Tag Archives: Conversion Rate

How to make a connection through your content writing and hook readers

How to make a connection with your content writing

How to make a connection with your content writing

Why do you write and publish content?

I’m pretty sure many of you are going to say, “for better SEO”.

Although, this is not a wrong approach, if you are writing and publishing content merely to improve your search engine rankings, you’re missing a great opportunity to connect with your core audience.

Your content writing increases your conversion rate if it is able to connect with your readers.

Your content writing must be able to establish a connection with your readers/visitors, as very nicely explained in this blog post, titled “How to write magnetic content that resonates with your audience”.

The author draws a parallel between a chance encounter with a letter carrier or a mailman, and the importance of different approaches towards storytelling to establish a connection with your audience.

He begins his blog post by telling a story about a letter carrier who used to deliver mail in his office, six years ago. Then he got transferred to another city or another area.

The author observes that the letter carrier has grown heavier.

During his previous posting, the letter carrier had to visit individual offices or homes to deliver mail and letters. He would park it struck somewhere and then walk to different offices and homes.

In his new posting, he didn’t have to move much. All he had to do was open the mailbox doors, put in the letters, and close the doors, from within the truck itself. Result: he gained weight.

Such a subtle difference, such a big impact.

In my own blog post, this one, I begin with the importance of making a connection with your readers.

Why is it important to make a connection with your content writing?

Why is it important to make a connection with your content writing

Why is it important to make a connection with your content writing?

By now you must have read multiple times that every buying decision is an emotional decision.

A Harvard business School professor says that 95% of purchase decisions are made subconsciously.

Emotions are triggered when you make a connection, whether the connection is visible or invisible, whether it is perceptible or imperceptible.

The connection doesn’t even have to be immediate.

Maybe a connection was made a year ago or a month ago and then, even unconsciously, it comes to the fore, when you are making a purchase or making a buying decision or deciding to hire someone like a content writer.

In the above-linked blog post, the author says that you can make connections, you can write magnetic content, by opening every piece of writing with an engaging story.

Why is storytelling important?

You may like to read Importance of storytelling in content marketing.

Recently I have worked on a few landing pages and the clients have insisted on having a short story on the landing page.

I begin a typical story like this:

There was this guy named Peter. He was having problems with his business. These problems had spilled over his personal life. He was on the verge of getting a divorce. He was thinking of filing for bankruptcy. He had laid off most of his staff.

Then he came across this app that completely transforms the way he manages his business.

… and so on.

Yes, at this time when explaining it here, it may seem a bit artificial, but on the landing page, I create an entire narrative and you can feel a connection with the protagonist.

When you tell a story, people can immediately relate.

These days there is the Coronavirus pandemic going on.

If you go through various blog posts and articles preparing lists of books that you can read while you are confined at home, you will notice that 80% of the books have some sort of outbreak or epidemic as the main theme. This is because these days people can relate to such plots and stories.

You can interweave storytelling and content writing by creating a context.

Does the story always have to be real?

It’s great if the story is real, but even if it isn’t real, as long as it is believable and practical, use it.

Why storytelling makes your content writing unique from your competitors?

When you’re writing and publishing content on your website or blog, how unique is it?

Haven’t all the topics also been covered by your competitors?

For example, if you are a mobile app development company and you want to explain your development process, aren’t there thousands of other websites out there that are explaining their development process in the same manner?

How do you make your mobile app development process unique?

Through storytelling.

Your story is always going to be unique because, it’s your story.

So, instead of simply explaining your development process, tell about a client who had a certain problem and then how you used your development process to solve that problem.

This can be applied to any situation.

For example, instead of explaining how to do online trading using your platform, talk about how Rajesh used your platform for strategic investment and growing his money.

5 Reasons your online copywriting is not converting

5 reasons your online copywriting is not converting

5 reasons your online copywriting is not converting

No matter how much traffic your online copywriting generates, unless people do business with you or unless they do what you want them to do, it doesn’t matter much.

Your online copywriting must convert.

Read: 10 copywriting tips to boost your website conversion rate

What is conversion?

