The Shifting Sands of Website Copywriting

Catch up on my recent SEO News article at www.sitepronews.com …

Website Copywriting, Keyword Shuffling and the Visible, Video Future

There’s no doubting that website copywriting - and the SEO that accompanies it – is an evolving, moveable feast!  Meta tags and keywords are still important features of SEO copywriting, but there’s been a recent shift of emphasis at Google towards the value of inbound links and link building.

As we all know, Google attributes ‘value’ to what it describes as high quality, ‘relevant’ links.  A web page that has attracted a string of links from highly regarded and ranked websites that are in a similar (or ‘relevant’) field to the site being linked to, has intrinsic value in Google’s eyes and will be more likely to satisfy the needs and expectations of those who are looking to match keywords and content through their online searches.

The SEO rewards now go to those sites with strong link profiles.  Achieving this has a lot to do with producing so-called ‘quality content’ to which people will want to link.  This now goes beyond keyword-relevant on-page content.  We’re talking about videos, photos, Powerpoints, original research and thought-leadership content! 

Alongside this are other off-page elements that will also generate links on the strength of their well-optimised quality content.  This includes things such as articles, news releases and blog posts, as well as new kids on the block from the social media world.

Nothing ever stands still in the dynamic world of SEO – as my article points out.  Google is committed to continually improving the search experience – as well as finding ways of responding to new arrivals which include its very own YouTube videos, social media and social bookmarking sites.  These are all factored into how web pages rank on the current results pages (SERPs).

Of course, Google has to stay one step ahead of the black-hat SEO brigade so they aren’t in a position to manipulate the results.  Nothing new there – but the whole SEO kaleidoscope is shifting all the while to create new patterns and ways of working for everyone in this crazy competitive business.

Twitter Is The New SEO Songbird

The humble tweet is now a force to be reckoned with in the world of SEO.  Or according to Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land it is!

Google and Bing now recognise Twitter as a conduit for delivering high quality content from recognised ‘authority’ sources.  Given the ubiquity of social media, this has to be a welcome development. 

As with other types of inbound links, tweets are given a leg up in the SEO stakes by ‘influential’ people tweeting about you or re-tweeting your content.  We’ll probably never know what constitutes ‘influential’, but it’s not difficult to make a few educated guesses.

SEO research has also revealed the not-so-surprising fact that ranking rewards come from an abundance of high quality tweets linking to your site.  From a purely practical viewpoint, bear in mind that your keyword-rich tweet-links will act very much like anchor tags on web pages.

If you’re looking to generate more link juice, make sure your content is good enough to share or re-tweet; make sure you attract a steady stream of new friends and followers; and use highly visible buttons to allow visitors to click your links.

Remember, however, that links from Twitter are ‘NoFollow’.  The river of tweets that go by every minute of every day make it impossible for search engines to monitor the minutiae of what’s going on.  Safe to say from case study research that it is the overall weight of public tweets that give Twitter links both their credence and their SEO ranking potential.

(Download Notes image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Sales Letter Copywriting – It’s Due for a Comeback!

I’m a regular reader of Nick Usborne’s newsletters, blogs and articles. In one of Nick’s latest articles, he expounds on the agony of getting noticed amid the churn of messages on social media sites.

As we all know by now, B2B social media should be about targeting the right prospects. That’s fine… but: whatever happened to good old-fashioned direct mail where you wrote to a named prospect and could command ‘solus’ attention – so long as he or she opened the envelope and were interested in your proposition?

No need to compete with the millions of tweets and Facebook posts that create a river of information every minute of every day! And with fewer and fewer people using direct mail – what an opportunity this is!

E-mail marketing may be the next best thing, and it does of course have the benefit of clickable links to take the reader back to your website landing page, blog or whatever. The problem with e-mail is that it’s notoriously difficult to attract and keep your readers’ attention. How easy is it to simply delete that uninvited intrusion into your inbox.

Compare this with what is nowadays an intriguing interloper slipping into your daily mailbag or letterbox – the sales letter! And how much more welcome it is than those dreaded bills and statements. With the right message, a well-targeted mailer will be just as effective in 2011 as it always has been.

No-one is suggesting you should abandon social media. Far from it. It’s an amazingly powerful tool for spreading your message in realtime and/or virally. What I AM suggesting is re-introducing sales letter copywriting and direct mail to your marketing mix.

If you’ve forgotten how effective direct mail can be (or if you’ve never given it a try), why not compare it with the time-effectiveness of your social media activities? I’m confident you’ll be glad you did. I’m also confident that sales letter copywriting is due for a mighty big comeback!!!

Social Media and the Fear of Selling

I’ve just read a fascinating piece by direct response copywriter Daniel Levis. Part of the article outlines what a lot of people have long suspected – that social media is ultimately the perfect excuse for getting you off the hook of having to sell.

Make no mistake: fear of selling is alive and well.  Social media has looked like the perfect soft option for long enough, especially when the ‘gurus’ keep telling us that online interaction is good; ‘liking’ is good; and having an online forum where you can dismantle major brands is good. Yes, it’s true what you’ve heard… God is good and he’s living just a couple of keyboards away.

