Show me a person who wasn’t fond of playing Lego as a kid. You could spend hours constructing tiny houses and gas stations. Life seemed so easy: you just took the multi-colored pieces and fixed them on the right place. Actually, the Lego concept is amazing itself: no suffering of creation, no broken ambitions – only the pure joy of simulation. 😉

And what does all that have to do with copywriting? Quite a lot, as today there exist sooo many tools helping to build copy quickly and easily – just as with a Lego set. Of course I don’t mean content generators or similar stuff – your construction shouldn’t be made of stolen bricks. Yet some sources can be rather useful when creating the article frame, making it more attractive, or just squeezing your creative juices.

For example, you are to describe the importance of advertising copywriting and to promote your services. As usual,

• you start with a catchy headline;
• then follow with a powerful lead;
• next you write some bullet points to make the copy better scannable;
• at last you end with a well-thought conclusion.

Well, how can you manage with all this using a copywriting Lego set?

• Try the Advertising Slogan Generator to create a striking headline. All you have to do is to type the name of your brand – or another appropriate keyword, – press the Sloganize button, and the magic machine will create dozens of slogans.

e.g. I entered “Copywriting 911” and here is what this tool offers me:

I Feel Like Copywriting 911 Tonight.
Happiness is Copywriting 911-shaped.
Copywriting 911 is Mightier than the Sword.
Don’t Get Mad, Get Copywriting 911.

Then you choose the best one and create a headline, like

Feel Like Copywriting 911 Tonight?
Psychologists Admit: Happiness is Copywriting 911-shaped.
Do You Know Why Copywriting 911 is Mightier than the Sword?
Tired of Empty Words? Don’t Get Mad, Get Copywriting 911.

• To write an effective lead you can start with a quote. No matter what you are writing about – just add an appropriate quote, and your content will look more persuasive for the readers. Many successful bloggers know about this effect and use it.

e.g. Instead of writing a long detailed paragraph about the ultimate importance of ads, you can have the lead done with a witty suitable quote, such as

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.

Steuart Henderson Britt

• If you mastered the previous tools, you can also apply them to the bullet points, converting your ideas into short and striking utterings. Whatever you choose, that’s the most difficult part of the whole copy building, as here more detailed information should be placed. Any tool won’t do it for you, but some of them can find the related words to enrich your copy.

• Finally, create an effective conclusion. Make it pithy and converting, using the Metaphor and Analogue tool.

e.g. On their website I found a good definition of advertising copywriting, compared with simple article writing:

A copywriter is like a bricklayer…. proficient at building word structures if directed properly.
An Advertising Expert, is like the architect ….. his experience, training and judgement coupled with understanding consumer motivation is essential to creating the plans the content creators follow.

So, the company’s promo copy can be ended by something like:

Writing an article is like laying bricks: one just needs to place words in the right places.
While to run an advertising campaign is like being an architect: one should have training, experience and judgment, as well as understand consumer’s motivation to create the plan for the “bricklayer” to follow. Our pros are both architects and bricklayers building your success in business!

Of course, that isn’t the only possible way to apply the copywriting Lego set – maybe you can do it better or find other helpful sources. Just try it, get inspiration and test your writing skills.

Image by udronotto

The one who cuts often
is a barber, a butcher, –
or a great writer.

Haiku

Have you ever wondered why most people would prefer a story to a multi-volumed novel? Why O’Henri is easier to read than Charles Dickens? And why on earth your brilliant content didn’t bomb as you’d expected it to?

You may think people on the Web ignore long posts because they are focused on making money rather than on reading. It’s a double error. First some topics require truly detailed descriptions. Secondly readers hate wasting their time not so much on long pages, but on boring ones.

The thing about brevity is that you keep only the most significant words, cutting out everything occasional and far-fetched. As a result, your copy becomes fast-paced, and your idea – quite clear. But that doesn’t mean you should simply cut every second word/sentence. As the above haiku says, a writer must know where and what to cut exactly. By the way, practicing this ancient Japanese style can be very useful, as it teaches to organize thinking.

All in all, if you’ve just realized your writing isn’t as excellent as it had seemed before, try these 4 steps to short writing.

