Part 6 of the Internet marketing guide focuses on the SEO Copywriting of the VanLeasingQuotes.com website

Writing all the copy (text) for a site the size of VanLeasingQuotes.com can be a daunting task. With so many pages and the fact that vehicle leasing isn’t an industry I’m particularly well versed in, it would be easy to try and push the task back to the client and get them to use their in depth knowledge of the industry to work something up. But actually, that would be the completely wrong thing to do!

Copywriting for SEO is a science – probably more so than it is a creative process. You have an average of 3 seconds to engage someone who has arrived at your site. If you don’t engage them, they’re off (never to be seen again!).

You don’t just have to engage a visitor though, you also have to optimize the content you’re writing for the search engines and that means hitting a very difficult balance between layering each page with the primary and related key terms and writing text that will actually interest the real person reading it.

To make a piece of copy engaging it needs to capture interest very quickly, guide the reader through the rest of the content and make that user take action (whether that be filling in a web form, picking up the phone or buying a product). It is for this reason that asking the client to use their industry knowledge to work up the copy would not have been a good idea. You almost always find that people who work in a particular industry (unintentionally) assume a certain degree of knowledge. They know lots about their industry and forget that others don’t. You see a lot of websites (especially in the B2B sector) where technical industry jargon is used where it shouldn’t be.

The golden rule of good copywriting: everyone should be able to understand it!

So, I knew because of my lack of knowledge of the vehicle leasing sector and because I didn’t involve the client too much in the copywriting process, I would actually come up with copy that is easier to understand for the average website visitor.

Getting down to work

As you have seen in the previous posts of the Internet Marketing Guide, a lot of planning and development has happened in the early stages of the project and this starts to speed up and make things easier at this stage. We have already defined the keywords for each page, mapped out a site structure and have designed the look and structure of each page. So now I have a clearer idea of what and how much to write for each page.

I get everything in front of me first – including the design visual of the page I’m about to work on and the spreadsheet telling me the keywords for each page – and I type the keywords into our related keywords tool.

The related keywords tool is a piece of software that gives me a list of related search terms that are closely linked to the primary keyword. So if a page is to be optimised for ‘van leasing’ then it will give me a list of other related words and terms such as ‘commercial vehicle leasing’, ‘van finance’ and ‘van lease purchase’. By using these related keywords in my copy I will provide the search engines (and visitors) with more relevant content and it will give the site a better chance of performing well, not only for the term ‘van leasing’, but also for a number of related variations of that term.

Now I start to write and I’m constantly keeping the call-to-action in mind – what do I want the user to do on this page? I may want them to complete the form to find out if they’re eligible to lease a van, I may want them to get a quote for a van or I may want them to pick up the phone – each page has a different goal.

When I’m writing copy for a site of this size I will tend to write it initially in one go and then leave it for at least a few hours before coming back to it fresh again and reading it over.

The Final Product

You can see from the website visual, and you will see more when the site goes live, that we have tried to separate the copy into small, engaging snippets of information. We have used words such as ‘discover’, ‘calculate’ and ‘compare’ to communicate to a visitor that they can obtain all the information they need from the site easily on their own. On the main lading pages we use the strap line ‘discover the best van leasing quote in 60 seconds’ – again this shows the visitor how easy and intuitive the process of getting a van leasing quote is.  These are the statements a visitor will scan over or read when they hit the page.

Really for a site like this everything should be intuitive. The big headlines are the most important as these are what people will see and respond to. The larger paragraphs are secondary information and are partly there to increase our content for the search engines. This is not the kind of site where people will be reading lots of content – if they are then we have failed in creating an easy to understand, easy to navigate and intuitive website experience. This is why we have structured the site in the way we have – big headlines at the top, with other small snippets of information and paragraphs boxed off into to easy-to-digest chunks of information.

We’ll be back with another installment of the Internet Marketing Guide next week. In the meantime for more info on copywriting for SEO visit the Search Engine Copywriting page on our site.

Search Engine Copywriting is an area that we get asked about a lot – so much so that we will shortly be launching a whole new dedicated section on our site to it.

It’s an area that is, not only a bit of a science, but also requires the ability to balance a number of different equally important factors to get it right.

The issues are that, to get found online, you need to take SEO into consideration, which means using your selected search term/s repetitively (or so many think…). Most don’t make a good job of this and it ends up reading like a very contrived piece of SEO copywriting that is designed to keep the search engines happy and not the potential customer.

At the same time as having the pressure of the search engines weighing on your shoulders, you also only have 3 seconds to engage any visitor to your website – if you don’t, they’re gone. So you also need to write powerful copy that will capture a users interest, engage them and compel them to take the desired action.

These 2 forces are completely different – search engines like lot’s of relevant, and often repetitive, content for the terms you’ve optimized your site for and potential customers like clear, engaging and easy-to-read copy that isn’t repetitive or too long.

We thought we’d share with you our process for producing search engine copy that is SEO friendly and engaging at the same time. We believe the process we use makes a much more effective process for writing great web copy.

THE GOLDEN RULE: YOU MUST FOLLOW THE STEPS IN THE CORRECT ORDER!

Step 1 – Identify Search Terms

We use SEO tools such as Wordtracker and Google Developer Tools to analyse, not only the most popular search terms, but also the terms with the least competition. Identifying and selecting terms that your competition haven’t found will mean you have the best chance of getting found by potential customers.

Step 2 – Create a Word List

Good search engine copywriting isn’t about saturating each page with1 search term; by creating an extensive list of related words (up to 300 per single search term!) you actually make your site more SEO friendly and generate increased traffic.  This is because your site is then optimized for the ‘longtail’ and not just one specific term.

Step 3 – What’s the Call to Action?

Effective website copywriting should always have the ‘call to action’ in mind whether that’s buying a product online, filling in a form or picking up the phone. Plan what action a user should take before you start writing the copy.

Step 4 – Get Writing!

The writing begins – you have search terms identified, an extensive list of related words to use on each page and know the action you want the user to take. Have 3 things at the forefront of your mind – writing copy that will result in an effective SEO ranking, engaging user interest and encouraging user action. 

Step 5 – Take a Step Back

The golden rule of copywriting is to step back, leave it for at least a couple of hours and then comeback. This time away helps you go back to it fresh and give the work a final ‘once over’

We’re using this process to optimise and engage on the new search engine copywriting section of the website. I’ll let you know once it’s up and running and, more importantly, what the results are!

In the meantime – GET WRITING!