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Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Ep 215 // Website Copy Refresh? 5 Areas to Prep for the Best Possible Copy
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What up party people? Also, I've been just wanting to use that phrase so much. But please know that when I say party, at this point in my life, party just means being able to finish a sentence uninterrupted and maybe drink a cup of coffee while it's still warm. So for today's episode, we are going to chat, chatty chat about how to prepare for a website copy and SEO refresh. Whether you are hiring a copywriter and an SEO consultant, separately hiring us to do both, wink wink, or you're doing it all yourself, which is totally fine. Been there, done that. What I want you to do is I want you to be able to go into this process, which btw, you probably need to do more often than you think. I want you to be able to go into your website copy and SEO refresh project set up for success. And so I'm going to walk you through all the things that you need to do to get your little self prepared. Whether you're going to hire out the work or do it yourself. Let's go. Hey there fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and Marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization? And you want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website? And not just any leads. High Converting Lead Hey, I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist and barrel racer. And for the last eight years I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world of online marketing to get organic traffic? And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many more people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take note. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. So to kind of continue our copywriting series, I really wanted to just give you guys my process. I mean, honestly, just hand you over my onboarding sequence essentially, so that you know how to prepare for a copywriting SEO revamp. Now, this is obviously something you can hire out, right? But it's also something that you can do for yourself to a certain extent, right? Obviously, I'm a fan of you hiring our team for your copywriting and SEO, but I realize that that's not. That's not possible for everybody, and that's okay. So my heart behind this episode is to help you prepare for your copywriting SEO revamp. Or maybe it's the first time I want you to be able to be prepared no matter how you do it, right? No matter who you hire or whether you do it yourself. Because I feel like a lot of people, they think about the copywriting on their website last. It's like the last thing they think about for whether it's website copy, sales copy. You know, we're so, you know, it's so easy to, like, be worried about building the thing that we forget how to market the thing. And y'all, lucky for you, I think about how to market the thing before I actually even build the thing. Like, all right, sales copy before I even build the thing. I don't know why I am the way I am, but I am. Okay, so take it or leave it. But I also feel like a lot of people, they don't realize the work that goes into the prep work and how important that is for setting you up for success with your website copy and your SEO strategy. Because, true story, most people, slash, probably everybody, no matter how wordsmithy they are, cannot just sit down and whip out the perfect website copy in one try without any forethought or research. Okay? What you see at the end as the end product of any great SEO copywriting or just even website copy job, it's the result of a lot of thought, research, and reworking on the back end. Sometimes from the outside, I feel like a great website or brand or website copy. Sometimes from the outside, it can. It can look like an, oh my gosh, they're an overnight success. But in reality, that brand has been working their butt off in the back end to get their messaging right, to do the market research, to recraft and reframe and reshape their words again and again and again. Okay? So this episode is to help you prepare, right? Is to help you do the back end work so that you can go into your website copy project really, really set up for success. Okay? So A couple of disclaimers before we jump into this. In my world, SEO copywriting, SEO research and copywriting, like one in the same. Most people in the industry, I would venture to say, have a separate SEO strategist and a separate copywriter. So if that's you, if that's the route you choose to go, know that you're going to have to do some blending of the SEO strategy and the copywriting. But for me and my team, SEO strategy and copywriting are there. We blend them together so that they flow seamlessly. So, and the other kind of disclaimer that I need here is, I don't feel like you need to wait to make changes to your entire website. If you just find, like, little typos and little errors and things like that, right? You don't have to wait till your website copy, you know, project comes up. Like, if you see a spelling error or a typo, just fix it. Right? I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about a full website refresh. Full copy refresh. Okay, now in reality, this is my third disclaimer. In reality, not everybody has a ton of time to sit down and revamp their copy all at once, and that's fine. I want you to prioritize the order of your pages that need refreshed and redone. Okay? This is something we have clients do for VIP days, but if you are on the DIY train, you need a priority list. Okay. I need my homepage done first and my about page and my