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How Your Clichés Turn Off Potential Customers

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You probably don’t use clichés in the marketing copy on your website.

Or do you?

I learned a simple rule from a marketing consultant years ago that’s stuck with me ever since. Don’t make your reader think “well, I should hope so”. But I see that all the time in website copy  — empty phrases and promises that prompt exactly that response.

  • Quality service!
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We do it right the first time!
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We always honor our agreements.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We have expertise in [whatever it is we do] Well, I should hope so.
  • Free estimates.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • At [company name] you’re the boss.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We pride ourselves on working hard for our customers
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We provide a job well done and done to your satisfaction.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We respect our customers
    Well, I should hope so.
  • Fully insured!
    Well, I should hope so.
  • Your satisfaction is our goal.
    Well, I should hope so.
  • We work to make you happy.
    Well, I should hope so.

You get the idea.

The next time you write or revise your web content, I hope you will keep this principle in mind.

Well, I should hope so.

Don’t make readers think “Well, I should HOPE so”.

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Combat the Bounce

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The Dreaded Bounce  — What Is It?

Visitors who bounce like this are bad for your rankings.
We’ve all done it. Clicked on a link to a web page somewhere and realized it’s not what we were really looking for. So we click the Back button in our browser and move on. That’s a bounce: we bounced right back to where we came from.

Is a Bounce Bad?

Clearly, a bounce isn’t exactly good; that visitor didn’t buy anything. But is it really bad? Or just … meh?
Actually, it’s pretty bad. It’s not just a “so what?” matter.
When someone bounces, especially when they landed on your site from a search page, that tells the search engine that (at least to that visitor) your page wasn’t a good match for what they were searching for. And if your page isn’t a good match for whatever keyword phrase was searched, the search engine probably won’t want to rank your page as highly next time.
This can hurt you no matter how well your on-page keyword optimization has been done, and no matter how many relevant pages on other sites are linking to your page. Bouncing is a negative ranking factor.

How Do You Prevent Bounces?

This is where you need the skills of a copywriter. You need to make your page uniquely informative  — or fun  — or surprising  — or outrageous  — or provocative. And unique. SEO techniques can’t help you with this. Nothing done with search engines in mind can help you with this. You need to craft each web page with your visitors in mind. What do they need? What are they looking for? What will they like?
And you need to ask them to do something. “Click for more.” “Sign up for our newsletter.” “Tell us what you think.” “What are your questions about this?” “Buy now.” These are calls to action, and their efficacy is undisputed. Why do you suppose when you order a fast food burger they always ask you “Want fries with that?” It’s because they sell lots more fries that way. It can work for you, too.
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Need help with your own website’s rankings? Rank Magic can help.
 

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Do You Write Compelling Headlines?

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Click Bait?

You need to write attention grabbing headlines!Your web page or blog post or newsletter may be astoundingly helpful or surprisingly informative, great fun to read and generally a gem that your target market really needs to know about and read. But if your subject line isn’t good “click bait”  — something that will make it impossible to pass up without clicking on it  —  no one will know.
You need to grab them with the subject line. In an email newsletter, it’s the subject of the email. In a social media post it’s the headline you give the post or the first few words of the post. On a web page  it’s the page title that will show up in search results. And in a blog post it’s also the page title, but that often duplicates the primary headline of the post.

How to write compelling SEO headlines.

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The Value of Good Examples

One thing I’ve often found helpful, especially when a headline or subject line seems beyond my grasp, is to look at some examples.
Info Marketing Blog reprinted 100 great advertising headlines with a brief discussion of each. Review them and you’ll get a sense of what elements go into a real compelling, click bait subject line.
The Financial Brand has s helpful set of rules for creating a killer subject line, even though their focus is financial.
From an advertising perspective, Crazy Egg has a list of nine steps to follow to create a compelling subject line or headline.
And Position Digital has an excellent set of seven steps to a compelling SEO-appropriate headline.
If you don’t get enough inspiration from these sources, try searching in Google, Yahoo or Bing for headline ideas or how to write a headline. There are some great ideas to get you through that writer’s block.

BTW, if you found this helpful, please share it with friends: Like it or tweet it with the buttons on the left or the Click-to-Tweet above.

Join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Do You Need a Google-Savvy Copywriter?

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Effective SEO copywriting on your website is critical

As you know, Google has made a lot of changes to its algorithm over the past year or two, and those changes have been largely focused on content quality. E-commerce sites that consist mostly of product descriptions written by the manufacturers have suffered more than most, but almost any website can be at risk of a copy related slapdown in the Google rankings.

