You searched the internet and after elaborate research, you decided to hire a copywriting service for your copy needs. You’ve discussed the requirements, placed the order, only to receive a lengthy copywriting brief.

Meh!

You were so happy you could unload your worries to a professional copywriter. Finally, you could focus on growing your business.

Not so fast!

A detailed copywriting brief is your key to unlock a stunning piece of copy from your copywriting service.

So what is a copywriting brief? Who writes it? Why should you care?

Read on for answers to all of these questions.

So what is a copywriting brief really?

If there’s one piece of document every copywriter reveres, it’s a creative copywriting brief.

Simply put, copywriting brief gives us all the information we need to understand your business, your goals and your requirements to write stellar copy for your website, blog or Instagram.

It includes the essential information we need to complete the job. Essentially, all the building blocks of your copywriting project should be in your copywriting brief.

Why does a copywriting brief matter?

A copywriting brief is a reference manual of sorts for your project. It contains all the information your copywriter needs to craft mind-blowing copy for you. It tells us who the target audience is, what type of action you want the reader to take at the end of the copy, what keywords the copy is to be optimised for, and so on.

The creative brief is a document that’s agreed upon between the copywriter and the client. As your copywriters, we will review this document at every step of the project and ask questions or make suggestions for changes.

This is important because it ensures that everyone is on the same page. It ensures we understand your requirement and we stick by it.

When you want your content writing job to succeed, we will require all the relevant details from you right at the start.

Sure, we could simply put our copywriting wizardry to use and create a copy without any brief. However, it won’t be extremely effective.

We want to ensure your copy propels your readers into action. To be able to do that, we need to understand what your target audience is like, we need to get to know your business, and we must get the tone right.

There are several benefits of investing your time filling out a copywriting brief:

• You will save a ton of time explaining yourself.
• Your copywriter will understand your business completely and would be able to communicate your message to your audience.
• Your piece will be written for your target audience.
• Your content is optimised for conversions.
• Your copy will be optimised for your target keywords.
• You receive a piece that’s ready to publish without any need for edits or rewrites.
• You receive the finished copy sooner.

What does a copywriting brief include?

• Information about your business: business name, website URL, products/services.
• Objectives: what is the purpose of this piece?
• Your company values: A broad topic but very important piece of information that ensures we get it right.
• Your brand personality: This helps us understand the tone and style to use for your copy. You could describe using three to five words or even describe it in detail.
• Problems you solve: What are some of the pain points your customers face? How does your product/service solve these problems?
• Competition: This helps us to understand what your competitors are up to so we can position your brand differently.
• Demographics: Who are your target audience, what do they do, what interests them, what tone of voice should we use to engage them? The detailed the information, the better.
• Keywords: If you want us to incorporate a target keyword in the copy, be sure to let us know which keywords you want to optimise for.
• Your USP: What sets you apart from the competition? We will leverage this information to create a winning copy.
• Call to action: what action do you want your readers to take at the end of the copy?

Conclusion

When you want to get the most out of your copywriting project, be sure to write a detailed and insightful brief for your copywriters. Put in as much effort into creating your brief as you expect from your copywriters and expect to receive a winning copy.

Quick Copywriting is a team of qualified copywriters who take great pride in producing quality content for our clients. Contact us today to discuss your content writing requirements.

Search engine optimization or SEO is essential for driving traffic to your website. But it’s a complicated process especially when Google brings out changes to its algorithms.

So how do you write website copy that’s keyword rich without sounding spammy?

How do you write copy that doesn’t just get love from Google but also impresses readers?

Our website copywriting team has compiled some essential tips to help you write SEO-rich website copy.

Leave Clues for the Search Engines to Find

Search engines need something to understand the content of your website so they can index them appropriately in their directories.

The search engines primarily focus on words and not graphics to assess your website’s relevance. Words help them in identifying whether your website is relevant for a particular search query.

You must literally use words on every page on your website.

This is the only way to get indexed and improve your rankings on the search engine result pages (SERPs). These words act as clues that tell the search engines what your website is actually about and relevant to. These clues are known as keywords.

Pick the Right Keywords

It is important to target the right keywords lest your efforts would all go down the drain. Think about the words and phrases that come to mind when you think about your business.

Next, brainstorm the words your customers would use to search for the services you offer.

Now visit your competitors’ websites and look at the kind of words they are using. You could even use software such as Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool or WordTracker to find the right keywords.

It is important to choose keywords that are relevant. For instance, if your website is about baby clothing, your website isn’t going to rank for those phrases if your site only talks about parenting tips.

If you are selling baby clothing, ensure your website copy targets this essential keyword “baby clothing”.

Incorporate Keywords in Your Copy

Now it’s time to get to the task. The trick is to use your keyword naturally in your website copy. It’s important to be subtle at keyword optimization to ensure you don’t distract or put off your readers.

Keep sentences short and ensure your copy is easy to read and understand.

Stay away from any “smart tricks”.

Avoid overstuffing your keyword. Don’t use your keywords where they don’t belong such as the comment tags.

These “tricks” will not only affect readability but will adversely affect your rankings.

Don’t Ignore LSI

The key reason you include keywords in your copy is to ensure search engines can identify your niche and assess your relevance to a search query. However, Google and all other search engines have become smarter when it comes to understanding content.

One of the factors Google considers when ranking is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) to understand what a page is about in addition to the user’s search phrase.

It looks for synonyms and related words. This means that you shouldn’t just optimize your copy for your primary keyword.

Let’s take the example of baby clothing further. If “baby clothing” is your target keyword, your LSI keywords could be baby needs, shoes, baby grooming and so on.

Take for instance this blog post. We are a copywriting service and since the topic for this article is, “How to Write Keyword-Rich Website Copy”, the relevant words that Google would recognize would include website, content, SEO, content marketing, SERP, search engine optimization, and so on.

The use of LSI keywords not only boosts the SEO of your page, it also enhances the readability. Using LSI keywords is way better than repeating your primary keyword repetitively.

In Conclusion

High rankings in the search engines will surely drive traffic to your site. However, getting to the top isn’t easy. It’s a complicated game. A professional SEO copywriting service can help you achieve your SEO goals smartly and effectively.

Need assistance writing keyword-rich website copy? Get in touch with Quick Copywriting today!