Five Tips for Better Online Copywriting

If you run a business, it’s likely that you’ll need to learn some copywriting skills. Writing content that resonates with a target audience and inspires them to take action is especially important when you’re selling products or services online. If you have no prior experience though, it can be a daunting task.

Let’s take a look at five ways in which you can improve your copywriting.

Know your audience

One of the main rules of copywriting is to know who you’re talking to. Writing content that appeals to everyone is almost impossible, but if you can break it down and identify the exact person that you need to appeal to, it’ll be so much easier. Sit down and brainstorm your ideal customer. Think about age, gender, occupation, interests, beliefs, and anything else that you can pinpoint. At the end of the exercise, you’ll be much better placed for writing compelling copy. You should always remember that even if SEO is one of your primary objectives, you need to appeal to human visitors. Recent algorithm changes from Google have demonstrated just how important it is to produce high quality content.

Focus on benefits rather than features

Rather than just listing the features of your products or services, you must try to draw out the benefits and ensure they’re clearly communicated to your audience. So, for example, imagine that you’re a virtual assistant selling time to business owners. The features of your services might be completed paperwork, updated social networks, and accurate spreadsheets. Whilst these things are what you actually deliver, they’re not the real reason why clients would use you. Try to work out why it is that someone would engage your services. It’s likely to be saving time, or achieving a better work-life balance.

Keep it snappy

Internet users are becoming more and more impatient, and they don’t have the time to read through masses of information. If your copy is too long, they’ll simply move on to one of your competitors. While it’s essential that you give them everything they need to know, avoid waffling. Cut out as much as you can without taking away from your message. This sort of ruthless editing is likely to result in much higher conversion rates.

Include a clear call to action

When someone visits your website, you want them to take action. You might want them to make a purchase there and then, you might want them to sign up for your email list, or you might want them to contact you for a specific quote. Whatever it is, make it clear and make it easy. Simple additions such as ‘buy today using our secure online system, and you could receive your product by the end of the week’ will leave visitors in no doubt about what they’re supposed to do.

Call in help from the experts

Copywriting is a skill, and it’s not something that everyone is good at. All savvy business owners know that outsourcing is a wise move when it comes to adding value, and writing copy is an area in which you can excel by bringing in an expert. Many professional SEO practitioners use a team of freelancers to get the copy that they need, and you should think about doing the same.

We hope these tips will help to get you back on the right track when you’re lacking inspiration for your online content. It may not come naturally to everyone, but when you consider the benefits of outstanding copy, it’s easy to see why it’s so important for any business.

Do you write copy for your business? Do you have any tricks or tools to make the process easier? If so, we’d love to hear your secrets. We accept online marketing guest posts about your web experiences!

This article was brought to you by Ruth Hinds on behalf of WebSearch SEO. WebSearch is based in London and offers risk free, ‘pay on results’ SEO services including link building packages for online synergy and success.