Adam Oakley - Express Writers

SEO & Content 101: How Good Writing Services Can Boost Your Google Ranking

August 4, 2022July 12, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Search engines have a simple purpose: to help users find the information they need. Google, known as the king of search with over 60% of the market share, aims to give users the best experience when searching the web. To make this happen, Google is always looking for good website content. Thus, business owners are always looking for good writing services! Now, it has become even more important to make sure that you have good quality content on your website. Otherwise, you will be penalized by Google. How Google Rankings Relate to Good Writing Services Poorly-written and over-optimized content is your ticket to the bottom of the last page of search results, which is essentially equivalent to not having a website at all. Quality writing services can help prevent your site from being banished to obscurity by making sure you have great content that Google’s algorithms and, most importantly, your customers will love. Why Should You Care About Google Algorithms? First of all, you may be asking, what in the world is a Google algorithm? Simply put, this is a mathematical formula or steps of instructions that tell the search engine how to sift through millions and millions of web pages to find information that is most relevant to a search query. Google has several algorithms such as Google’s Farmer/Panda, which was implemented in 2011 to lower the rankings of content farms and overly-optimized sites and to push up sites with better content. Content farms are websites that publish massive amounts of generally low-quality content to get traffic to their site for the purpose of generating quick advertising revenues. Then, there’s Google’s Penguin algorithm, which was designed to punish websites that engage in web spamming or black hat search engine optimization (SEO) techniques to manipulate the search engine index on purpose. Some of these rogue techniques include keyword stuffing, content duplication and participating in low-quality link exchanges. All these algorithms will work in your favor if you have fresh and quality content on your site and that’s where good writing services can be of great value to your business. Otherwise, you’ll have no chance to increase your online visibility and Google is keen on making sure of that. That’s why you need to care about their ever-changing algorithms if you are looking to build your online presence. How Can You Please Google? You can please Google by not trying so hard to please them, and pleasing your customers instead. Many Internet marketers and website owners have become obsessed about optimizing their content for search engines. While it’s clear from the previous section that Google’s search algorithms are very important, don’t kill yourself figuring them out. Instead, focus on pleasing your customers and giving them information that is relevant to your offering and relevant to their present and future needs. Remember, Google wants to help their users. Just like your customers, Google is looking for relevant content that is accurate and contains helpful information. The only legitimate way to improve your search engine rankings is to have informative content on your site that will compel new readers and keep existing readers coming back. So, if you constantly deliver content on your site that is useful to your customers, there’s no way Google will not locate your site and rank it high on their natural search results for your prospect customers to find. Keeping in Line with Google When it comes to improving your search engine ranking, however, great website content goes beyond good grammar and interesting topics, although these are very important aspects. It’s not just a matter of how much time you have in your hands or whether or not you can write. Making your content search-engine friendly requires the use of certain techniques that must be done according to good website practices or, in other words, Google’s guidelines. Google has put in place several guidelines that will ensure the search engine will index and rank your website so that it will be ultimately found by your target audience. One of the advantages of hiring writing services is that you’ll have someone who knows and understands these guidelines and all its details and can implement them effectively. Good writing services with SEO capabilities will know exactly how to optimize a website without overdoing it. For instance, it is important to use the right keywords but there are rules as to how you should use them. Even if you’re not stuffing keywords into an article, there is still a right way of incorporating keywords to ensure readability. In the same way, including links on your web pages have an impact on your ranking too but, again, your site must follow certain rules on linking relationships to avoid being penalized. Investing in Good Writing Services As you may understand now, for Google, it’s all about delivering better search results. Hiring good writing services is the easiest and most efficient way to produce high quality content that will translate to better search engine ranking. Publishing quality material on a regular basis gives you a great chance to improve your online visibility. However, you have to ask yourself, is this something that you can accomplish on your own? If you can delegate the task to someone in your staff, do they have the right knowledge and skill set to do the job effectively? Unless you or your staff has a solid talent for writing, an excellent grasp of SEO techniques and Google’s guidelines, and enough time to develop content on a regular basis, you will need professional writing services. Having quality content on your site and earning a top spot on Google search results doesn’t just happen. It takes considerable experience and knowledge, along with a real talent in writing, to capture the message of your business and transform it into content that will be relevant to your target audience and compelling enough for them to start a conversation about it, and even share it to others. By investing in good writing services, … Read more

What Is the Content Beast? (And How on Earth Do You Feed It?)

