Writing effective web copy begins with an understanding of what the goals of your web site are. Are you trying to get your visitors to purchase something or have them sign up for your newsletter? Remember you are trying to get someone you can’t see and have never met take a step towards building a relationship with you or your company.

1. Create a customer profile - try to find out what are the needs and desires of your visitors. Below are some examples of questions you could ask:

• Are they young, middle aged or senior?
• Are they primarily male or female?
• Are they financially secure or budget-minded?
• What gets him or her excited?
• What are his or her most pressing concerns?

Try to brainstorm a list of topics that might interest your target audience.

2. Create a Unique Selling Position (USP) - This is a statement of 2-3 sentences that explains why you are different from everybody else. This is the unique factor that sets you apart from your competition. Make this the first thing your visitor sees when they arrive on your home page.

3. Focus on benefits - most web users want to find the information about the product or service they need as fast as possible. If they land on your site, they want to know how they will benefit from buying your product or subscribing to your e-zine. You will need to answer that question as clearly and concisely as possible or you will lose that visitor.

4. Use the inverted pyramid style - provide a summary of your information by clearly communicating the direction of your discussion. Use informative headings and subheadings with a paragraph of 4 to 5 lines that supports them. You only have a few seconds to grab your visitors’ attention. Most will simply scan for the information they are seeking.

Use bulleted or numbered lists, boldface or coloured font to emphasize the points you wish to make. Include links at the end of your paragraph (or within the text) to direct visitors to other pages of your site for more in-depth information.

5. Write in an informal or personal style - write in a unique way that differentiates you from other small businesses in a similar business or niche. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or super-creative. You simply provide a style that gets the attention of your visitors.

6. Keep your sentences simple - you are not writing to impress. You are writing to communicate. You want to pre-sell your product or service, therefore write as if you are talking to a 13 year old.

Don’t use large words but opt for strong verbs over weak ones. Use the active voice instead of a passive one. For example, instead of “a good score was achieved by the team”…say “the team scored a season high”. Speak “to” but not “at” your visitor. Keep your sentences short and snappy.

7. Include searchable keywords - use targeted keywords in your web copy that will allow the search engines to find your site. Include these keywords in your Meta tags, links and file names also.

8. Eliminate the fluff - don’t waffle on in your writing. You will only bore your visitors and they will click elsewhere. Try to remove filler sentences that contain phrases like “for those of you” and “all of you”.

9. Proof read your web copy - errors in your web copy give the impression of being unprofessional or sloppy. Read the copy aloud to yourself or get someone else to proof read it. Often they will find more errors because they are more objective.

Use the spell checker but don’t rely on it. Often it doesn’t pick up all incorrectly spelled words. Print a copy of your content. It’s easier to find grammatical or spelling errors on a hard copy.

10. Take a break - revise your web copy after taking a break from it for several hours or a few days. This allows you to see it from a different viewpoint. You may find a better way to say something to further improve your copy.

11. Use images sparingly - images should only be used if they relate and support your web content. If not, they will only distract the visitor from reading your web copy. Too many images will slow down the time it takes for your visitor to load your site in their browser.

12. Use effective navigation - your navigation bar should help visitors easily find the main sections of your site. Read: How to Create an Effective Web Site Navigation Structure.

Writing effective web copy is the key to converting visitors into buyers. Getting 1000s of visitors to your web site doesn’t guarantee sales. Reading your web copy should pre-sell your product with the words you use. Once you achieve this, your web site will become very profitable.

By Herman Drost

Here’s a fact for you, 85 to 95% of websites are found through a search engine. You may have the most incredible website on the Internet, but it will receive little or no traffic without search engine visibility and ranking. Can you imagine a billboard in the Sahara desert? Who sees it?

So, how will searchers find your website? What types of search engines could they use?

Search engines fall into two categories. The first is referred to as natural, organic or standard. The second is called pay-per-click, paid inclusion or paid placement.

Natural, organic and standard are interchangeable terms describing a search engine that bases its search rankings on a ranking algorithm. The algorithms involve a number of criteria and parameters, all relating to the content of the website, the website’s size, the number of incoming links to the website, and the content’s relevancy. You will hear terms such as keyword relevancy and keyword density to describe various components of the algorithms.

For the standard search engines, you, your webmaster or hired search engine optimization specialist could spend considerable time optimizing your website to achieve top rankings. The goal is for your website to appear on the first or second page of the search engines’ results when your target user searches keywords or keyword phrases.

The good news is rankings on standard search engines are free. The downside is the tremendous amount of time and effort required to achieve exceptional search engine rankings. Let’s confess to each other that top rankings on standard search engines can be tough and timely to achieve!

The term pay-per-click describes a search engine that bases its search rankings on a “bid for position” basis. Simply stated, you “bid” a price to be in a specific position of the search rankings for a particular search keyword or keyword phrase. For example, the No.1 position on the search phrase “pay per click” recently required a bid of $3.55 per click, whereas the 15th position required only a bid of 55 cents. As a result, your differential website advertising costs between position No.1 and No.15 can be considerable.

With pay-per-click search engines, your ability to bid high can dramatically impact your website’s search engine ranking when the search results display website domain names or URL’s for the search keyword or keyword phrase. The benefit is your website gains visibility with the searcher, but you are not charged the pay-per-click “bid” until a searcher actually clicks on your website domain name or URL displayed in the search engine results. The selection of your website in the search engine results is called a click-through.