By empowering individuals at the expense of big business, social media has tamed the advertising lion. No longer do ads roar. Now, the lion explains, rather apologetically, that he’d like to eat you all up – but online etiquette forbids. So is it OK if he whispers?

Revisionist conventional wisdom in the world of social media tells us that quiet persuasion and understated information is the order of the day.  Companies who fail to heed this new order will have a rude awakening in the shape of falling sales and busted brands. 

By all means soften people up by using Facebook and Twitter to create a frenzy of interest around your brand, but never ever overstep the mark by doing something as vulgar as asking for the sale!  Direct marketing and telesales are the visible villains in this particular piece of the peace – as are forthright online messages that would love to close that sale, if only they were allowed to!

Social media generates masses of activity and information that is exchanged worldwide at the click of a mouse.  Engage your audience is the mantra – but make sure you’re targeting the right people.

Hang on a second!  Did someone say ‘targeting’?  Wash your mouth out and leave this temple at once.  The world of social media is no place for heretical thoughts that hark back to the old order.

This is the new régime where selling is outlawed on pain of attracting strange looks, frowns and a communal shaking of heads.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is passport control at the gates of sales hell! 

 

Article Marketing – A Revival!

Writing articles is back on Buzzwords’ SEO agenda – as is blogging! It’s all part of an inter-linked approach to generating more traffic to the main website using social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

There’s a lot of scepticism about using Facebook and Twitter for business. Personally, I think the best approach is to leverage every digital marketing opportunity to generate a buzz around what you’re up to! Simple, but there’s no doubting the rewards that plenty of online activity brings in the SEO stakes.

To illustrate the point, every article I write is linked from ezinearticles to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. My blog posts go direct to LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Squidoo. Twitter goes straight to Facebook. And there’s a dedicated ‘Free Article Reprint’ page on Buzzwords’ website - buzzwords.ltd.uk/free_reprint_articles.htm – which features all my articles (as standalone and optimised web pages) for use by anyone, anywhere.

The net effect of all this is to create a virtuous cycle of activity and interest in what Buzzwords is doing – and of course generating traffic to the main website. A major reason why social media doesn’t work for so many companies is because they aren’t active enough in writing and creating the various blog posts, tweets, Facebook entries, articles and website updates needed to shake Google’s tree.

The reasons for this are really quite simple: lack of time, commitment and the opportunity cost of time and attention wasted doing what is a non-core activity – not to mention the lack of confidence in some quarters to write what’s needed to the standard that won’t let the side down.

All of this is a great shame. To give social media a fair crack of the whip needs confidence and commitment. Without it, the endeavour is doomed to failure. To coin a phrase, it’s really a question of reaping what you sow.

Copywriting and the social media mix

How can a busy copywriter find the time to indulge in social media, if ‘indulge’ is the right word?  This implies social media is some kind of luxury, a bit of fun that copywriters can have instead of doing the crossword.

Well, I must admit, I’ve decided to make a fist of the social media thing and try to make it work in a B2B context.  I’ve dabbled with blogs in the past, opened an account with LinkedIn and even had a brief dalliance with MySpace some time back.

The blogs I had were fine but they took up a lot of my time, and without any apparent benefit.  When they were banned for using too many links back to my main website (or was it too many tags?), I shrugged my shoulders and got on with life. 

What I didn’t realise at the time was just how much SEO-juice the blogs were feeding back to my main website.  The content itself wasn’t earth-shattering, although I guess the spin-offs from being more industry-aware had some value (to someone, somewhere!!!).

So why the conversion (or re-conversion) to social media?  What’s brought on this Damascus-like change?  This may sound pathetic, but it’s mainly to do with my tweets ranking on Google!

My first venture into social media was in the dark days before Twitter, so I do have some kind of explanation!  It was also to do with blogs linking with Twitter, and online articles linking to Twitter and so on.  (You’re right, it still sounds pathetic – but I will persist, dear reader!)

Another reason I’m re-visiting social media is because clients are actually hinting that I should be offering this as a service or, at the very least, offering advice on its feasibility for their company.

I must confess that it feels a bit limp-wristed to say to them that social media doesn’t really apply to companies – that it’s a ‘social’ thing!  The fact is, if it can be used to benefit SEO – and even help in opinion-forming by hooking up with even a small number of customers – then B2B social media must be ‘a good thing’.

Whether it’s a ‘cost-effective’ thing or not is a moot point.  This type of SEO is not measurable in its splendid isolation.  It may add to the weight of a full-blown SEO campaign, but assessing the ROI of B2B social media strikes me as tricky.

Having said that, tweets that are ranked by Google – albeit because they have links to other content – obviously have value.  Blog links have value too, and even the content on sites like Facebook may have some PR value.

So, yes, I shall be persevering with social media, if only to say to clients: “Yes, it works!” – or: “Don’t go there!”  With first-hand experience, I will have a leg to stand on, and a bag full of mixed metaphors to boot!

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