Copywriting is a separate profession. It is not easy to be good at it and to write and produce content that is perfect in every way. To this day, I see a lot of copywriters making huge mistakes when they are asked to write copy. What are the criteria for describing copywriting? How much does SEO copywriting cost? Let’s see!
What is the job of a copywriter?
A copywriter’s job is to write high-quality copy. These are usually published in a segment of the web. It is a basic misconception that a copywriter only writes blog articles. Professional product descriptions for web shops? Social media content? PR articles for news portals? Google AdWords ad headlines? All the work of copywriters-at any SME where the owner cares about the quality of the content.
Why can we say that copywriting is a key to the marketing of the future?
It may come as a surprise, but you’d never know how much our status as experts makes a difference in a bidding process. Why? With an agency that is professional, clients are willing to leave more money. A professional who is professional in the way he or she looks will not be asked for a quote by frivolous clients who are always looking to beat down prices and get their hands on professional work for pennies on the dollar.
I get requests for quotes on my website on a daily basis. Many times I hear “I read on your blog that… You are the one who convinced me”. You might not think it, but it’s true: they are willing to pay a lot more for someone who can be described as a professional based on their work.
There are, of course, other elements of content marketing – video marketing, for example. However, relatively few SMEs in this country can afford to use excellent video marketing tools.
Why is search engine marketing so important alongside search engine optimisation?
Now imagine. Suppose your website is at the top of Google’s organic search results. Let’s assume that you’re the first in the Google AdWords advertising campaign. Yet the results are not coming. The money is not really flowing.
Why? In a joint meeting, your competitors tell you how well they’re doing and how many bidders are coming to their website. You don’t understand why there are no customers on your website. When you browse the competitor’s website, you notice how much better it is written. When you look at the posts and landing pages, you see that it’s almost impossible to stop reading the text. There is something at the end of each paragraph that takes the user further along in the reading. While the copy on your website is boring and meaningless.
Why is it beneficial for an online business to have a copywriter?
Well-written web copy has a very positive impact on your business. Why? Well, let’s see, point by point, the benefits of good copywriting.
You will increase the number of customers. If we have good copywriting, a much higher percentage of people who come to our website will become customers.
Our customers will trust us. A person who builds an expert status for himself through his professional posts will be much easier to choose. They are willing to leave more money with us.
Our reputation will grow. If we have high-quality web copy, our competitors will speak highly of us. If we can create something really unique, our name will be heard in meetings and webinars.
How much copywriting work does an SME need today?
In my opinion, a small business today needs a large amount of copywriting work. Let’s look at the areas where professional work is needed in almost every business:
- Writing blog posts
- Google AdWords copywriting
- Google AdWords for Google AdWords
- Email marketing and product descriptions
Most agencies offer a minimum of 4 article packages per month. This is because, all things considered, this is the minimum amount a small business needs.
How much does copywriting cost?
If you as a company want to use the services of a copywriter, you will see that it costs around 6,000 cents for a 3,000 character piece of copy – the most typical price in today’s market is 2 cents per character. This is the traditional pricing for blog article type texts-there are higher and lower prices.
Specifically for sales and marketing copywriting, pricing is around 0,1 USD per character. The reason for the higher rates is that the system needs to condense the main message into 1-2 sentences, which is not an easy task.
A common problem with pricing is the belief that the character price varies linearly with the length of the text. This is a huge mistake! After all, think about it: which is the easier task? 4 texts of 500 words or 1 text of 2000 characters? If an article of 500 words costs roughly 60 USD, the price of an article of 2,000 words – assuming, one might think, a linear proportionality – will be 240 USD.
This assumption is wrong. After all, writing a 2000-word article requires much more literature research and research than 4 articles of 500 words. In a serious competition, 500-word articles are not enough to prevail. Just Google the term “dahlia”. If you have a horticultural webshop, you can see from the content of the articles that a 500-character text will not do you much good. If you want to hire a copywriter to do the job, you need longer articles. And writing one requires more literature research. If, for example, a 500-word article costs 60 USD, a 1000-word article costs 1500 USD.
What else influences the price of copywriting?
The topic itself. In most cases, what you write about does not change the price. After all, it is not necessarily more difficult to write a good article about sofas than about prams. But it is much more difficult to write an explicitly technical article. For example, it can be much more challenging to talk about and explain various physical phenomena.
How does the work of a copywriter differ depending on the type of text written?
As mentioned earlier-Google AdWords, Facebook marketing, email marketing, post writing all require copywriting work. So why is it challenging to adapt to each of them in the same way?
Website copy
You cannot write really good website copy if you are not aware of the design possibilities. What layouts does the template we are using offer? What icons are given to which we can adapt our text? How much space is given for the website text (web text) per block?
My view is that only someone who is fully aware of the design possibilities can produce really good website text.
Simple blog articles
The biggest problem in writing blog articles is the need to write a detailed and substantial text that gives an exhaustive answer to a given topic. It is an easier genre to write because, unlike a sales or marketing text, a blog article does not have severe space and character constraints. A common challenge in other copywriting jobs.
Google Ads
One of the keys to optimising Google AdWords campaigns is to create high-quality title and description elements. AdWords currently offers 3 30-character title line elements, which should include the core message and call to action. There is also a character limit for the description below. This should also include product benefits, guarantees, relevant keywords. It may also be worth taking a look at competitor’s ads to see the possibilities.
Facebook ad texts
Facebook is also a good place to advertise. What makes it very different from Google AdWords is that it is a push marketing tool. There are no major character restrictions, but you should try to keep the title of your post as short as possible.
A particular challenge is to make the image text of the edited post as aesthetically pleasing as possible.
