I have spent years running workshops and writing books in which I have advised copywriters to forget about writing to an “audience” and, instead, focus on their “reader”.

That’s OK as far as it goes because my intention was to implant the idea of a single person not multiples when you’re selling.

The problem is, “reader” itself implies a level of commitment that may not (probably doesn’t) exist.

It also can suggest that you are a “writer”, which in turn leads us into murky waters where creativity takes precedence over cold, hard cash.

I am writing the student workbook for my new online copywriting course we’re launching in September, and I have made a conscious decision NOT to use the term reader for the person on the other end of your copy.

From now on, I am using a very old term that every sales person would use and understand…

Prospect.

Prospects are still individuals, but they are potential buyers of your stuff, not consumers of your writing.

Prospects have needs: readers don’t. Prospects have objections that you need to overcome: readers don’t.

Prospects are what you have just before you have customers. And customers pay the bills.

Sign up today!

At the moment they are ranked 1 to 100 on Google for the main keyword.

The agency works diligently and fairly for all of them using the same techniques.

Now guess what their Google positions are for their specified keywords.

1 through 100.

Q.E.D.

So what’s the deal with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) copywriting? Can you, by mere dint of clever wordsmithery, boot a site onto the front page of Google, possibly to the very top? Or is there something else going on?

I spent an hour or so combing through some of the supposedly best SEO blogs on the web, including one regarded in the SEO “community” as the best, to find out what’s the current advice on best practice. Here’s what I discovered.

Google employs many hundreds, possible thousands, of clever and quite morally driven people whose job it is to update the famous algorithm that determines PageRanks for a website.

They are not unaware of what’s going on out there so they simply weight the algorithm in favour of factors that are totally outside a site owner’s control.

Most important of these are “Trust/authority” and “Link popularity”. Loosely translated, this means if you are a highly regarded authority on a particular subject, budgerigar breeding, for example, many people who are also interested in budgerigar breeding will link to your site.

You can write about budgerigar breeding till you’re blue in the face (or possible green, or yellow), but unless you have those links, forget it.

It’s a simple but effective way of ensuring that the site owners who get the PageRanks are the ones with the deepest reputation, not the deepest pockets.

Copywriting (now referred to as part of “on-page optimization”) is important, but it comes pretty well bottom of the pile of decision-factors.

Listen to many soi-disant SEO experts and you will hear a great deal about the importance of keywords, meta tags, bold and italic tags …blah, blah, blah.

Once you have blown away the smoke and smashed the mirrors, the truth is revealed.

It’s no more a specialist art than decent direct mail copy ie make your copy relevant to your reader by talking in detail about the things that interest them. Use bold and italics to highlight key passages – but don’t overdo it. Write interesting headlines that help the reader understand what you’re talking about.

And, overall, write for your reader not for the spider – advice provided gratis by Google in its own report on SEO.

Just to close, here are a few of the qualifications in a report on on-page optimisation.

On tags:

“although not used for “rankings” by any of the major engines”

“although not necessary”

“we never recommend employing the tag”

On keyword density:

“A complete myth as an algorithmic component”

On body tags:

“never studied in a depth of detail that’s convincing to me”

“it has a very low correlation with high rankings (close to zero, in fact)”

“These tags appears to carry little to no SEO value”

“a very, very tiny amount of SEO weight”

“No testing has yet found that internal anchors are picked up/counted by the engines”

And their earth-shattering conclusion?

“whatever works best for the content and the visitors is likely ideal

The truth is that in the process of producing great web content, we sometimes forget, sometimes ignore and sometimes intentionally disobey the best practices laid out above.”

Right.

Asking for the order

I ran my first freelance copywriters’ masterclass yesterday in central London.

It was, I think, a success.

Our first exercise, as well as being a chance for the delegates to introduce each other, was to get a sense of everyone’s burning issues.

Perhaps not surprisingly, there were a few common threads…

• More money.
• More upmarket clients.
• Gaining confidence in quoting/holding the line.
• Selling skills.
• Marketing.

We also took time to write a vision for our businesses and an elevator pitch.

Andy teaching freelance copywriters how to run a more profitable business.

An overriding theme that emerged very early on was “Why don’t clients place more value on my work?”

It seems to me, having observed this market for a number of years, that the answer is, “Because you don’t.” (That’s all freelancers, not the ones on the masterclass.)

Measuring its value by the number of words you write or the hours it takes you is all wrong. So is charging as little as, say, £125 for a sales letter.

My advice? Start pegging the value of what you do to something that matters to the client, like revenue delta (change). A company hoping to win £500,000 in extra sales from a campaign they want you to write might, just, be willing to pay you properly for your expertise.

Andy with delegate Katherine Wildman.

Many thanks to Katherine Wildman for this pic and the two above.

I’ll close with this from delegate Laura Silcock…

“Andy’s freelance masterclass was absolutely brilliant and worth every penny. I came away feeling totally fired up and with heaps of practical advice and materials to help me set my business on a new, much more profitable, path. Andy’s got a really natural, friendly presenting style, so the day was thoroughly enjoyable, but he made sure we stayed on track and addressed all of our burning issues. The post-course hotline is a very welcome bonus and one that I’ll definitely be using. Andy really knows his stuff – not just about copywriting, but about building a business and I’m delighted that he’s happy to share his knowledge, techniques and experience.”

Copywriter Laura Silcock

You ask 15 people “What do you think of this?” and you get … 15 different answers. eg I don’t like that font. (They mean typeface.) Could you make the logo bigger? That isn’t our corporate colour.

That’s because you asked the wrong question.

Here’s what you should say…

“Based on your experience of what leads to maximum response rates in b2b direct marketing (or e-commerce or advertising), do you think there is anything we could do to this that would lead to more sales?”

Then you would get 15 identical answers. “I don’t know.”

Then you say, “OK, thanks, I’ll approve this then.”