It is my pleasure to introduce to you Scott Smith, partner at CopyWriting.Net and copy writing guru. Before you read any further, however, I want to give you a heads up that this is not a normal article from StepForth. This is an unedited interview written in a very personal style. In other words, this is not the normal condensed knowledge that my staff and I try to put out every week. That said, I really wanted to introduce you to Scott because I feel his copywriting skills are top of the line and either his services or his tips may help you shore up your bottom line. If you want to get in touch with Scott Smith he is best contacted by email.
What is web copywriting and why is StepForth Placement publishing an article about it? The fact is web copywriting is a perfect mate with search engine optimization and this has been the case ever since SEO became a reality. After all, as an SEO it is abundantly clear to me that getting people to your website serves no purpose unless they can be converted into sales; which is where a great copywriter comes in. An expert web copywriter like Scott Smith has the talent to change your website into a sales machine while search engine optimization services and other forms of online marketing drive the convertible viewers.
So, without further adieu, here is my unedited interview with Scott Smith. Be sure to take notes because Scott let some great tips escape in response to my questions.
Ross: “So tell me Scott, what is web copy writing?”
Scott:Just this: words power the Web and Internet. The Web is the graphical interface of the ‘Net, where we actually see what’s going on in the inky blackness of cyberspace. But when you scrape away all the flashiness of presentation, it still boils down to what is being said. Which means… WORDS. That’s what search engines read. But more importantly, that’s what human beings read.
So what is web copy writing? Writing for humans 1ST. Writing for spidering search engines always comes in as a close 2nd.
The actual process of web copy writing is much the same as print copy writing, BUT… with its own set of rules.
First thing to remember is that the reader is reading through a cold computer screen. Generally, it’s not very inviting. The world outside the computer screen is much more compelling, and oftentimes a lot more interesting. Heck, it’s most often the comfort of someone’s own home. Which means the first words on the screen – yes, the Headline – had better grab the reader by the scruff of the neck and forcefully pull them in.
Know what? Very often this is against the reader’s will… after all, as the writer you are asking – no, scratch that, you are demanding that they pay very close attention to what you have to say.
And according to studies by research sites like MarketingExperiments.com, you have less than 30 seconds to interest your reader enough for them to read on. Which means, your headline and opening salvo had better be compelling.
Most copywriters spend a great deal of time writing and rewriting their headlines. I do. Here’s a copywriter’s secret (which if you’ve been online for awhile, is not really a secret at all…): there are entire books for sale containing nothing but great headlines, as well as ‘cheat’ books of great headlines out there in circulation. We use them to jog our creativity. They are great resources when your ‘butt’s to the blade’, as my dear old Dad used to say. FYI, at this point I’ve boiled my own copywriting resource shelf down to only two books: Brian Keith Voiles outstanding ‘Ad Magic’, and Jay Abraham’s ‘Mr. X’ book. For me, these two books say it all for both print and web copy writing.
To wrap it up about web copy writing, you should know this: readers don’t read in linear fashion. Maybe this is obvious to you. After all, they can enter your site at any entry point, via any page or any link.
So how do you deal with this? Simple. Treat every page of your site as a complete entity unto itself. In other words, each page of your site is its own ‘pitch’ if it’s a sales site. If it’s an informational site, each page of your site must offer a complete piece of the puzzle per page PLUS provide an overview of your company.
Be smart. Write each page to be unique. Take the time to do this, and you will be rewarded with more readers. Better search engine positioning. More sales.
One more thing to know about your reader: they won’t read your page from top to bottom. Instead, they will skip around. First, they will read your headline and opening salvo. Then they will jump down the page. Studies show they will often head straight to your pricing, then back up to your bullet points, testimonials, your PS (post script), and then…
They may actually get around to reading your copy from top to bottom.
Don’t be frustrated by this. As you can see, the real difference between print copy writing and web copy writing is the ‘modular’ concept. As the writer, you are forced to take a modular approach to the writing. Because of the reader. And, sometimes because of the designer. A designer will do the most interesting things to your copy. After all, this is their job. And a good SEO will often take your copy and go one step further to give you a boost with the search engines.
No problem. Go modular, be as brilliant as you can be in each facet of your copy, and you cannot help but succeed.
