Many people feel uncertain when dealing with copywriters. Like any art form, writing is subjective; instead of black and white, most business owners and marketing managers see indistinguishable shades of grey.<\/p>\n
But copywriting possesses one key element that most other forms of art don\u2019t \u2013 a commercial imperative.<\/p>\n
Because the copywriter\u2019s audience is driven by the realities of the business market, so too is the copywriter. Although the good ones love to write, they don\u2019t necessarily love to write about toilet paper and real estate.<\/p>\n
Copywriters \u2013 in particular, website copywriters \u2013 write because it\u2019s their job. And like any job, copywriting has very defined objectives and parameters which determine how the copywriter works, and the kind of material they produce.<\/p>\n
So, if you need black and white, this is where you\u2019ll find it.<\/p>\n
There are two primary commercial realities for a website copywriter. Understand these realities, and you\u2019ll understand the writer. Ignore them, and your job will take longer, be more frustrating, be less engaging, and earn you less money.<\/p>\n
REALITY 1 \u2013 READER-FRIENDLY AND SEARCH-ENGINE-FRIENDLY<\/p>\n
A website copywriter needs to adhere to certain guidelines to ensure your website is both reader-friendly and search-engine-friendly. This is black and white.<\/p>\n
Because most websites rely on search engines for their traffic, your website copywriter has to write for two broad audiences: human and computer. This introduces several complexities because, quite often, these audiences want different things.<\/p>\n
For instance, with humans, less is generally more. But with computers, more is more. Humans need to understand, so the fewer words the better.<\/p>\n
Search engines, on the other hand, are programmed to think that anything important enough to be ranked highly has to have a lot of words.<\/p>\n
A website copywriter must balance these conflicting requirements. Your copywriter will work faster and more efficiently if you don\u2019t demand too few words or too many.<\/p>\n
TIP: If your site needs both humans and search engines, try not to set your heart on less than 100 words per page or more than 300 words. Generally speaking, somewhere in the middle is a nice compromise for both audiences.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just the number of words used that\u2019s important. Humans tend not to like repeated words, whereas search engines do.<\/p>\n
Humans will understand from your heading what it is you do, and if it\u2019s relevant. Mention it once, and they\u2019ll generally remember. Search engines are not so smart. They need to be told again and again. This is how they figure out how relevant your site is.<\/p>\n
TIP: Don\u2019t ask your website copywriter to be a minimalist. The search engines won\u2019t like it. By the same token, don\u2019t ask them to simply jam every page full of hundreds of your primary keyword phrases, because your human readers won\u2019t like that (in fact, neither will the search engines).<\/p>\n
The trick is to expect each page to repeat one or two primary keyword phrases 5-10 times.<\/p>\n
TIP: Remember, balancing human and computer requirements are time-consuming. Try to have a clear understanding of the objective of each page before your writer starts. You\u2019ll get a much better product with fewer time-consuming iterations.<\/p>\n
REALITY 2 \u2013 BENEFITS, AUDIENCES, PRODUCTS, SERVICES, FEATURES
\nA website copywriter deals in benefits, audiences, products, services, and features. This is black and white.<\/p>\n
These things may be painfully obvious to you, but they won\u2019t be to your copywriter. And although a good copywriter will be able to draw them out of you, they won\u2019t be able to accurately and comprehensively identify them alone.<\/p>\n
TIP: Before you engage a website copywriter, make a list of what you do, who you do it for, and what benefits it gives them. Your job will cost more if your brief consists of one line, \u201cI want to increase sales!\u201d<\/p>\n
When it comes down to it, a good website is written around benefits. Customers are only interested in how you can benefit them.<\/p>\n
This means benefits are the website copywriter\u2019s inspiration. By the end of the project, you\u2019ll be sick and tired of hearing your copywriter ask, \u201cBut what are the benefits of that to your customer?\u201d You\u2019ll thank them for asking though.<\/p>\n
TIP: Don\u2019t confuse features with benefits. A feature is what you do or how you do it. A benefit is what advantage that brings to the customer.<\/p>\n
Your list should make a clear distinction between the two. This will save your copywriter a LOT of time, and save you a lot of money. Most importantly, it will MAKE you a lot of money because your website will engage your customer.<\/p>\n
Website copywriting is an art form. But because it\u2019s an art form with a commercial foundation, it can be understood by anyone in business. And when you understand the commercial realities of the copywriter, the greys of the art form will begin to seem more like the familiar black and white of the nine-to-five.<\/p>\n
Then, and only then, will you be able to make the most of your website copywriter?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many people feel uncertain when dealing with copywriters. Like any art form, writing is subjective; instead of black and white, most business owners and marketing managers see indistinguishable shades of grey. But copywriting possesses one key element that most other forms of art don\u2019t \u2013 a commercial imperative. Because the copywriter\u2019s audience is driven by\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copywriting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/w1.affwebsites.com\/articledir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}