1. “The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.”

Blaise Pascal

First of all keep aside the idea that writing short phrases is easy. Just try – and you’ll see: it’s a drudgery (at least when you start).

Think through your topic and jot down a few sentences or word combinations that express your idea the best. Unless you write a press release or a newsletter, you don’t have to answer the notorious “5 W’s and How”, but make sure you gave the reader all the necessary details.

2. “It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn.”

Robert Southey

Now it’s time to cut. Replace, when it is possible, lengthy expressions with simple ones and compound words with monosyllabic ones. Write short. But pithy. Don’t get upset if you can’t find the exact words at once – it will come with experience (provided you work hard, trying on dozens of words, and not just waiting for your inborn talent to show).

3. “The only problem
with Haiku is that you just
get started and then”

Roger McGough

… and then you find out that half a page is already written and you haven’t come to the point yet. Work on the overall text structure. Such parts of narrative as introduction, body and conclusion weren’t invented by cruel school teachers to make people’s life hell. Make sure your copy is well-structured and logical. Once again – cut all unnecessary words or even paragraphs. Don’t feel sorry for them – they only put a spoke in the wheel of your creativity.

4. “The more you sweat in practice, the less you bleed in battle.”

Author Unknown

Do practice. Once you’ve caught the basics of short and pithy writing, try your strength. You can perfect your skills by describing your thoughts and emotions in one-sentence stories, six-word sentences and haiku – a classic Japanese verse which includes only 17 syllables. Polish your style and become a brilliant writer.

They say, brevity is the soul of wit. And I’d add that wit is the heart of author’s income. Isn’t it good motivation for improving your writing style?

Do you like psychological tests? I bet you do. Even if sometimes the tasks seem completely stupid and the results evidently far-fetched, psychological tests or surveys remain a popular entertainment for many people. So, you might like to pass yet another one:

The Implicit Association Test

When you see/hear the word traffic what association do you have?

a) you visualize a busy street in a rush hour, taxis beeping, pedestrians hurrying to cross the street at the red lights, and your poor car standing in a jam;

b) you can’t but think that the stuff will be supplied tomorrow and you should keep it on the low;

c) the only thing that bothers you is your website and its unbelievably low traffic.

Traffic should be:

a) calm;

b) clandestine;

c) the higher the better.

Now check out the results.

All the chosen points are a): you may be a driver.

In your answers b) prevailed: you may be a drug dealer.

You’ve selected only c): the easiest one – you are a website owner.

You’ve spent restless nights creating a unique competitive site, you’ve worn white and black hats in turn or both at once, yet everything seems to be in vain. That nasty traffic doesn’t want to flow. It prefers to stream around your site making your life a misery, coming as a nightmare when you’re asleep and as low SERP ratings when you are awake. Hey, here is a little consolation prize for you, don’t give up! Try these

11 Steps to Increase Your Traffic

At least you’ll know you’ve tried 😉

1. Squeeze all you can out of on-page optimization. Choose a memorable (non-hyphenated-?) domain name, use carefully selected (long-tailed) keywords, optimize the title and meta description tags, create unique and useful content and see that it is regularly updated… Improve navigation; pretty sure not all of your site visitors will be PhD’s, so make it as clear as possible. Try and check that the code is clean and not more than 100K.

2. Try and submit your content to the main directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ.org, as well as to niche ones. Article directories could also bring some visitors (check out EzineArticles.com, ArticleFinders.com or GoArticles.com). Note: The copy should be really useful and unique. If you have an ebook, submit it to corresponding directories, e. g. EbookJungle.com, FreeEbooks.net and EbookPalace.com.

3. Get inbound links. Actually, link building is a topic which can be discussed for hours, so, let’s look at some of its strategies:

– Invite other website owners to publish your articles with links to your site;

– Leave testimonials and comments (but be helpful);

-Answer people’s questions at AdSense Help discussion group and Yahoo answers, placing a link to your site at the bottom;

* Some web masters also don’t scruple to buy text links, nevertheless, Google frowns upon this, so one should be very careful.

