywriting hand to help, you can always contact us here for the right advice or to help you craft the right message for the web.

Author: Theresa Brady