How Important Is Skilful Copywriting

There was a post in a forum the other day that I responded to, and boy did it start one hell of a row.

The post was in the form of a question, which in short asked whether anyone ever reads long sales pages and went on to suggest that they were a waste of time.

I replied to the post in what I thought was a helpful and factual way. My opinion was, and is, as follows:

Long sales pages that are skilfully constructed do have a great value. The cutting edge information and “hook” need to be “above the fold” as does the capture box, and an option to purchase.

People who just want the facts - and nothing more, will rarely scroll down the sales page. Your above the fold presentation is all that they will have to base a “buy or move on” decision upon.

Below the fold can serve two purposes.

One purpose is to ensure that all of the prospective purchaser’s fears and desires are dealt with and that the prospective purchaser finishes the page with a comfortable feeling that they know and can trust you.

This is where you can close the sale with the “long distance reader”. They are reading to the bottom, because they want every detail. They want to believe and the long sales page is your opportunity to convince them that your product or service is EXACTLY what they want or need.

The other purpose of a long sales page is for search engine optimization. It is this second statement that started the trouble.

Now I freely admit that in my original post I did not go into great detail, but a so called “senior member” and self styled copywriting expert who has no background knowledge of me, made an immediate attack about my post and stated most categorically that if I used my sales page for SEO purposes, then I had missed the point completely and utterly and he suggested that I was misinforming people.

My response to his reply was swift.

In my opinion skilfully written copy is extremely capable of performing two tasks – more in fact.

Look at the way in which the legendary Douglas Adams wrote on multiple levels, but I digress.

I went on to point out that I had checked the ranking of his website, which was nowhere to be found in the first several pages of google, and I suggested that since one of my sites – one with the long sales page – was on page 1 google (and others) and in the top 5 spots on page 1 for ALL of my main search phrases with some Number 1 positions too, I was perhaps better qualified to comment about skilful copywriting that combined great selling qualities together with search engine optimization facets.

As is the often the case with bullies – they are really cowards when anyone stand up to them – He had me banned for life from the forum.

So what can we take from this?

What is it you want form your website?

For myself, I want to a) make money online and b) gain lots of web traffic so that I can continue to enjoy point “a”.

If you just want a copywriter, then any old hack will do. If you want skilfully written copy that outperforms the heard, while helping you to increase your search engine positioning, then you may need to learn – or hire - some additional skills.

In short you may need a professional website copywriter.