4. Hang out in the blogosphere. Take part in blog discussions providing relevant and thoughtful comments. The quality of your posts is critical, as nowadays many blogs are full of spammy silly comments the only purpose of which is to leave the author’s URL. Do stand out of that crowd: create original and pithy posts. Set up your own blog, leaving such tags as “Digg this” or “Add this to del.icio.us” below each article. Some social networking sites have amazingly massive traffic and, once your content is original, you gain visitors automatically.

5. Publish useful posts in forums, using keywords for your online profile. Growing forums often need additional moderators. Offer your services in exchange for free ads of your site.

6. Create your own forum as well if you can, yet consider a few points first. Someone has to moderate the forum in different time zones, 365 days a year, removing spam and managing its work. So, you’ll need several reliable moderators ready to share your trouble. Launching a forum, it’s very important to remember that this is just a helpful tool for your website’s promotion. In other words, make sure your visitors pass from forum discussion to the site itself, otherwise this plan won’t do.

7. Distribute a captivating informative newsletter for encouraging repeat traffic. Tell your readers about new and the most popular articles, offer them to take part in the survey you’re running, arrange some interesting contest and give away freebies. Ensure that the charm of novelty never fades, and your repeat traffic will boost. After all, why spend time and force on flirting with SEO, if the visitors forget about your site as soon as they leave it?

8. Don’t forget the power of well-written press-releases. “Well-written” means pithy, compendious and gripping. Grab the readers’ attention with a killer headline and some hot topic being discussed. Once an effective press-release is ready, submit it to BusinessWire, PRWeb, PR Newswire and other press release distribution sites.

9. Use PPC advertising. The treacherous aspect of good content is that you risk losing money instead of earning it. Thus, if your pages feature brilliant content, it may distract visitors from sponsored ads. The fact is that, if you pay for traffic, your content should also be persuasive. To increase the conversion rate create landing pages dedicated only to publicity. Attract people’s attention to the product/service you promote and make them fill out the sign-up form. Many website owners buy pay-per-click advertising on Google’s AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, but these tools can be helpful only if your site’s conversion rate is rather high, otherwise it’s quite unprofitable.

10. Make your content available through RSS. Providing a content syndication feed with a link to your site will help surfers to find you in the endless Web ocean.

11. Apply for a consultation of professional SEOs and let them draw you a checklist of things to be improved/changed/implemented.

All in all, make sure you’ve taken your website promotion seriously – and you’re likely to soon be getting real serious traffic.

People are going crazy about SEO. It is discussed on forums day in day out, tons of more or less useful SEO related articles appear on the web weekly, and authoritative Internet insiders believe they perform their professional duty by giving away a new SEO conception. In brief, if you spend the better part of your life online, you have probably noticed one worrying tendency: the Internet community is literally growing SEO-obsessed. SEO is as ubiquitous as love for football and as inevitable as Global Warming. Everybody is eager to know what good SEO is and what it is not. How to become SEO-friendly and how to polish off competitors in the niche using SEO strategies. SEO this, SEO that, SEO… actually, what?

Dear web surfers, without any doubt, you have more than deep knowledge of the topic. However, the SEO concept itself is so rich and universal, that all its aspects can be hardly reduced to a common denominator. All in all, guys who want to take a closer look at real SEO, check the following list.

So, SEO stands for…

1.Satellite for Earth Observation
2.Science and Education Outreach
3.Search Engine Optimization
4.Search Engine Optimizer
5.Seasoned Equity Offering
6.Security Engineering Officer
7.Senior Executive Officer
8.Seo (Korean name), a common Korean family name
9.Seoul, South Korea’s capital
10.Shutdown Electrical Operator (US Navy submarine watchstation)
11.Side Entry Orifice
12.Siemens Exchange Object
13.Site Enhancement Oil
14.Society of Education Officers
15.Socio-Economic Objective
16.Software Engineering Organization
17.Software Executive Official
18.Source Election Official
19.SouthEastern Ohio
20.Special Engineering Order
21.Special Equipment Option
22.Special Exemption Order
23.Sponsors for Educational Opportunity
24.Sports Entertainment Organization
25.State Engineer’s Office
26.Student Employment Office
27.Subtransfer Earth Orbit
28.Super Entity Obstructer
29.Support Enforcement Officer
30.Survivability Enhancement Options
31.Symbol-Error Outage
32.Synthetic Engine Oil
33.Systems Evaluation Office

Now if somebody on the Web pretends to be an SEO expert – don’t laugh in his/her face. Just ask politely what kind of SEO your opponent specializes in exactly, – and see how your authority increases.

