(Sorry…. did I say THE best?……  I meant 8th best)

Well this was a nice surprise. UK Copywriting at No 8 with a bullet in this month’s Top SEOs Content Creation list.

Always good to have your mojo risen. Well done team! Take a half day.

By way of personal celebration here’s a reworking of a joke that the lovely @shelovestowrite Tweeted yesterday.

Question – How many Manchester SEO Copywriters does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer – It takes one Manchester SEO Manchester freelance web copywriter UK to change a Manchester SEO copy writer Manchester copywriter UK light SEO Manchester seo copywriter UK bulb.

Oh dear.

A short and sweet UK Copywriting blog post.  I just wanted to let you know about the Institute of Copywriting Diploma that I was awarded last month.

Generous aren’t I.

Plenty of useful stuff on the course.  Modules included;

Writing for business
Press Releases
Direct Mail
Press Ads
Leaflets and Brochures
Newsletters
Writing for the Web

What I particularly appreciated was the time and insight shared by Richard Owsley who reviewed and assessed my work. It was great to have his constructive feedback. Sincere thanks too to Derryck Strachan for his support.

Of course any copywriter worth their salt is studying their craft all the time. Reading around the subject is a must. Books that have inspired me and that I have held close in battle over the last year  include:

Write To Sell: The Ultimate Guide to Great Copywriting by Andy Maslen (I’m just about to get my teeth into both “100 Great Copywriting Ideas (100 Great Ideas): From Leading Companies Around the World” and “The Copywriting Sourcebook: How to Write Better Copy, Faster – For Everything from Ads to Websites“)

Can I Change Your Mind?: The Craft and Art of Persuasive Writing by Lindsay Camp

Brilliant Copywriting: How to Craft the Most Interesting and Effective Copy Imaginable (Brilliant (Prentice Hall)) by Roger Horberry  – take care with this one though. I may have just blown a really nice job by being too brilliant. The client opened the document and was instantly blinded. (Do you ever over deliver to your own detriment?)

So anyway….. who inspires your copywriting? Who are your rock star copywriter gooroos? Your copywriting touchstones?

Ninja and out.

UK Copywriting – Dip CW (Inst. CW)

I’ve always had a talent with lyrics.

So in my last blog I referred to Google Insights as a good keyword research tool. Here’s another. The Google Wonder Wheel. It’s great for drilling down related keyword phrases and identifying a little bit of sexy long tail. Scroll down the Google search page and check out Wonderwheel on the left hand menu.

In a thinly veiled attempt to boost my search ranking on the term advertising copywriter I did a search on the expression advertising copywriter.

What did the wonderful Wonderwheel reveal?

That all these keyword phrases

• become an advertising copywriter
• advertising copywriter vacancies
• advertising copywriter creative director
• advertising agency copywriter
• advertising copywriter salaries
• advertising copywriter job
• junior copywriter salary
• freelance copywriter

are spokes on the advertising copywriter wheel. Clicking on each of them offers more related terms.

For example clicking on advertising copywriter vacancies returns:

• advertising copywriter positions
• advertising copywriter employment
• advertising copywriter careers
• copywriting recruitment agencies
• advertising copy writer
• advertising copywriter jobs
• d&as vacancies
• advertising art director vacancies

Keep clicking through until you’ve either exhausted any form of obvious and not so obvious relevance. There’s a kind of exciting nth degree of separation feel to it all. I mean … who knows where you’re going to end up! It could be literally…..anywhere!

Check out the first half of this partially cheesy but wholly enthusiastic Youtube video that talks through the Google Wonder Wheel

What do you use for keyword research?

Are you a Google Wonderwheel fan?

Selecting the right kinds of SEO keywords and keyword phrases is important. Get them wrong and you’re Vicky Pollard chatting with the Queen – you’re Lester Burnham on the pull, you’re Paul and Yoko. It’s not going to work out.

You need to talk in a language that your audience understands. More importantly you need to use the language they us – to share their ’semantic space’. Smart keyword research gets right under the semantic skin, explores and identifies a whole range of useful words and phrases. Sure, there are the obvious generic terms that you can and probably should use but the chances are that they’ll be highly competitive on organic searches and highly expensive when it comes to PPC.

For real SEO breadth and depth you need to get lateral, to granularize. Spend little time exploring the crooks and nannies. See what they tell you.

They’ll probably suggest using Google Insights. It’s a great SEO tool. A way of quickly and easily identifying what terms are being searched for, when and where. It’s… insightful SEO. Google itself says -

‘With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. ‘

Have a play, check out this SEO Google SEO vid or take  a look at this excellent Google Insights tutorial

I did a quick search on the term SEO for 2010 and drilled down by location to find Manchester. Interestingly SEO Manchester comes out third ahead of SEO London. Possibly even more interestingly the top two locations were Bletchley and Brentford (anyone know why?).

Here are the top SEO search terms:

1. SEO Google
2. Web SEO
3. SEO UK
4. Website SEO
5. Free SEO
6. SEO London
7. SEO marketing
8. SEO tools
9. SEO Wordpress
10. Wordpress SEO

Even better than that Google Insights lists ‘Rising Searches’:

1. Google keyword +80%
2. Keyword tool +70%
3. Search engine optimization +70%
4. Wordpress SEO plugin +60%
5. SEO tutorial +50%
6. Webmaster tools +40%
7. SEO checker +40%
8. SEO optimization +40%
9. Wordpress +40%

Seek the keyword heat and make good things happen.

Do you use Google Insights? Thoughts?

Thanks to Triplezero for the Flickr image

Top drawer copywriting, content strategy and content marketing presentation from Adam Singer.

View more presentations from Adam Singer.

I’m loving this.

Any other new presentations out there dealing with content strategy, copywriting and content marketing that are worth checking out?

Please let me know. Thanks.