Inside the 2009 Web Copywriting Intensive … Featuring Heather Lloyd-Martin, the “Pioneer of SEO Copywriting”
By Monica Day, AWAI Roving Reporter

As I’m writing you this email, certificates of completion are being handed out … along with specs and paid assignments for future projects … and, yes, it’s true … checks for copy written here at the event. For some of the recipients, it’s their first paid assignment.

Total tally: 12 checks have been handed out to 11 different participants over the past three days! Congratulations to: Sidney Grosvenor, Deborah Megee, Kathleen Cleary, Alexa Hudson, Lanelle Blackwell, Laura Armbruster, Peter Stoddard, Eric Murphy, Penny Thomas, Rick Robinette, and Paula Williams (whose copy was so good she got two checks!).

The best part is that each one of those checks paid for copy that took 15 minutes or less to write!

Everyone here sees the opportunity waiting for them once they get home and start applying the new skills they learned here at the AWAI Web Copywriting Intensive in Austin.

Before I head out, I want to give you some scoop on today’s speaker – Heather Lloyd-Martin – SEO copywriter extraordinaire.

Whether your clients realize it or not – copywriters are the most important part of the search engine optimization process. You are the one who drives sales and finds the most effective placement of the SEO content.

But it’s not copy alone that makes a website rank #1 on the search engines. Which means you can’t take all the credit for a high ranking – but you shouldn’t shoulder all the blame for a low ranking either. There are three things that go into the ranking a site gets:

• Site architecture
• Content
• Hyperlinks

Depending on how savvy your client is about search engine optimization, it may be up to you to educate him. And if he insists on adding things to his site that will work against him, you may have to deliver a dose of tough love.

Heather says the most common fight is over graphics. A client may want a lot of icons or graphics on his home page because he likes the look. But graphics can’t be read by the search engines. As an SEO expert, it’s up to you to know what the search engines can and can’t do – and tell the client, even if it’s not what he wants to hear.

Heather also warns that there is an industry-wide misconception about SEO copywriting. People think it’s just a matter of shoving keywords into copy. It’s so much more than that!

SEO copywriting combines traditional direct-response copywriting with SEO principles. It blends what search engines need with what makes good, compelling copy. You know … like getting kids to eat green vegetables!

When you understand how to create powerful SEO copy, you’re in an excellent position to show clients what it can do for them – and why your fees are a bargain considering how much more they’ll make when you use SEO principles to dramatically improve the earning power of their site.

Because getting work was on everyone’s mind today – Heather also gave some tips about how to find all those clients who are in desperate need of SEO copy …

She noted that this is one of the best times she can remember for getting new clients – and that’s coming from someone who has been in this business for a long time. Even all the layoffs you read about every day may mean more opportunity for you. Companies may have had to cut back on staff – but unless they’ve closed up shop completely, they still need you to maximize their sales.

“How do all these clients who are dying for our services find us?” asked one attendee.

Here are Heather’s top three tips:

1. Optimize your own site! And make sure you’re targeting the area where you want to work. For example, if you want to let businesses in your local area know you’re available to optimize their sites – make sure you use that geographic location as a keyword on your own site.
2. Take advantage of local opportunities to become an expert. Write columns for your local paper, speak at local events, sit on Chamber of Commerce panels and other similar events.
3. Start blogging – yes, start your own blog. But also, start following other people’s blogs and make intelligent and helpful comments. You’ll attract the attention of the blog owners and readers alike. If your comments are good, you’ll be asked by other blog owners to become a contributor, or they may start mentioning you in their blogs and link to yours.

Last, but definitely not least, Joshua Boswell closed out the conference with even more tips on how to get paying clients. The “secrets” he shared are actually pretty simple – obvious even! But they only work if you use them!

Joshua walked through everything he does and says from beginning to end to get and keep a client. Right down to the language he uses to close the deal, upsell into another assignment, and earn their trust in you as an expert – even if you’re just starting out!

I’m signing off now – heading to the airport to go home and put everything I learned into my own business – and the new projects I have simmering on the stove.

One last bit of advice: Start tucking away money right now to come to next year’s Web Copywriting Intensive. They keep it small – and the number of attendees who return year-after-year to take the advanced track is growing. You won’t want to miss out!

“This event was incredible! I now understand why so many websites fail to attract buying customers and how to fix that problem. Plus, I know how to market myself to the hundreds of thousands of potential clients desperate for help.” – Pam Foster