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What is Bounce rate?

bounce rate image

Bounce rate is a measure used to work out how useful your site is to visitors.

Bounce is one of those things that people will tell you is massively important whilst others will tell you it doesn’t matter at all.

In fact, the likelihood is that it is somewhere in between and, together with lots of other metrics go to show search engines that yours is a good site.

So how is bounce rate worked out?

Bounce rate is fairly simple to work out. It is just a percentage score of how many visitors consume your initial content and then go on and read something else – or more accurately don’t!


Check out the vid about bounce rate!


In general terms zero bounce is good, 100% bounce is bad.

So if your visitor reads a second piece of content then it reduces your rate which is a good thing.

But…

Low bouncing isn’t necessarily good (and a high one isn’t necessarily bad)

It really depends upon what sort of site you have.

So a shop site would expect a very low bounce rate whilst a site that is all about getting people to sign up to a mailing list would be fine with a high one.

And that’s the problem with looking at this in isolation – it ignores what your site is for.

If you have a mature site and your bounce rate is ridiculously low (say 20% or lower) then it kind of suggests that something is wrong with your analytics.

If you have a brand new site and you are at 100% then that’s absolutely fine because it takes time to get a wealth of information on your site so that people have something else to read.

In general services type sites are good if they are in the 50% range and shop sites need to be under this but again, a shop site with a bounce rate that is 50% but converts 5% of visitors to customers is better than one with a 30% bounce that converts 2%.


More resources
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What can you do about your bounce rate?

The first and most important thing is to have good, relevant content on your site.

The more content you have then the more likely it is that people will read more than one page.

Reduce the size of your pages too.

People may not want to read 2,500 words but they would happily read three posts of 800 words each.

Also make sure it’s easy to navigate round your site.



Split your content into chunks so that people read one and then naturally follow to another page to read the next part of the story.

You can also make sure that you point people to related pages. After all, someone who reads one post about SEO is clearly interested in the subject so may like to check out more of your SEO posts.

And finally give people more value if they read more pages.

So have a page that is an introductory part of a subject then follow that up with more in-depth pieces and finally a really useful downloadable.

You can find a more technical explanation of bounce rate from Google here.

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I’m a specialist in writing copy for financial and professional services companies so if you would like to get your bounce rate down then get in touch and let’s talk.

What is TLDR and why you should care

TLDR (or TL;DR as it used to be known) means ‘Too Long;Didn’t Read’.

Simple.

So why should you care?

Well TLDR is really important when you are composing your blog posts and web content and I’m about to tell you why.

In this post;

Truth is no-one likes a wall of text

Have you ever been faced with a wall of text and just decided that life’s too short?

That’s TLDR in action.

A massive wall of text on a webpage is offputting.

Sure if you are sitting in the garden with a white wine spritzer and a copy of catch-22 then you can spend some time enjoying the experience of reading, but if you just want to find a recruitment consultant then you haven’t got enough life left to make it worth while.

Research has shown that our attention span reduced from 12.5 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2015 and the trend is continuing.

This means that as a blog writer you need to make sure your posts are snappy and to the point.

Otherwise your readers will drift away

person drifting away from a boat
If you’re not smart your users will drift away

Split up your text

So what can you do about it?

Well for a start you can practice writing in short, snappy sentences.

Long paragraphs of text aren’t attractive at all so you need to avoid them and make sure you use easily accessible language because the average reader won’t be wanting to read acres of jargon.

Make sure you break up your text with relevant images too that illustrate your point.

Text for your homepage

So here’s the thing – Google says you need plenty of text on your homepage to tell it what it’s about but in reality your users won’t read it. So what do you do?

You start off by getting to the point above the fold.

Above the fold means the bit you can see without scrolling.

If you check out my homepage it says quite clearly above the fold – expert professional services marketing.

If you’ve come to the wrong place then you’ll know straight away but if you have come to the right place then you’ll scroll to…

Telling people what problems you solve

Look, we don’t want to read a page full of jargon, we just want to know what you are going to do for us.

So get to the point as quick as you can, the problem, the solution, who it’s for.

So don’t dance around your handbags for half an hour before getting to the point because your TLDR readers have already left the building.

I’d suggest that above the fold you go for your most important services.

Then as the user scrolls down you provide more detail.

And when they click onto another page you can expand your thought process.

TLDR for blog posts

Have you noticed that I answered the question right at the top of the post?

I did this for two reasons.

The first is for the TLDR people. They don’t have to read any further than line 1.

That’s fine.

If you are going to buy from me then you probably want to know much more than just the simple answer to the question.

So I am happy to give TLDR people the answer to their question because I know that they probably aren’t going to engage with me anyway.

The second reason is for Google.

Google likes posts that answer questions, and it likes to use the answers on it’s featured snippets panels.

