Continued from Part 1 

Are you a web designer or developer thinking about offering web page writing services to your clients? If so, one of the biggest decisions you’ll make is figuring out what to charge. In Part 1 of this series, we talked about how website copywriting rates are all over the map and vary depending on the complexity of the topic, the amount of research required, etc.

Measuring the ROI of Website Copywriting

Another factor that goes into pricing website copywriting services is the value that your website copywriting services provide. From press releases to guest articles to blog posts to sales copy, all types of web writing have the potential to provide a hefty return on investment (ROI). The higher the ROI that a piece of writing provides, the more you can charge for it. Measurable returns that web page writing services may offer include an increase in website traffic, social media clout, backlinks, conversions, sales or RSS subscribers. Returns that you may not be able to measure include an increase in trust and authority or brand enhancement.

As the Old Adage Goes, “You Get What You Pay For”

Some clients may scoff at the idea of paying a handsome fee for website copywriting services, but as with anything else, you get what you pay for. If you pay a low fee, expect low-quality writing that doesn’t produce results. Or worse, expect to receive bad writing that hurts your brand’s reputation.

Web writers who are just starting out may be willing to deliver good writing for peanuts for the sake of “building their portfolios,” but the majority of writers will only put as much effort into a project as they are paid. So, if you want to receive top-notch website copywriting that satisfies your client base, expect to pay your writers and charge your clients accordingly.

Another issue to consider is the perceived value of your services. If you undercharge for your website copywriting services, most clients will assume that they aren’t any good. Charging less can actually hurt sales in the long run because it will make it more difficult for you to establish your reputation as a trustworthy provider of web writing services. Clients who understand the importance of investing in high quality website copywriting services expect to pay top dollar.

Marking up Your Website Writer’s Rates

The beauty of outsourcing website copywriting is that you can mark up your writer’s rates and make money with virtually no work on your part. But you have to make sure that the fees you charge on top of your writer’s rates are high enough to make it worthwhile. To determine what your commission should be, think about how much time you’ll spend interacting with your client and writer to complete a writing project, how much time you’ll spend on related administrative duties, and how much time and effort it will take for you to sell website copywriting services to new and existing clients.

Contact O’Copy for more information about our website copywriting services for web designers and developers! 

photo credit: gtorelly

As a web designer or developer offering website copywriting services, one of the biggest dilemmas you’re likely to face is figuring out what to charge. From $3 article writers fighting for scraps on bidding sites to website copywriters who charge no less than $1500 per page of copy, web writers are a diverse group with rates that are truly all over the map. So, what you can you expect to make with writing services and what should your clients expect to pay?

Copywriting rates vary considerably depending on the degree of expertise required, the amount of research required, the writer’s experience level, and so on and so forth. The industry/topic also matters — content about a complex medical procedure will cost significantly more than content about baking chocolate chip cookies.

According to the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA), writers charge anywhere from 5 cents to $2 per word. According to www.writers.ca, the going rate for online/website writing is $1 to $3 per word or $60 to $100 per hour, while print copywriters charge anywhere from $350 to $500 per page. Direct Creative has a good article discussing copywriting rates, as does Invesp. But as Direct Creative’s Dean Rieck says,

“Asking how much copywriters make is like asking how tall trees are. There is considerable variation.”

To give you a ballpark idea of what professional website copywriters in the US, Canada, and Australia are charging these days, here are some random examples I gathered with the help of my old pal, Google:

• $90 to $175 per article and $125 to $175 per page of SEO website copy
• $80 per hour
• $70 per hour
• Standard rate of $250 per page
• $195 per hour
• $1590 per page
• $100 to $200 per page
• $140 to $280 per article
• $125 per hour

Yep, it’s a big ballpark.

The rates you charge will also depend on your target market. Are your clients mostly small business owners? Start-ups? Major corporations? Generally speaking, the larger and more established the client, the more you can charge for website copywriting services. Small businesses tend to have smaller marketing budgets, so you probably won’t be able to get $1500 for a blurb if you serve mostly mom and pop operations, unless the return-on-investment your clients will get warrants such a fee.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

Looking for a website copywriter to partner with? O’Copy offers web writing services to web designers & developers and their clients. Contact us for more info. 