Ross: “What is the biggest mistake you see in other people’s web copy?”
Scott: Every business has their own culture, but what I’m about to say applies to each and every one. We’ve had the privilege over the years to work with some of the largest companies and campaigns in the world, as well as with one-person shops and brand-new startups. We’ve experienced enormous success at every level, and we’ve also been in on failures. So we can speak from experience here.
This is what I see.
The biggest mistake on the web, in the web copy, is not being personal. It doesn’t matter if you are a mega-corporation, or a billionaire. And it doesn’t matter if you are a tiny little shop trying to come across as an established big business. You MUST be personal.
I’d even go so far as to say… go “belly to belly”. The Internet is such a cold medium. You have to melt the frost. Taking this step with your copy is key.
Be personal. Go belly to belly. Don’t be afraid to ‘tip your hat and reveal yourself’. We all have warts, bumps and bruises.
Then roll up your sleeves and write the very best copy you can. Plan to rough draft it without being too critical. Sleep on it. Then, plan on being very critical indeed with each module of your copy. Buff and polish every single one. Your copy is organic and alive. Write and rewrite. Write and write, and…
Web copy is never done, another wonderful difference it has from print copy writing. You can easily go back and rewrite. And you should. Testing various elements is easy. Simply test a single element at a time.
An interesting, albeit controversial, set of statistics was provided by Compete.com last week outlining the top 20 online properties that a pool of 2,000,000 people spent the most time on in December 2006.
What struck me and other readers the most was the significant gap between Google and Yahoo; Yahoo beat Google by a landslide. In addition, MySpace's position at the top is a perfect example of how social media marketing is taking a leading edge in online advertising space.
According to Jay Meattle of Compete.com the data was grabbed from "multiple data sources, including ISPs, ASPs, Opt-In Panels and the Compete Toolbar. " Jay also noted that he and the compete.com team "strongly believe in our multiple data source strategy and its ability to detect and correct for bias across diverse data sources to ensure accurate U.S. projections."
So just how seriously should we take this data? I expect it should be taken with some salt considering a good chunk of the data was gathered using the compete.com toolbar which appears to place a significant emphasis on searching Yahoo. That said, I find it encouraging to see Yahoo potentially taking leadership on the web - at least in one form.
Hello all, I wanted to clear up a significant issue with my recent article "The Most Common Reason for Dropped Rankings: Duplication". It was edited closely but apparently not quite close enough. Please note the following change in a question within the article:
Q: “Which website should I shut down? Is there anything I should consider first?”
A: Yes, it is very important that you choosekeep the website that has the most backlinks and has been online the longest. The reason I say this is that Google tends to favour entrenched websites; they have been around a while, are well backlinked and overall appear to have a positive history.
Whatever your decision is, it is vital you understand switching a website to a new domain is a dangerous step. This is because of Google’s famed ‘sandbox’. The ‘sandbox’ is really only an overused turn of phrase that represents a portion of the Google algorithm which considers the age of the domain as a signifier of trust. Generally, new websites will require 6 months to a year before substantial rankings are evident; this is kind of a right of passage that Google appears to be enforcing on the average website. Sites that are obviously popular and quickly gain a load of legitimate link popularity will easily avoid the sandbox (because Google can not afford to miss a ‘great’ website) but this is not the common scenario.
Sorry for this confusion! I hope the rest of that sentence made the mistake irrelevant but I didn't want to take the chance.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR QUESTIONS: Well I guess we were right thinking this was a hot topic! I have received a deluge that I will respond to as soon as possible. Instead of answering them all one-on-one I will try to find some common issues or questions that I can respond to in a quick follow-up article which would be great for both of us.
Yesterday Google's official webmaster blog announced that Googlebombing will be soon a way of the past thanks to some targeted attention from the search results team. Here is the gist of the posting:
We wanted to give a quick update about "Googlebombs." By improving our analysis of the link structure of the web, Google has begun minimizing the impact of many Googlebombs. Now we will typically return commentary, discussions, and articles about the Googlebombs instead. The actual scale of this change is pretty small (there are under a hundred well-known Googlebombs), but if you'd like to get more details about this topic, read on.
Ultimately they admit these algorithm changes will not catch every Googlebomb but they expect the changes will clear out the majority.
