If you want to keep your site visitors engaged and get or maintain a high ranking with search engines, you need to keep it stocked with fresh content on a regular basis. One of Google’s latest algorithm changes is focusing on rewarding site owners who make a point of posting relevant and timely items with favorable rankings.

What does Google consider quality fresh content? The search engine giant likes to see news and events posted online. The advantage to you in adding this type of content to your site is that Internet users want to be in the know about what’s going on, and they want to find out in bite-sized pieces of information.

Consider adding a blog, news & events or public relations section to your website and invite your site visitors to subscribe so that they can be notified by e-mail whenever a new story is added. This simple step allows you to implement a three-pronged approach to promoting your business: if properly written and optimized, you get a steady stream of organic Web traffic to your site, improved search engine rankings and a steady stream of visitors that know your business is alive and well. 

How can you use newsworthy stories to help promote your business? You can report on the results of surveys or trends which are relevant to your market (while avoiding mentioning your competition, of course). News can also mean promoting your business by sharing noteworthy events, such as a new product or service launch, an award your company received, being featured or cited in the media, sharing the news of an employee’s promotion and so on.

Adding fresh content to your site on a regular basis will help keep your brand in front of your customers. Newsworthy items will make your site a hit with search engines. It’s a win-win situation.

The ranking of your business, service or product in Google’s search results is critical to your success. Toronto-based content and website copywriting expert Ray Litvak understands the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and using the right words in the right way to increase your rankings. Discover how greater exposure on Google can drive more traffic, increase leads and grow your business. Many of Ray’s clients consistently rank on Google’s first page of results for their key terms and have grown their business as a result. You can do it too – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call Ray locally at 416-226-8676 for a free assessment of your specific needs today. You’ll be glad you did!

Creating great content can be compared to baking your own bread. The process cannot be rushed; if you simply slap together a few ingredients (words) and hope for the best, you won’t get the results you are hoping for.

Choose Your Words Carefully

Crafting great content takes time and some effort to produce. It involves much more than just putting a few words together and publishing them online. There is so much “noise” competing for your audience’s attention that you need to make sure that what you post online stands out.

To continue with the baking metaphor, you will get much better results if you use high quality ingredients. Not only does your content need to be structured carefully, you will also need to make sure that you are choosing language which speaks to, not at, your audience.

Give it Time

Ideally, you want your great content to be something which will create a lot of interest online. This is not a situation where you can expect to get instant gratification; your content will take time to be appreciated by Internet users and come into its own. It will take some time for your content to be indexed by search engines, but you can help the process along by making sure you share it through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites.

If you consistently post great content on your website and blog, you will establish your brand as one which your readers can trust and this strategy will ultimately lead to increased readership and revenue. Like your home-baked bread project, it takes time for great content to rise in the rankings and to be appreciated, but the results are well worth it in the end.

Great content speaks to the Internet user and provides value to the reader in some manner. It needs to be prepared by an expert craftsman, and Toronto-based content and website copywriting expert Ray Litvak is well versed in how to make your content great. Contact Ray today at 416-226-8676 for a free, personalized assessment of your content needs and how to distinguish yourself from the competition through great content.

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.

Have you ever considered applying this principle to search engine marketing? It’s called “remarketing.”

Traditionally, anyone struggling to convert customers using paid search, i.e. Google AdWords ad boxes, will try to rectify the problem by changing ad copy, conducting more keyword research and so on. Doing so is often the right choice but sometimes all you need is a little persistence.

Just as the salesperson who just won’t quit sometimes makes a sale by returning to a target who already said no, the same strategy can make search remarketing effective.

Remarketing is, literally, remarketing your ads specifically toward customers who have already rejected or “bounced” from your site. The process involves attaching special tracking cookies to past visitors, “following” them as they continue to search and remarketing with new ads targeted specifically to them.

The first reaction may be to worry about the ethics of such a strategy. Is it really fair to follow someone after they leave your site? The key is to associate your remarketed web ads only with a select number of similar keywords and websites. That way, though you’re taking another shot at the customers who spurned you, you’re still only reaching out to them when they’re still searching for products and services similar to what you offer. If customer X opts not to buy your power tools and wants to comparison shop instead, it’s not overly invasive to attract their attention with a new power-tool ad while customer X is still searching for power tools.

Remarketing increases your conversions by essentially “unbouncing” your bounce rate. It also raises brand awareness for your business, as it gives customers the sense that your site is popular, authoritative and ubiquitous. It’s the equivalent of a billboard you keep seeing all over town. It gets you thinking about that brand, doesn’t it?

Consider trying some remarketing today. Since the process can be a bit challenging to implement for first-timers, hiring a specialized web content development company to help might be a good idea.

The ranking of your business, service or product in Google’s search results is critical to your success. Toronto-based content and website copywriting expert Ray Litvak understands the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and using the right words in the right way to increase your rankings. Discover how greater exposure on Google can drive more traffic, increase leads and grow your business. Many of Ray’s clients consistently rank on Google’s first page of results and have grown their business as a result. You can do it too – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call Ray locally at 416-226-8676 for a free assessment of your specific needs today. You’ll be glad you did!

I love stuffing. My Thanksgiving turkey will be packed with it this weekend. But keyword stuffing – also known as keyword spamming – makes you a turkey in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

Any overzealous SEO Copywriter or website owner can easily make this mistake. It’s common that we think we’re doing ourselves a huge favor by stuffing our pages with as many keywords as possible. Unfortunately, doing so often hurts more than it helps. Here are three key reasons why keyword stuffing can hurt your bottom line.

1. It kills your readability. Last week, we discussed the “aural test” and how readability is crucial to your site’s success. A page overloaded with keywords has no shot of passing the aural test! Overstuffed copy is nonsensical, overly dense, totally unnatural and extremely unappealing to the eye.

Content overstuffed with keywords turns off readers, confuses them, and sends them running. In theory, the keywords may help you in search engine results and increase your traffic, but that traffic will rarely convert. Too many keywords means lower conversion rates and higher bounce rates. Keyword-saturated content may look overly robotic, less human, and will make it harder for potential customers to trust you. Looking “spammy” kills your readability.

2. Google isn’t stupid. The funny thing about keyword stuffing: in the modern search-engine landscape, it may not even increase your traffic. Search engines like Google care more and more about quality content these days, including relevant, authoritative and engaging content. There’s nothing engaging about nonsensical copy loaded with keywords. Coming across like a robot will hurt you in the rankings, not help you.

3. Time is money – and keyword stuffing takes time. Bloating your site with keywords means spending far more time and capital on SEO. Since the excess keyword research and work won’t even help your site in the long run, committing oodles of time and resources to keyword stuffing may make you lose money.

In a nutshell, don’t sacrifice readability for possible search engine rankings.  That said, being too conservative, as in using too few keywords, does you no favors. So, what’s an SEO to do? A good rule of thumb to follow: try for no more than one keyword phrase for every 100 words of web content.  Use synonyms, singular and plural instances of your keywords. Focus on sounding ‘natural.’  Doing so will keep your keyword total healthy and relevant while also preventing you from alienating your audience.

The ranking of your business, service or product in Google’s search results is critical to your success. Toronto-based content and website copywriting expert Ray Litvak understands the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and using the right words in the right way to increase your rankings. Discover how greater exposure on Google can drive more traffic, increase leads and grow your business. Many of Ray’s clients consistently rank on Google’s first page of results and have grown their business as a result. You can do it too – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call Ray locally at 416-226-8676 for a free assessment of your specific needs today. You’ll be glad you did!

Even though web copywriting is about appealing to users’ eyes, the key to success may be your ears.

Putting SEO and keywords aside for a moment, let’s think about what constitutes good web copy. It should be current, original, informative and authoritative.

Take The Aural Test

Unfortunately, ignoring one major area will undermine your copy even if it has all those traits: readability.

One of my biggest pet peeves in web writing is overly technical or even academic language. Writers often get caught in the “good spelling and grammar” trap. While you absolutely want everything spelled and phrased correctly, it doesn’t mean you should follow every rule that you followed when writing a university essay on Paradise Lost.

Overly dry or academic content may be worded perfectly, it may contain brilliant arguments, but it will fail you if it isn’t easily readable for searchers. If it’s too technical, too dense, it could even turn off your readers. They’ll feel alienated by the language and seek a competitor who offers similar products, services or content but speaks to them in a more accessible way. In other words, unreadable content will spike your bounce rate and lower your conversion rate. Not good.

This is where the “aural test” comes in handy. By reading your own content out loud, either to yourself or to a friend, you get a stronger sense of how your content affects your web users. If it sounds robotic and distant, that’s because it is. The best way to attract readers online is to speak in a way that really connects with them. Keep it punchy, conversational and introductory. If your content is interesting and welcoming, you should hear that tone when you try the aural test.

The good part about this suggestion: it doesn’t even mean you have to dumb down your writing. You’ll be making it shorter and choppier but, in many cases, that also involves searching for especially descriptive and relevant words, which are cornerstones of great writing.

Keep it simple and natural and you’ll keep your readers on your site longer. If you don’t trust my word, maybe Albert Einstein’s will do:

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.”

Arguably, most people with a decent understanding of search engine optimization associate the process primarily with “typical” web content. To improve your PageRank, you embed relevant keywords in your web copy, you work on your title tags, you engage in link building campaigns, and so on.

But, sometimes, we forget that anything publishable online can be optimized. Because these types of files – like PDFs – are more difficult to manipulate than others, we often overlook them when it comes to SEO. Don’t! Using PDFs as an example, let’s explore how and why you can make any publishable web file work for you in the search results.

As Google explains, though it encounters non-HTML files like PDFS (or spreadsheets), it still incorporates them into its algorithms. The modern incarnation of Google is more about finding relevant, engaging content than anything else. Even if it takes more effort, Google will seek out any quality content – even from alternative sources like PDFs.

So how do those robots do it? As Google explains, “The general rule of thumb is that if you can copy and paste the text from a PDF document into a standard text document, we should be able to index that text.” Any PDF without password protection or encrypted copy can be indexed.

Though images in PDF files aren’t indexed, links are. The algorithms treat links in PDF just like HTML links and factor them into PageRank.

To maximize your PDFs’ effectiveness in optimizing your site, I recommend that you:

1. Avoid duplicate content between PDF and HTML. Google much prefers a single copy of a given piece of content. Naturally, some sites or businesses need two copies to cater to different types of readers. If so, it’s a good idea to at least include a preferred URL in your Sitemap.

2. Work to influence the title shown for your document. Make sure the metadata pertaining to the PDF and any anchor text pointing to it are up to date and reflecting the title you want shown with your PDF in search results.

Make non-HTML files like PDFs and PowerPoint part of your web content strategy! Understand that they can be your friend, not your enemy, and they can help your SEO just as much as any content.

The ranking of your business, service or product in Google’s search results is critical to your success. Toronto-based content and website copywriter expert Ray Litvak understands the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and using the right words in the right way to increase your rankings. Discover how greater exposure on Google can drive more traffic, increase leads and grow your business. Many of Ray’s clients consistently rank on Google’s first page of results and have grown their business as a result. You can do it too – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call Ray locally at 416-226-8676 for a free assessment of your specific needs today. You’ll be glad you did!

If you’ve been around writers or business owners involved in search engine optimization and/or web development, you’ve probably heard by now that “content is king.” It’s a phrase so common that it feels like cliché now but it’s consistently used because it’s so true.

User engagement is everything these days. To impress search engines like Google and to keep users on your site, your content needs to be both fresh and relevant. In other words, you have to write often and you have to write well. The thought of accomplishing both scares some people, so I’d like to share a few tips on how to write efficiently and effectively (in random order).

1. Do your homework.

High-quality content is very much about coming across to readers as an authority on a given subject. If you already know a lot about your business or website’s subject matter, you’re ahead of the game. If not, do your homework. Read books, articles and forums. It will slow down your writing process at first but it will greatly benefit you in the long run.

Not only will your online copywriting be more authoritative and appealing to your audience, becoming more knowledgeable about a subject makes it far easier to write about it. If you’re an expert on something, you tend to have a million things to say about it!

2. Make your computer’s operating system work for you.

An overlooked way to increase your efficiency is to properly utilize your computer’s operating system. If you’re referring to other source material while you write, for example, it’s difficult to constantly click back and forth between windows.

New computer operating systems, whether you’re using a Mac or Windows 7, are designed to turn your computer into a real work station. They let you work in multiple windows side-by-side, giving you easy access to whatever research materials you need as you write. If you master your computer’s OS, you’ll be surprised at how much time you’ll save.

3. Good outlines help articles and blogs write themselves.

The actual writing of a blog post or article often isn’t the hard part. The key is formulating your argument and making sure your thoughts are organized. Once you build an outline, the rest of the work should flow easily.

4. Motivate yourself with a reward system.

If you have a case of the Mondays, feel restless or just don’t want to work, consider rewarding yourself for hitting critical junctures. For example, “If I get to 300 words, I get to take a coffee break.” Rewarding yourself can be a nice motivator.

5. Write often.

Practice makes perfect. The more you write, the easier it will become for you, the faster you will do it and the fewer mistakes you will make.

6. Don’t edit while you write.

I’ve debated this strategy with my copywriting peers for years. But, to me, the key is to do the heavy lifting first and the tinkering second. Get the bulk of your thoughts down as quickly as you can. Then, you can review and make necessary changes.

I’ve seen people try the reverse strategy, thinking that editing along the way saves time, and the results can be infuriating. If you keep second-guessing every sentence you type, you may never finish your work, as you’ll never be satisfied!

The ranking of your business, service or product in Google’s search results is critical to your success. Toronto-based content and expert  web writer Ray Litvak understands the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and using the right words in the right way to increase your rankings. Discover how greater exposure on Google can drive more traffic, increase leads and grow your business. Many of Ray’s clients consistently rank on Google’s first page of results and have grown their business as a result. You can do it too – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call Ray locally at 416-226-8676 for a free assessment of your specific needs today. You’ll be glad you did!

If you want people to know how wonderful you are, let other people brag about you.  And you can do that easily through sites like Yelp! and Google Places.

Just ask
If you’ve done great work that your client appreciates, all you have to do is ask and, typically, they’ll be happy to write a glowing review of your performance and post it on whatever review site you request.  Then all you have to do is provide instructions on how to navigate through the review site to get the endorsement published.

Think about it
Those reviews are like gold. Think about it. What’s more powerful: you extolling your virtues at a networking meeting or a valid third-party endorsement posted where potentially thousands of people can see it? The answer’s obvious, isn’t it?

Not just numbers
But it’s not just the number of people who read it that counts; it’s the power of third-party endorsement. People will trust the people who’ve actually used the product or service far more than they’ll trust the people who are selling it. And the more people you have endorsing you on Yelp!, Google Places and other review sites, the more your listing will stand out from others.

No time for modesty
Yet we usually let satisfied – even thrilled – customers slip away without asking them to share what they know about us online. And that’s a shame.  Because this is not a time for false modesty that will cost you in the long run.

Ask for the endorsement
Maybe I shouldn’t mention this, because it never happens, but I was fortunate recently to receive an endorsement from a client of mine – Public Speaking Coach and Trainer, Thomas Moss – in the form of an entire blog post that I didn’t ask for and wasn’t expecting. You can check it out here. But remember, that very rarely happens  If you’re in business, you know you have to ask for the sale. Well, you have to ask for the endorsement or online review too.

Promote your reviews
And when your customers say “Yes”, and they usually will, yell it out from the rooftops, take out a full page ad in your local paper or, better still – and infinitely less expensive – make it a part of  your online copy and marketing efforts by creating a ‘Testimonials’ section on your website. Mention and provide a link to the review on Linked In, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Remember, happy customers are almost always glad to provide glowing testimonials.  In most cases, it’s simply a matter of asking.

Just do it!
One last point: I know some people won’t ask for reviews because they’re afraid the client might say something negative. That very rarely happens, particularly if you request reviews from satisfied customers. And if for some strange reason it does happen, the impact will be minimized if it’s surrounded by glowing words of praise from other satisfied customers.

Need an online copywriter?
Toronto-based web content and online copywriting expert Ray Litvak understands the art and science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and using the right words in the right way to increase your rankings. Discover how greater exposure on Google can drive more traffic, increase leads and grow your business. Many of Ray’s clients consistently rank on Google’s first page and have grown their business as a result. You can do it too – and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call Ray locally at 416-226-8676 for a free assessment of your specific needs today. You’ll be glad you did!

Location has forever been crucial to success in the business world. Appearing in the right place can make you especially visible to your target market. For today’s businesses, the meaning of “location” is changing. Online space is now just as important as any billboard, television ad spot or shopping mall.

Google, the world’s top search engine, is a vital resource for maximizing your businesses’ reach and response. It offers three key services that can separate your product or service from the pack:

Google AdWords

Google AdWords helps you build ads that appear in search results on the right side and/or top of the page. You can target your niche by programming the ads so they only appear when people search terms relevant to your product or service. Better yet, you only pay Google if people click your ads.

Google Places

List your business’ address and location in search results on Google Maps – for free! Google Places is ideal for local businesses that serve customers in a limited radius.

Organic Search Results

Perhaps the best way to get your company’s name out is to appear in the all-important search results. Google has high standards for ranking websites, focusing on relevancy. If you provide high-quality content and have other authoritative sites link to you, Google will boost your site in the ranks and get you noticed.

Get the full story here…

About Writing Web Words Inc:
Based in Toronto, Ontario, we are a full-service Web Content Development Company that helps businesses optimize their online presence through original  SEO Copywriting, proven SEO Services and customized Business Blogging that attracts, engages and converts target audiences.