Special offer: suggest 5 new definitions and get a discount on any type of professional copywriting services!

If you shudder every time someone asks to please pass them the juice over the dinner table, consider visiting the GP. You might be showing the symptoms of a serious disease that has been spreading around quickly.

The name of this ailment is B.O., also known as backlink obsession.

Since the advent of Google with its revolutionary Page Rank system, people who have been overusing its carriers, links, experience various acute conditions, feel unquenchable thirst for new links and sometimes even act inadequately forgetting about all the rest of daily concerns.

So why are links so addictive?

These days every SEO is born with the knowledge that the quality and quantity of inbound links to your site are the major variables in your success equation. It is the link flow that gives you the power of an authority, and the authority in turn brings you visitors, conversions and money in packs. As a result, webmasters often look forward to the quarterly Google dance as if it were the first ball for a young lady to come out into society, determining her future “career” as a bride. And then – oh, Heaven, the 3 month delay, and Matt Cutts says they simply forgot about the update.

If your heart skips a beat at reading this, too, it might be a good idea to have a look at the following 5 common facts about PR which we’ve marked as True or False.

1) Page Rank is a value that shows how popular your site is. – False
PR only refers to a certain page within your site, and so when you need to direct the juice flow to it, do state the exact url of your landing page (e.g. links to http://copywriting911.com will be of no value for the PR of http://www.copywriting911.com). However, internal linking may help pass some energy around your site as well, so links from a PR5 homepage for example could translate into PR4′s for second level pages.

2) High Page Rank automatically brings you to the top of SERPs. – False
If you look at the 1st page of search results, you’ll see that sites with lower PR sometimes rank higher than their competitors with “greener” PR display. It is so while PR is the last one of ranging factors which becomes decisive only when the rest of parameters coincide. Before launching your hunt for PR, make sure you’ve done the on-page optimization, including the keyword research, content creation (!) and overall site structuring.

3) The more links point to your site, the better for its Page Rank. – False
Hundreds of backlinks from spammy directories will not help you promote a resource though they won’t probably hurt you, either. While it is theoretically impossible to control who links to you, there’s such a notion as “bad” or “good” neighborhood. When you’re looking for linking partners, better choose those who wear white hats. Don’t make Big Daddy suspicious.

4) Paid links are evil for your site. – True. And False.
To tell the truth, this issue is a controversial one. Recently there’s been much fuss about devaluating sites that trade links via TLA. However, TLA itself seemed to stand up to the update without any losses, just like a number of splogs and scraper sites monetized with Google Adsense/Adwords. And yeah, do you know that the second largest SE, Yahoo, actually allows buying and selling links?
Though we can’t decide for you here, if you still choose to try, at least make all you can to ensure your paid links look natural.

5) Network interlinking will not help improve your Page Rank. True and False again.
There are two main types of networks: ones owned by a single person or a group of individuals and hosted on the same server with identical IP C classes – and these are really a waste of your time in terms of SEO; and secondly, niche communities connected through business ties and spreading valuable editorial links (b5media), which is perfectly ok with Google, as that’s a part of standard commercial promotion. One more thing to take note of, reciprocal links are yesterday’s hit. They hardly rock any longer. They are so likely to be forgotten tomorrow.

That was it. At least now you know what direction to move in. Hope this dose of anti-B.O. vaccine relieved your pains for a while, and should you need a professional consultation on SEO, we are here to help! Please also feel free to comment with more ideas about Page Rank importance, and we’ll reply.

P.S. Content is king!

