Guest Post By Michel Fortin
This Post Featured on Reuters |
|---|
Last Sunday, a bunch of copywriters shot the breeze on the Nuts & Blogbolts talk radio show. At the end, Mike Sansone asked if we would individually respond on our blogs to this question:
“Writing for the visitor is more important than writing for the search engines. Can both requirements be met without sacrificing quality?”
Ryan Healy posted his answer on the subject. I agree with him, but only in part. This is not because I disagree with anything Ryan said, because he makes some great points. But because I think there are ways around it.
So my answer is both “yes” and “no.” Here’s why…
First off, I’m not a search engine optimization (SEO) expert by any stretch. However, I do know enough about SEO to know that it’s primarily based on three major factors:
Code, links, and content.
Code has to do with ensuring the content is presented in a way that makes it more appealing to the search engines. Simply, the code is optimized so that the search engines can find your content and read it more easily.
Why is this important? Because, in reality, your code not only helps search engines find and crawl your content, but also helps them present that content in a way that appeals to their users.
Links are links within your content, as well as links to your content — the latter being more important, of course. When people link to you, they are indirectly telling the search engines that your content is of value, and therefore of interest to their users.
Undeniably, this requires some skill, such as knowing how to write content that creates interest — and in a way that makes it interesting, too (which is still copywriting, by the way).
Content, which is third in this list, is the one on which the question behind this post really hinges. I think a better question to ask is, “Can you write content and copy at the same time?” Yes. But there are three ways of doing this in a way that doesn’t force one to sacrifice the quality of the other.
First, understand the difference between content and copy. Content informs. Copy invites. In other words, content educates its readers, while copy elicits a response from them, in some way.
So can you be both informative and response-driven? Absolutely. Now, there’s the rub: how do you blend the two?
I do believe that you can write content that’s appealing to both the search engines and its users. (And really, it’s all about the audience, isn’t it?) But to ensure that it’s generating a response at the same time does require some attention.
Personally, I don’t spend time on things like keyword optimization and density. I look at it this way: give what your users want, and you will naturally give what the search engines want.
The objective is to focus on your audience. Find out what they want and bring value to them. Because that, in effect, is why your website exists in the first place, whether it’s to educate or sell. (And it’s also what makes copywriting truly compelling in the first place, too.)
In terms of content alone, you can post a lot of it so that you naturally multiply your keyword density. You can focus on a particular niche. And you can also write content that’s buzzworthy, too.
Do either one of these, and you will naturally attract a lot of organic traffic as a natural byproduct, without much extra effort.
But if you want to maximize your content and make it response-driven at the same time, there are three ways to accomplish this:
- Guiding
- Funneling
- “Newsifying”
Guiding
The content guides people into taking action, whether it’s directly or indirectly.
You can certainly turn your content into copy to a degree. In other words, you can use the content itself to elicit a certain response from your audience, or add copy to it to accomplish this. (Turning one into the other is what I call “newsifying,” and I will come back to it later on.)
Press releases, product reviews, and even articles can be both educational and promotional. But guiding can also be as simple as adding links or forms within the content, and even adding words or phrases that lead people to take a certain action.
Therefore, the copy may or may not be part of the content proper. It can be separate and distinct from the content, and it can either blend within the content or be placed in a sidenote.
However, in the case of a strictly long-copy salesletter, I agree that your aim is to elicit a response and not satiate the search engines. If you were to optimize your sales copy for the search engines, the quality of your copy may suffer at some point. As the saying goes, you can’t be all things to all people.
But this is where the next two options come into play.
Funneling
This is the process of using content to generate organic traffic, and siphoning that traffic to a copy-focused, response-driven page, site, or salesletter. It can be part of the same website, or it can be on another site altogether.
These content-only pages act like beacons or baits that attract people who are interested in the content first and foremost, and are then led to take action elsewhere. Unlike “guiding,” this step involves two separate and individual processes that are distinct from one and other.
Now, these may be concurrent or not. For example, you can funnel traffic from one to another, or through a multi-step process where one only occurs after the other has been completed.
For example, we see this in part with product launches that deliver content beforehand to increase exposure, create interest, and build lists of eager subscribers who are notified when the product and copy are officially launched.
But whether it’s concurrent or consecutive, when you really think about it you are still directing your visitors, are you not? So the content acts like copy, to some degree. It’s still calling for some kind of action, even if it’s to get people to read more.
Newsifying
This third step is where the two blend.
“Newsifying” is a term I’m coining to illustrate the process of turning copy into a newsworthy piece. Rather than adding copy to your content (as in “guiding,” above), you are adding content to your copy, or turning your copy into an informative, valuable, newsworthy piece in and of itself.
Even though the purpose is to elicit a response (most likely a sale), by making your copy educational you also make it palatable — and perhaps even more so, since you’re not overtly promotional.
In other words, it appears as a softer sell, where the content doesn’t appear as an outright promotional piece. But it’s not necessarily a “soft-sell” in all cases, too. You can newsify your copy and still be strong, hard-hitting, and benefit-rich.
In my report, The Death of The Salesletter, I talk about the increasing popularity in copy that’s newsworthy, intriguing, and informative, rather than copy that’s overtly hypey, aggressive, and mimicking every other salesletter out there.
Tests are showing that salesletters that provide valuable content in themselves are getting better results. These salesletters look less like salesletters and more like articles or editorials (think “advertorials”).
Here’s a forinstance: you sell an information product on how to reduce stress. So you create a free report on 16 tips for relieving migraines without drugs.
While the report talks about how to relieve headaches naturally, it connects with the effects of stress, and how eliminating or reducing that stress can help.
People will not only understand the real problem behind most headaches and become better educated on all the other effects caused by stress, but also understand the benefits of owning your product and ultimately buy it.
(Of course, I’ve just pulled this example out of thin air for illustration purposes only. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. But hopefully, you get the picture.)
Anyway, this is just one example. There are so many different ways of doing this.
In the above scenario, you are using content that logically fits into your product. But you can also pull one topic from the many covered in your product, offer content that teases your audience to want more, or provide content that’s separate from your product but proves it, supports it, or emphasizes any of its key benefits.
(These articles are salesletters in disguise, in other words.)
Nevertheless, the answer to the initial question about being able to write for both visitors and the search engines, without sacrificing quality, is to use one of the above three steps.
Remember, we don’t write for the search engines. Even when we do, we are still writing for the visitor. Search engines exist primarily to help people find information. So the sacrifice, in many cases, is caused not by writing for one or the other, but when we stray from our audience and focus on ourselves instead.
The more you focus on what people want and give it to them, the easier it will be to get the search engines AND your visitors to do what you want.
And in the end, it’s all copy.
About Michel Fortin…
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog and subscribe to his RSS feed.