Web and SEO copywriting with rock-solid New Hampshire values

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Here’s a quick tip about writing better web copy.

If you want your web copy to engage and convince your visitors to take a specific action, then talk to them using the appropriate tone for your audience.

Your content will work much better at converting if you talk to them, not by talking about yourself and how great you and your company are.

Try to minimize the use of the words I, me, we, us, and ours…

Instead, use more of the words you can, you will, yours, and you’re. It shows you’re (see – I used it right there) focusing on them and their problems.

What are your thoughts?

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

Merrill Clark
Web, SEO, and Direct Response Copywriter

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If you’re responsible for website content, you know it can be a pain in the butt creating or updating good content.

Of course, you want content that your prospects and clients are interested in and will actually read, but it just ain’t that easy.

So what often happens is you get sites jam packed with all sorts of useless crap, corporate mumbo-jumbo, and copy talking about how great they are. Now they have content, right?

Uh-uh…The problem is that people just don’t care about them and their content because it doesn’t provide them any clear benefit or reason to read it.

So what do ya do to figure out what to write about?

First, understand that people use the Internet to find information that relates to or solves their problems. The challenge is creating relevant content that deals with these problems, while demonstrating a need for your product or service and how you can solve their problem.

So…to help you decide what to write about, I’m going to tell you about a tool I just recently learned about.

It’s Wordtracker Labs’ Keyword Question and you can find it on Wordtracker’s site http://labs.wordtracker.com/keyword-questions.

Just enter a keyword or short phrase related to your industry and the Wordtracker Labs’ Keyword Question tool delivers a list of questions people are currently asking.

It sorts results by the number of times they were typed into search engines during the past year.

For example, here are some popular questions for the search term “marketing”:

What is marketing?

What companies use viral marketing?

What is search engine marketing?

What is direct marketing?

Now – if your target audience wants to learn about marketing, these questions are potential topics for at least four web pages, articles, or blog posts.

And best of all, you know there’s already an audience searching for these subjects.

Now…go create some good content!

I’d like to hear your comments…

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

To your website’s success!

Merrill Clark
Website and Direct Response Copywriter

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Don’t you want to get more traffic to your site?

It’s not a trick question – hell yea you do!

You see ‘em all the time…emails, ads, books, and programs promising to get bazillions of new visitors to your web site in 30 days or less.

And that may be great – as long as it is a legitimate method of increasing your traffic (but it probably won’t be 30 day).

Plus, it must be qualified traffic that’s somewhat interested in what your site has to offer.

But there’s also a problem with traffic.

Now you’re thinking: “How can getting traffic be bad?”

Actually, there are two things.

The first is getting tons of untargeted or unqualified traffic, which does nothing but possibly overload your website, and the second – more typical, more important reason is -

You get a bunch of new visitors that are interested in your site – then, just as fast as they get there, they leave and head over to your competitor’s website.

Many business owners incorrectly think getting more traffic is the “Holy Grail” of determining the overall success of their websites (don’t get me wrong – more high quality is important – even vital) but what usually happens next is…

Once your site gets all this new traffic – the copy and/or the site design does nothing to quickly a) tell them they are in the right place, b) how your products or services can benefit them and c) give the visitor any reason to stick around and continue reading to learn more.

Most sites do a terrible job at converting a new visitor to a qualified prospect you can follow up with or to make a sale.

And isn’t that the whole purpose of having a website? To make money!

Yet, almost every day I talk with business owners who are concerned more about how pretty their sites are and how they need more traffic, when, if they really want their sites to be profitable, they need to worry about converting traffic they already get to paying customers with better sales copy.

A million visitors a month is useless – unless you convert a percentage of them to sales.

On the same token, without traffic – you get zero conversions.

So you see, your site must get traffic AND convert some of that traffic in order for your site to make money for you.

Isn’t that what you really want?

Or do you want a site that matches your image and just sits there, doing absolutely nothing but looking pretty.

You really have to decide in your own mind whether it’s more important for your site to look pretty or to be used as a successful money-making machine.

(And there’s no reason it can’t look good while getting more traffic and converting more sales)

So get some professional advice about why your site isn’t working as good as it could, and finally put your website on the road to success.

I’d love to hear your comments about this.

To get more information about the benefits of powerful copy, about this post, web/online advice, or about my direct response web copywriting services, e-mail me or call me at 603-686-5140.

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

To your website’s success!

Merrill Clark
Website and Direct Response Copywriter
Crestview Marketing Services LLC

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Get more of your e-mails opened with compelling subject lines.

Haven’t you heard that e-mail is becoming more and more important as a lead generation and sales tool?

Then maybe you can tell me why more businesses aren’t taking full advantage of it?

After all, there are no postage and printing costs to worry about, so the total cost of sending a promotional e-mail is next to nothing. All you need is a list of names and e-mail addresses plus some e-mail copy.

I believe one big problem is this – you can send out e-mails all day long, but the first step, and one of the keys to a successful e-mail campaign is getting the recipient to open the darned thing.

It’s called the open rate, and the percentage can be pretty dang low.

The best way to increase the open rates of your e-mails is to use a powerful subject line - one that makes them want to open it and see what’s inside.

Unfortunately, that’s where many e-mailers stumble.

You see, most e-mail subject lines are boring, uninformative, or full of words that shoot it right on down to the junk or spam folder, where you’ll probably never even see it.

And guess what? If your email isn’t seen, it sure as heck will never be read.

Here are some different tips anyone can use to create a subject line that will get your e-mails opened more often:

• Inform them of something valuable or important
• Use intrigue
• Personalize it by using the recipient’s name
• Include your “brand”
• Ask a provocative question
• Introduce a special offer

Your subject line has the same purpose as a headline – you need to get your reader’s attention and interest so they will open your email.

And another important thought is this: You need to test, test, test. Then you will know what headlines work the best in any given situation.

I’d love to hear your comments about this, good, bad, or ugly.

If you want me to write powerful subject lines for your email campaigns, to get more information about SEO, the benefits of powerful copy, about this post, web/online advice, or about my direct response web copywriting services, e-mail me or call me at 603-686-5140.

And if you need offline direct response marketing copy and advice, go to www.crestviewmarketing.com

To your website’s success!

Merrill Clark
Website and Direct Response Copywriter
Crestview Marketing Services LLC