December 31, 2020July 11, 2013 by Adam Oakley

You may or may not have heard of the content beast. What is this wily, hungry creature? Well, it’s large, insistent, and, quite frankly, insatiable. It demands to be fed new, fresh, interesting content on a regular basis. If you don’t feed it, it gets tense and twitchy. The beast scares off your readers and potential customers with its overbearing silence and looming presence. However, if you keep feeding it, it helps you maintain and grow your audience. Sate the content beast’s appetite, and it’ll happily go into a soothing state of peaceful bliss. While it rests, your clout will steadily grow. Fail to give this content monster what it wants, and you’ll be eaten. (The content monster may or may not be Google. We’re not sure – we’ve never gotten a good enough look at it.) Bottom line: the only way to stay alive on the web is to give the beast a constant diet of freshly-picked content. Why Fresh, Useful Content Matters for Content Marketing Much like bread, eggs, and produce, content loses its freshness over time. It goes stale. It gets moldy. Nobody wants to read it anymore. It’s in the past. In fact, Moz illustrates how content decays over time: Bet you didn’t know that your website could literally “go bad.” It sounds strange, but it’s totally the truth. According to SEO SiteCheckup, if you fail to update your site, search engines like Google will consider it “dead.” In other words, expired. Useless. Lifeless. In stark contrast, a fresh website that’s constantly updated grabs Google’s attention. Especially if you feed that content beast with quality blog posts, web pages, articles, and other useful information, it will notice you more often. It will stop by and index you. Feed it often, feed it well, and you’ll slowly climb the ranks. As the content monster is subdued, your authority will grow. This is the key to successful content marketing. Infographic from SEO SiteCheckup 5 Ways to Keep Your Content So Fresh, It Should Be Slapped You don’t have to work like the Energizer Bunny in order to satiate the content beast. Instead, with some smart strategies, you can keep producing fresh content that will keep that hungry monster from killing your content marketing momentum. With these tips, your content will be as fresh and crisp as an apple plucked straight from the tree. 1. Plan Your Content and Create a Schedule Without a plan, you’ll be scrounging around for ideas and stressing over creating new content. You can’t be creative 24/7 – that’s just common sense. However, if you pool your resources and come up with a content plan and a schedule, you can appear that way. How to do it? Have a brainstorming session where you cultivate lots of topics for blogs and new content. Write them all down, then plan out when you’ll update your site and post your fresh stuff. 2. Riff off of Holidays Coinciding with your content schedule, you can take advantage of certain times of the year. Holidays and special events are the perfect time for new blogs that tie in seamlessly. According to Business.com, writing a holiday-themed or related post can inject new life into an old topic. It also gives you plenty of fodder for new content. Think about what works for New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, the first day of spring, Memorial Day, summer vacation, Halloween – you get the idea. Then, run with it. 3. Refresh Old Posts with a New Angle Running out of content ideas? Revisit old posts and refresh them. Come at the topic from a new angle, or write about it from a different perspective. If you have new information that makes the old post obsolete, write an update. This is the perfect way to feed the content beast without having to come up with totally new ideas. 4. Look at the News The news is a great source of inspiration you can tap into for new content. Is there a world event or local happening that you can relate to your business or website? Is something new and noteworthy occurring in the industry? Is something happening that deserves your take? 5. Poll Your Audience Finally, if all else fails, don’t be afraid to ask the audience. Poll your readers to find out what they want to see. Then, get that content on your site. Bonus: when you give your audience exactly what they ask for, you’ll build trust. Plus, you can be confident that they’ll find it interesting, relevant, and useful – and that’s a win, win, win. Keep the Content Beast Happy with a Regular Diet of Newly-Minted, Engaging Content That annoying but important content beast can’t find food on its own. It needs you to do the dirty work. Keep it fed, and it will stay happy. Keep it happy, and your content marketing will soar. Need help writing fresh, quality, engaging content? Tap the talent at Express Writers – check out our content shop today.

