Learn content writing strategies to help maximise your traffic

Cast your mind back to GCSE English classes, and you’re probably filled with fond (or not-so-fond) memories of Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, and JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. You learnt all about the intricacies of how and when to use the humble comma, and you may have even mastered the use of the semi-colon.

While writing may have been easy for some, it may have been a struggle for others, but here’s a little secret for you: writing great copy for the internet is nothing like what you learnt at school!

Academic essays are a world away from great copywriting, where your main concerns are your conversion rateA conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that take a desired action on your site. and ensuring that your copy meets the SEO requirements of your website copywriting. So, how can you ensure that you’re writing great content? Read on to find out!

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting is a broad term that covers all kinds of writing for business. This could mean writing landing pages, writing blogs or articles, or even writing on things like leaflets, flyers, and packaging.

There are different types of copywriting spending on the task at hand. For example, writing for a search engine is hugely different to writing press releases and writing landing page copy for web pages.

Copywriters have a way with words; they understand how to weave a good story into what they’re doing as well as get the information across in the right way. For example, if you were to write a press release about a PR disaster at your company, it would be a lot more serious and direct than if you were writing a witty tweet to share with your followers.

In short, copywriting is a varied profession, and good copywriting takes years of experience and training. That’s not to say that you can’t write good copy for your business, but for the most part, it’s advisable to at least have a web copy editor look at it before it goes live. A copy editor can suggest corrections or changes to really drive the point home, just as a book editor would.

Blog Posts Vs. Articles

When most people think of copywriting they immediately think of blogs, and it’s true that blog writing does usually make up the bulk of most copywriters do when they create content, but there is a difference between what most people think of when they think of “blog” and what most copywriters think of.

When it comes to content writing, blogging is a fantastic way to build your SEO content marketing strategy (search engine optimisation) strategy both on-page and off-page, but we’re not talking about blogging your life as an online diary. We’re talking about helpful articles to encourage people to come to your site, learn about whatever you’ve written about and hopefully return again and again and buy things.

If you approach blogging like writing an article, it can hugely increase the traffic to your website, and there are many ways you can monetise that traffic (ads, affiliate linksHyperlinks, also known as links, are the connection points on a webpage that take you to other webpages., info products, courses, consulting, the list is endless).

The Technicalities of Copywriting

There are a few things you’ll need to consider if you’re writing article blogs for your website, these are:

• Keywords research: It’s really important to do your research when it comes to your keywords. Don’t be tempted to just repeat your keyword(s) every few words, either. This is called keyword stuffingKeyword stuffing is a technique that attempts to give pages higher rankings in search engine result pages by inserting the same keywords over and over again. and will actually get your content downgraded.
• The tone of voice: Keep your tone consistent. Usually, you’ll want to aim for an informative but friendly tone, not too casual but not too formal either. People want to be entertained, but they’re not looking for a new best friend.
• Target Audience: Along with tone of voice, being mindful of your target audience is vital too. If your target audience is likely to be more serious-minded, then go for a more serious tone, if it’s likely to be more fun-based, then go for a friendlier tone.
• Formatting: No one wants to read a long block of text, but equally, no one wants their reading experience interrupted by hoards of moving ads or enormous pictures getting in the way. Usually, we’d suggest going for one picture per 500 words roughly, just to break it up. Don’t forget to use the title tags (headings 1, 2, 3, etc.) to break up your content as Google will notice this, and then use bolding and bullet points to really bring the viewer’s eye to important parts of your content.

Hiring Copywriting Services

If this all sounds too difficult, or you are aware that your writing just isn’t up to standard, then it may be worth outsourcing your content SEO copywriting to a professional.

Hiring a copywriting agency or a professional web copywriter can make a huge difference to your website. They will understand how content needs to be formatted, what it needs to look like, and what things it needs to include to work for you.

If you’re set on hiring writers, don’t be afraid to grill them on their credentials first and ensure that they write in the way that you’d like your content to be read. Many content writers and copywriters will be happy to do a test piece for you. This is usually done in the form of a 500-word article on a given topic with guidelines on how you’d like it to be written, from here you can see their tone, style, and how much research they put into an article.

Conclusion

Great copywriting is an art, as well as a skill. It’s not something that everyone can do, but it’s also worth investing the time to learn the art. There are many courses online that can help you become a better copywriter, as well as many great copywriters out there who will do a fantastic job for you.

Working with a great professional copywriter can transform a business and really boost the traffic to your website, and increased traffic means increased sales. It’s a win/win situation!