services page. Like, whatever it is, just prioritize it so that you don't get bogged down in, you know, fixing a little bit here and there and here and there and never actually getting into finishing it. Okay, so now let's jump into the list of tasks that I have for you. Okay? I've broken them down into five different categories. Okay? And then there's multiple things within each category. So the first category of tasks that I have for you is to gather your data. Data. Data. I don't know data is what I usually say. But you need to know, where is your traffic coming from? All right? Are you actually getting traffic for the keywords that you think you should be? Right. Are those the keywords you want to be going for? Should you be going for them? Those are entirely different questions. But where's your traffic coming from? What are you actually getting clicks for? Okay. And search console is a great place to start for that. Okay. But gather your data. Like, where are your leads coming from? Are you getting a bunch of leads From Instagram, From Facebook, from TikTok, from LinkedIn, from YouTube, from podcast. Where are you getting your leads? You need to know that so that you can monitor that and see if it improves with better website copy or not. Right? Okay, task list, Task group number two is your internal deep work. This is fun, right? But it's important. Okay, I know that sometimes as business owners, it's hard to pause and sit and reflect and think about why we're doing this or, you know, what makes us different. But all of those questions are very important. So here are some internal deep work questions that I want you to do. I want you to ask yourself before you go into your website copy refresh. I want you to ask, what sets you apart? What is your onlyness factor? Right? There are lots of people that do what you do, and that's okay. There's enough people to help out there. But what sets you apart? What is your onlyness factor? Now, this is not the time to get all like, bogged down in your feels and like, I'm not good enough, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, no, if God has called you to do this, then he's going to help you do it. Maybe you need to shore up on who he's called you to be and who you are in Christ, then do it. But it should be okay for you to go deep and dig in and figure out what sets you apart, what is your onlyness factor without having a mid business identity crisis. Okay? It's okay if you are not as good at everything as the business next door. That's fine. What sets you apart? What makes you different? What is your unique gift in the marketplace? Okay, maybe you are way faster than somebody else. Maybe you have a great track record. Maybe you have tons of adoring clients. Like, whatever it is is fine, but you need to know what it is and to be able to clearly communicate it. The next internal deep work question I have for you is, why do you do what you do? Why? Just to make money ain't enough, baby. You need to know why you're doing this. Why are you spending your one precious life doing this work for these people? Why? Why are you doing this? Okay, and the deeper you get with your why, and the more certain that you get with your why, the better you will serve your people and the more money you'll make. Because people love somebody and love a brand that's on a mission to do something that matters. All right, the third deep work question for you is this. What do you want your brand to feel like? What tone of voice do you want to have do you want to have a friendly, calm, soothing tone of voice? Right. Or do you want to have a tone of voice that makes somebody want to get up and charge hell with a water gun, right? Like what tone of voice you want to have? What do you want your brand to feel feel like? Okay, and the next question I have for you is, what do you want your customers to feel when they read your copy? What do you want them to feel when they read your copy? And the last question for this section is, how do you want to be perceived? Do you want to be perceived as the most expensive brand? Great. Do you want to be perceived as the most approachable brand? Great. Do you want to be perceived as the brand that everybody wants to link arms with? Great. Whatever it is, you need to be intentional about how you want to be perceived so that that can come through in your copy. Be authentic, yes, but you want to be intentional about it as well. All right, the third group of tasks I have for you. Well, hey there friend. Question for you. Are you ready to have your website ranking and converting? Are you ready to get more traffic, more leads, and more sales without another cringeworthy social media post? Are you tired of writing blog posts that never rank frustrated with website copy that doesn't convert lookers into buyers? And are you absolutely over spending hours trying to DIY your SEO strategy with little to no results to show for it? Well, I have a sad but true statistic for you. 60% of websites will never rank on the first page of Google. Why? Well, because their SEO and copywriting strategies are poop. Having an SEO and copywriting strategy that work together matters now more than ever. Sure, you can hire a generic copywriter who's good at pretty words, but if they don't understand SEO, it won't matter. Those words will never get seen. On the flip side, you could outsource work to an SEO agency that understands the technical side of things. But if they don't understand buyer behavior and don't know how to write like your brand sounds, what good will it do? You need a cohesive SEO and copywriting strategy that works together to get you the right website traffic and more