What Not To Do In SEO Copywriting

January 1, 2021July 10, 2013 by Adam Oakley

The goal of SEO copywriting and inbound marketing strategies is simple:

Gain leads that have a high chance of conversion.

Unfortunately, once you’ve gain these leads, it’s not all that difficult to lose them.

But let’s take a step back. Not only can the simplest mistake cause you to lose the leads you’ve worked so hard to gain, but it can also hinder your chances of gaining new leads in the future as well.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume you want your copy to enhance your chances of gaining leads.

But if, for some reason, your aim is to drive your audience away, take a look at the following tips to help you do so.

Who Are You Writing For? How to Build an Audience Persona and Discover Your Ultimate Reader

June 19, 2024July 9, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Marketing 101: You can’t market to everyone. It’s just not possible. That’s why marketers hone in on specific audiences for their brands. Here’s the logic: For every product or service, there exist ideal buyers who will be totally into it, desperately need it, or some ratio of both. No, you can’t market to each of them individually. But, you can distill their similarities into an overall audience persona. This persona is a fictional human you create who has all the traits common to your target audience. This sounds great in theory, but why should you create one for your brand? How do you get started? The answers are right here. Why Create an Audience Persona? Besides the fact that using personas can boost your success rates (one company reported an increase in sales leads of 124% as a direct result of using targeted personas), what are some other reasons to use them? 1. Talk to Exactly Who Will Buy From You Imagine standing on a stage and looking into an audience full of people. You want to talk to the ones who will buy what you’re selling – but how? Right now, they’re just a sea of random faces. Now, imagine if you could shine a spotlight on an audience member who represents your ideal targets. This person’s interests, behavior, demographics, job, income, etc. are all indicative of your ultimate buyer. In fact, if you could pool your ideal buyers, take their common traits, and mold them into a new person, this is what that person would look like. All of a sudden, by singling out this one persona, you have the opportunity to speak directly to your buyer and get them to engage. If you tailor your messages to them, you’ll not only grab their attention – you’ll hold it, which will lead to profitable results across that audience segment. 2. Keep Your Messaging, Copy, and Content Consistent Besides being representative of a segment of your target audience, your persona is also a tool to use in your copy and content. When you create a persona, you create a person to write for – someone you can get to know intimately. You’re no longer writing to anonymous people, but to someone with preferences, needs, wants, and traits. Much of writing is about the audience. Your persona will guide how you write so it’s more pointed and powerful for the exact right people. Plus, personas are tools you can use for your business at every level to make sure your entire team is referencing and addressing the same targets. 3. Waste Zero Time on Non-Prospects When you create a targeted audience persona, you weed out the people in your audience who don’t need what you’re selling or won’t buy from you. These people may be interested, but there’s no urgency in it. Here’s how HubSpot frames that conundrum: “If only 1 out of 10 people in your target audience needs your solution, and 9 of them aren’t prospects, you’re wasting 90% of your time and resources.” If you try to address your entire audience with the exact same message, it won’t be as effective for some as it is for others. This is because they’re at different stages of the buyer’s journey. Creating personas that target specific types of people in your audience, and then creating messaging and content for each of them, eliminates this problem. How to Build a Persona for Your Audience: Research, Compile Data, and Get Personal Over and over, you’ll find that researching is the best way to approach building an audience persona. Then you can compile what you find and distill it into one, two, or a few different personas that represent your audience segments. Step One: Research Your Audience For research, there are some wide-ranging options for gathering data about your targets: Use Facebook Audience Insights Facebook has a tool you can use to research your audience and build multiple personas, and you don’t need an advertising or business account to access it. (You just need a profile.) You have two options in this tool: research using all of Facebook’s existing user base, or just research people who are connected to your account. Moz recommends the former option just in case your account connections have been “dirtied” in some way (i.e. if you have paid for followers in the past, your connections might not be an accurate representation of your target audience). After you choose which type of data to research, you can search various interests related to your industry and then narrow down the audience based on what you find. For example, say you sell books in Missouri. You would enter that information to find out who you should be targeting. As you can see, 67% of people in Missouri with an interest in books and reading are women: With this in mind, let’s narrow down our target audience to women only. Then we can look at demographics and stats for their household, like income and home ownership: Now we have more information for our persona: She should be a woman who makes $50-75K and owns a home. You can keep going into further detail from there as you browse the sections and continue to narrow down this woman’s traits. Check out this guide from Moz for a deeper how-to. Create Surveys Find out more demographic information about your audience with surveys. A simple survey can tell you exactly where your audience lives, their income, their education, family size, age, job industry and title, and more. Tools like SurveyMonkey are perfect for the job. You can create your own surveys for free and distribute them yourself, or you can pay to use SurveyMonkey Audience to collect data from a pre-qualified target audience with attributes you select. Chat 1-on-1 with Customers Don’t forget to go back to basics. Just take some time to have a chat with your customers to find out their preferences, interests, behaviors, and demographics. This can be as easy … Read more