In terms of writing content for your website (even your blog) conversion means people doing what you want them to do.

Conversion can be macro and micro.

Macro conversion means more people buying from you and more people using your service.

Micro-conversion can be anything.

You may want your visitors to download your e-book or your white paper.

You may want them to subscribe to your email newsletter.

You may even want to encourage them to come to your website or blog frequently.

You want to engage them.

Your macro conversion is the sum total of your micro-conversions.

The more engagement you have with your visitors, the greater are the chances of them becoming your paying customers and clients.

Here is a comprehensive explanation of the difference between micro-conversions and macro conversion. A long read, it is also good example of a pillar page as well as long form content.

How do you know your online copywriting isn’t converting?

Of course, if you are not generating enough sales it means your online copywriting is not converting.

If you are not getting regular subscribers to your newsletter it means your content is not inspiring people enough.

If people are not downloading your e-book, they don’t find your content or your copy worthy enough.

Somehow, your copywriting isn’t making a mark.

People are not impressed.

They are not finding what they are looking for.

You need to evaluate your writing.

Unless you know why your conversion rate is very low or even non-existent, you cannot make amends.

Listed below are 5 reasons why your online copywriting is not converting.

1. You are focusing more on yourself and less on your customers and clients

When people come to your website, they’re not interested in you just for the heck of it.

They have a problem and they are looking for a solution.

They have a need and they are looking for someone who can fulfill that need.

If you come to my website looking for someone who can improve your SEO with online copywriting, you don’t want to know what a great copywriter I am.

You want to know whether I understand your problem or not and accordingly, I can improve your SEO.

YOUR problem should be my focus, not my skills and abilities.

Of course, you need to know my skills and abilities, but they should be integrated into a you-centric message.

If you focus more on yourself and less on your customers and clients, there is no emotional connection and people leave your website without doing business with you.

2. You don’t have a call-to-action

What do you want people to do when they are on your website?

If you are simply busy generating traffic from search engines and social media websites without making it clear exactly what you can offer, your conversion rate is going to be low.

Your copywriting should make it clear that you are in the business of providing solutions people are looking for.

3. Your online copywriting is not web friendly

People have a certain way of reading text on their mobile phones and even on their PCs and laptops.

I have repeatedly written on my website that people don’t read blogs and websites the way they read traditional magazines and newspapers.

The digital world is full of distractions.

While you are browsing a website or a blog, you are constantly being disturbed by notifications and by the possibilities of easily going to another website or blog.

Since most of the people may be accessing your website or blog on their mobile phone, they may be sitting at a crowded and noisy place.

The point is, online copywriting needs to take into account zillions of distractions.

Write very short sentences.

Be clear about what you are saying.

Cover every important point as quickly as possible so that even if someone leaves your website midway, he or she knows what you are trying to communicate.

Keep your copy easily scannable.

Organize your text under various headings and subheadings and bullet points.

Don’t beat around the bush.

4. You have a misleading headline or web page title

Many people come to your website after coming across your link on Google or one of the social media websites like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

They will be drawn to your website due to the title or the headline that they read.

Some writers create misleading headlines and titles to draw people to the website or blog thinking that the only purpose of their writing is generating traffic.

Many entrepreneurs mistakenly think that it’s all about getting traffic to the website, whereas it is not.

Yes, you need traffic, but more than traffic, you need people who are actually interested in doing business with you.

When you use misleading headlines and web page titles, people feel cheated and they quickly leave your website.

5. You are not getting rightly targeted traffic

Rightly targeted traffic means getting those people to your website who would like to become your paying customers and clients.

For this, through your online copywriting, you need to target searcher’s intent: why people are looking for that particular piece of information?

In the beginning, when people had just started doing business online, I was providing web design and web programming services.

I mostly focused on creating and publishing HTML and PHP tutorials on my website.

Though I was able to generate lots of traffic, I rarely got clients.

Instead of targeting people who were looking for web designers and web programmers to build their websites, inadvertently I was targeting people who themselves wanted to learn web design and web programming.

