DIY copywriting, marketing and SEO

What is a strapline?

It’s a short statement that clarifies exactly what your business does, so people get the picture ‘at a glance’.

Where does a strapline go?

A strapline usually sits directly below a logo or company name.

Do I need a strapline?

It depends. If your business name / url already makes it crystal clear what you do, there’s no need. If it isn’t immediately clear, a strapline might be a good idea.

What should my strapline say?

Your strapline should make it obvious what your business does in as few words as possible, as engagingly as possible.

Examples of bad straplines? 

There’s no point creating something pretentious, airy fairy or overly ‘clever’. This is no time for bullshit. Believe in Better from Sky, For the Journey from Lloyds TSB and Today, Tomorrow, Toyota are embarrassingly fatuous displays of corporate nonsense.

My favourite strapline is a mini-masterpiece created by fellow  freelance copywriter Alastair Allday for skint.com: You’re broke. We’ll fix it. Which does exactly what it says on the tin as well as being witty, straightforward and as clear as a bell. Lovely.

Because this blog is home to more than 400 posts, it’s high time I went back to basics and re-covered all the good stuff I haven’t mentioned for ages.

Here’s a list of the subjects I’ll be resurrecting over the next few weeks, interspersed with the latest on-site SEO, SEM, SMM, direct marketing and communications news and views:

• integrated marketing
• direct marketing
• segmenting and targeting data
• creative targeting
• DIY marketing and SEO
• SEO basics
• B2B versus B2C marketing
• creating winning press releases
• writing with search engines in mind
• making the most of testimonials and case studies
• blogging to win more followers and please search engines
• copywriting and marketing ‘how to’ guides
• making a success of email marketing
• creating hard working autoresponder messages
• keeping your website fresh
• content quality control
• testing
• ebooks
• all about editing
• brand stuff
• media stuff
• the legal bit – marketing and distance selling rules, regulations and compliance
• formatting website content
• creating effective direct response adverts
• calls to action
• marketing and copywriting checklists
• getting your  meta data right – the code bit
• how to maximise sales conversion
• writing to a common denominator
• the ins and outs of key words / phrases
• insights into search engine algorithms
• the basics of link building
• long and short copy
• putting users first
• common sense data analysis
• link bait
• good, old fashioned print!
• direct mail
• direct response
• cross selling and up selling
• creating a winning newsletter
• reacting to trends
• mobile web
• plain English
• customer communications
• database marketing
• site updates
• marketing planning, tactics and strategies

(Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/profile/onetwo for the excellent free image)

Google is using ‘social signals’ to help rank websites in the search results pages. But is it really a good idea? 

It makes sense for Google algorithms to take the majority’s likes and dislikes into account.

There’s about 70 million people in Britain. And 26 million-ish Twitter accounts. Many of us have two accounts, one for work and one for personal use. Spammers often have thousands of accounts each. So the number of British individuals using Twitter is probably a great deal lower than 26 million. And because 60% of Twitter users are aged 25-44, the social signals it generates aren’t representative from an age perspective either.

Facebook claims around 30 million unique UK users. That’s less than half the population. Apparently Facebook mostly attracts 25-34 year olds, making it even more age-restricted than Twitter.

Google+ apparently accounts for less than a million of us. If you’re talking statistical relevance, 1/70th of the population isn’t a representative sample either. Far from it.

Plenty of internet-savvy people have multiple social media accounts. I have four: one Facebook, two Twitter and one LinkedIn. Which must skew social signals even more.

Despite significant inroads by marketers, most of us use social media to communicate and interact with friends and colleagues. Social media marketers and SEOs, on the other hand, do their best to manipulate social media because they know Google is starting to take social signals into account.

When the majority of social signals are generated by Social Media Marketers, the end result isn’t representative of what most of us want. It just means we see what the biggest SMM spenders want us to see. If Google’s not careful they’ll end up delivering artificially skewed search results based on the preferences of the few, not the many.

(Thanks to http://www.sxc.hu/profile/TALUDA for the fab free image)

Is it better to choose a domain name with or without hyphens?

Here’s an example.

You could choose either green-widgets.com or greenwidgets.com. It doesn’t make any difference to search engines and it doesn’t affect your search positions. Either way, if you sell green widgets you’ll have an advantage over a business whose domain name doesn’t include the phrase ‘green widgets’.

The former, with hyphens, is easier for humans to read at a glance. But the crux of the matter, according to my tame senior SEO expert, is actually the comparative ease of verbal dissemination. It’s harder to get “Visit green hyphen widgets.com” across verbally without confusion than it is to say, “Visit greenwidgets.com”. Therefore, domain names without hyphens are best.

Simples!

Here’s a video featuring my lovely bloke Tony, Head of Search at top SEO agency Fresh Egg, discussing the ins and outs of Google’s notorious Panda algorithm update.

Just follow the link…

All about Google Panda.