Writing for the Web: Reaching Your Internet Audience Effectively

August 4, 2022July 8, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Whether you’re blogging for your new website or writing copy for your landing pages, writing for the Web is vastly different from other kinds of writing.

People who decide to either open their own website or online store usually try and create their own copy for it but fail to understand the reading habits of the Internet audience. This leads to either little or no traffic on the site or the ultimate collapse of the business.

If you have just purchased a domain name and a website for your new business, knowing how to reach your audience effectively and avoiding some of the most common errors when you’re writing for the Web can mean the difference between a successful online business and the frustration of failure.

How To Win at Social Media Copywriting

January 1, 2021July 6, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Social media: it’s become the standard for how we communicate, connect, and synthesize world news. Today upwards of 70% of the U.S. population has a profile on at least one social media platform. By 2018, the number of social media users around the world is projected to grow to 2.5 billion. With those numbers in mind, it’s clear that social media copywriting is more important today than it’s ever been before. While many people assume that all social posts are created equal, this simply isn’t true, and anyone who spends any time in the world of social media likely knows that great social media copywriting can go a long way regarding engagement and conversions. While social media copywriting is a bit easier said than done, this post is designed to help you hone your skills and start overhauling your social presence today. Read on. Why Social Media Copywriting Matters In addition to the fact that social media is becoming a near-universal method of connection, the people using social media are also becoming more discerning. Before virtually every brand on earth had a Facebook page, it was easier for companies to create content that stood out – partially because there wasn’t a lot to compete with. Today, though, Facebook alone sees the sharing of 30 billion pieces of content each month, and it’s getting tougher and tougher for brands to create content that gets noticed. While it’s unrealistic to expect that social saturation will slow down anytime soon, the one thing companies can do to compete is ensure that the content they create and publish on social media is as quality and relevant as possible. And the best way to do this is by focusing on social media copywriting. 5 Smart Tips to Improve Your Social Copywriting Great social media copywriting isn’t born in a day. Instead, it takes months (and, in some cases, years) to perfect. While few marketers have the patience to sit with it long enough to learn what works and what doesn’t, the people who do will find that, by improving their social content, they can subsequently enhance their entire social following. This, in turn, helps the brand build a stronger social presence and promotes things like sales, shares, and engagement, all of which promote a positive SEO cycle that helps a company dominate the internet. With that in mind, follow these five tips to improve your social media marketing, starting today: 1. Niche down: write to your target audience, rather than social media at large Right now, 78% of the U.S. population