conversions. Book a free call with me to see if this is the best fit for your business. No obligation, no pushy sales tactics. I just want to help you help more of your people with your God given gifts. Book your call now. Spots are limited. Go to faith hannon.com booking and I'm looking forward to chatting with you. Is your Internal biz work. Right. I wanted. I knew you need to get in, do the biz work, do some internal work on your business at least, like gathering more data. Right? And so the list of tasks I have for you in this group is I need you to list out your full list of services and prices. Okay? I know you probably know it in your head, but list it out. If you're working with somebody, this will help them immensely. And even if you're just, you know, doing it yourself sometimes we've pieced together so many services and at different prices that when we actually write it down and get it on paper and get it in front of our eyeballs in one place, sometimes we realize, oh, snap, this has gotten really complicated really quickly. Okay? So even if you are doing this yourself, I still want you to list out a full list of services and their prices. Next, I want you to list out the top three benefits of each of your main services or products. And if you have 97 products, you should probably condense it. Just saying. If not, you're gonna have to list out the benefits of all 97 products. Okay? The benefit to the customer, not the benefit to you. Now, it's important to focus in here on the benefits, not just the features, right? Think about my favorite washing machine example, okay? I don't care as a consumer how big a motor is in a washing machine. I don't care how many gallons necessarily of water this thing uses. I care, is it going to get the dirt out of my jeans and the baby poop out of my kids clothes? Like, those are the things I care about as a consumer. And your ideal client is the same. They care if you can solve their problem. They don't really care nearly as much how you can do it and the features that get them there. Okay? Think through and list out the benefits of your main services or product as it pertains to the consumer. Next, I want you to describe your ideal client. This is not the typical idea, you know, exercise, where it's like, what coffee does she drink? What kind of sweaters does she wear? Does she shop at Target or Nordstrom? It's like, no, this is not that. I want you to think through them as a person. What kind of problems do they have? What does their life look like? What is their budget? Where are they located? Like, how do you help them? How do you make them feel? What are they thinking about as it pertains to the service and the product that you provide? Think about them as a person and somebody that you can help. Not Just where they shop and what colors they like. Please and thank you. And to go right along with that, the next question that I want you to workshop through is what problems do they have as it relates to your business? Now these, it's very important here that you think about the problems that they know they have. Not just the deep core problems that you know you can solve, but the problems that they are aware of and looking for solutions for. Okay? Not, not just the deep core problems, right? Like if they are looking for how to lose weight, like that's the problem that you need to think through here. Not their relationship with food and all of their emotional trauma issues. Right? You need to think through the problems that they have, that they are aware of and ready to buy solutions for. The next thing I want you to workshop through is how do you solve their problems? Just describe it like from point A to point B, how do you solve their problems? Okay? And the next question I have to follow up with that for you is how do you make your process easier to digest? Okay, not necessarily easier for them to understand because they don't need all the deets, baby. Like they don't need to know the 47 steps that it takes to get booked with you. But how can you make your process easier to digest? Because especially in the service industry, people buy, they buy results, yes, but they want to know that there's a proven method, a proven process, a proven system to get them somewhere. Not necessarily every teeny tiny step within the process, but it needs to be an easy to digest process. Usually I advise clients and I help them break down their process into three to five steps. Like typically they come to me and they're like, oh, it's blah, blah, blah. And it ends up being like 15 steps. And we condense it down to be three to five steps. Because I want your ideal client to be able to think, okay, this is simple, they can help me get there. And it's not going to take 87 years or 87 steps to do it. Alright? And group of tasks, whatever number four I have for you is to do the research. And I have three different kinds of research that you need to do. Okay? First of all, you need to do some internal research. And by that I mean market research. Listen, I get that it is uncomfortable to ask, hey, are you happy with the services that we provided? Are you happy with the product? I get that it's a little uncomfortable. I'm a words of affirmation kid. Okay, so that means words of affirmation build me up. But Also, words of affirmation, or lack of words of affirmation can tear me down. Right? So I get that it's uncomfortable to be like, hi, are you happy with xyz? But you've got to do it, okay? Because our heart in business, I'm assuming yours too is to serve, is to serve people well. And if you don't ask, hey, is that helping? Is it working? How do you feel? Then you don't know if what