A site that is visually appealing, easy to navigate, easy on the eye and well-structured will go a long way in keeping visitors on the site.
….but – design isn’t the only thing that keeps your audience engaged on your site. Your site’s copy is just as – if not more – important than the look and feel.
Copy is the core of your brand – it is how you present yourself and your products to the world.
How you describe yourself, your products and your services leaves an impression on your audience (customers and potential customers) and what they think of your brand.
Web copy is also important to convey product and service information, and to explain how your product or service works and how it will impact and improve the customer’s life. The better your copy, the better your conversion rates.
Conversely, ignoring your copy will have a negative impact on conversion rates.
How Good Copy Works
CRO Optimised And SEO Enabled Copywriting Can Boost Your Sales
Good copy is more than just about selling a product – it is about informing, engaging and relationship-building.
Informative: Your copy should inform your visitors about your product or service, along with its unique features and benefits.
Evocative and actionable: Copy should invoke emotion and tug at the consciousness of the consumer – and in turn, drive action and persuade the customer to make a purchase (if that is the end-goal).
Cultivate a relationship: Your copy should highlight your values, mission and purpose and demonstrate how it aligns with those of the customer/visitor. This helps build a lasting relationship.
For a quick recap – check out our Web Story HERE and share it with your network!
Here’s a deeper look at how CRO and SEO work together to make for better copy.
CRO & SEO Optimised Copy
RO & SEO Optimised Copy
Writing for the web, however requires more than just well-strung sentences – your copy needs to be aligned with your business goals – that is, to increase sales and profitability – and in line with the best SEO practices, to ensure that your content actually gets discovered by the people who most need it. This is where CRO and SEO optimisation comes in.
CRO:
This stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation. CRO as a strategy can be used to increase the percentage of any desired goal: increase the number of website visitors who become paying customers, increase the number of people who sign up and give you their emails, etc.
Anything that requires action on the part of the site visitor will require a degree of CRO. When it comes to copy, adopting CRO will ensure that your words convey the right message in a convincing manner.
SEO:
This stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is the process of optimising your website’s content and structure for search in order to receive organic placements on the search engine results pages or SERPS.
It’s the process of making your web page easy to find, easy to crawl, and easy to categorise. It is about helping your customers find your business from among a thousand other companies.
SEO is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy, because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers, which means more sales for you.
It also serves as a valuable tool to boost brand awareness, build relationships with prospects, and position yourself as an authority and expert in your domain.
CRO: The Basics
Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on your site – ie converting. Conversion Rate Optimisation is the process of enhancing your website design, speed, content and other features to boost conversions.
It supports the overall performance of your site by increasing the number of site visitors who convert to actual paying customers.
CRO tactics increase the value of your website to each visitor, prompting them to stay longer and take action, and focuses on getting more out of existing traffic and leads, as opposed to generating new traffic. While CRO is a set of tools and tactics, conversion rate is a metric. Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors, and multiplying that by 100, which gives you the final percentage.
CRO involves testing and reviewing a multitude of factors – AB testing two versions of the same website or landing page against each other, testing big elements like the checkout process, or minute details, like the colour or font of a button.
It also involves analysing content and copy, and understanding what is resonating better with your audience and prompting them towards positive action.
CRO Copywriting: Best Practices & Essentials
Like we mentioned above, copy is a major conversion driver, and it is one of the first ways in which a prospect interacts with your product or service.
It helps visitors take that all-important next step (signing up for emails or giving you their contact details) and gives you the opportunity to secure the information you need to further engage with them.
And finally, copy gives them the information and assurance they need to make a purchase/convert. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating CRO copy.
Write for your traffic type: The nature of traffic that your website is getting will be a determinant in how you should write your copy, since this is an indicator of how familiar users are with your brand. Is it search or display traffic?
Top-of-the funnel users who came by an advert or landed on your page after a Google search may not be that familiar with your product or service and wish to learn more.
However, users who already know of your brand – and already know what makes you unique – will require less detailed information.
Your copy needs to cater to the kind of users you are attracting, because information that doesn’t suit them will drive them away. Analysing what kind of traffic is going to your landing page will dictate your length and information of your page
Always include the USP: Your unique selling proposition or unique value proposition is what sets you apart from the competition, and your copy needs to revolve around it. This needs to be put forth in a clear, considerate and comprehensive manner.
Create smart headlines, sub-headlines and CTAs: A concise headline that touches upon the USP, followed by a sub headline that supports and reinforces the headline – whether it’s an offer, pricing or explanation – is a must. It also helps to keep it action-based and spark curiosity, so that the reader sticks around.
Let’s take an example for a subscription-based cooking magazine.“Get recipes, videos and shopping lists delivered to your inbox, daily.” Followed by the sub-headline “Try your first month for just $1.99.”
