Web Content

But who writes the homepage?

Published on June 13, 2013 by

fight for homepageThere are copywriters for copy, and content writers for content…but who writes a website’s homepage?

There is no doubt that writers and copywriter are in demand.

With the explosive growth of web content marketing and social media, a lot of words need to be written. Not to mention all those sales pages and landing pages. And the emails and newsletters.

So it’s no surprise that when you do some Google searches for words and terms like copywriter and “content writer” you get a lot of results.

Here’s what I found today on Google

copywriter - 13,800,000 results

“content writer” – 4,180,000 results

There is plenty of supply and demand when it comes to copywriting and web content writing.

Which brings us to my key question…who writes the homepage?

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Your web content will be derivative and boring, unless…

Published on June 6, 2013 by

key to original contentMillions of new content pages are published online each day. Most of them are derivative and boring.

How come? Several reasons. But perhaps the biggest reason is that the environment of marketing online demands that we keep publishing new posts and new pages, at an ever-increasing rate. And photos. And videos. And slide shows.

If we don’t keep publishing, we look like we’re falling behind our competitors.

Plus, Google has made is clear that it likes “fresh’ content. And social media is driven by what’s new, and what’s happening now.

New, new, new. Publish, publish, publish.

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Do you have an internal linking strategy for your website?

Published on May 16, 2013 by

internal linkingIf you write web sites, for clients or for yourself, you probably know about the importance of linking.

Attracting inbound links from other websites is a great way to attract new visitors, and also sends a strong message to Google that your content is of high quality. (If your content was of low quality, other people wouldn’t bother linking to it.)

However, paying attention to links is not just about maximizing the number of quality inbound links from other sites. You should also pay attention to internal linking, within your own website.

Why does internal linking matter? A couple of big reasons.

- It helps your readers find related content on your website. Instead of having to search through your navigation system to find other pages they might be interested in, they can find the links right there within the body of the page, or listed at the end.

- These links also help Google make sense of your website. They let Google know which pages are related, and also the relative importance of pages on your website. Lots of inbound links pointing to a particular page suggest it’s an important page.

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Integrated social media: The next opportunity for online writers and copywriters.

Published on April 11, 2013 by

social media integrationSocial media marketing is, thankfully, coming out of its trendy phase and moving into its business phase.

For those of us who have been online for a while, the trendiness of social media has been somewhat irritating. The web was social before the web even existed. In other words, the Internet was social before the first web browsers appeared. Back then we connected with one another through Listservs and the like. It was 100% social.

Services like MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent social media. They simply made it more popular and improved its functionality.

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The more skills you have in your online copywriting toolbox, the greater your value to your clients.

Published on March 21, 2013 by

online copywriter toolboxWay back when I wrote copy offline, I was pretty much a one-trick pony.

I wrote direct mail. That was my thing. I have never written a radio spot. I have never written a TV commercial.

Back then, it was fine to focus on a single copywriting skill, because there was no connection between what I wrote for a client as a direct response writer, and what their agency copywriter wrote for TV.

Sure, we all worked to the same brief, keeping within the same campaign idea.

But the key point to understand is that the quality of my direct mail piece didn’t depend on my knowing anything about writing for TV, radio or any other medium. Why? Because each medium was separate from the other.

All that changed with the arrival of the web.

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When quality content serves no purpose at all.

Published on March 14, 2013 by

rubbish web contentWhen the topic of web content comes up, whether I am talking with a solopreneur or someone at a large company, I ask a simple question: “What is its purpose?”

Right now everyone seems to be focusing on the quality of content. I get that. Quality content is good for your readers, and good for increasingly picky search engines.

In particular, quality content builds reputation and trust.

However, we still need to come back to the question of purpose.

Let’s look at this at the page level and at the strategic level.

What is the purpose of that individual page?

Yes, you want to wow and impress your readers. You want to entertain, surprise or educate them. No cut and paste. No boring stuff. Each page of content you publish needs to add to your reputation.

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