has a social media account, and the worldwide number is pushing 1.96 billion. As you can imagine, trying to write to all of those people at once will only cause your content to sink, and will simply mean that you don’t reach anyone effectively. While it’s important to write to your target audience in all of your online copywriting, nowhere is this more critical than on social media. Thanks in large part to the sheer saturation of social media, ensuring that you’re targeting your content to your primary audiences is critical, and the companies that do it are the ones with the best chance of enjoying a high ROI for their social material. While there are thousands of examples of businesses that are great at this on social media, one of my favorites is Innocent Drinks. The UK-based smoothie and juice company’s Facebook page is filled with material that caters to their audiences’ concern over sustainability, human rights, and the environment. Don’t get them wrong, though, Innocent Drinks isn’t all work and no play. They pepper things with humor to keep them light, and they do a great job of engaging their target audience as a result. Another company that does this very well is Bogs Footwear. Specializing in waterproof, insulated boots for men and women, the company’s social profiles are filled with social media copywriting that’s designed to appeal to families and outdoor enthusiasts. It’s wholesome, engaging, and “awe”-worthy throughout, and it just works. While these two companies have different target audiences, they both speak to them well, and they demonstrate exactly what is possible when you speak to your audience (rather than the massive population of Facebook as a whole) in your social copywriting. 2. Keep it brief – social media was designed for brevity While platforms like Facebook support long-form content more than, say, a platform like Twitter, it’s still important to keep all of your social media copywriting as brief as possible. This does not mean that you should sacrifice detail or quality in the name of meeting a character limit – only that social media is meant for skimming, and you’ll get more engagement on your posts if they’re easy to interact with in just a few seconds. To help you get an idea of how long the optimal social post should be, Buffer put together some research on the topic. According to them, Facebook posts with 40 characters receive a whopping 86% more engagement than longer posts. Tweets are ideal when they’re between 71-100 characters, and Google+ posts perform best around 60 characters. While these may seem too short, remember that you can always add a visual to help demonstrate your point, or provide a URL where readers can dig into a longer post, if they choose. No matter what you do, though, keeping your in-feed social media copywriting brief will work wonders in making it more efficient. With that in mind, cut unneeded words, and work to alter your copywriting so you learn to drive your message home in a succinct, compelling, and compact way. For some tips on how to do this, check out The Day You Became a Better Writer, by author and Dilbert creator, Scott Adams. 3. Pepper your social content with quality visuals While not a “copywriting tip,” per se, the inclusion of visuals is critical for effective social copy. In addition to the fact that adding visuals to your social content can help illustrate your points more effectively, they can also have a dramatic positive effect … Read more