Routinely publishing educational content is not bad, but publishing educational content just to attract an audience who is interested in learning but not in doing business, can be counter-productive.

Even for my content writing and online copywriting business I share lots of educational content but now I don’t repeat the same mistake.

Even when I’m sharing my knowledge and experience with my visitors, I never neglect the keywords and search terms that bring me content writing and copywriting clients.

Hence, be careful of your targeting when regularly publishing content on your website or blog.

Remember that it’s very chaotic on the web.

People will come across your information among hundreds of other links.

When they come to your website, they may get confusing or mixed signals.

The job of your online copywriting is to make sure that you articulate the benefit of doing business with you, as clearly as possible.

If you don’t do that, you will have a low conversion rate.

Targeted content writing for better conversion rate

The image shows a bull's-eye to signify targeted content writing

Targeted content writing can improve conversion rate

You publish content to improve your conversion rate.

Conversion rate isn’t always about more people buying. It is about more people doing what you want them to do.

Suppose you write a blog post explaining people why they should download your e-book. This is your conversion rate – people downloading your e-book.

Although, you may want people to download your e-book so that they do business with you, the conversion rate of that particular link is the number of people downloading the e-book divided by the number of people accessing the link, multiplied by 100.

Targeted content writing plays an important role in this. The purpose of targeted content writing is to get the right people to your link and then delivering the right message.

Through targeted content writing, you need to tackle your conversion rate from two angles:

  1. Get traffic from search engines and social media/social networking websites.
  2. Convincingly deliver the message so that people take the action they’re supposed to take after reading your blog post or webpage.

How to do targeted content writing to improve your conversion rate

In simple terms:

  1. Clearly define what you want to achieve.
  2. Make a list of keywords and search terms that will help the right people to find your link on Google and other search engines.
  3. Write content based on these keywords but keep the message at the center.

Clearly defining what you want to achieve

Focusing on a single topic and a single objective is very important. Often, clients send me a topic and then they send me a long list of keywords to cover. It doesn’t work that way.

Sometimes they send me a list that has got nothing to do with the main topic title of the blog post or the web page they want me to write.

They simply want to generate search engine traffic without having a clear idea what the visitors are supposed to do once they find the link and come to the blog post or the web page.

Frankly, if you focus on your main topic (which generally has your main keyword or search term) you don’t need a separate list of keywords. Sure, you can use synonyms and alternative words for better SEO, but you shouldn’t move far away from your core topic.

I’m writing this blog post to explain to you how to do targeted content writing to improve your conversion rate. I don’t intend to teach you how to improve your SEO. I’m not even talking about copywriting.

To clearly define the purpose, know searcher’s intent and write accordingly.

For this blog post, I know that the searchers should be looking for a way to use content writing to improve their conversion rate. When they look for information on how they can use content writing to improve their conversion rate, I tell them that they should focus on targeted content writing instead of generic content writing.

Make a list of keywords that correspond with the information you are planning to provide

Keywords and search terms shouldn’t drive your writing effort. Nonetheless, they keep you focused and if you optimize your content writing for appropriate keywords and search terms, it helps the right people find your content on Google and elsewhere.

I say it again, don’t worry too much about using keywords everywhere. They should appear naturally. The more you focus on the topic, the better you optimize for the targeted keywords.

To write targeted content, as an experienced content writer, I can incorporate even unrelated keywords. Right now, I’m doing this for one of my clients. There is no connection with the topics they send me and the list of keywords they want me to focus on. Any other content writer would have either given up or made a mess of the entire thing. The client knows that I’m doing a great job.

Ideally, to write targeted content, make sure that the main search term appears in the title of the blog post or the web page you are writing. Various studies have shown that when people see the keyword or the search term they have just used, in the search listings, they click the link with greater frequency than those in search engine listings that don’t carry the keywords they have just used.

Remember that the most important is your message

Don’t bother about the keywords if you cannot incorporate them. There is always another blog post or webpage where you will be able to use those keywords. Most important is the information that you are providing. The value that you are delivering. Simply focus on that.

