Creating a killer copy is a great way to market a product or service. Combining SEO skills with copywriting gives you access to the most powerful marketing machine in the world. However, like every popular marketing buzzword out there, copywriting has its fair share of myths and urban legends. Here’s a look at six of these myths in detail.
Myth 1: A Good Copy Sells a Bad Product
Let’s get one thing straight. Copywriting is just one component of marketing. It’s good to think of marketing as a system with many moving parts working towards a common goal: selling. Copywriting plays an important role, but all it does is increase the chances of lead conversions. The success or failure of a product or service can’t be pinned to the sales copy alone.
What you need is a good product with several consumers who are willing to spend money on it.
Myth 2: It’s Important to Target Keyword Density to Rank Higher
Writing a blog post around specific target keywords is important, but you’re missing the point of copywriting if keyword stuffing is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of SEO. There was a time when marketers used to recommend a keyword density of around 5% for competitive ranking, but those days are long gone.
Search engine algorithms now routinely penalize websites for keyword stuffing by tanking their organic ranking. That being said, marketers still advise targeting a keyword density of around 1%. A good copywriter will always find a way to naturally insert target keywords into a blog post without making it sound too ‘sales-y’ and forced.
Myth 3: Copywriting Is Too Expensive
If you want your product to sell and appeal to your prospects, you’ll need to hire good copywriting services. Of course, you can start writing the blogs yourself, but that will take time. And if you’re a busy entrepreneur with all hands on deck, time is one commodity you can’t throw down the bin. Put, if you’re not 100% dedicated to copywriting as a full-time job on your website, you’re wasting your efforts.
The key rule about copywriting is that it only works if you consistently upload high-quality, lengthy blog posts. If you can do this while running your business, then more power to you. For the most part, it is best to pay a professional to do a proper job so that you can focus on the core areas of your business.
Myth 4: Shorter Copies Are Better Than Longer Copies and Vice Versa
You’ll need to write a longer copy if you’re tackling a research-based topic such as “The Definitive Guide to Blogging” or “How to Build a Custom Gaming PC.” A realistic copy for such topics will stretch upwards of 2000+ words or more if you want to go all out with information.
Compare this with ad copies, such as those for PPC campaigns where you only get 25 characters for a headline. This is where you should get straight to the point and speak to the end goal of your visitors. Suppose you sell termite killer products, and your prospects are searching for keywords like, “Help get rid of termites.”
In this case, your Google Ad (or any PPC campaign) headline should speak directly to their end goal, which is, “Get rid of termites with this proven formula.” This way, your prospects know you have a solution. Don’t waste your precious ad space by asking silly questions you already know, such as “are you dealing with termites?” It’s best to keep your sentences concise and to the point.
Myth 5: The Goal of Every Copy is to Sell
This isn’t true because the object of each copy varies based on one’s marketing strategy. In some cases, the business website may set up a newsletter subscription page to increase subscriptions. In others, they may require a blog post to increase customer engagement.
In many cases, people hire copywriting services to help their website rank higher on search engines. This is usually done by writing long-form blog posts.
Myth 6: Copywriters Focus on Search Engines Instead of User
Speaking to human issues and addressing a prospect’s pain points is the core strategy of copywriting. It’s tempting to ‘game’ the system by tossing in keywords that make no sense purely for the sake of organic ranking, but search engines have become wiser than they were in the early 2000s and will quickly shut you down.
Search engines care about user experience, and if your blog post is full of unhelpful fluff, people will abandon it, and search engines will pick up on your bloated bounce rates. A good copywriter writes for people first and searches engines later. The goal should always be to optimize the copy for search engines without jeopardizing user experience.
About Author: Dave Brown is a senior content marketing strategist at Content Development Pros for 8 years. He helps launch brands and also trains web copywriters for effective copywriting. Dave can be found swimming or surfing the web for fun when he’s not busy offering high-quality content writing services.