Blog Writing: How to Maximize User Experience

December 31, 2020July 4, 2013 by Adam Oakley

There are many things to consider in blog writing before you even open your Word document to begin. You need to consider SEO, meta tags, and keywords. Yet, keeping all these things in mind still isn’t enough; there is one more task to consider before starting your post: you need to think about how viewers are going to read it. It is a well-documented fact that you need to create outstanding online content in order to hold the attention of the reader for the entire article. While it is true that most readers skim online articles, they actually read more content than most blog writers would believe. It is just that readers scanned the article a certain way in order to determine if the post is worth their time. So, how do you create a post that ensures that the most important information will be scanned? Then, how do you entice the reader to go back and digest the entire article? Formatting Articles for Blog Writing In order to make sure that readers notice the important facets of your article, you need to format the article in a way that attracts the reader’s eye. Next, you have to live up to the reader’s expectations by creating fantastic content. Two-Thirds of a Post is Read According to a study completed by Chartbeat, readers will actually look at 60% of an online article or blog post. This means that more of your blog writing is actually read then you may believe. In addition, 65% of engagement by readers occurs in what is considered below the fold. You have a good chance of having someone read your entire article if you can capture their attention during this initial scanning. Eye Tracking Study Chartbeat and other specialists like Crazy Egg have found that online articles are read in an F pattern. This means that a person’s eyes will travel horizontally first and then vertically as they continue down through the rest of the post. If you keep this in mind during blog writing, you can format your article to take advantage of this pattern. Be Bold You need to be able to attract a person’s attention when they are reading your blog post. One way to do this is by using bold in your post. If you place titles, subtitles, and important phrases in bold or italics then you will draw a person’s eye to that section of the article. This will call their attention to the key factors you are reviewing in your post and it will help them to decide whether they will find the rest of the post informative. Another important aspect of formatting during blog writing is to create multiple subtitles in the post. This helps to break up the content and also call specific subtopics of the document to the reader’s attention. Be Visual Guidelines for efficient online articles include at least one image. Blog writing calls for creativity, and your imagination should not be limited when it comes to discovering images for your post. Don’t just scan through the free images that are available online. You can apply to subscription service such as iStockphoto, or you can create your own images. Pictures are not the only type of images you can use here. Studies have shown that info graphics help to enhance the share ability and views of online content. Learning how to create info graphics doesn’t have to be complicated. There are some basic templates that you can use to create effective photogenic images that described your text for you. Video is another great way to explain the information in your blog post and to hold a reader’s interest. Videos can be as simple as an animated slideshow. Basic software to create videos is often found in laptops and can be downloaded for free on the Internet. Be Unique It is also important with blog writing to make sure that you are taking a unique point of view on your topic. Nobody wants to read a rehash of the same information over and over again. Put a unique spin on an article to keep readers informed and to show them that you are a thought leader in your field. After all, anyone can rewrite content. It takes someone that has a thorough understanding of the subject matter to be able to put their own perspective on the topic. Tell Readers What to Do Do not assume that readers will know what you want them to do next. You need to include a call to action in all of your online content. In terms of blog writing, this often means asking them to do something as simple as leave a comment, share your post, or subscribe to your RSS feed. Statistics show that when writers ask people to do things the readers are more inclined to follow the directive. While blog posts should not be advertisements for your business offerings, this does not mean that you cannot create calls to action for downloadable content. In order to establish your online reputation and brand, it is important to create case studies, white papers, and e-books. After this content has been created, you can craft a blog post about the topic of this content and create a call to action that will encourage readers to download the information to learn more about the subject. Live Up to Expectations Once you have caught the reader’s attention by using visual aids, subtitles, and bolding key phrases you need to live up to the expectations you have created in the reader’s mind. Too often, blog writers will craft a terrific summary but then the content fails to deliver. In the initial phases of your blog writing, make sure that you have outlined the topic of your post and that you have at least three main ideas and three subtopics to support those ideas for 500 pages of content. This way you make sure that you thoroughly explain the subject matter to your reader … Read more