Your conversion rate depends on many factors. It also depends on the urgency the visitor has or does not have. But your targeted content writing plays a pivotal part. For that, you must know what you intend to achieve through your writing. Or your content writer.

10 copywriting tips to boost your website conversion rate

The image shows a notepad with copywriting tips for better conversion rate written on it

Copywriting tips for better conversion rate


In this blog post you will read a few copywriting tips that will help you boost your website conversion rate.

Although I constantly promote myself as a website content writer, when I’m writing for a business website, especially the main pages like the homepage, the services page, the product features page or the about us section, I’m doing copywriting.

Content writing is educational and informative, copywriting is promotional and persuasive.

A long time back I published a web page explaining the difference between copywriting and content writing.

Content writing doesn’t always have to sell, but copywriting is all about selling and hence, conversion rate is very important when it comes to copywriting.

Aside from your main business website content, copywriting is also used for

  • Landing pages
  • Email marketing
  • PPC campaigns
  • Social media advertising
  • Brochures and flyers
  • Promotional video and audio scripts

When you hire a professional copywriter, you want to boost your website conversion rate. You want more people to buy from you or use your services or download your software or e-book or mobile app.

Basically, you want them to click the “call to action” link or button.

How do you make people do that?

This is where my copywriting tips can help you. Even if you yourself don’t want to use these tips, you will be able to glimpse them in the writings of your copywriter and you will feel empowered and involved.

There is nothing magical about copywriting. It is simply convincing and engaging writing, written in a manner that your target audience is impressed by your message and agrees to take the action you want it to take.

Here are 10 copywriting tips that will boost your website conversion rate.

Copywriting tip 1: Have a clear idea of what your audience is looking for

This is one of the most important copywriting tips and without knowing what your audience is looking for, you cannot improve your conversion rate.

Conversion happens when you are providing exactly what your prospective customers and clients are looking for.

Whether they want to update themselves regularly, or educate themselves about a certain product or service or want to make up their minds, you need to create your copy accordingly, and only then your conversion rate improves.

Good copywriting also involves using the language that your audience uses. If your language is totally alien, they don’t understand what you are saying and they leave your webpage or landing page, frustrated and confused.

So,

  1. Write about what your audience is looking for.
  2. Write in the language your audience uses.

Having a persona also helps you understand the expectations of your visitors. You cannot please everyone. So, decide in advance whom you’re going to please. Define a persona. A persona has

  • The gender of your target person.
  • His or her age.
  • His or her social status.
  • His or her job title and industry.
  • Marital status.
  • Location.
  • Whether he or she has kids are not.

These are general traits.

If you are writing copy for a fashion accessory, then it will help you to know the fashion preferences of your persona.

Copywriting tip 2: Use conversational language

Stiff, official-sounding language doesn’t sell well. Use a conversational style when copywriting. Preferably, use first person. Use lots of “you” and “your”.

Talk like a person. Talk as if the other person is sitting in front of you and you are convincing him or her to do something. Use imaginary body language because it reflects through your copy and make sure copy sound natural. You can also imagine a scene from a movie where two characters are talking to each other.

Copywriting tip 3: Come to the point, don’t beat around the bush

Tell straight up what you have to offer.

If you are offering an SEO package, tell the person immediately how you’re going to improve his or her search engine rankings.

Mention the problem, then mention the solution.

Life is full of distractions these days. Even small things can distract people away from your landing page or website.

Hence, deliver your important message as early in the copy as possible.

Copywriting tip 4: Respond to common objections in advance

Frankly, there can be thousands of objections your target audience may have and hence, it is important to define a persona, as described above, and then stick to that persona. This way, you will know the common objections the person may have when going through your copy.

For my target audience, for example, I’m not looking for people who are more interested in getting cheap copywriting services and less interested in improving their conversion rate.

Although cost matters, I’m targeting people for whom cost is not the deciding factor but how well my copy converts.

So, people belonging to my target segment may have a question like, “But, is your copywriting service really effective and will it help me improve my website conversion rate?”

I need to convince them. I need to provide proof. I need to provide testimonials. Through the copy, I need to convince them that I’m the copywriter they are looking for.