So if you answer the question that people are asking quickly and succinctly in the first sentence then you are much more likely to be highly placed.


Free resources to help with your copywriting and SEO
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Chuck in a bulleted list

Did you see at the start of the article that there was a bulleted list?

This is designed to help readers get to the bit they want to read without scrolling or reading through the rest of the article.

Seriously though, with so much great information available why would people scroll past?

But they do!

Oh and set up page anchors so if you click on the item it takes you to the relevant section. Find out how to do page anchors here.

TLDR is important to keep readers engaged

So in summary then the principle of TLDR is important if you want to keep readers engaged in your blog and if you want site visitors to read more on your site.

On your home page make sure you get to the point right away and make it above the fold.

For blog posts, answer the question your readers are asking straight away as this will help engagement and will also boost your SEO score for the page.

And make sure you split your text up into manageable chunks and include the odd image here and there.

Here’s the ad

If you’d like help with your site, whether it be copywriting, marketing or anything else then give me a shout and let’s chat.

Do keywords matter when you are copywriting for accountants?

An accountant who needs copywriting

This is a question that pops up from time to time as I’m regularly asked if I will put some keywords into the copywriting for accountants that I do.

The problem is of course that the answer is that ‘it depends’.

So in this post, I thought I’d explore this in more detail and look at the whole issue of keywords.

Getting accountancy clients isn’t physical sales.

To my mind, the debate has been taken over by physical sales marketing, in other words, the use of keywords and phrases is all about a transactional relationship with the client.

The problem is that this is rarely the way to sell accountancy services as they rely on the build-up of trust between the client and the firm.

So simply packing blog posts with keywords is probably going to do more harm than good, especially in the eyes of Google.

So keywords are no good then?

Nah, that ‘s not what I said.

Keywords are fine for pointing people at the valuable content you have on offer.

They are a way of telling Google what is on your site but I’d argue that once the visitor is on the site it is much more about building a level of trust.

And the truth is that for trust based services like accountancy, people generally don’t buy because they saw you at the top of the search engine results pages.

I’d also say that marketing for clients works much better when it is away from the Google search pages and done on an individual basis.

In short, I think that when you are commissioning copy for an accountancy practice you are better off looking at the meat of the copywriting rather than the fluff of keywords. Treat them as a ‘nice to have’.

Copywriting for accountants – what’s the use?

Well it’s all about credibility.

Look at it this way, imagine you were wanting to find a good practice near you that was up to date and had their finger on the pulse.

You go to a website and find that the last blog post was written in 2014 and was about tax rates.

You’re pretty certain that the tax regime has changed since then (it has) so you are suddenly mistrustful of the site and it puts you off.

So you go and look at another site and you find that they have a wealth of posts about different areas of their practice.

You even find out something that you didn’t know.

So you feel much more confident about the firm, the people and about contacting them for more information.

And this is the crucial difference between selling services and DVDs.

A great set of keywords will sell DVDs directly from the site.

A great set of keywords won’t sell your accounting services, but when people hit your site, poor quality content will certainly lose you the sale.

Want more information about digital marketing?

I’ve produced an in-depth guide that you can download for free by clicking here

Copywriting for accountants – what is LSI?

Financial copywriter at his desk

When you start to think about getting some copywriting for your accountants practice you may well come across the phrase ‘LSI’ and wonder what on earth it is.

Well wonder no more. This post will tell what it is and how to get it.

Latent Semantic Indexing – LSI

OK so let’s take a walk back in time to the dawn of the internet.

If you wanted to know something about paperclips then you’d probably type into Ask Jeeves and you’d get presented with a series of results based purely on the amount of times the pages mentioned ‘paperclip’ in their text.

The problem with this is that people can game the system and so by simply using the word paperclips a gazillion times on their pages they can rank highly.

This is where things get interesting

Fast forward a few years and Google decides to stop people playing the search engines and start presenting results based, in part, on LSI.

Cut to the chase – what is LSI?

So LSI means all the words that are likely to exist around the word or phrase you are looking for in normal speech.

So for example, let’s imagine you are looking for information about paperclips.

Take two sites, one is a Will making site and one is a Paperclip supplier site.

The Will making site may have a phrase “don’t paperclip things to your original Will because they may go missing”.

Whilst the paperclip site may have a phrase “Paperclips are usually made from mild steel and plastic and are often sold in paper or carboard boxes.”

So the LSI for paperclips would be words like ‘Steel’, Plastic, ‘Cardboard’, ‘Paper’.

You wouldn’t expect these words to turn up on the Will making site.

But if you were looking for Wills then you’d expect things like ‘Testament’, ‘original’,’document’ etc.

So Google knows that one site is about paperclips because it says paperclips and because it has the words around it that make it more likely.

So how do you find your own LSI keywords?

One of the easiest ways to discover what your LSIs are is to do a Google search on your keywords.