The copy on your website is informative, entertaining, and good all around. But for some reason, people aren’t calling you, clicking on your “buy now” button, or otherwise reacting to your copy. It could be because there’s something vital missing from your copy: the call-to-action. 

Why Your Copy Needs a Call-to-Action

Not including a call-to-action in your copy is  copywriting suicide.  If your prospects are interested in your offering, they want to know what to do next. If you don’t tell them exactly what to do, they might get tired of trying to figure it out on their own and then click away. Or they might get lost in the vortex of your content archives. Or maybe they’ll go to the bathroom and forget about your site altogether.

Tell ‘Em What to Do Next

Life is busy and full of interruptions, so you need to tell your prospects exactly what to do once they’re done reading your website copy. Your call-to-action could be as simple as, “Please call xxx-xxx-xxxx for more information about my services” or “Fill out this online contact form to set up a free 30-minute consultation.” Whatever you do, don’t leave your prospects wondering what step to take next because your competitors are only a click away. Make it very easy for your prospects to take action by including a phone number, contact form, sign-up link, or buy-now button right there — don’t make them dig around to find it.

Make It Urgent

If you’re designing a call-to-action for a landing page, give your prospects an even greater incentive to take action. For example, if you’re selling a membership, you might give your prospects a sense of urgency by telling them there are only 10 spots left. Or if you’re selling a product, you might offer a special, limited-time-only sale price or include a few extras to sweeten the deal.

Put It Above the Fold

Whenever possible, put your call-to-action “above the fold” so visitors see it immediately upon landing on your site. According to a study by Nielsen, users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the fold and many pay less attention to the content that’s further down the page. To improve your website’s conversions, include a call-to-action above the fold on every page. For example, you can include a contact form in the sidebar on every page of your site to attract more inquiries.

Speaking of calls-to-action, if you’re a web designer or developer and need a website writer to write copy for your biz or your client’s biz, please contact O’Copy today!

If you run a web design & development firm, many of your clients probably require copywriting. Rather than referring them to another service provider when they request copywriting services, why not provide them with the copy they need? You’re probably thinking, “I don’t have a staff copywriter!” But if you partner with a white label copywriting firm, you can offer copywriting services to your clients without doing any of the writing in-house. Here are 5 benefits of partnering with a web copywriter.

1. Win more customers

Clients are more likely to pick you over the competition if you offer complete packages that include web design, development, AND copywriting. When business owners work with a firm that offers virtually all of the services they need to launch and promote their websites online, they don’t have to go through the hassle of hiring multiple service providers.

2. Boost revenue

Most businesses launching new websites require copy. Even after the initial launch, businesses have a continuous need for a broad range of copy and content, including blog posts, articles, press releases, white papers, and email copy. By offering copywriting services, you can fill that need and significantly increase your web design & development firm’s earning potential.

3. Achieve greater customer satisfaction

If you deliver an attractive, user-friendly website, your clients will be satisfied. If you deliver an attractive, user-friendly website with well-written copy and content that helps to generate more leads and sales, your clients will be elated. Offering your clients copywriting services makes their lives easier by eliminating the need for them to hire a copywriter or write their own copy.

4. Increase efficiency

When you’re designing and developing websites for your clients, waiting for them to deliver their own copy and content can slow things down and impede your progress. If your clients fail to deliver the copy on time, you could miss deadlines. And if the copy your clients deliver isn’t up to par, you’ll have to wait until it is revised and improved. By partnering with a professional copywriter, you can ensure that the copy you receive is top-notch, appropriate for the website you design, and on time, every time.

5. Improve your firm’s image

If prospective clients look at your portfolio and see websites with sub-standard copy, they’re going to judge you for it, even if it was the client – not your firm – that wrote the copy. Prevent problems like this from occurring by partnering with a skilled web copywriter. Prospects are more likely to do business with you if they see attractive websites with great copy in your portfolio.

The Bottom Line

As you can see, partnering with a web copywriter boasts numerous benefits. If you work with a partner that offers copy and content writing services at competitive rates, you can re-brand their services, offer them as if they were your own, and markup the prices. Your copywriting partner will do all the work behind the scenes, enabling you to offer your clients complete, full-service solutions with minimal effort.

O’Copy offers white label copywriting services to web design & development firms. For more information or to request a quote, please contact us. 

Having your clients fill out a web copywriter questionnaire is an effective way to get clear on their needs and preferences. Here are 15 important questions to ask in a questionnaire.