Home grown web copy written by business owners may just not cut it anymore.

What does Google want?

Google's Panda update focuses on quality web content.The purpose of search engines is to present people with high quality websites that will provide what they’re looking for. Part of being a high quality website is offering unique content that you can’t find on any old run-of-the-mill site. A few of the critical factors include

  • Appropriate keywords in the copy
  • Unique copy, different from (better than) other similar websites
  • An excellent user experience in terms of information presentation, ease of navigation, and compelling and engaging copy

Asa a business owner, you need more than that: you need content that makes people want to buy from you and that makes it easy for them to do so. A lot of that comes from the copy on your web pages.

How do you find the right copywriter?

CopywritingLaura Crest has written an excellent guide to seeking an SEO copywriter and identifying which one is most suitable for you in SuccessWorks, a blog about copywriting.  The main steps she suggests (she explains each in great detail) are:

  • Review their writing for readability, value, and lack of keyword stuffing.
  • Ask about their process (and listen for a few danger signals).
  • Take note of the kinds of questions they ask you.
  • Ask them about the latest Google updates (Panda & Penguin) to be sure they understand and can explain what they’re about.

Laura’s article includes a very helpful video by Heather Lloyd-Martin, which I’m sure you’ll find valuable. Perrin Carrell over at Authority Hacker has also written a good and thorough introduction to SEO copywriting.
We have some copywriters listed on our website whom we’ve worked with in the past if you’d like to start your search there.

Your observations & comments are valued — please let us know what you think in the Comments section below.

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How to Fix Your Keyword Stuffed Copy

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Is your web page uncomfortable to read?

Often less experienced SEO practitioners guide you to create copy that employs keyword stuffing. In the early days of SEO 10-12 years ago, repeating a verbatim keyword phrase several times on a web page was de riguer. Not anymore — now it can hurt.
Keyword stuffing is bad on many levels, and you’ll know it when you read it. That’s why it’s always a good idea to read your web pages aloud to yourself. Do they sound stupid? Are they repetitive? Is your keyword use obviously “over-redundant”?

The folks at RankedHard.com had some fun with the subject:

Keyword Stuffing illustrated

That kind of copy hurts.

  • It hurts your image and reputation.
  • It makes for a bad “user experience” on your site (and that’s a ranking factor at Google).
  • It increases your bounce rate (visitors who leave without reading anything else on your site.)
  • It sabotages your conversion rate (the % of visitors who become customers/clients)
  • After the Penguin algorithm updates at Google, it may sabotage your rankings.

You need to fix it. But what if the page ranks well?

This can be a real concern. If the page ranks well, will changing the copy hurt your rankings? Sure, it might. But it might also help if you do it right. Take it slow, make minor changes at first and see how your rankings respond.

How to fix it

The first thing to know is that repeating verbatim keyword phrases is not necessary. Here’s how to fix them:

  • Employ formatting ploys. Search engines don’t register punctuation and line breaks. If you can break up a keyword phrase by having the first word or words at the end of a sentence or paragraph and the rest of the phrase at the beginning of the next sentence or paragraph, your visitor won’t experience the sense of a repeated phrase. But it’s still there and can register with the search engines.
  • Use “stop words” and near synonyms. These are words that don’t add value to a query and are mostly ignored by the search engines. The usually consist of pronouns, prepositions and articles. For example, these phrases are all essentially equivalent:
    • replace air conditioner
    • replace your air conditioner
    • replace an air conditioner
    • air conditioner replacement
  • Keyword phrases may not even need to be on the page. If you have a page about replacing customers’ air conditioners, it will be quite natural to use the phrase air conditioner throughout the page. It also makes sense for the words “replace”, “replacement”, “repair” and “trade in” to occur on the page. Even if you never say “replace air conditioner” anywhere, it will be understandable to the search engines that your page is about that. Search engines have gotten much smarter over the years,

Understand that a page that ranks well but drives away potential customers is doing you no good.

Fix it. Make the copy read comfortably. Make it effective marketing copy that drives customers to buy from you. Include calls to action to help drive the buying decision. If your page is the best it can be about it’s subject, search engines will want to rank it highly.
If you’re still skittish about it, make incremental changes and watch your rankings. You may well be surprised to see your rankings improve rather than drop.

Need help? Give us a call.

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