Convincing Client of Crappy Copy
-
I believe that one of my clients has poor copy on their site.
Convincing them seems to be impossible, have you any thoughts on how I can turn this around?
I've tried writing alternative text, but they believe their text is better. I'm not claiming to be the best copywriter in the World so maybe my skills fall too short to convince them.
I have suggested that they read The Copywriting Sourcebook by Andy Maslen. They tell me their copy follows this thinking, but I see little evidence of this.
I wonder if hiring a third party might be a good move. If so I will only have 1 shot at convincing them, so I need to hire someone who's fantastic.
Any thoughts?
-
Thanks Egol thats great advice.
-
If you think that "conversions" is the main work that needs to be done then you can tell them that the current copy is great for this and that... but we think that a few changes will help it convert better. Give some examples.
If the site has lots of traffic you might be able to see an obvious lift or if you have the ability to do A/B test, measure any conversion change that occurs. If the site doesn't have a lot of traffic or you don't have the ability to do A/B testing will be a little harder to prove, but you might compare conversions per hundred visits this month vs. last month.
-
Thanks Egol,
That all makes sense.
I would never tell a client their copy sucks, I have tried to be diplomatic.
I think the text is badly presented for conversions.
Difficult to prove this without changing the text I guess.
-
Good point Andy I didn't know about Inspectlet I will give it a go.
The client believes that despite his products having different applications the benefits are identical.
He also doesn't like testimonials or case studies.
I think the text is therefore a bit lack lustre in terms of its appeal to users.
I'm not aware of a penalty due to the copy, nothing in Google Search Console for example.
-
what is making you think it is so bad?
I agree. And, what do you think is so bad about it?
- Is it simply lots of errors in grammar and punctuation?
- Is it errors in the basic content?
- Is it that the structure needs changed to make the points better?
- Is it badly presented for conversions?
- Is it lacking in SEO elements?
Each one of these requires a different expertise to repair.... proofreader/grammarian, content expert, editor, conversion rate optimizer, SEO.
Lots of people really really hate to write and when they are told your writing sucks they don't like it. They are offended or they don't want to invest more. If they are an industry expert with a lot of experience selling in their business niche then you are really putting your nose into it.
So, before you can do a good job of improving their work you must identify the types of problems present and realize that each type of problem (and there may be more than one) requires a different approach to solve - some of which might be more palatable to your client.
-
Hi,
First of all, what is making you think it is so bad? I would be cautious of trying to convince them so much that you end up alienating them and diving in there with someone else to try and get your point across, might just do this.
I like to turn to statistics and testing at this point. Are there pages not converting well? Is there is a penalty of any sort because of the copy? Have you thought about adding a live user testing application like Inspectlet to show them how people are navigating the pages?
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
There is a copy of our website that is ranking. How can I let Google know our website is the authentic site?
I just found another copy of my old website and have no way to take it down. Unfortunately, it's ranking so he didn't place it as a nofollow. (My boss hired someone to redevelop our website before I came on board and never finished the project). So, could this be hurting us? I tried to look to see if we were being penalized and couldn't find that we were. Also, ever since we migrated to a new domain name, our ranking is tumbling. I've redirected properly and tested to make sure they're resolving correctly and they are. I have no idea what is going on. We've virtually lost all ranking. Any help would be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | npuffer790 -
How to explain to a client that duplicate content is bad...
Afternoon! An SEO client of ours has copied a load of landing/category page content from other sites. Lots of emails have been sent back and forth asking them to remove it, but they are adamant to keep it up there until we have time to amend it. We have explained to them: The Google penalty risks The copyright risks The short and long-term implications for their brand new business/website The money they are spending on our SEO package could be completely wasted if they're caught I think the above is pretty black and white, but the director of this company will not budge. Does anyone have any different approaches? The director said he's happy for us to amend the content but, in the meantime, the plagiarised content will not be removed. Cheers, Lewis
On-Page Optimization | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Hiding body copy with a 'read more' button
Hi Whats the consequences of hiding half of the lovingly crafted body copy/written content (good quality modern version of what we used to call seo text) i have written for a clients main site sections and then having a 'read more' button to reveal ? I have written 500+ words for each page but client wants to reduce word count displayed since thinks looks too 'wordy'! I know that this is possible and used to be fine if done in a manner that was still crawlable, is this still the case ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Optimal Copy Length
We have a separate page for every product of every bank e.g. http://www.imoney.my/home-loan/citibank The idea is to make it rank for the name of the keyword + the name of the bank. Is the copy long enough for that to happen? We've written one paragraph of unique copy about bank's product information. Shall we write more, or it is enough?
On-Page Optimization | | imoney0 -
Is keyword stuffing relative to total copy length or an absolute rule?
My seomoz report has warned me about 38 occurrences of a keyword on a page, is that always too many? 19 of them are in my reviews tab, "I love KEYWORD", etc. I expect to get more reviews and more keyword mentions. If I had to keep that page to 15 or fewer, I would have no reviews tab.
On-Page Optimization | | Brocberry0 -
Getting access to clients websites for onsite seo
I understand on site seo fine, as I have tweeked up my own website a fair bit. But I am thinking about doing Onsite and Offsite SEO for clients, as I have had a few request now. So my question is what is the best way to get access to clients websites. So I can make the required adjustments. I have one client, who had a company create a website for him, but they have since closed down.
On-Page Optimization | | aussieseoguy0 -
CMS making body copy mark up faux pais
Good morning from 13 degrees C wet an windy wetherby UK Ive noticed some CMS platforms do not mark up body copy correctly. In other words instead of marking up body copy within p tags its marking body content in the following ways: and Whilst my gutt feeling this is not good i wonder just how serious a problem it will cause for the Google bots ie will they have problems indexing the content as its best to always wrap contnet in opening and closing p tags. So my question is please, am i worrying uneccesarily or is there a genuine penalty to pay SEO wise when body content is not mark up correctly. A live example of markup wriddled with break tags is here: http://www.langleys.com/ Thanks in advance 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | Nightwing0 -
Homepage Keywords for a Client with Multiple Services
We have a local client who services are very broad and there is no one service, i.e. keyword or keyword phrase, that covers all that they do. This is making it very challenging to select keywords to optimize the homepage for. Basically they do everything from engineering, surveying, planning, environmental, etc. We were thinking we would focus mainly on their most important service which is engineering and then use the other services as supporting phrases. However, this feels very diluted and there will be pages on the site for each of these services where the keywords will be targeted. Any thoughts or recommendations for this type of situation?
On-Page Optimization | | DragonSearch0