Traditional Copywriting vs. Internet Copywriting

Traditional copywriting and internet copywriting have a common goal. Both have the purpose of generating sales for a business. Because profits are involved,and online shopping is becoming increasingly popular, it is  crucial to put a lot of attention to copywriting for the internet. Even those however who already have well established online businesses don’t always do this. 

There are many reasons why online copywriting and SEO aren's a main priority for some business owners. One reason is that business owners think they can just run an internet business using the same offline tools. This is not completely true.  Sales writing for the internet in particular has to take SEO strategies into the equation and that's why I'm writing this blog for you! =)

Unfortunately, entrepreneurs online need to create and manage websites and web pages. Part of these tasks involves getting around some technical web specific approaches and methods to attract attention, which are not all taught in "business school." 

The traditional way of marketing used to involve using the phone, booking sales presentations and networking with contacts. You can still use these principles but effective online copywriting can actually already take care of much of what these offline techniques cover. Lucky for internet businesses, you have the potential to accomplish a lot with just the use of appropriately constructed web copies containing the right KEYWORDS. 

The requirement for keyword insertion is what makes web copywriting more difficult. Not only do you have the challenge of using language in just the right way to persuade clients to learn about or buy a product, you also have to insert keywords in such a way that seamlessly blends into the copy and makes sense!

Most marketing or copywriting professionals will have to incorporate traditional and internet copywriting skills into their position, a double wammy!

Keywords are The Key to Easy Search Engine Optimization

                                        Image via CrunchBase

                     After being in school as long as I was, it has taken me a while to really understand the importance of keywords for successful search engine optimization.  When you are a student, people are FORCED to read your work.  Now in the real world you have to actually have an audience in mind and figure out how to attract them to your site or blog. 


That's where keywords come in! Keywords are the words people use to search for something they are looking for.  So here are some ways I am personally working on my own search engine optimization:

1. Like anything worth doing, you have to do your research.  There are sites that can tell you what keywords are most possible like:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

http://www.selfseo.com/keyword_suggestion_tool.php

http://www.submitexpress.com/keytracker.php

http://www.wordtracker.com/

http://www.freewebsubmission.com/keyword-popularity.html


      2.  Use your keyword(s) in your post title. From left to right, the closer to the left your keyword is,
           the greater value it is given for SEO.  Remember to make it something that will catch peoples' 
           attention.



      3.  Create an SEO friendly permalink. Hopefully you’re using custom permalinks in Wordpress. If not, 
      don’t. If so, make it your title minus the fluff words (and, the, if, etc) with dashes (not underscores) 
      between each word.


     4.    Use your keyword(s) as tags or labels in blogger. Use no more than 2 tags per post. Use your tags 
        as file folders for your content topics. Don’t spam tags for all your posts.

     5.    Use your keyword(s) in your first and last paragraph, or a restatement of your title. As well, make 
         sure to use your keyword(s) throughout your copy when applicable.


     6.    Bold your keyword(s) and relevant statements/words throughout copy. Format for SEO
          (bold/emphasize) the first and last instances or reasonably throughout your copy.


     7.    Use your keyword(s) in the ALT text of every image on the post. ALT text is entered when you
           insert an image. Make sure you use a descriptive, short sentence similar to your title that includes your
           keyword(s).


     8.   Link to relevant content.  Create internal links within your own blog to posts you have written on 
          similar topics,  Create external links to relevant sources outside of your blog with your keyword(s) as 
          part of the anchor text in the link.

The SEO Importance of KEYWORDS!!

When it comes to internet writing, blogging, marketing, etc., KEYWORDS are extremely important.

Keywords are basically the words in your copy that match what people are searching.  As you know, millions of searches are conducted each day on popular search engines by people all around the world.

Fortunately for you, most major search engines provide a way to glimpse into the web's query stream to discover the most popular search keywords or topics. These are just a few:

• Ask IQ: See top searches at Ask.
   
• Dogpile SearchSpy: Choose to see either a filtered or non-filtered sample of top, real-time search terms from this popular meta search service. Sister site MetaCrawler offers a similar MetaCrawler MetaSpy service.
   
• Google Trends: Allows you to tap into Google's database of searches, to determine what's popular. View the volume of queries over time, by city, regions, languages and so on. Compare multiple terms, as well. See our review: Google Trends: Peer Into Google's Database Of Searches.
   
• Google Zeitgeist: What people are searching for at Google and its associated specialty services in a variety of categories. There are versions for various countries, as well.
   
• Lycos 50: Long-standing service showing top searches at Lycos each week.
   
• Yahoo Buzz Index: Shows you what's hot and what's not in terms of search topics at Yahoo.

 
 It is important to actually search a couple of these sites before even starting a new blog post or whatever copy you are planning on doing.  That way you can ensure you are writing about something current and interesting in the minds of the majority of people.

DOING THIS COULD EVEN SUPPLY YOU WITH SOME INSPIRATION! YAY!

I also found this GREAT site http://www.seomoz.org which has some very helpful SEO resources you might want to check out as well. 

This particular page is actually telling you where the search engines are "crawling" or searching for keywords the most, which is basically where you want to focus your keyword attention on. 

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#on-page-keyword-specific-ranking-factors