The Do’s and Don’ts of Website Copywriting

December 31, 2020July 3, 2013 by Adam Oakley

When it comes to content writing, there is a right way to write and a wrong way to write. Your website content needs to be engaging, entertaining, and inspire readers to take action-whether that action is to sign up for an e-mail list or give your company a call for a free estimate. The rules of website copywriting have changed over the years, and it’s important to keep on top of the latest trends for SEO benefits, social media sharing advantages, and more. Why Website Copywriting? The reason for web copywriting is to gain company and brand recognition. In other words: to sell. The job of your website is to generate leads, to attract visitors and turn those visitors to customers. It is all about generating sales and building trust with your readers. With website copywriting, everything should contribute to this goal. Maximizing your content marketing is one means to a wonderful return on investment. Effective copywriting means more traffic, leads and sales, establishment of experts, improved SEO, faster results with less advertising costs, and a great ROI. It is success that makes success happen, and web copywriting has proved to be successful. Website Copywriting Do’s Powerful search engine optimized website copywriting has the potential to create a tremendous impact on your sales and marketing. And, let’s face it. When you do something, you might as well do it effectively, or it is a waste of time. Here are the do’s in website copywriting: what you should do and what you should accomplish with it. Keyword Research: Content is “King”, but that “King” needs a little more than outstanding copy. It needs to be outstanding copy with effective keywords. One of the first steps in website copywriting is keyword research. Targeting your keywords is a part of your strategic planning in SEO and the wrong keywords can totally break a campaign. Great Headlines: Headlines are a way to format your material so that readers can easily get to the information they want. Headlines attract the eyes, and create interest, and your keywords should be included in your headlines Correct Keyword Placement: Keyword placement is an area where you’ll likely receive a lot of advice. My suggestion here is to have your primary keyword appear in the first or second sentence of your opening paragraph and sprinkled throughout the copy. You should have a 2 to 5 percent keyword density. Attention-Grabbing Homepage Copy: Homepage copy needs to grab the attention of the viewer from the moment he/she lands on the page. Your words have to speak and grab the attention of the reader. Copy should be divided into chunks, with sub-headers, for viewers to get right to the information they require. Your keywords should be placed throughout the copy, like mentioned in the paragraph above. Your copy, like any copy, should be focused on the keywords. When you create website copy, it is important to create a meta title and a meta description, as well. If you have a web programmer / designer, you’ll want to give them both, along with Persuasive Copy: Any content you create should be persuasive. While this is kind of obvious, not all marketers create or hire someone to create compelling, persuasive content. The goal is to attract potential customers and turn them to long-term customers. Bullet Points to Break it Up: Bullets are a real benefit. In fact, the search engines consider them to be important items. Website copywriting should include bullets when possible, preferably with one of your keywords. Strong Call to Action: Copywriting should have a call to action. A call to action is simply giving the reader a place to go for more information and is a great benefit to both you and the reader. Website Copywriting Don’ts Like the do’s of website copywriting, there are don’ts, and you want to keep them in mind as you craft your content. Let’s take a look. Not Having a Good Understanding of Your Business or Brand: One of the worst things you should do is to not have a good understanding of your business or brand. In order for your copy to be effective, you need to have good insight on your business, products, and services, and you need to be able to focus on your business, products, or services. There is no place for “fluff” in website copywriting. Lack of Persuasiveness: Persuasive copy is essential. Content can be great, but if it doesn’t involve the emotion to learn more or purchase, then it really isn’t effective. You want persuasive copy that spells out why your business, products and services are needed. Bland Text Instead of Headings, Subheadings and Dot-points: When you have your content formatted with bullets it is an easy means for readers to get information fast. Statistics show that bullets attract. They also show that your bullets need to be effective. Bullets headings and subheadings all give you an opportunity to grab the attention of the reader and keep that attention. They should be in a place that is noticed, and as well constructed as possible. Lack of Relevancy: A lack of relevancy will send readers away from your site or content, and will leave an impression that doesn’t sit well. When content is irrelevant, you aren’t highlighting or saying anything important about your business, products, or services. Never write around the subject. Always engage the readers with interesting and relevant content that is to the point. Again, there is no room for fluff in web copywriting. Without effective website copywriting, you don’t have the potential to generate optimal interest in your business and brand. Content is “King”, and when created properly, it is effective and does make a difference in your SEO advertising. Need great web pages? We curate some of the best writers online to formulate our team of writers – order online via our Content Shop!

