Archive for February, 2011

Since I’ve had a bit of a black and white fetish lately, it’s probably no surprise I eventually found this optical illusion online.   It’s completely captivating.  And that got me thinking about the job good advertising does.

You see, there’s a couple of  similarities between what this intriguing image does and what your advertising should do.  If you want it to cut through.

Cutting through the clutter

Research tells us that, today, each one of us is confronted by over 1,000 advertising messages every day.  Probably the reality is even higher.  You think about it.  There’s advertising at the bus stop, billboards on freeway, breakfast radio ads, promotional coffee cups, in the newspaper …. and that’s all before you even sit down at a desk and turn on your computer.

On target, on message

So what makes you notice one ad and not another?  Now, I’m not going to dish up a long white paper on target market research, advertising copy, creative content and every other advertising element.  The fact is, all good advertising does three things.  Just like this trick image does:

• K I S S

  keep it simple sunshine (or another word)

• Capture

  good advertising reaches out to grab your attention

• Keep

  effective advertising holds your audience interest

In its way, advertising is a candid medium.  It’s not trying to be anything else, and it’s up front about trying to sell you something.  Keep the message black and white, and let it do its job.

Contact a Cluey advertising copywriter for great ad copy.

Right now, Facebook is in the middle of a look and feel overhaul.  So we figured it was time the Cluey freelance copywriters page got a face-lift too.
If you check it out, you’ll find there’s an all new landing page. That tells everyone quick and easy what we’re about. And we’ve brought in a YouTube feed as well. So you can see all our latest video script work in one handy spot.
Love to know what you think of how it’s shaping up. You can Like from here to see our Cluey page renovations. Or contact us about writing your social media content.

I was reading an item earlier in the week that made the argument search engines (Google in particular) should not pay so much attention to back links.  On the surface it was pretty convincing.  After all, there’s plenty of  SEO link fodder about.  What’s SEO link fodder?  Let me explain …

Google and other search engines like to try and gauge the credibility of your website.  They do that mainly by checking out other sites that point to yours.  One of the factors in page rank.

There are several things search engines use to make a measure of the inbound link ‘value’.  These include:

• the domain type, age and page rank of the link origin
• the page content and its relevance to your site
• where and how the back link is anchored

What’s happened in search engine optimisation as a result is, a whole industry has emerged dedicated to creating inbound website links.  If, like me, you spend any time following up on where such links originate, you’ll already have found yourself face-to-face with articles and blog links clearly written in the author’s second language.  As I said earlier, link fodder.

What’s the value of that?  Well, when Google or some other search engine find the page, it measures the link value.  The idea being, for SEO purposes the more links the better.  Not so and here’s why:

• If you’ve ever checked Webmaster Tools, you’ll know Google aims to recognise only authentic links.  So, even if you buy thousands of  links from some SEO outsource company, expect a quarter or less to be acknowledged.  Good value?  You be the judge.
• Many outsource SEO companies specialising in link building will create mostly blog references and on the whole those will originate from low SEO value off-shore sites and predominantly be ‘no follow’ links.  That’s right, they actually stop Google from visiting your site.   Sounding good yet?
• Last but not least, the poor quality language most often associated with Link Fodder reflects poorly on you and your business.  It might not be every customer or website visitor who finds the Jinglish out there … but it will be some.  Can you afford to look so unprofessional?

For more about website links and developing an SEO strategy to lift your online performance, contact Cluey freelance copywriters.