1. Who is your target audience? Are they located in a specific geographical area?

2. Would you like to optimize your copy for any specific keywords? If so, what keywords?

3. Do you already have a website or other marketing collateral? If so, do you like the copy? Why or why not?

4. Where will your website traffic come from? For example, will you get traffic from Pay-Per-Click ads, social media, and/or search engines?

5. What products/services do you offer and what are their benefits?

6. What proof can you provide to back up those claims (i.e., testimonials, statistics, relevant credentials, etc.)?

7. What problems do your customers have and how does your product/service solve those problems?

8. Why haven’t your customers’ problems been solved yet?

9. What sets you apart from your competitors? Why should people choose you over one of your competitors?

10. Who are your main competitors and what are their websites’ URLs?

11. Do you like your competitors’ copy? Why or why not? Is there anything lacking in their copy?

12. What are the most frequently asked questions about your product/service/industry?

13. What do you want people to do after reading your copy? Order something on your site? Call you? Sign up for your email newsletter?

14. What is your business’s story? Why did you start your business?

15. What tone of writing do you prefer? For example, do you prefer a corporate or casual tone?

Looking for a web copywriter who can provide copy to your web design & development clients? Contact us.

Title tags are html tags that succinctly describe the content of a web page. You don’t have to write title tags for your website, but if you don’t, the search engines will automatically generate them for you. If they generate magnificent title tags that summarize your content to a T, super, but otherwise…. not so super.

For some web pages, such as product pages, automatically generated title tags may be sufficient. To prevent subpar, search engine-generated title tags from having a detrimental effect on your search engine rankings and click through rates, however, you should always write your own title tags or hire a website writer to write them for you.

Include target keywords in your title tags, but without going overboard because you’re not just writing for the search engines — you’re also writing for humans. The rule of thumb is that title tags should contain up to 70 characters because Google will only display that many characters. And besides, concise title tags are more appealing to searchers, who have infamously short attention spans.

Sometimes, a title tag that contains a few target keywords is all that’s necessary because keywords describe what your site’s content is about and searchers just want to be sure that you’ve got what they’re looking for before they click. But you can make your title tags even more effective by writing them in a direct-response fashion.

To entice people to click on your search results, tempt them with language that addresses their needs. Your website’s title tags will be an important deciding factor in whether or not searchers will actually visit your site.

For example, on the O’Copy copywriting services page, the title tag is, “Copywriting services – hire a website copywriter now – O’Copy.” I included my business name for branding purposes and the keywords “copywriting services” and “website copywriter” for SEO purposes. The line, “Hire a website copywriter now” is a simple call-to-action that encourages people to click.

I could have just used a keyword-laden title tag like, “Copywriting services | website copywriter | copywriter | web writer” or something like that, but I knew that including a call-to-action that appeals to people’s need to hire a copywriter would entice people to enter my site more than a list of keywords.

Do Title Tags Really Matter for SEO?

There are numerous SEO benefits associated with crafting good title tags, too. I hear that back in the good old days, you could stuff title tags with target keywords and boom, your site would rank well for important terms. Nowadays, search engine algorithms are more advanced and you have to work harder to achieve good rankings. But that doesn’t mean title tags don’t matter in SEO. According to an authoritative survey of SEO experts carried out by SEOmoz, keyword use in title tags is still an important search engine ranking factor.

Many business owners overlook their site’s title tags. However, optimizing your title tags is a quick fix that is likely to improve your sites’ rankings and performance, so don’t hesitate to do it (or hire someone else to do it for you).

5 Quick Tips for Writing Effective Title Tags

Here’s a recap of the advice above, as well as a few additional tips:

1. Include target keyword phrases for search engine bots and searchers. Use the keywords towards the beginning of your title tags, so they have more weight.

2. Write in a direct response fashion because it entices people to click.

3. Even if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, try to be as concise as possible because Google won’t display more than 70 characters.

4. Be descriptive. The keyword phrases you incorporate will generally do the work of describing your content for you, but read over your title tags to ensure that searchers will be able to figure out what’s on the page before they actually click.

5. If you use WordPress as your content management system, adding title tags is easy. I use a free WordPress plug-in called the All-in-One SEO Pack and it does the trick.

If you’d like to hire O’Copy to write title tags for you or have any questions, please get in touch.