Then just scan down the results and make a note of the words that keep appearing in the little snippets of the site.

Assess each word or phrase for whether you would naturally expect it to turn up next to your keywords.

Voila!

You have a list of LSI keywords.


free guide to content marketing for accountants
Want a guide to digital marketing written especially for accountants? Click the image above – it’s free!

The secret they won’t tell you about digital marketing

The big digital marketing secret

There’s a secret about digital marketing out there that people aren’t sharing and I think I know why.

I know why it’s not being shared and I also know why it is counter-productive.

It’s a secret that digital marketers and content producers know full well or, if they don’t then they ought to.

And it’s a secret that anyone embarking on digital marketing, whether it’s just for their own site or for someone else’s should know.

Marketers are great…

…at selling the sizzle.

It’s what we do.

We tell you how great things are going to be when you use our services and we let you believe that you’ll get instant results.

How often have you watched a video or read an article that leaves you with the impression that this is all dead easy and you can have amazing results really quickly?

The problem is that marketing has something called the ‘golden triangle’ which is something that project managers have known about for years.

If you want hits then you can have them cheap, quick or good but you can’t have all three.

So for instance you can get a huge number of hits by paying to always be top of the google rankings. They’ll probably be good hits and you’ll get them quickly but it won’t be cheap.

Or you can pay a link farm to get you tons of links. It will be cheap and fast but the sort of links you get won’t be particularly good.


Your quick digital marketing guide
Check out my 5 minute guide to digital marketing here

Here’s the secret to digital marketing

It takes time.

Yep that’s it.

It’s not earth shattering but it is important to know because if you think you will get overnight results and a billion hits from your single blog post then I’m sorry to say that you are going to be disappointed.

It takes time to understand your marketplace.

It takes time to find a strategy that works for you

It takes time to build up a site that has valuable content that really works for your potential clients.

You’d think this was a bad thing for someone in the industry to say right?

Well personally I prefer my clients to be properly informed from the start.

There’s no point in me promising you something that you can’t have only for you to be really disappointed this time next week when a billion hits haven’t magically appeared.

I prefer honesty.

Why don’t marketers tell clients this?

Because it’s nice to have some one tell you with absolute certainty that life is going to be wonderful and easy and that you don’t even need to think about it.

But the truth is always a bit more complicated than that.


Want a totally free guide to digital marketing for accountants?
Want a totally free guide to digital marketing for accountants? (it works for other industries too!) Click the image for you free resource

The truth about digital marketing

The truth is that anything worthwhile is worth doing well.

Like a good wine, a marketing strategy is worth taking a little time over.

Taking time to understand your clients, your market and your offer is rarely wasted.

Producing useful, good quality content, little and often is always better than paying someone to set up a big bunch of dubious links.

And making sure that your content is optimised for SEO and then shared with a relevant audience is priceless.

Take time over your digital marketing and you’ll find that it pays dividends with a sustainable community of people who like your stuff and consistently high rankings on the search engines that doesn’t drop off the moment you stop paying for advertising.

How I can help

I admit that for most people producing quality content regularly just isn’t possible and this is where Yellow Tomato comes in.

I can do a site audit and let you know where you marketing is letting you down.

I can produce a marketing plan that will show you how to start moving up the rankings

and I can write the content that will get your target market engaged.

Give me a call or email me and let’s talk.

Why content marketing is like a hot air balloon (and what to do about it)

Content marketing is like a hot air balloon

Content marketing really is like a hot air balloon.

You may think that there aren’t many things that link the two but read on and find out how this knowledge can help you with your digital marketing strategy.

In the beginning…

When you first start up a company blog you are all enthusiastic and ready to get going.

You probably write 5,6 or even seven blogs and amazingly there’s no impact whatsoever on your Google ranking and no-one visits your site.

So you stop blogging.

And this is where content marketing suddenly becomes exactly like a hot air baloon.

Keep the fire alight

Hot air balloons work on the principle of hot air rising.

The hotter the air and the more that is in the balloon then the faster and higher the balloon will rise.

But, if you stop burning gas then the air cools and the balloon starts to fall.

And so you turn on the gas again.

and the balloon rises

Content marketing is like a hot air balloon
Turning on the gas

This is exactly what happens with people’s marketing.

(Incidentally, the British Balloon and Airship club has a fascinating site that’s well worth a read here )

Content marketing needs to be consistent.

In the same way as the hot air balloon rises and falls I often see people do exactly the same thing.

They do loads of work on their content marketing at the start and the balloon rises quickly. In other words they bring in work.

But then they stop and unsurprisingly the work starts to dry up

so then they panic and do loads of marketing

And the balloon rises again.

It’s a natural reaction but unfortunately for the business it produces a ‘lumpy’ sales pipeline and makes it difficult to forecast sales and resources accurately.

