Note: this is the seventh of our multi-part Optimise to Win series, where we show you how the best businesses get more conversions than their competition.
The only way to stay relevant online is to consistently have content that interest and helps your users. Unless your content is purely artwork or photography (and often, even then), that content must be extremely well-written.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is more than just thinking about what topics need to be covered on which pages, although that is an important part of it. A great content strategy incorporates the brand’s unique qualities and projects those on to the copy, all while emphasising only the most important and interesting aspects of the written copy. Users should enjoy learning from your copy. This even extends to areas like 404 pages, button text, headlines, menu items, and especially calls-to-action.
What does a good copywriter do?
A good copywriter will first take your initial thoughts, then brainstorm to find areas that reverbrate with your target audience and do research on Google, Quora, Twitter, or other sources to find pain points and appreciated solutions. Only then do they craft headlines, titles, and meta tags as well as placing keywords, power words, and calls to action as effectively as possible.
Even if you have content that you think is well-written, it’s still worthwhile to have a great copywriter have a once-over to find areas that could be improved.
SEO benefits of great copy
In order to rank well in search engines, your site must be seen as an expert in your field. How does it determine this? By the number and status of sites that link to you, the bounce and conversion rates of your site, and the keywords in your copy. All of these factors can be improved significantly with a strong content strategy and copywriting.
It’s no longer about the number of times you can stick a keyword like “pizza sydney” into your web copy that determines your ranking — those days are, mercifully, long past. These days, Google has gotten good at promoting well-written sites and demoting keyword-spamming ones. Our goal with each site is to make that site the authority for their category.
Re-use your content
It can be very tiring to create great new content all the time. Fortunately, you can re-use well-written content in many different media! Let’s say you create a webinar on a particular topic that your target audience is interested in. You can take that content, reformat and restructure it, and re-release it in any number of ways.
Case Studies – the results of a good copywriter
- Adding two extra words to an email newsletter subject line (from “How to…” to “Hell Yeah – How to…”) increased the open rate by over 23%.
- Adding three well-written bullet points to a newsletter signup form increased signups by nearly 85%.
What can we learn from all this?
A great copywriter can make a huge difference in the success of your website, even with small, seemingly insignificant changes. Your content is your brand and a measure of your expertise.
In reality, your website content is an invaluable business asset, as is the personality that you project through it as a brand. It’s time to stop treating it as an afterthought and start giving the effort and respect it requires.
Sources: ContentVerve
For more, check out our other Optimise to Win posts:
- Optimise to Win: Why are you missing out on thousands of conversions?
- Performance & Page-Loading Speeds – Silent, but deadly.
- Design for Conversions – Give users what they want!
- Simplify – Focus & get rid of the clutter!
- Mobile-Responsive Design: Stay relevant & be usable on-the-go.
- SEO & SEM – Help your customers find you.
- Content Strategy – Good writing pays off!
- Provide Options – Spread the net wide.
- Be Natural – User expectations & how to exceed them.
- The Test-Improve Cycle – Never stop getting better!
At Redfox Media, we employ all of these methods and strategies for clients in our Online Accelerator program. Enquire now to discuss how we can help your business, and get a FREE SEO report!