Your CTA or call-to-action buttons should tell the user immediately what they are doing – or what they are getting – when they click it. The words you use here are important, because for one, you only have limited space, and two, this button is critical to get the user to move to the next step – whether it’s a signup, purchase or demo.
Formatting: Formatting is important – and so is getting everyone’s attention at a glance. Website visitors today rarely read – they scan. They will not go through your copy unless it is formatted correctly.
So you need to have a proper information hierarchy, with the most critical information in the first few paragraphs. Using two columns also helps, so you can list information and post an image side by side. Bullet points are also your best friend, since they help break down information and make it easy to read and digest.
Evoke emotion: It is also essential to evoke emotion with your copy and responses on site. Be sure to include positive storytelling to help convey the benefits of your product or service, and help readers envision how they will benefit from it.
Benefits Of CRO
There are many benefits of CRO. Some of them include:
Data-based decision making: CRO eliminates guesswork and gives you solid data to work with, ensuring that you take decisions and change copy based on what your customers like.
Better results: When you make decisions based on data that caters to audience preferences, you automatically get better results.
Learn more about your audience: Adjustments to your copywriting approach means that you are constantly learning about your audience, and understanding their likes and dislikes.
Increased sales: CRO also brings in more revenue in the long run, since you are making continuous adjustments to your copy based on how your audience is responding, and tweaking your website to suit their needs and drive them towards action.
SEO: The Basics
Optimising content for conversions isn’t just about writing a compelling webpage, blog or piece of content – it also involves SEO, which boosts your visibility in search engines. The more visible you are, the more traffic you will attract. And increased traffic = better chances of driving conversions.
SEO copywriting means writing keyword-rich content that is easily found and understood by Google, and also happens to be the kind of content that your audience will want to read, like and share.
SEO Copywriting: Best Practices & Essentials
Keyword research: One of the most important aspects of SEO is to be able to find profitable keywords. Make a list of all the search terms and and keywords you want your website to be found for.
Get into the shoes of your audience – how would they want to find you? What would they be searching for on Google, in order to find your business? By the end of your research, you should be able to find enough relevant terms that your audience will use.
Choose a niche and find low competition keywords: Choosing a niche is important, especially when it comes to blogs. This will bring in some contextual relevance and help you position yourself as an authority.
Analyse blogs within your niche that have overall low authority and rank. You can then check which keywords your competitor ranks for and get an estimated keyword difficulty score for each of them, giving you an idea of how competitive each keyword is.
Then you need to check for volume, since low competition keywords tend to have lower search volumes. Then, check the “searcher’s intent” – this is one of the best ways to determine profitability.
Once you have found a low authority domain and found which of their keywords you would like to target, check the on-page difficulty of those keywords. (This can be done by searching the keyword you are looking to rank for in Google and analysing the top search results for content quality, relevancy, and depth.)
Once this is complete, check for off-page difficulty. This will give you approximate authority scores on the pages and domains that come up for your keyword. If there are not that many high authority domains on the first page, and it passes the on-page difficulty test we recommended in the previous step, this is likely a low competition keyword!
Don’t ignore technical SEO: While SEO is a blanket term for optimising your site for search engines, technical SEO is something different. According to Moz, “Traditionally, the phrase Technical SEO refers to optimising your site for crawling and indexing, but can also include any technical process meant to improve search visibility.”
Some of the important elements of technical SEO include crawling, indexing, rendering, and website architecture, all of which have a direct impact on your copy. Making a website faster, easier to crawl and easily understood by search engines are essential for technical SEO. If you are able to execute these elements well, you are more likely to be rewarded with higher rankings when a user conducts a search.
Benefits Of SEO
You can’t have a website without SEO. Here are the benefits:
Quality traffic: SEO is aninbound marketing strategy, which means that customers find you when they are looking for a solution to their problem or looking to make a purchase. You get leads who are already interested in what you have to offer, as opposed to cold calling where you may end up targeting someone who has no interest in your business.
Economical: With SEO, you don’t have to pay for ads – because you have already
created a page that search engines deem worthy of directing their users to.
Boosts brand visibility: When your content shows up at the top of relevant search engines, you grab more eyeballs – generating more buzz and awareness for your brand.
Builds trust: Showing up at the top of search results also positions your business and brand as an authority in your domain/segment, which will help users trust your site and make a purchase.
A Combination Of CRO + SEO For Better Sales
It’s important to note that while the approach and elements of these practices differ, they go hand in hand to get you increased sales. Employ both – because both these strategies need to work together to ensure higher profitability for your brand, while filtering prospects through the conversion funnel.
Chandala Takalkar is a young content marketer and creative with experience in content, copy, corporate communications, and design. A digital native, she has the ability to craft content and copy that suits the medium and connects. Prior to Team upGrowth, she worked as an English trainer. Her experience includes all forms of copy and content writing, from Social Media communication to email marketing.
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