Repeatedly my sales and consulting staff find themselves explaining that using duplicate content can and will negatively affect search engine rankings and it is heartbreaking to see clients having to rebuild rankings due to such a simple mistake. As a result, I felt it was time to write this article and hopefully dispel many misled website owners.
Why write an entire article on something as simple as duplicate content? Well probably because it is not as simple as it sounds and many website owners find themselves in the grey area of duplication; where they don’t know for sure whether they are risking rankings or not.
The following is a sectional breakdown of the most common duplicate content issues we see defined from the standpoint of a question – hopefully making this article a little easier to read. After all, I have no illusions that reading up on duplicate content rules is exciting.
Duplicate Websites
Definition: a duplicate website is a website that has many if not all of the same pages as another live website. Note: the following questions are based on a person who owns two websites that are duplicates.
Q: “Why is a duplicate website such a bad idea?”
A: The major search engines are constantly trying to improve the quality of their search engine results in an effort to provide the best quality content for users. When duplicate content is indexed by search engine spiders, valuable time and processing power is wasted. As a result, search engines have blocked sites that used duplicate content from their database, ultimately favouring the site that either had the content first, or I believe, the one site that has the greater online history. In addition, the major search engines have a bad taste after dealing with so much duplicate content created by spammers over the past several years. As a result, posting a duplicate website is an offense that can quite literally blacklist a domain; there are few things the search engine properties dislike more than being gamed by spammers.
Q: “What should I do with my duplicate website then? Just delete it?”
A: Deleting the site is the only option unless you want to create an entire new website with unique content and a unique purpose. That said, by deleting the website you can still ensure the effort you put into promoting the old site does not go to waste by pointing the domain to your new website’s domain using a 301 redirect. A 301 is a term used to describe a server protocol which Google and other search engines will ‘see’ when they visit the old site. The protocol essentially says that your content from the old site can be found on the new site and that this is a permanent forwarding of all traffic. 301 redirects are by far the best way to minimize your losses from shutting down a website that just might have traffic or inbound links.
Q: “Which website should I shut down? Is there anything I should consider first?”
A: Yes, it is very important that you keep the website that has the most backlinks and has been online the longest. The reason I say this is that Google tends to favour entrenched websites; they have been around a while, are well backlinked and overall appear to have a positive history.
Whatever your decision is, it is vital you understand switching a website to a new domain is a dangerous step. This is because of Google’s famed ‘sandbox’. The ‘sandbox’ is really only an overused turn of phrase that represents a portion of the Google algorithm which considers the age of the domain as a signifier of trust. Generally, new websites will require 6 months to a year before substantial rankings are evident; this is kind of a right of passage that Google appears to be enforcing on the average website. Sites that are obviously popular and quickly gain a load of legitimate link popularity will easily avoid the sandbox (because Google can not afford to miss a ‘great’ website) but this is not the common scenario.
Q: “Will using a 301 redirect pass on the benefit of the deleted site’s link popularity?”
A: Link popularity is passed onto the other website when a 301 is used but how much this pass-over will benefit the website seems to fluctuate on a case-by-case basis. Usually the fluctuation is only present when popularity from one domain is passed to another with differing content/topic. In this case, since the link popularity is being redirected to an identical website I expect the benefit to be virtually lossless.
Duplicate Content
Definition: content appearing within a website that is duplicated elsewhere on the same website or elsewhere on the Internet.
Q: “I need content for my website; can I just copy content from industry journals and benefit from that quality content?”
A: No, aside from the copyright concerns of using content that is not yours, your rankings (if they exist) would suffer because it is highly likely the major search engines would detect the duplicate content. As a result, the page that you create may get flagged as duplicated and it would be ignored at the very least. The page could even devalue your site’s overall credibility. Credibility is a critical component of Google’s algorithm so sites with less credibility tend to have a harder time staying (‘sticking’ if you will) in a particular ranking.
Q: “I use a content management system to manage my site and it uses a particular set of templates. These templates have some duplicate content within them and they are spread all throughout my website. Should I be worried?”