In general, click-through rates range from 1% to 5% of the number of impressions. What is all of this? A click is when a searcher selects or “clicks” your pay-per-click ad. An impression is one display of your pay-per-click ad on the search engine results. So, the click-through rate is a measure of the total number of ad clicks versus the total number of impressions in a period of time:

Click-Through Rate % = Total Number of Ad Clicks / Total Number of Ad Impressions x 100

Let’s do the math for our No.1 position bid of $3.55 per click. In September, 2004 there were 21,535 searches for “pay per click.???First, let’s assume a 1% click-through rate. The top bidder spent $764.49 (21,535 x 1% x $3.55). At a 5% click-through rate the top bidder spent $3,822.45 (21,535 x 5% x $3.55). Budgeting and controlling marketing expenses with such a broad range of potential costs could be tough. Plus, such costs could be the tip of the iceberg. We still must consider derivatives of the keyword or keyword phrase. So, was being No.1 worthwhile? That depends on your website’s cost per visitor, conversion rate and profit margin of your product or service.
From what we’ve covered so far, you should realize you can achieve a top or high ranking through a pay-per-click search engine. But, a high ranking will cost money and these costs can be volatile. Meanwhile, the standard search engine remains free.

However, pay-per-click offers one significant advantage. It enables you to achieve website visibility with a high ranking instantaneously or overnight. If you want to draw traffic to your website fast for any reason, pay-per-click can make that happen. Remember, maximizing the standard search engine process takes time!

Let’s summarize the pros and cons of pay-per-click marketing:

Pros

• Improves your website’s ranking and traffic quickly.
• Tests the marketability of your product or service swiftly.
• Determines the ability of your web site to convert visitors to a call to action or make a purchase promptly.
• Identifies which keyword phrases will provide the best conversion rate rapidly.
• Provides complete control of the search engine campaign, both position and cost.

Cons

• Cost

Many individuals criticize pay-per-click because of the costs involved. But, have you really thought about the cost issue? Unless you or someone in your organization has expertise in search engine optimization, you’ll probably pay several thousand dollars in fees to a search engine optimization specialist to improve and optimize your website to achieve higher rankings in the standard search engines. So, my question to you is. Are the standard search engine rankings really free?

At the end of the standard versus pay-per-click search engine debate, it’s like the old saying, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Or, it’s like the old commercial, “You can pay me now or you can pay me later.” The reality of the debate is you must evaluate your specific website situation and utilize the search engine approach that maximizes your website promotion goals and investment.

By Chet Childers

Think fast! If I asked you to quickly name ten things you could do to promote your website, what would you say? If you’re like most online entrepreneurs thinking off the top of your head, you wouldn’t make it past two or three. Allow me to help; here are ten quickie tips to get the word out on your site.

1. Publish an ezine: The only way to collect email addresses of your website visitors and build your own opt-in list is with your own ezine. If you’re not publishing, I strongly suggest you start and add a sign up box in the upper right hand corner of every page in your site. To learn more about ezines, visit http://www.EzineUniversity.com

2. Use P.P.C:? That’s “Pay per Click,” for all you newbie�s out there. If you’re not using Google and Overture you need to open an account today. By bidding into the top three positions you’ll enjoy mass exposure on many of the other top search engines like Yahoo.
To keep costs down, use two and three word phrases and try to stay away from the most popular ones. http://www.Wordtracker.com can help. To learn more about pay per clicks go to: http://tinyurl.com/6f5bd

3. Swap Links: You’ve heard it before but it bears repeating: find other related sites and swap links with them. Not only will it give you a slight boost with the search engines, but it will also enhance your site for your guests by giving them more related resources to explore. Check out http://LinkPartners.com

4. Buy ezine Ads: ezine Advertising is popular because it works. Look for top spots and solo ads for best response rates.? Check out: http://www.Lifestylespub.com and http://tinyurl.com/4obh

5. Swap ezine Ads: If you publish an ezine, and you should, find other publishers to swap ads with for some f-r-e-e advertising. Make sure these publicati0ns appeal to your target market. Take a look at: http://www.SwapEzineAds.com

6. Discussion Boards: Participating in online discussion boards and posting helpful resources with a good signature line is a great way to increase your traffic. My personal favourite is http://ablake.net/forum/

7. Write Articles: Write short articles such as this one and distribute them to article lists and other ezine publishers for possible inclusion in their ezines. Try to keep them short, fewer than 500 words. Check out: http://www.Family-Content.com and http://ktamarketng.com/article-submission.html

8. Press Releases: Try to come up with a news angle for your site and compose a press release and submit it to the media. If just one person picks up your story you can get a large amount of traffic. Check out: http://tinyurl.com/4obb

9. Promotional Products: Have pens, pencils, notepads and other promotional items printed up with your url and give them away. Try http://Epromos.com. Get URL plates for your car at: http://tinyurl.com/4obg

10. Affiliate Program: If you sell a product consider starting y0ur own affiliate program where others sell for you and you pay them a commission. Check out: http://tinyurl.com/6xztt and http://www.clixgalore.com

Contrary to popular belief, if you build it they will *not come* — at least, not without promotional effort on your end. Do it daily and before long you’ll see an upswing in your traffic and hopefully a little more cash in your pocket.