Email marketing
The most common mistake in email marketing is that the headline in the inbox does not encourage clicks. Are you personalising the name of the mailer? Do you include emojis? Keywords such as “eBook”, “PDF” or “video” are very strong click-through incentives. Are they missing from the headline?
What are the most common copywriting errors that occur?
There are many typical mistakes that can be made in copywriting these days. What are they? Let’s see some of them!
We are not talking about what we should be talking about
If you want to do SEO copywriting, the first question is: what should you write about? The first thing to target is not the short-tail (very general) keywords, but the more specific, long-tail keywords. These will be the first ones to produce results.
The text you write does not reflect the current knowledge of your users
Perhaps surprisingly, even on the blogs of professional marketing agencies, this mistake appears regularly. It is often observed that they use terms in their posts that the user simply cannot understand with their current level of knowledge. A lot of people who want to learn about the concept of search engine optimisation will search for ‘search engine optimisation’ or ‘SEO’. Then, for example, it is a huge mistake to use the word “conversion” in your post without explaining its meaning.
It is also a typical mistake when someone offers “responsive website design” as one of their services. The average person you call in off the street is not aware of the meaning of the term “responsive”.
They are not clear on the right keywords
It is simply impossible to do a good SEO copywriting job without a precise knowledge of the right keywords. After all, for a piece of text to be search engine optimised, a number of criteria need to be met: for example, the keywords need to be in the right headings. Use as many synonyms as possible! Preferably include the keyword in the first paragraph.
The company slogans are not clear
If the company’s slogans are not known to the writer, how can you write professional texts? Whether it’s a Facebook post, a headline for a Google Ads campaign, or a product description, phrases such as “free delivery”, “100% guarantee”, “24-hour turnaround” should not be missing.
Lack of clarity on the appropriate targets
Clarifying the exact objectives is one of the most important tasks. Why? Because it is important to be clear about the results you expect from the service you are ordering. For example, there is strong competition on most plant-related issues.
Typical texts of 3000 characters are simply not going to get to the top of Google. In this case, of course, the pricing is different, due to the difficulty of the work.
The design will be done faster than the text
This is one of the most serious mistakes you can imagine. Graphic designers have the goal and the vocation to dazzle users with the most unique and complex design. The only problem with this is that graphic designers do not take proper copywriting into account.
In order for a website to adequately express the owner’s goals and rank well in search engines, it needs to have the right amount of text. This is usually missing from the graphic design, or part of it.
No call to actions
What is the point of a professional professional entry without links to relevant product pages? Or no products placed in the post? Practically nothing. It’s important to show your users that you are selling and marketing that service or product.
No subheadings or tagging
When someone reads a newspaper article or a detailed post to get an answer to their question, they want to find what they are looking for quickly. This is where well-organised subheadings help users. It is a particular mistake to put a blog article or post on a portal page without taking into account the spacing in the website layout.
A Word document is not always displayed in the same way on a website. How prominent are headings and how much space is there between them? These are very important considerations!
Another typical mistake is to use long paragraphs. Give your users time to relax a little!
Not using synonyms and related terms
If we don’t use synonyms and related terms in our texts, Google will not be able to take our texts seriously, and neither will our readers. For example, what would it be like if you were reading a text about weight loss and it didn’t include the terms “weight” or “scale”, “calories” “diet” or “exercise”?
Of course, a text can still be authentic if one of these terms is not in it – for example, the word “scale”. However, if none of these terms are used, that could be a problem.
What questions should we ask when we look at our writing?
Here are some of the points you should run through when reviewing your copywriting. My own view, based on many years of experience, is that it is not the most important thing for a copywriter to hit the style of Ernst Hemingway. It is more important to look at the following aspects:
Is the text understandable to lay people?
The question speaks for itself, but very often it is observed that writers do not take into account the fact that the text must be written for lay people. A dental practice’s website should not be full of Latin words. It should be something that everyone can understand.
Are we addressing our target group?
Are we really addressing our target group when we write texts? Just think how silly it would be to write a text with a self-aggrandising tone if we are addressing a young audience. One of the first questions that should always be clarified at the beginning of the text is whether we are writing a text that is polite or self-deprecating. Who is your typical customer? What social class do they come from? What kind of lifestyle do they lead?
Are we talking about the users’ problems?
Don’t highlight our company. Who cares how many awards we have won and how much we are the market leader in our sector? All that matters is how much what we write will answer our readers’ questions.
Are we presenting product benefits instead of product parameters?
It is a common mistake to highlight the different specifications of a product instead of describing what the benefits of that product are. For example, in the product description of a lawnmower, do not write “double the torque thanks to the gear ratio”. It should say “mows up to 2 m of hedge”.
Are we presenting our company realistically?
Of course, it’s not a question of starting with the most serious blunders. But highlighting our main profile and emphasising what we do and don’t do is very important. It gives people confidence, for example, if you write down that you do not do certain services and give reasons for this – that way they will see that you are a fair team.
Are there parts of our text that are meaningless?
It is very common to find content in a written text that is actually meaningless. They do nothing to move our readers forward, they are just a meaningless glossary of words.
Is our text a call to action?
It is a huge mistake not to have a call to action in your text. Emphasise that we can provide solutions to their problems. We will be the company that will help them to change their lives.
How can we tell for sure that the copywriting we’ve received is good?
Google Analytics is used by virtually every single website these days. It helps the search giant to get data on how much time users spend on our websites and on our various posts.
We can, of course, look at that and if we see that users are spending a lot of time on our posts, then we have a good copywriting job. Of course, it depends not only on that, but also on the design of the site, but it can give you a good indication.
Conclusion
Copywriting is by no means an easy job. To be truly effective, you need professional copywriters who are dedicated to it.