A: No, in most cases the amount of duplicate content used within a template in a content management system (CMS) is negligible. If, however, you have a large number of pages created using a page where 90% of the text is duplicated and only 10% is unique you do have a reason to make some changes. In my opinion it is crucial that every page within a website be composed mostly of unique content with the exception of catalogues and shopping carts where text simply has to be reused over and over.
Whatever your situation make certain that your site contains a large number of pages composed of unique content that has been well optimized by yourself or your search engine optimizer (SEO).
Q: “How much of my page should be unique? Is there a standard ratio or percentage you can share?”
A: There is no industry standard formula but if I had to state a percentage I would say a minimum of 70% of the page should be completely unique to thwart any concerns of duplication. You may be able to get away with less than 70% unique content but I would suggest this is playing with fire. Either way, this statistic is moot since every page you create needs to be created with the intention to provide a powerful resource; after all search engines are only a small part of the plan – you do need visitors to like what they see and buy your product or service!
Q: “My blog currently has many different ways to find content and depending on the route a visitor may find the page is actually shown on a different URL (i.e. archives, search by label, etc.). In this scenario am I not in danger of a duplicate content penalty?”
A: Yes and no. Yes that this is duplicated content but no you are not likely to be penalized by this simply because a majority of blogs offer these additional methods of finding content so it would be detrimental if search engines penalized this application right now. That said, search engines do have to have some way to handle this duplicate content. I expect when Google (picking the most advanced search engine) finds duplicate blog postings on a website its algorithm chooses the most popular posting as the primary page to provide in its ranking results. In other words, the posting URL that has the most number of inbound links or was spidered first will be the page that attains rankings.
For those unfamiliar with blogs, the following is an example how a blog can easily have 3 duplications of a single article. In this scenario, I recently posted an article on our SEO Blog called “SEO Answers #12”. Upon posting this article was immediately posted in 3 places: once on the home page (because it is the latest article), second on its own page for permanent linking purposes, and third within the label “Local Search” a topic related to this posting.
In the future I expect blog systems will offer an option to specifically add a NO INDEX tag to the top of posts located within the labelled search section. After all, every additional label I added to this article created a duplicate version which is something that I expect search engines will soon either ignore or require a NO INDEX tag.
Conclusion
I am sure I didn’t cover every question regarding duplicate content but I am fairly certain I touched on the most common questions we see at StepForth. If you would like to submit a duplicate content question or any other SEO question please go to our submission page and I will endeavour to respond as soon as possible; likely in an article format or SEO blog posting.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 4:21 PM
As reported in Search Engine Journal, in an attempt to eliminate spamming to Wikipedia, effective immediately all outbound links from the internet giant will have the "nofollow" tag appended. The "nofollow" tag was introduced a while back for webmasters to tell the major search engines to ignore the specific link. When Google sees this tag, the outbound link is passed by as if it were regular text.
What does this mean for site owners? If you have links pointing in from Wikipedia they will be lost, at least in terms of helping with your SEO campaigns. Links come and go all the time, but to lose a Wikipedia link is a big deal as it is a highly regarded site in the eyes of the search engines and its credibility with Google would mean the link would have a significant ranking value. For small sites with few links and good rankings, a loss of a Wikipedia link could have significant impact on rankings.
Internet marketing consultant and blogger Andy Beal is not going to take this sitting down and has launched a campaign in an attempt to reduce Wikipedia’s Page Rank down to zero. He suggests that to dispute the decision that all webmasters who have links directed at Wikipedia append the "nofollow" tag themselves to give Wikipedia a taste of their own medicine. Beal does go on to mention that his site does not have any incoming links from Wikipedia and that this campaign is based entirely on principle.
Wikipedia was made popular due to the vast numbers of incoming links it has gained over the years and if enough linking webmasters adding the "nofollow" tag it would certainly cause it to ultimately drop. Currently Wikipedia’s English home page has more than 1.5 million incoming links noted by Google. It would take an incredible feat to have their popularity decline as a result of "nofollow" tags, but it is still within the realm of possibility.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 4:20 PM
We’ve known it was coming as Yahoo has been talking about it for a while now, but the new ranking model will be officially unleashed on February 5, 2007, according to Yahoo's mass mail out news letter.
In the good old days things were very simple. If you wanted your ad to rank well, you simply bid more money than the next guy. That was it. This did cause the occasional bidding war for advertisers resulting in a skyrocketing per click price, but the concept was simple.