you're doing is actually serving somebody well or not. Right? Like, the best example I can think about here is if you get a massage and somebody is giving you a massage in the, like, in the wrong place. Like, you're like, oh, I really hurt down here, my lower back. But they're rubbing on your upper back and you, you don't tell them or they don't ask. You know, hey, is this helping? Then you walk away not feeling any better and you're not going to go back and that person is probably would be sad to know that they didn't help you feel better. Okay, so do the research. And I am all for like follow up forms and please tell us how we did and can I have, you know, a written testimonial, blah, blah, blah, like the actual like writing out automated form of market research, but sometimes a phone call, zoom call, face to face conversation is where you're going to get the best information. Now you do have to ask some hard questions and that's okay. But realize that when you know better, then you can do better. And, and, and, and that market research and those testimonials that you have permission to use will help you not only build credibility, because people are going to see testimonials that sound like they came from a real human on your website, but that market research helps you to mirror your customer's words back to them for future customers and future purchases. So don't be scared to do the market research. I know it can be uncomfortable, but I also know that you can do it. Okay? And the next thing you need to do, next kind of research you need to do is keyword research. And I am pretty sure I have approximately 845 episodes on keyword research, so I'm not going to go into that at all right now. The third kind of research you need to do is external research. Now this is not to copy your competitors, but you need to know what will the market bear, what's working, what's not working, right? So here's some things I want you to list off and answer in Your external research. Who are your top in industry competitors? Right? Even if you're like, oh, my gosh, I can never be as good as them, like, who are your competitors? Write them down. Okay? Who would somebody or could somebody hire instead of you? Write it down. Okay? Now I also want you to list out people in your industry like, that you admire. Maybe they're bigger or smaller than you, but you admire them. Now write out, what do you admire about them? Okay. And I want you to read through their website copy and think, okay, this is amazing. This is not amazing. We are not here to copy as in, like, write what they write. Okay? But you do need to kind of know what's going on in the industry, what's working and what's not working. And that should be part of your website copy preparation process. How's that for alliteration? And the fifth group of tasks, the fifth major task I have for you is just to write down. What action do you want people to take from each page? I know it's tempting to have 47 CTAs. Click here to learn this. Click here to learn this. Click here to learn this on every page. But for the most part, y'all, that is generally way too much. And when you confuse, you lose. And you're not going to get the clear action that you want from your website visitor and ideal client. So just think through. Take. Take a second to think. Okay? From the homepage, I want them to either click to the service page or get this one freebie. Right. From the services page, I want them to book a discovery call. Great. From the about page, I want them to download this free gift. Like, whatever it is, whatever action you want somebody to take, just plan it out in advance, okay? And you can have like a. I want them to get this freebie, a free CTA and a paid cta. That's totally fine. But if you're asking them to choose from one of 87 freebies on your homepage, y'all, that's too much. It's too, too much. All right, y'all, that is a great overview for you of how to prepare yourself for a great DIY website copy refresh or working with a copywriter or a copywriter and SEO consultant, you are going to gather data. Number one. Number two, you're going to do internal deep work questions. Number three, you're going to do some internal business work. Number four, you're going to do the research, baby. Market research, keyword research, and external research. And number five, I want you to pre decide what action you want people to take from each page. And if you are ready to get your website copy and SEO strategy done the right way, then book a call with me. Just 30 minutes. We're going to chat and honestly analyze if a website copy package is the best deal for you. Zero obligation, not a pushy call. We're just going to get to know, you know a little bit about your business and see if we think it's a good fit. I have honestly turned clients away before because I didn't think it was a good fit for their business. So know that I care about you and your business and that's why I want your website copy to convey the heart of your business, to do its dang job and to serve you and your clients well. I pray that this episode blesses you that you're able to take the tips here and in the last two episodes about website copy and just really hone in on the words on your website because they should be working for you. All right then, we'll come back and chat some more next week. All right y'all, Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your website. If it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the Kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things. Courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website, faith hannon.com until next time, God bless and I'll talk to.