Besides the creation of the content for a standard website page, there are two other widespread aspects of the world wide web that cater to the writer’s services. Internet blogs and forums are as content driven as any other website but their style differs in that, on forums especially, the user is creating the content for the site. To a lesser degree, since many blogs are personal projects, you will find fewer of them which invite comments from their readers.

For blogs the ideal posting is a link to another interesting and topical article on the web with a short description or review of what the user will find when they view it. Internet forums are more community oriented, with regular users commenting on the specific subjects and replies to other user’s comments. They are designed more for sharing information and ideas. It is a place where someone with a question can ask people familiar with the topic what the best solution might be. They are very similar to the old style bulletin board sites that spread in the 1990′s.

A blog or forum is like any other website in that they require the search engines to find and index their content so that people searching for a particular topic can find them. Since the content is being written daily by the users there is less ability to optimize the site for keywords. However, a new blog or forum which needs to build a large enough base of useful information may hire writers to create topic specific posts for their site. These people will be paid to create various threads relating to the subject matter and begin a dialogue. This is especially effective for new blogs or forums that need enough content to be found useful and be ranked higher in the periodic “indexing” schedule for the search engines. Once the board has grown in size and volunteer users have started posting, it should carry on without further need of paid posting services.

As well as individual freelance writers who offer their services on forums dedicated to content creation, there are some companies that will act as an agent for a group of writers. These agents will find the forum or blog needing content and then, for a percentage of the article or post group’s cost, will turn the commission over to one or more writers to complete. For beginning individuals, they may expect no more than 10-20 cents per two or three line comment. Once a writer builds credibility with many insightful and informative posts, the remuneration may rise as high as 25-50 cents per post. Blogs generally start at about $1-$2 per 200-250 word description with the link, and experienced bloggers can expect more.

The major problem people who pay for posting services face is in getting writers who post useless, trivial or off topic comments. When hiring posters one must state at the beginning that such posts will not be acceptable or paid for. A blog or forum moderator must also be aware of any spamming posts that are attempted on their board and remove them or face a lowering of the value of their site.

There are a few very important considerations to make when choosing a domain name for your business. The name itself should reflect your company or its services and products. While ego might dictate a personal name for your business, it is not recommended if you are marketing on the world wide web. Finding a business and domain name that tells what you do rather than who you are will be much more effective.

If at all possible, a one word domain name will have the greatest value and brand name recognition. Primary study data compiled by DomainsBot Labs shows that nouns are the most important part of speech when used in a website domain name. Two to three nouns used together can increase your ratings with the search engines to 90-100% serps (search engine results page). A noun and verb combination will still rank in the top 90 percentile. Some items to avoid in your domain name are hyphens between words and numbers used in place of letters. Made up words are also to be avoided unless you have a massive advertising budget to make the word familiar to the general public. Not only will they be harder for users to remember but the spelling errors generated will prevent your site from showing in results.

Once you have chosen your website name, it must be registered. You must purchase and register your domain name through an agent company. While the major search engine companies like Yahoo and Google offer this service, independent companies like GoDaddy can offer the same services for registering and hosting more economically. While you do not have to host your website with the same company you register the domain name with, there are advantages. Payments can be combined into packaged groups and discounted for multiple years of registry and hosting fees. Your registration fees should run no more than $10-15 USD per year.

Cost for hosting your website on the company’s servers depends upon the size and usage of your site and can be as little as $5 USD a month for a starter package and increase upward from there. Keeping your registration and hosting with the same company also makes it easier to keep up with your domain names and the times they need to be renewed. This is of the utmost importance as failure to keep your registration current can cause your domain name to default and possibly be sold to someone else.

While it may cost a bit more in registration fees, it is best to purchase all the top level domain name extensions for your business and website name. You will definitely want to use the [dot]com extension for your business website. Owning the rights to [dot]biz, [dot]org, [dot]net and [dot]info will prevent a competitor from creating a knockoff site similar to yours and funneling business from you.

Finding the availability of your chosen name can be searched through either your preferred registration company or use the services of whois[dot]com. Whois lists the ownership information and contact addresses of all domain name owners. They are also affiliated with companies that will act as agents to attempt purchasing currently active domains that you may wish to acquire.