Copywriting tip 5: Use numbers instead of claims

“I can double your conversion rate in 8 weeks” is far convincing than “I can improve your conversion rate fast”.

“My clients have experienced 300% improvement in their conversion rate after using my copywriting services for 5 months” is better than “Improve your conversion rate with my copywriting services”.

Numbers give your target audience a clear idea. Whether you are mentioning a price of a product or service or the amount of improvement it can bring in, use numbers to give them a clear idea of what they will get.

Copywriting tip 6: Use shorter, crisper sentences

Shorter sentences are easier to read and easier to understand. They focus on a single thought and that’s it. After being exposed to that single thought, the person can move on.

“A $105 flat fee, no hidden cost.”

“Buy it once, you don’t have to buy it again.”

Life these days is full of distractions. People don’t get distracted when they read short sentences. Short sentences are also powerful and make a big impact.

Most powerful statements have fewer words. Take for example what Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” – simple, to the point, says what it means to say.

Copywriting tip 7: Hit the emotional chords

By the end of the day, selling is emotional. We buy less for utility value, more for emotions. As the insane success of the iPhone tells you, people buy for experience and not just for the utility value (provided, they can afford).

This Harvard Business School research says that 95% of purchase decisions are made in the subconscious mind.

You can hit the emotional chords many ways.

Take for example, “Join the elite club of billionaires who make millions every month using these copywriting tips.”

Although, the line talks about making money, it reaches out to people who would like to join the elite club of billionaires.

Another one, “Never worry about putting food on the table – the sure shot way of making money.”

Everybody wants to make money, but, the need to put food on the table can move anyone.

“Make your ex regret the moment he decided to leave you,” can be a great weight loss slogan if making your ex feel bad is more important than being fit.

Emotions are great motivators.

Copywriting tip 8: Sell the benefits, not the product

What is the benefit of good copywriting? It gets you more customers and clients. So, what is the benefit? Getting more customers and clients.

People don’t want to buy your product or subscribe to your service just because you are providing it.

Something is troubling them. Something is missing in their lives. Something is holding them back from achieving their best. Something doesn’t let them sleep.

Take for example a to-do list.

“This is one to-do list that never lets you miss the important things you need to do.”

“The mobile phone app that lets you get your life back on track.”

Nifty features are great to have, and they certainly help people, and this is why you have incorporated them in the first place, but people aren’t really bothered about them unless they have started using your mobile app.

What is the greatest, irresistible benefit of downloading and installing your app? Begin your copy with that.

Copywriting tip 9: Never underestimate the importance of a headline

Headline is what that catches your fancy.

When you come across a headline on Facebook or Twitter, how it beckons you decides whether you are going to click it or not. This is the power of headlines.

A headline is bigger. It attracts the attention of your visitors immediately because the headline is not just bigger, it is also at the top. The size and place says, “Look at me before you look at something else.”

Most people will stay or leave your landing page based on what you have written in your headline.

If you want to make a promise, if you want to highlight the most important benefit of your product, if you want to deliver the most hard-hitting USP, use it in your headline.

Copywriting tip 10: Become your reader’s advocate

Become your customer’s or client’s advocate through your copy.

Although deep within you want them to spend money on your business, basically, what you have is their good in your heart.

Your product or service has the ability to transform their lives.

Your product or service can herald a positive change.

Your prospective customer or client has a problem, and you have got the right solution.

You have totally understood his or her problem and now you want to offer a solution.

Throughout your copy, you fight for the benefit of your customers and clients. This is how you write effective copy.

Conclusion

There is no hard and fast rule in copywriting: you just need to put the interest of your customers and clients first before your own. You need to connect. You need to tell them a story they can relate to. You talk in their language. You become one of them.

Improve SEO of web pages and blog posts with higher engagement levels

Improved search engine visibility of web pages with higher engagement levels

Improved search engine visibility of web pages with higher engagement levels

On web pages and blog posts with higher engagement level, people stay longer. For example, if someone stays more than 30-40 seconds on a web page or blog post on your website, this web page or blog post has a higher engagement level compared to web pages and blog posts that people leave within five seconds.

