If this job comes across your desk, view it as a challenge. The trick is to get your reader interested in your product or service using only 70 characters or less. That’s right, I’m talking about Pay Per Click advertising. To be more specific, I’m talking about writing ad copy for PPC advertising.
It can be confusing. With so many books and tools out there offering you the “best” way to run your PPC campaign, it can be a bit over whelming. I’m not the guy to write about setting up your account, but I do know something about writing your ads. I have been writing and testing ad copy for a financial services company for the past year. It’s a huge campaign and an ongoing project. Here are some tips that helped us significantly increase our Conversion and Click Thru Rates (CTR).
It starts with the headline. Search engines usually only give you 25 character spaces to grab the reader and make them move on to the body copy. Many companies use Dynamic Keyword Insertion for both their headlines and body. This allows you to automatically add specific keywords that the reader is searching for to your ad. When the ad appears, the search term will be bolded. This makes the keyword pop off the page and grab the reader’s eye. Continue reading →
Lee Odden of Top Rank Marketing is putting together an article on content strategy and SEO and he asked me to participate. Here is our Q & A from that interview:
Q: How would you define “content strategy” and what role does it play in a SEO effort?
Your content strategy is a systematic and planned approach you take to develop site copy, blog content, press releases, articles, newsletters, videos, podcasts, e-book and/or white paper downloads and other forms of content that enhances and builds your relationship with new prospects, current clients, the media and those in your industry. Through developing this relationship, you secure a long-term, two-way “benefit channel” for both yourself and them. People buy from those who they have a high comfort level with. If you have a large network through the relationships you’ve built from your strategic content efforts, you will always have a steady stream of buyers for your products and services.
The role content strategy plays in the SEO effort is simple: Continue reading →
Every single one of us in the online marketing space is here for a reason. Whether you are talking about Andy Beal, Aaron Wall, Heather Lloyd Martin, Lee Odden, Jill Whalen, Danny Sullivan or any of the other 100 or so web marketing leaders out there, we all have a strong desire to help other companies become more efficient and sell more products and services. Of course, all of us are passionate about the web, love to know what makes consumers buy and enjoy building online communities. But each of us also has a treasure chest of resources that we have gathered over the past few years that have lessoned the learning curve and help us help others every single day.
So, for the first time ever, I put together a list of my personal favorite online marketing tools and resources for you to take a look at. In total, this is a very large, very comprehensive and very good list. Continue reading →
I thought I would do something a little different for this post by showing you some copy I recently wrote and why it works. Let me first mention that it’s an interesting topic – Pork Rinds! MMMM… good eating! Okay, maybe not this guy, but I guess there are millions of people out there that like these things. It’s just a simple home page, but I think the copy can illustrate some of the key points that I always talk about whenever I’m preaching the tips and tricks of online content creation.
First, so you understand what we are dealing with here, the keyword phrase that they want to rank for, not surprisingly, is “pork rinds.” The site is focused toward their target consumer, a Southern and Mid-western, blue collar male in his 40’s-50’s. Continue reading →
What’s the hottest topic in the news today? That’s right, the Presidential election. No matter where you go or where you turn, it’s there. It’s on the news, it’s what people are talking about, it’s in the air. People are naturally sizing these candidates up. Who has the best chance? McCain or Obama? Who has the best agenda for America? McCain or Obama. And of course, what I am interested in: Who has the better content on their website? McCain or Obama???
But of course… What a great topic right? Seriously, I, of all people, was interested in knowing! After all, we’ve heard all this big talk about how Obama was using the Internet in new and unprecedented ways – especially for financial contributions and building a grassroots organization. But was he using it well in other ways… like with his content? Continue reading →
Some of you out there may have heard of something called link baiting. But, what is it? The term Linkbait is used to describe viral, linkable content designed to attract thousands of links and is recognized as one of the most effective ways to build links – and relevance for a site. So link baiting is really building link-friendly content. It’s just another name for it – or more accurately, a subset of it.
The traditional way of getting links circa 2004 and before involved contacting other relevant websites, emailing the webmasters and asking for a link. You’d contact people you know – vendors, partners, customers, suppliers and “reciprocate” links. You would carefully explain in your email that linking to you would be worthwhile for their visitors and beneficial to them as well…and you’d spend hundreds of hours doing it.
