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Content is King, the saying goes. But is that for people or search engines, who do you write for?
Our Digital Marketing Manager had an excellent discussion with a copywriter the other day…
As a copywriter and former Editor himself, he was asked to critique a piece of copy that had crossed his desk and so he went into editorial mode.
Of all the things that an online content editor should do, he assessed the article he’d received against a set of long-held, natural and instinctive criteria.
One particular benchmark was had the piece been written with the search engines in mind? The response from the copywriter was:
“I write for people”
That’s an obvious and perfect answer because, of course, who is all this online content for? People, stupid. Without people, there is no audience, without people there is no traffic, without people, there are no readers, no sharers, no amplifiers of your message.
So, of course, all content is written for people.
Or is it? What about the other option, the other end of the spectrum?
Yes, we can write for search engines and not people. In fact, our Digital Marketing Manager was once approached, a long time ago, by an agent who offered to “spin” his content. He was told to write articles in such a manner that they could be run through some software to produce multiple versions of the same article.
And what, you might ask, was the point in that?
Well, many years ago, Google’s algorithms were a little less sophisticated than they are today and so content was, at one point, quite literally churned out to produce masses of fodder solely for the purpose of ranking in the search engines.
The idea was that if you produced a lot of content around a certain subject matter, particularly niche content with limited competition, you could rank high, vacuum up all the traffic for those terms and dominate the search engines…
…with crappy content!
A whole industry grew up solely around the creation of poor-quality content. People with little or no writing skills would submit, for absolute peanuts, content that served no purpose but to attract search engine rankings.
You see, a niche term, ranking at number one in the Search Engine Rankings Pages (SERPs), might not get a massive amount of traffic but by being at #1 gets disproportionately more traffic volume than the number two, number three slots etc. (See Number 1 position in Google gets 33% of search traffic)
Churning out a lot of content on the same subject, for ranking purposes only, might then gain you “authority” on the subject and so a website could rank in additional slots other than the first position, thereby getting “all” the top traffic.
Now, ranking and gaining traffic for a low-volume niche term may not make yours the most popular website on the planet but, when you do this on an industrial scale, just think about mopping up traffic for nearly ALL the niche terms.
This is exactly what happened way back in the late 2000s. Those low-paid people churned out tons of low-grade content, enslaved for their pittance of a wage, to these “content farms”. Websites once existed that were stuffed full of this content, cornered all the traffic for the low volume niches and sold display ads to then generate revenue.
This, from the Wikipedia entry for “Content Farm”, sums it up nicely:
In the context of the World Wide Web, a content farm (or content mill) is a company that employs large numbers of freelance writers to generate large amounts of textual content which is specifically designed to satisfy algorithms for maximal retrieval by automated search engines. Their main goal is to generate advertising revenue through attracting reader page views, as first exposed in the context of social spam.
And, for a time, it worked.
I remember well the days of eHow and the public IPO of Demand Media. Content farms were a huge business back in the late 2000s and Demand Media, the epitome of the commoditised content farm, peaked at something like $2 billion if I recall correctly.
But then you had Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, make the statement that the Internet was a “cesspool” of misinformation and low-grade websites, long before Donald Trump came along banging on about “fake news”.
And so the purge began.
Google worked hard on its algorithms and still does, to eliminate poor quality content from the world wide web. When I say eliminate, I mean to remove it visibly from the SERPs.
Google Panda was the name given to the set of algorithm changes that started to see the slide of machine-focused content. All the “thin content” that barely scraped by at 300 words, all the “spun” content, the sites with 10 different articles all about “how to boil an egg”, they started to become irrelevant. They lost their rankings, their traffic and firms like Demand Media, much to the delight of real, passionate professional copywriters, started to nose dive.
And today, that is why we write for people.
Or do we?
I’ve been told by some people that more than 300 words is “boring”, befitting of that Too Long, Didn’t Read (TLDR;) moniker.
But isn’t that more a symptom of modern-day reading habits, of Generation Z being brought up on a diet of 2-minute YouTube videos and listening to 3-minute pop songs? Isn’t it because we’re living in a world of attention deficit and no time to read anything in any great detail?
When I were a lad we used to read whole stories, whole books! My own copy of The Lord of the Rings tome was a whopping 1069 pages! I read that book at least twice in the first year I had it.
So, back to the original point…
Do we write for humans or do we write for the search engines?
Well, ultimately it has to be for humans but, if you write for this reason alone and ignore the demands of the search engines then you risk losing the opportunity to be crawled, indexed, ranked and amplified.
So please do write for humans but ignore considering SEO, when you’re writing, at your peril.
You can probably tell that, as a Hampshire SEO agency, we’re not just highly experienced in copywriting but truly passionate too. Just think about what that means if we write copy for you…
If you’d like to discuss how we can inform your readers, inspire thought and encourage debate, just pick up the phone and call us now on 01276 534 680 or fill in our easy contact form.
“I’m not trying to write a novel, I’m just trying to sell a product”
We hear similar arguments time and time again when talking to businesses about the importance of copy writing. The thing is: how to write better sales copy, the kind that pulls a reader in, builds trust and results in conversion, is as much of a delicate craft as writing fiction. Why?
“Copy is a direct conversation with a consumer”
Shirley Polykoff
Copy writing is an open dialogue and a valuable line of communication between you and your customers. How you treat that dialogue can have a massive impact on your sales. Think about your own buying habits. Are you more likely to trust a website riddled with spelling errors, or one that features accurate, interesting and clear copy?
In addition, thanks to Google’s countless rounds of algorithm updates, relevant and high quality copy writing is more important now than ever before. So, if you’re not a natural-born Ernest Hemingway, how can you make sure your writing is up to scratch? Simply follow these 5 golden rules, from some of the most iconic names in copy writing.
“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything.”
David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy is one of the giants of the golden era of advertising, and was called “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry” by TIME magazine in 1962. He also has some of the most valuable pieces of advice to offer when it comes to writing to sell.
The above is perhaps the most poignant. When selling products and services, many businesses experience a disconnect between the ad they’re writing, and the customers themselves. In essence, they almost forget that it’s their colleagues, loved ones and friends who the ad is aimed at. It’s easy to make the mistake of generalising and treating a prospect like a one-dimensional character, rather than an individual.The best copy treats the reader like a peer, creating a story and hooking them in. Don’t try to be everything to everyone, or your copy loses all its power. There’s nothing wrong with being specific.
The best copy treats the reader like a peer, creating a story and hooking them in. Don’t try to be everything to everyone, or your copy loses all its power. There’s nothing wrong with being specific when you write better sales copy. For a deeper dive into the mind of David Ogilvy read his epic tome Ogilvy on Advertising.
“The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.”
William Bernbach
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have the cheapest or the best product in the world to achieve great sales. Above all, you just need the reader to trust you. These days many of our purchases are made online, which is also a notorious playground for spam, scam and shady characters. Trustworthy and credible websites are the ones which will enjoy the highest conversion rates.
So, how can you make yourself appear trustworthy? Tell the truth, for a start. Because to be honest, no one is going to believe you if all you do is sing your own praises. Your sales pitch becomes all the more believable with balance.
When telling your story on your website, include the rocky start at the beginning. Talk about the things that went wrong. If your product comes with some limitations, be upfront about them and your customer will thank you for being genuine in a sea of scam artists.
“On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”
David Ogilvy
Back to David Ogilvy now and another timeless gem. Research “how to write good copy” on the web, and you’ll be inundated with blog posts all centred around one essential component: the headline. The headline is the part that captures your reader’s attention and determines whether or not they go on to read the rest of the copy.
It follows then that you should invest some real time in crafting the perfect headline. Some general rules of thumb? Keep it short, simple and to the point. Headlines are also prioritised by Google when indexing your page, so keep it relevant to the rest of the subject matter on the page.
“People aren’t interested in you. They’re interested in themselves.”
Dale Carnegie
Never was a truer word spoken. Once you understand this essential rule, your writing will never be the same again, because you’ll have realised that sales writing has almost nothing to do with you and your business, and everything to do with your customer.
This relates back to point one, and how you talk to your readers. But it also has to do with what you actually say. I don’t want to know if you have multiple warehouses all over the country. I want to know that wherever in the country I am, I’ll still receive the product quickly. It’s all about translating your writing into customer-centric copy – that’s when you’re onto a winner.
“People don’t read advertising, they read what interests them. Sometimes, it’s an ad.”
Howard Gossage
At the end of the day, no one likes to feel like they’re being fed a sales pitch, so your copy doesn’t need to relentlessly have a foot on acc-sell-erator (see what we did there?) If you make it human, unique, creative or interesting enough, it will attract readers anyway. At the heart of good sales copywriting is the problem that you can solve for the reader. They might not even know what this problem is yet – but as a writer, it’s your job to find out.
Looking to write better sales copy but just don’t have the time? That’s OK, we understand, and we can help too.
Call Clever Marketing on 01276 534 680 or complete our easy contact form and we can discuss your sales copy requirements.
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