How to Write a Press Release that Wins on Social Media

December 31, 2020July 2, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Before the rise of social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, marketers were faced with the challenge of how to write a press release that would reach millions of people through their search engine optimization (SEO) talents alone. The goal overall goal is to enhance visibility in the search engines in order to drive new traffic to their site. Now, reaching both new and returning customers with your press release through social media pages is much more effective becoming an SEO genius. However, there is much more to learn on how to write a press release than writing good copy and publishing it on your social media platforms. In order for your press release to have any kind of impact through social media, you must first understand how these networks function, and what the audiences of these web sites are looking for when it comes to public relations (PR). Social Media and Its Influence on the Individual Before you sit down to learn how to write a press release that’s suitable to post on your social media page, you must understand that these networks function differently than other sites. When you post something on your blog, you depend on SEO keywords and your existing audience to give it a high ranking and to share the link on their own pages. However, it’s a bit different when you’re writing a press release for social media. When you create a social media page for your business or company, you are creating content that is made to be shareable. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and even Tumblr and Instagram have clickable buttons that allow users to share your post on their own feeds in seconds. People who use these sites are already geared toward brand recognition, so creating pages for your brand or company will enable you to reach them much more easily than you would with a blog post. Even on Twitter, where you are limited to 140 characters per post, you can share the link to your main social page, along with a short message that announces it. This kind of media not only allows you to reach a wider audience with your press release, but it may also spread much more quickly as well, thanks to the sharing options that these pages provide. Creating a Press Release for Social Media Understanding how to write a press release for social media is the first step toward success. Unlike a blog post, a press release should be brief, to the point, and packed with information. You should not include any personal opinions or include off-topic content; this includes past information about your company or any kind of background information that isn’t directly related to the news. For example, trying to set up new customers with a long, introductory paragraph about your business will turn off existing customers and cause them to click away. While prospective customers do need to be informed about your company, including a link back to your page or including a small resource at the end of the press release will allow them to visit at their leisure. Well-written content of this kind should include information, facts, statistics, and optimized SEO keywords. The length of the content for your release should be no longer than one page. Errors to Avoid with Social Media Once you have learned how to write a press release and understand what should be included in its content, there are still a few other errors to avoid if you want your content to reach the greatest number of people. One major mistake that people make is to release their statements at the wrong time. On the Internet, timing is everything, and if you miss your window, your post will become buried in people’s feeds. While you can’t predict breaking news, posting your press release when there are major world events happening will cause it to be hopelessly buried in a fury of shared links and news feeds. If you plan to make your post first thing in the morning and you see that some major news event has occurred, as frustrating as it may be, you should hold off posting it until the next day. Better to delay your announcement than have it get lost among posts that have more media power. Another mistake that people who are inexperienced with press release writing make is that they try and discuss too many topics at once in one post. While you might be eager to discuss your new product, its possible uses, how it will affect your business, and possible future profits, as well as a number of other topics, making your post too long or trying to add too much information will either confuse your readers or simply cause them to click away. Many readers and Internet users who read posts like this on their social media want information that they can process right away, so be as focused as possible when creating your content. Not All Social Media Sites Are the Same While your press release will have the most effect when you have a number of social sites for your company or brand, not all social media sites operate in the same manner, so your content will be shared differently on each site. On Facebook, instead of releasing a press announcement on your personal blog as the company’s CEO, create a page for your brand instead. By creating a fan page, you can give your readers a comprehensive landing page that gives them a little bit of background on your company and other information, as well as a place from which to launch your press releases. When you do this, the readers who follow your page will become accustomed to this, which will make your Fan Page their go-to source for all of your company’s news, and they will be more likely to share information from this page as well. Learning how to write a press release for social media demands accuracy, concise and informational copy, and good … Read more

Living with the Death of Google Reader (& How To Survive)

December 31, 2020June 25, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Google Reader is set to expire on Monday, July 1, 2013. For some, it will be a moment in history: others probably won’t know about it, and some just won’t care. For a lot of companies offering solutions to replicate Google’s product, it’s a gold mine opportunity to grab Google Reader’s disgruntled, wandering and lost users. But for users, it’s simply put a frustration. If you are a Google Reader user, you’re probably looking for something to switch to and how to switch out (so your feeds don’t die with it).