Why didn’t someone in the know just explain to them that all they had to do was write solid content and the links would come? Of course, you have to promote it too, but perhaps they were looking for the easy way out. Ironically, the easier way is to write high quality, very popular, link friendly content. Continue reading →
One of the best ways to connect with visitors to your website is to write like you talk. In fact, I would say the most under appreciated aspect of good writing is the flow of the words and how they sound when spoken. Good “flow” can make the message resonate. It makes it memorable. Like a good song with a hooky melody, conversational writing can cause the reader to recall what they read over and over again through the course of the day. This kind of command over written language creates a strong connection with your audience and …makes them come back for more. Take for example a good blog. What makes you come back again and again? The informal and conversational tone is a big part of it. The substance of the message is critical too – but it’s not everything. It’s how you say it, right? In this case, it’s how you write it.
Of course, you’ll want to remove all the “ums”, “ahs” and pauses. You don’t want to make your website copy exactly like the way you speak. The other good thing about writing is that you can think about what you want to write before you write it. The spoken word usually requires instant answers and quick-on-your-feet replies. That’s the good news: for those out there who aren’t the best spoken communicators, conversational writing may be made for you.
A few tips and tricks of capturing a conversational tone:
1.Think about how you talk - what makes people want to listen to you? Modulating your voice (changing the volume or pitch) is one way – it makes what you’re saying more interesting. The written equivalent? Combine short and long sentences in what you’re writing. Don’t make them all the same.
2.Use emotion and passion – use bolding, underlining and emotionally charged words to get your message across. Again, just like how we talk – most people use strong adjectives to describe something or emphasize certain words based on the importance of what they are saying.
3.Break the “rules” of English – use run-ons and one word sentences occasionally. After all, isn’t that how we talk? Try it out!
4.Use repetition – use the same emphasized word in 3 consecutive sentences. People do this all the time when they talk. Why? To make a point and drive the message home. You can do the same thing when you write copy.
5.Analyze other good conversational writing and try to mimic it. – Not to toot my own horn, but check out the copy I wrote for www.customcopywriting.com. A big part of what I was trying to do there was write the content in an informal tone – in a way that everyone would understand: from a 3rd grader to a PhD.
So, when all is said and done, why does conversational writing work?
Because it makes it easier for your prospect. It makes it easier to get the message across. It makes it easier for them to understand…There’s less thinking involved. Plus, it’s a warmer way of communicating. It makes people more comfortable. And after all, we have become a more informal culture anyway. People almost expect it.
So, try it out on your site and see what the response is. You may be surprised.
Thought you might like to see some excerpts from my presentations at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas. I enjoyed meeting many of you face to face and look forward to presenting again next year. Thanks for coming and enjoy!
With the downturn in the economy encompassing nearly every aspect of our lives, businesses large and small are feeling the pinch. MarketingSherpa recently published a survey stating that over 60% of large companies are unceremoniously planning on slashing their marketing budgets significantly this year.
With smaller marketing budgets, companies are hunting for cost-effective, measurable solutions to sagging sales figures. This naturally leads to metric-friendly online marketing in order to generate new prospects and customers. Surprisingly, many sales and marketing heads don’t know enough about the true power of web marketing and the latest tips and tricks to take full advantage of its cost-effective nature. The goal is to recession-proof your online content and marketing. Continue reading →
The “snippet” is the text that appears underneath the title on the search engine results page. Some people read snippets, others scan them, and some don’t look at them at all. But whoever you are dealing with, this little group of words can get people to click on the link to your web page/site, if it’s written well. With Google and Yahoo, they usually just take a small chunk of text from your page and use that as the snippet. Google’s is usually shorter than Yahoo’s, and Yahoo will many times use the description tag. Continue reading →
Every single one of us in the online marketing space is here for a reason. Whether you are talking about 
I thought I would do something a little different for this post by showing you some copy I recently wrote and why it works. Let me first mention that it’s an interesting topic – Pork Rinds! MMMM… good eating! Okay, maybe not this guy, but I guess there are millions of people out there that like these things. It’s just a simple home page, but I think the copy can illustrate some of the key points that I always talk about whenever I’m preaching the tips and tricks of online content creation.
effective ways to build links – and relevance for a site. So link baiting is really building link-friendly content. It’s just another name for it – or more accurately, a subset of it.
Thought you might like to see some excerpts from my presentations at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas. I enjoyed meeting many of you face to face and look forward to presenting again next year. Thanks for coming and enjoy!
by 
With smaller marketing budgets, companies are hunting for cost-effective, measurable solutions to sagging sales figures. This naturally leads to metric-friendly 
