Here are a few SEO copywriting tips to get you on your way.

1)      Who are you writing for? This will dictate the style of the writing and the sort of content that you decide to use. Writing SEO articles just for the search engines may help with your rankings, but the chances are that they are not going to mean anything to the visitor that eventually finds your site.

2)      What are you writing about? One of the toughest things about writing SEO copy is that you need to know what to write about. You need to write something that will interest your visitors and hopefully be good enough that other webmasters will want to link to you.

3)      What are your keywords? You need to research relevant keywords that will bring in relevant potential visitors. Think about what your visitors will be searching for, research the amount of keywords and the competition that already exists for the keywords.

4)      Pack A Punch Title! Not only is the title the most important part of any content for SEO, but it is also the thing that will effect whether or not the visitors take the time to actually read the content. Keep it short and punchy, avoiding words which are not required. The most important terms want to be at the start of the title if possible. However it still needs to be catchy enough that the visitor wants to click your link.

5)      What about the content? When you are writing for SEO, you need to keep a few things in mind. Make use of subheadings in order to break the content up and make it easier for your visitors to rear. It will also show the search engines which keywords are important, as these are the ones that will be in your header.

User bullet points or short paragraphs – it is easier to write small chunks of text than to write full paragraphs of content.

6)      Long tail keywords! One of the main reasons for SEO content creation is to pick up on the long tail terms. These are usually 3 or more words with very low competition that your content will rank for without any additional work. Try to think what longer queries your visitors might use to find a site like yours.

In its most basic form, social media is using “social” sites in order to market your company. This includes the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, although is not limited to those sites.

Companies often think that they should start using social media to promote their website, however once they have signed up for the account they are stuck – they don’t know what they should be doing with the account and can often end up doing more harm than good!

Here are 7 rules that you should follow in order to make the most of your social media marketing campaign.

1)      Use the account that you have set up! You would not believe the amount of people that do sign up for their accounts and then leave it, expecting it to work miracles for their business without them doing anything. Some networks such as Twitter should be updated at least once a day, others such as facebook at least a couple of days per week. If you don’t take the time to go to your account and update it, why would your “fans” bother to come back and check it?

2)      Its not all about sales! Simply posting “buy my product” or “give me a call to arrange this service” is not what social media is about. You should use the platform to connect with your customers and give them advice.

3)      If someone asks you a question or comments on your post, respond to them! Generate a conversation between the company and your customers. If the customers don’t get anything back they will go elsewhere!

4)      Be careful what you say! Whatever you post is instantly available for everyone on the internet to see. The slightest thing posted at the wrong time or in the wrong way could cause you a lot of trouble and lose you a lot of customers.

5)      The customer is always right! This is especially true on the internet. Do not get into arguments with customers who complain. Deal with the complain politely and professionally, remember that all of your other customers will also be able to see what is going on.

6)      Give them a reason to join your social media network. You need to give them a reason to take the time and effort to join your network and take an interest in what you have to say. Popular incentives include discount codes, free gifts and exclusive offers.

7)      Keep giving! If your social network account isn’t giving the user anything, then they aren’t going to bother coming back and keeping an eye on your page. Adding weekly quality updates will keep them interested. How about one item with a large discount every week? Provided you give enough discount so that the item is something people will want to buy, people will come back every week to check your page!

These are all things that you need to be able to measure if your website is going to be successful. They are also metrics that can be measured using Google Analytics quickly and easily. Here are a few things that Google Analytics can measure and how they can help your online marketing campaign.

1)      With Google Analytics you can view how many people  have found your website for specific keywords from the search engines. This means that once your online marketing company has got your website to number 1 for terms such as “bespoke kitchen doors in Lincolnshire” you can see that you have never actually got any visitors from that term, or that by being number 1 for “hampers” or “wine merchants” actually brings in a large portion of your traffic.

2)      When you are looking through the search terms that your site has been found for, you may notice a few terms which you did not realise that you are ranking for but that are bringing in traffic. It may be that you are on the second page for a term which has a lot of searches per month and as a result it is still bringing in a decent amount of visitors. This would be a term that you could then spend a little time on and probably get it onto the first page and increase the traffic even further.

3)      Another important feature of Google Analytics is that you are able to view the bounce rate and time spent on your site. You may have your website number one for a selected search term, however a lot of the traffic may be looking for a different product or service and therefore increase your bounce rate. If this is the case then you may be better targeting a more specific term or making changes to your website to make the landing page more relevant to the visitors search term.

4)      As well as seeing how long the visitors stay on their first page, you can see how long they stay on the whole site as well as every page they have visited. If you find pages which have a really high bounce rate or where the visitors are only spending a few seconds on the page then you should immediately start looking into why they are not spending long on that page and what you can do to improve it.

1) Extra Clicks – What is the point of this front page? The user has already found your site which means that they want to see something on their. They have either typed your URL into their browser, or they have clicked a result in a search engine. Why make them have to click another link to get the information they need? You should be making it as easy as possible for your visitors to navigate your site, and this includes getting into the site!

2) Extra Bandwidth – A large image or flash video can be quite a large file which not only uses your visitors bandwidth and makes the site slow to load for them, but it also uses the bandwidth of your website hosting provider. As most host will have a limit imposed on the amount of bandwidth your site can use, do you really want to be wasting it before your “real” site has even loaded?

3) No Content – As we have said, these pages are normally a large image of a flash video, complete with a link saying “click here”. This is the first page that the search engines see on you site as well! To a search engine this site looks like a low quality site, without any content on it when they first arrive and as the search engines love content – thats not what you want! It also means that the search engines will stop checking your site as often and when they do come back to your site to check for updates it will see that the front page has not changed and possibly not bother looking at the rest of the site for any updates.

4) Devaluing Links – When most people link to your website, they would link to www.yoursite.com which means they are linking to your intro page rather than any pages with content.

So, your intro page is annoying your visitors, increasing your bounce rate, costing you money in bandwidth allowance and harming your search engine rankings, does that intro page still look as good to you now?

1) Increase your conversion rate. You need to ensure that your site is as user friendly as possible and that there are not any obvious obstacles in the way of your customer. Look through your Google Analytics account and look for any pages with high bounce rates and check the ecommerce checkout “funnel” for any high drop out stages. This will highlight any obvious problems. After this, think about other things which could encourage purchases – how about free delivery? Are your prices competitive? Do you offer anything your competitors dont? Try out different special offers and different delivery charges.

2) Increase your traffic. This is the most difficult step. There are a variety of ways to increase the traffic to your website including search engine optimisation (moving your site up the search engine rankings), social media, pay per click and affiliate marketing. Deciding which route to take and ensuring that you receive a good return on investment is not a quick decision to make. Unless you understand online marketing well yourself, it would be best to contact someone at this stage to ask for advice and see how they can help you. We covered an overview of SEO vs PPC vs Affiliate a few weeks back which may help to give you a better understanding of each of the options.

3) Repeat customers! This is one step that alot of online companies forget about, despite the fact it is cheaper to create an order from an existing customer than it is to create a new customer. Depending on your product, you may be able to sell the same product several times through the year or if it is a one off purchase, how about cross selling similar products? Perhaps you sell hampers? Create a list of all of the big events through the year when hampers are traditionally given and send an email just before each of these occasions promoting the relevent products. Maybe you sell bespoke conservatories? This is obviously a one off purchase, however how about emailing the people that have requested your conservatory brochure and telling them about your new range of conservatory furniture?

This is a very basic guide to give you a few ideas as to how you can increase the sales on your website, however if you would like advice on any stage or a chat about help with any of these points then feel free to contact us.