Web Content Archives - Page 14 of 21 - Courses and Tools for Freelancers

4 Weeks to Content Marketing Mastery with Brian Clark

Nick Usborne and Brian Clark talking about content marketing Although I don’t usually promote other people’s programs on my site, I’m happy to make an exception with Brian Clark and his program on Content Marketing.

Why? For a couple of reasons.

First, although I have written a couple of ebooks on the topic of content marketing, I have never written a full program on the subject.

Second, if you were to ask me to name the most knowledgeable practitioner of content marketing online today, I would immediately point to Brian.

I have known Brian Clark for a long time now, although we didn’t meet face to face until about three years ago. And it wasn’t until earlier this year that we actually got to sit down together and talk to an audience about writing for the web and content marketing.

During a break between my own presentations, I sat down and listened to Brian give his talk on content marketing. From the outset it was pretty clear to me that he was sharing the core secrets behind the phenomenal success of his own business, Copyblogger Media, which now generates $7 million in revenue a year. It was an amazing presentation.

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Make your online sales copy LOOK like it’s easy to read.

by Nick Usborne

easy to read copywriting The best copywriting in the world won’t work if people don’t read it.

And people won’t read your copy if it looks “hard” to read.

In other words, the structure and visual design of your copy can make it or break it.

Often when I look at an online sales page the headline is too long, or the opening paragraph is too long. Or the first three paragraphs are all too long.

The outcome? The page looks like hard work. The appearance of the first screen of text signals that the reader is going to have to take a deep breath and really concentrate. They are going to have to commit to working their way through the text. Like reading a text book at school.

Bad move.

Sales pages that look like hard work are created by people who misunderstand the nature of people’s attention online.

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But who writes the homepage?

by Nick Usborne

fight for homepage There are copywriters for copy, and content writers for content…but who writes a website’s homepage?

There is no doubt that writers and copywriter are in demand.

With the explosive growth of web content marketing and social media, a lot of words need to be written. Not to mention all those sales pages and landing pages. And the emails and newsletters.

So it’s no surprise that when you do some Google searches for words and terms like copywriter and “content writer” you get a lot of results.

Here’s what I found today on Google

copywriter – 13,800,000 results

“content writer” – 4,180,000 results

There is plenty of supply and demand when it comes to copywriting and web content writing.

Which brings us to my key question…who writes the homepage?

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Your web content will be derivative and boring, unless…

by Nick Usborne

Millions of new content pages are published online each day. Most of them are derivative and boring.

How come? Several reasons. But perhaps the biggest reason is that the environment of marketing online demands that we keep publishing new posts and new pages, at an ever-increasing rate. And photos. And videos. And slide shows.

If we don’t keep publishing, we look like we’re falling behind our competitors.

Plus, Google has made is clear that it likes “fresh’ content. And social media is driven by what’s new, and what’s happening now.

New, new, new. Publish, publish, publish.

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Do you have an internal linking strategy for your website?

by Nick Usborne

If you write web sites, for clients or for yourself, you probably know about the importance of linking.

Attracting inbound links from other websites is a great way to attract new visitors, and also sends a strong message to Google that your content is of high quality. (If your content was of low quality, other people wouldn’t bother linking to it.)

However, paying attention to links is not just about maximizing the number of quality inbound links from other sites. You should also pay attention to internal linking, within your own website.

Why does internal linking matter? A couple of big reasons.

– It helps your readers find related content on your website. Instead of having to search through your navigation system to find other pages they might be interested in, they can find the links right there within the body of the page, or listed at the end.

– These links also help Google make sense of your website. They let Google know which pages are related, and also the relative importance of pages on your website. Lots of inbound links pointing to a particular page suggest it’s an important page.

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