Following in Google's footsteps, as of early next month, rankings will be determined by more than just your bid. Rankings will continue to be reflective of your bid amount, but only to a degree. Now they will also incorporate the ad quality which is determined by the historical click through rate (CTR) combined with a number of other algorithmic factors which examine items such as your actual ad copy and competitor’s ad copy. This combination of items will result in the "quality index" which will be used to help sort out the ads.
Of importance to note is how this will affect your cost per click charges. Historically you only paid one cent more than your next closest competitor. Under the new system you will pay one cent more than the amount required to hold your current position in the search results. (This is based on a combination of your bid amount and your quality index score). Ultimately increasing your quality index score can result in a lower cost per click while maintaining the same ranking position. There is now a greater chance that you could end up paying closer to your maximum bid, so be sure you are comfortable with whatever figures you enter. For more information on the effects of your maximum bid, visit Yahoo Search Marketing Help.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 4:18 PM
According to IBN live, German online news service, Heise, reported an unfinished website belonging to a client of a small hosting company, Goneo, in Western Germany "crashed quickly after an avalanche of Web surfers".
It seems another Goneo client had used an automated ordering process to gain control of the Google.de domain Monday evening resulting in the redirect of searchers. Google.de was redirected for around 12 hours before the issue was resolved.
Goneo’s chief executive, Marc Keilwerth, apologized and said all applications in the future would be checked.
On the 16th of January Wired Magazine published an article called "How Yahoo Blew It" which was a scathing review of the company's drop in popularity and profitability. The article makes a strong case that "Yahoo fumbled, bungled, and mishandled its execution at every step" while trying to compete with Google.
The Wired article is an excellent essay on the trials and tribulations of Yahoo!'s growth and the potential reasons for its fall from grace; essentially concluding that there was not enough technological leadership. I highly recommend the 5 page read but do not forget Yahoo!'s rebuttal which tends to look positively on its situation:
"Negative press notwithstanding, Yahoo remains a leading force on the Internet. We continue to grow at a pace (20 percent from Q3'05 to Q3'06) that far exceeds that of many leading Internet and blue-chip brands. We remain the undisputed industry leader in graphical advertising -- we have significantly outpaced the industry for the past five years and count the majority of the Ad Age Top 100 advertisers among our clients. We have the largest audience on the Internet -- 1 out of 2 Internet users connects to his or her interests online through Yahoo!. We are also the leader in the majority of things that consumers do online -- in the US, Yahoo in the #1 or #2 position in many vertical categories, including Mail, News, and Music."
All-in-all, I truly hope that Yahoo! uses its new management team and the launch of Panama to gain some market share back from Google over the next couple of years. After all, it would be good for all of us if Google had some more serious competition. More importantly, I love a comeback ... and a monster corporation rebounding would be a heck of a story!
"If at first you do not succeed, try and buy your market share." Okay, admittedly this is a bad example of the mantra I am trying to get across but it does fairly represent the enticements a couple of search engines are using to attract users; Blingo and AGLOCO.
1) Blingo: Owned by The Publisher's Clearing House, the search engine Blingo is randomly giving away prizes to those who search on their site. They have even made it viral by providing a duplicate prize to the person who referred the winner.
2) AGLOCO: The core concept of this search engine is that it is a co-operative. Users who sign up and use its proprietary "Viewbar" to search the net will get paid per hour and will be treated like a shareholder by getting a chunk of the company's profits. Members will also get paid for referrals to friends; the crucial viral marketing method. This is not a new concept, in fact AGLOCO was created by a couple founders of the similar but long dead AllAdvantage search company. Apparently the founders that started AGLOCO feel there is a better chance the second time around.
So why the title "... Advertisers Beware!"? Each of these search properties are built on the basis of making money off you, their advertiser. In fact, that is their entire business model - attract the users and the advertisers will have no choice but to come and pay well for visibility. My concern is that users who sign up to get paid to search may not be the target market for the average advertiser. After all, logically some of these users are on the search engine just to make an easy buck and are not necessarily interested in serious searching. Lower quality viewers aside, there is bound to be a market here worth tagging but I expect advertising on any of these properties should be carefully thought through before proceeding.
