Google’s search algorithms have changed a few times recently, and websites that relied on older SEO models are suffering, as stated in this article on bbc.com. Google wants their users to find pages that are actually useful, written by humans for humans, rather than the kind of keyword-stuffed, algorithm-gaming type of content that used to rise to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).
In this new search landscape, writing better copy is more important than ever. You’ve got to create content that is readable and entertaining enough for people to share if you want to show up in SERPs.
Let’s take a look at what “better copy” means in the context of copywriting.
What is “Copy”?
When we talk about “copywriting” or “writing copy,” we’re typically referring to written marketing materials: advertisements, marketing emails, promotional materials, web pages, landing pages, blogs, and any other form of written material whose goal is to persuade a reader to make a purchase. It’s not always easy to write, so here are 7 tips for writing better copy.
1. Know Your Audience
Before putting fingers to keyboard, you need to understand your audience, or the people whom your message is trying to persuade. It’s one of the most important lessons of the ancient Greek rhetoricians known as the Sophists. Their ability to teach anyone to argue the merits of any position earned them a bad rap that persists to this day. “Sophistry” means “a fallacious, deceptive argument.” But we can take at least one valuable lesson from the Sophists: your message has to be tailored to your audience. If you want to convince anyone of anything, you’ve got to see the world from their point of view and understand what they want and need.
For example, a marketing campaign about the importance of creating a living aimed at twenty-somethings will look much different from one for people in their 70s. Web copy for a company providing SaaS for small businesses will approach the subject in a different tone and address different points than one aimed at large businesses. Are your customers more price-conscious, or are they willing to pay a premium for high quality? These are questions that you must address before you begin writing.
2. Know Your Purpose
Blogs, marketing emails, ad copy, a website home page, a website “About” page, and product descriptions might all have the same ultimate purpose: persuade your audience to buy your products or services. But they all operate at different levels of the customer journey. Does your copy exist to make customers aware of your business, to add value or solve problems to help them make a purchase decision, to get a sale over the line, or to nurture them after a purchase? Understanding your purpose at this more granular level will help you craft a more precise and compelling call to action.
3. Stay Focused
When you’re writing about something you’re knowledgeable and passionate about, the tendency is to go long, to cram in everything you know, every feature that every customer might be interested in, every witty turn of phrase that pops into your head. Copy and content, however, needs to have a clear focus.
If you know your purpose and your audience, it’s much easier to come up with a central argument or concept and stick to it. Outlines are particularly helpful in this regard, even for shorter copy like email. Marketing principles like AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) provide a solid outline for all kinds of copy.
4. Keywords Are Important, But Not Everything
In the past, content writers would game search engines by packing articles with keywords proven to get traffic, even if those keywords had nothing to do with the product being sold on the website. If you’re following the advice of #3 and keeping your copy focused on conveying a single message, your most important keywords will fit naturally into your copy. If your main focus is on producing helpful, informative, and entertaining copy, people will be more likely to share it, reference it, and link to it, and building that authority and getting links back to your website are just as important as keywords for SEO.
5. “No One is Reading All That”
One of our writers is an English teacher by training and shared one of his formative experiences as a writer during one of his teaching methods courses: he wrote a long paragraph of instructions for an assignment that he thought were simple, clear, and easy to follow. The professor took one look at the block of text and said, “no one is reading all that.”
Look at your own copy and ask yourself the same. Is anyone going to want to read that massive block of text? According to HubSpot, the average visitor stays on a single webpage for about 54 seconds. Visitors to B2B websites, who are ostensibly doing deeper research and making important decisions that require some deliberation, don’t stick around for much longer: about 80 seconds. You have from about a minute to a minute and a half to get your message across to visitors, so keep it brief.
This advice also speaks to the importance of paragraph breaks and formatting text for mobile. What might look like a reasonably sized paragraph in Google Docs might end up as a wall of text on a mobile device.
6. The Writing Process is Not Linear
While the idea of a writing process suggests a series of steps to follow—brainstorm, research, outline, write, revise—the truth is that the process is not linear. Sometimes you have some ideas you just need to jot down, and then you go back and organize it later. Or you write a single paragraph, revise it to perfection, and then plan what the rest of the copy will look like. While it helps to get yourself organized with a linear “idea to final product” plan, recognize that these steps might take place in any order. Just make sure to not leave any steps out, no matter which order you tackle them in.
7. Get the Right Help
Cultivate a list of reliable sources of industry news and information for you to draw on for blog and social media content. Research what your most successful competitors are doing right with their copy. And most of all, know who the subject matter experts are in your own organization and have them work with your marketing teams. Your subject matter experts have the knowledge, and writers have the skill to package that knowledge in the appropriate form. Writing isn’t always a solitary activity. Sometimes, it takes a team to craft the right message for the right situation.
If some of these tips just seem more like general writing tips than tips specific to writing better copy, that’s because the same principles apply for any sort of communication that needs to be clear, persuasive, and engaging. No matter what you’re writing, you need to know why you’re writing, who you are writing for, and how best to get that message across to them.
