You Can’t Make This Into Filet Mignon- Ditto for Your Website

Oh. My. Gosh. The writing on this website was terrible.

Run-on sentences galore. Rampant misuse of punctuation forced my eyes to pause after every third word. The same few words and phases repeated over and over. And what the heck does that paragraph even mean?

It was a case of SEO copywriting gone horribly wrong. No wonder the site wasn’t converting visitors into quality prospective customers. Once visitors got to the site, they couldn’t understand in 3-5 seconds why they should be there!

The person in charge of the poorly written website was a marketing director who had been charged by the V.P. of marketing with increasing the ranking of the site on Google to attract more visitors, which they thought would lead to increased volume of prospective customers. In an effort to save money, the

marketing director hired a cheap copywriter through eLance. In a case of ‘you get what you pay for’, the site was packed with keywords and vague, overblown copy but little else. When I asked why they accepted the copy, she said, “My boss thought that’s what SEO copywriting was supposed to look like.”

When I asked how I could help, she said, “Can you just tweak it a little so it sounds better and put in some keywords?”

As much as I wanted to say yes - no, I can’t. And that’s because you can’t take ground chuck and make it into filet mignon. Translation: If the copy is already bad, “tweaking” it won’t help. The only thing you can do is scrap it all and start over.

I understand why she was afraid of a total website re-write. The site was on the first page of Google for their keywords and driving OK traffic. Her first concern (which makes sense) was “if we change the site, what happens to our rankings?” But, getting rankings is just one piece of the search engine conversion pie. A top position means nothing if the website doesn’t drive high conversion metrics.

Wondering if your website falls into the “ground chuck” category? Here are some things to check:

• What do your site analytics say? Are people staying at your site, maybe going to several pages per visit – or leaving mere seconds after they arrive?

• Are your rankings OK, but your conversions are non-existent?

• Do you know deep down in your gut that the copy is bad? (It’s OK to admit it. We’ve all been there. The first step to recovery is admitting your problems.)

To eliminate your ground chuck status, your only help for salvation is action. There are ways to re-write the copy so the rankings aren’t ruined. In fact, that’s the easy part (more on that in a future post.) A smart copywriter can easily craft new copy that maintains your keyword positioning.

Will re-writing your copy be painful? A little. Yes, you will be spending time and money. But, like all things worth having, the pain is definitely worth it. Although a SEO copywriting overhaul sounds overwhelming, it will more than pay for itself in increased conversions. Besides, once you’re at the bottom the only place to go is up, so the sooner you take action, the sooner your visitors regard your website and company as “filet migon” and start asking how they can get some!

During the summer of 2008 I visited the websites of 300 business-to-business technology companies looking for one thing: RSS feeds.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a Web feed format used to publish frequently updated information such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video in a standardized format. Website or blog visitors may subscribe to RSS feeds through a widget button on a site using Feedburner (recently acquired by Google) or other free service.

I found that 70% of B2B technology companies are not using RSS at all, and of the 30% that are using it, only 10% are using more than one feed in order to offer targeted information updates.

What’s the big deal about RSS? MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm surveyed over 3,000 B2B technology decision makers, asking them “How important is RSS in helping you stay up-to-date on technology information?” 8% responded that it was a “necessity”, 24% responded that it was “important”, and 39% said it was “nice to have.”

While only 16% of the general public uses RSS feeds, 71% of technology buyers assign at least some value to their RSS use. By not offering this option, most B2B tech marketers are missing out on a valuable opportunity to influence this audience.

According to Rok Hrastnik, author of “Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS,” the problem with most RSS marketing plans is that the marketer doesn’t go beyond providing a simple RSS feed for all of their online news or blog.

Marketers need to correctly plan their RSS marketing strategy, starting with deciding how RSS content will be delivered. Mr. Hrastnik recommends providing individual RSS feeds for:

- Individual target audiences

- Types of content

- Content topics

Want step-by-step instructions on how to best implement RSS? Get your free copy of my research report The Most Powerful Online Tool for Influencing B2B Technology Buyers