A point on this NewsCreed blog post on content marketing KPIs caught my attention (although, all the points are worth reading):

Some articles may receive many pageviews but have low engagement rates, which indicates that you may want to revise those pieces to capture people for longer amounts of time. Other stories may have low pageviews and high engagement, indicating that you should reallocate distribution resources and re-optimize them for SEO to get those pieces in front of more people.

This makes great sense, and although it is a natural thing to do, we often ignore such steps.

You can use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to know how much time people are spending on individual web pages and blog posts on your website.

Your statistics give you lots of insight. There might be many web pages or blog posts that get lots of traffic, but people don’t stay on these web pages or blog posts for long.

In terms of SEO, these web pages or blog posts might be great, but they are not performing much in terms of eliciting a positive response from your visitors.

I repeatedly mention on my blog that traffic doesn’t matter much if it doesn’t get you business. Without business, more traffic is just ego massage or an illusion.

There might be many web pages or blog posts that don’t get much traffic, but when people land on these web pages or blog posts, they stay there longer. When they are on these web pages or blog posts, they even feel encouraged to explore other parts of your website or blog. This tendency of these web pages or blog posts helps you increase your conversion rate.

So, shouldn’t you try to get more traffic to these web pages or blog posts? You should.

If you have lots of web pages and blog posts on your website, prepare an Excel spreadsheet (or Google spreadsheet) and enter all the URLs you would like to track, over there. If you are using WordPress to manage your website, there is a nice plug-in that allows you to make a list of all the URLs in your WordPress database.

Some study of Google Analytics can tell you how you can find out how much time people are spending on your web pages and blog posts.

Once you have discovered that there are many web pages and blog posts that have a higher engagement level but don’t get much traffic, you can start promoting these web pages and blog posts.

Note down their current rankings, traffic and the amount of time people are spending on them in separate columns of the spreadsheet.

You can start with trying to improve their search engine rankings.

How to improve the SEO of web pages and blog posts with higher engagement levels?

Do you feel that if you tweak the content of web pages and blog posts with higher engagement levels may bring down their engagement levels?

Sure, this can happen, and this is where an experienced content writer can help you.

Anyway, as long as you are clear about why these chosen web pages and blog posts have a higher engagement level, you can optimize the content to increase their search engine rankings without meddling with their current engagement level.

You will need to be patient. My website gets crawled almost daily, and even multiple times a day sometimes. This way, I can find out quickly whether certain changes have had some sort of impact on their search engine rankings or not.

That might not be the case with your website. If it takes a while for Google to crawl and index your new and updated links, then you will need to wait and see how your recent changes are improving SEO of your chosen links and how it is affecting the engagement levels.

Make small changes. You must have clear idea of what keywords and search terms bring targeted traffic to these web pages and blog posts. See if you can incorporate more instances of these keywords and search terms into your existing content.

Maybe you can include a couple of more points with headings having your keywords?

Maybe you can increase the number of words?

But don’t add text just to increase the number of words; have something relevant to say. Make sure that you are adding value rather than creating extra noise to increase the size of your web page or blog post. This will cause more harm than good.

If right now you have got nothing to add, then don’t add. Do some research. Do some more reading. Take more time. This is not some job that you should do in a hurry.

Make a list of changes that you would like to incorporate and then wait for the new data to emerge in the Google Analytics dashboard.

As a content writer my advise would be to make very small changes in the existing text and then if possible, add more text where the original text ends. This way, the material that gives you a higher engagement level won’t be pushed down or diluted.

You can also promote links with higher engagement levels directly without resorting to improving their search engine rankings. You can encourage people to link to these web pages and blog posts. You can link to them from your own LinkedIn, Quora and Medium posts. You can repeatedly share them on social media. You can frequently share these links through your mailing list.

The string of thoughts that made me write this post was triggered by the suggestion that one should try to improve the SEO of web pages and blog posts that enjoy a higher engagement level so that more people can come to these web pages and blog posts, to get you even higher engagement level and consequently, improve your conversion rate.