If you do decide to go ahead and advertise on these two sites (or any others like them) I strongly recommend setting up unique landing pages for each search engine and monitoring the average time for each visit using your traffic statistics. If you find a very low conversion rate and that the majority of users stay a very short time (less than 5 seconds) you had better turn tail and run - unless the cost of advertising is so low it doesn't matter.
QUESTION: My client originally promoted a single .co.uk domain that he owned. Recently he purchased a .com and pointed that domain to his current website. Since this change we have noticed his “pages from the UK” content has been dropped from Google UK but the .com is performing well on Google.com under the client’s target keywords. What is going on? – G.S.V.
ANSWER: I see no sure answer why this has happened without more information. First things first, the .com website will get attention from Google.com simply because non-regional TLD’s are favoured at Google.com. Also, the fact that your client’s site got excellent rankings is a testament to the quality optimization of the site (even if you do not want these rankings); so kudos to you if you were the one who optimized the site.
Understanding why the .co.uk dropped in the UK regional rankings seems the tough question. Here are some things to check on:
Was the .com 301 redirected to the .co.uk? A 301 redirect effectively tells the search engines that they should pay attention to the destination domain (.co.uk) versus the domain the spider originally entered at (.com). If you were to enable a 301 redirect now you might save yourself a lot of confusion and potentially pain in the future; since this technique undeniably states which domain represents the flagship website and will limit duplicate content penalties.
Did the .com have a prior history? Perhaps it was bought the .com had a significant number of backlinks or history that outweighed the .co.uk domain. You see, I expect when Google is presented with two domains pointing at the same content it will choose to rank the domain with the most positive history. That is of course, if no other directives have been stated (i.e. 301’s). A way to see if the domain had a history before it was bought is to use the Wayback Machine and see if a prior site existed. Next you should do a backlink check for the domain to see if there are any links that came with the ‘new’ domain.
Is the website hosted in the USA or the UK? If the .co.uk and the .com are both hosted on an American server then achieving a ranking on google.com will be significantly easier than google.co.uk and vice versa. In other words, host in the UK and use a .co.uk domain if you want to be sure to have regional UK rankings.
At the moment these are the most prominent possibilities that come to mind but there are likely more. The fact is, if all else fails and it appears everything is normal I find issues like oddly missing rankings fix themselves over time. I hope your outcome is extremely positive and I do hope you keep me up to date.
If anyone else has experienced this issue or has some educated feedback please post a comment within this posting on The SEO Blog.
QUESTION:How do I edit my website description on Google? Please direct me to the correct place. – Barb C.
ANSWER: There are three ways your website description might have been created by Google and fortunately each method has a solution which I have outlined below:
1) Google most commonly determines page descriptions from an assortment of the text on the page; usually the first 25 words or less. Controlling what is used by Google in this scenario is not foolproof but if you make certain that the first sentence on your page exemplifies an ideal description you will be off to a good start.
2) If Google does not choose the text on your page it may use the META Description tag found in the source. Ensuring that this description is well written is the simplest method of controlling result descriptions.
3) Perhaps the most frustrating scenario is when Google decides to use the description set for your website by the Open Directory Project (ODP). You can tell whether this has happened by searching dmoz.org for your website and cross referencing the description. If it turns out that ODP is the source of your frustrations then you are in luck! Just last year a new META tag was created which tells the search engines to no longer use your ODP description. Just place the following code with the other META tags on your page: <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOODP">
As a final benefit make certain that the descriptive sentence you use for solutions 1 and 2 are identical which emphasize consistency and improve your chances of controlling the description used by Google.
QUESTION:When a high PR page within a 3rd party website links to a page within my website where is the benefit placed… on my home page or my page that was linked to? – Jose U.
ANSWER: The home page and the linked page benefit from the link… but to different degrees. The majority of the weight is applied to the linked page because it is the page that effectively deserved the vote of confidence but it also counts positively towards the integrity and credibility of your whole website; which in essence is represented by your home page.
Please note, this answer is totally dependent upon the quality of the backlink you received. For example, links from websites that are unrelated or have poor credibility will offer little or no benefit. For more information on what constitutes a ‘good’ backlink see my answer to a recent question from a reader: “What exactly are good backlinks?”.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb