I work so hard on all kinds of things to eek out the smallest bump in search rankings.
Can you believe I had more boost with one 7-word edit than with all the thousands of words I’ve wrtten here!
Six weeks old, and my blog’s had TWO name changes. Third one’s the charm? Yes, for now.
image courtesy of: thecards.com
The three names so far, in chronological order:
“Student of the Game,” then
“Copywriter’s Got Game,” and the new search-traffic winner…
“Copywriting Is: Stories That Sell”
My very first name for this blog was… well, it was not good. “Student of the Game?” I mean, yeesh! I understood what that meant in context, and I did a pretty good job explaining it. But that less-than-obvious implied meaning does you no good with those little web “spiders” and search “bots.”
So I worked in the word “copywriter.” Much better. But notice how the word is not an exact match, what with having the apostrophe-ess. After some fiddling around, I discovered this small variance from “pure” was leaving me out of all kinds of search results. Then, like a bolt from the blew (that’s not a typo)–
It hit me: the word most people are searching is not “copywriters.”
The word far more searched is “copywriting.” ING.
My copywriting peeps want to talk about, want to learn about, content related to the work they do–not the workers they are. Task oriented, results oriented… not a job description. That is, unless they are looking for work AS a copywriter (like I am). But I still don’t want THAT traffic, because I’m not hiring!
So today, I changed from “copywriter’s” (wrong word plus modified from most-common search factor) to “copywriting” and combined that with a borrowed tidbit that I love, from one of my social network IDs…
Stories that sell.
A small aside: I have always loved stories. Books move me, often quite powerfully. I believe that we, the collective race of humans, are hard-wired to love stories. Whether you read books or not, you love a good story, too.
You want to know where you came from, who you’re connected to, and how it will all end. Women want to gather and share the details of the day’s goings-on. Men want to see the hero take down the bad guy in a new action flick. Kids want bed-time stories to fill their growing imaginations with more, new, incredible possibilities.
Our shared NEED for stories is the fundamental power behind every victorious revolution, every significant religion, and every effective marketing campaign.
image courtesy of: alphonsus
The longer “tagline” I’m using right now–just tweaked it to fit the header of this blog, in fact–is a summary, for me, of how I now describe what I do…
You’ve got something great to sell. You and that something have great stories. I write you both into your target customer’s own story as a walk-on superstar.
Have a great day, and be sure to do one thing:
Write what’s Right.
Ken
P.S. Can you tell a story in 7 seconds? If you try, I’ve got a free copywriter’s tool for you, right out of my own personal toolbox. You could even win a $10 iTunes gift code–my headline-writing challenge ends on Sunday, May 17 (2009).
"To say I was ‘blown away’ is an understatement.
I think you are spot on with your name-change, Ken. Often times we have a hard time separating ourselves from what our “followers” (read customers) are looking for. By looking at things objectively and making the appropriate changes, you show that you are, in fact, a Student of the Game (even if that isn’t your blog name). Way to go!
Thanks, Cathy. It’s been a good day for fresh traffic… I also had a couple friends, who follow my blog on Facebook, cast votes for my new article, which pushed me–for the first time–into the Top 10 “most voted” new posts there. I can’t wait to track some visitors later today, to see where everyone’s coming from.
Oh, and I do highly recommend the blog app I’m using in Facebook: it’s called NetworkedBlogs (click the name to visit). If any reader has a blog, go put this app to work connecting you to thousands of others who share your interests.
Readers note: the “tagline” for this blog is modified–yet again–from the starting point I used in this post, that bio tag from my twitter page. It’s always fun to play with your very important lines of copy, the ones you’ll use over and over… keep finding ways to make it better.
In that original line, I used the word “something” because I didn’t want to use “product and/or service,” or a similarly cumbersome chunk o’ junk. I went back to product for the tagline for now, because your customer or prospect doesn’t care for distinctions–he just wants to do business with some who can help him. If that’s you, call your “something” whatever you want to call it.
Then, I dropped “walk-on superstar.” Hollywood knows what a walk-on part is: it’s NOT a superstar, and besides… do you really want your product to outshine your customer? No, you want him to shine all the brighter in his world–his story–for having used your product. So now your product is the second-billing on the marquee, the “Best Supporting.”
Anyone have a tagline or other “keeper” piece of copy you’d like to talk through? Help is here.