Google also like sites that produce content consistently.

In short it’s better to do 8 posts over 4 weeks than do 8 on day one and then never do anything ever again!

A content marketing strategy doesn’t have to be hard

Content marketing can be fun and shouldn’t be a drag.

Consistency is the key. One or two articles every week is ample because it gives your balloon a nice flat trajectory which enables you to maintain a decent future sales pipeline.

The sort of content you produce doesn’t have to be all dry technical subjects. You can mix it up, not only to give yourself some variety but also to keep your readers interested too.

And of course consistent, interesting content is much more attractive for the search engines, which is half the battle.


Want some help with choosing blog subjects? Check out my post here

How great content can boost your SMEs sales
How to choose blog subjects

Publishing regular content isn’t always easy

Of course it isn’t. Otherwise everyone would do it!

You’re busy running your business and often you can’t find the time to sit and write a blog post or some interesting content.

That’s where I come in.

I’m a freelance writer and I specialise in content marketing.

I can help you with your marketing plan, can look at SEO on your site and can write the content for you.

If you are serious about kicking your content marketing into high gear then why not mail me and we can talk?

Your digital marketing 5-minute guide

Your quick digital marketing guide

If you’re new to the whole concept of digital marketing then it can be a pretty daunting place so I thought I’d write up a quick guide that you can sit and read over a cup of coffee.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is anything that encourages people to buy from you. That’s the marketing bit.

The digital bit simply means that it can be delivered using a computer, phone, tablet or any other electronic means. It really is that simple.

The problem is that the internet is big, really big so you just get lost.

Imagine you have got a van

And your van is full of stuff that you want to sell.

Your van is your website but if you never drive anywhere then it’s unlikely that people will buy anything from you.

So you need to put fuel in the van, that’s content marketing.

But if you just drive your plain old van around the streets you still aren’t going to sell much.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, TikTok and all the other social media sites are your signwriting on the van that tell people what you sell

And Google is a massive bell that you ring to get people to look.

As you can see, none of these things on their own is going to sell your stuff.

Having a website without any content is going to be pointless and having great content is lovely but if you don’t bother to promote it then it is pretty much useless.

You can’t. You have to have the whole package.

What is content marketing?

Content is the stuff that tells people about you.

Typical types of content marketing include;

  • Blog posts
  • Podcasts
  • eBooks
  • Guides
  • Checklists
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • and loads more.

What’s different about content marketing?

Looking at that list you might think it’s pretty simple and largely the same as ordinary marketing but actually you’d be surprised.

You see Digital Marketing works best when you give stuff away for free.

I know, crazy right?

What you are aiming to do with this type of marketing is to get people (and Google) to believe in your brand as an authoritative source of information.

This is particularly important if you are a professional services company because your reputation is everything.


Yellow tomato - I write content for small businesses

Want to know more about how fresh content gets you business? Click the image above


So what’s all this SEO stuff then?

SEO (or search engine optimisation) is like telling Google that you want it to ring that big old bell on top of your van and get people to look at what you’ve got.

SEO is largely the practice of producing content that is valuable and structuring it in such a way as it tells Google to put it at the top of the search rankings.

Part of it is about the writing and part about the quality of your site.

That’s like keywords and stuff right?

Kinda.

You see when people search for stuff they type things into their search bar and they are the keywords.

Then the search engines go out to the web and have a look for the words that most closely match what the user types into their search bar.

But it doesn’t bother looking every time.

Instead, Google (and all the others) map the web and look for sites that are authoritative sources of information.

Then when someone looks for expenses software or will writers then it knows exactly where to go.

So you need to prove to Google that you are the authoritative site by producing content that has those keywords in it.

Incidentally Google also looks at your site and rates it based on how easy it is to use.

Do your pages load quickly?

Does it work on mobiles?

Do people read one thing or do they stick around?

Then it gets all of the information it’s found and compares your site to the opposition. Then it ranks you.

The higher up the ranking you are then the more customers you will get. These are often called SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) in the trade.

The key to digital marketing is engagement

And the key to engagement is having fresh, useful content that regularly pops up in front of your clients

Oddly most people make exactly the same mistake when they are producing content – they give up!

It’s called the cycle of despair and it’s a real thing


Yellow tomato copywriting for small bsuinesses

Want to know more about the biggest mistake people make? Click the image above


The trick is not to go off like a train for two weeks then get upset.

Just publish a small amount of stuff regularly and make sure it is all related to your keywords

Don’t forget to tell people about your content

There’s no point in hiding your light under a bushel.

Tell people what you have produced.

Post it to your insta, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn sites, do Google ads, tell your friends.

There’s a type of virtuous circle where Google ranks sites higher if more people read them and return later.

More people read the site if it is ranked higher on Google and on it goes.

Digital marketing is easy if you are organised

And if you have the time

there’s nothing hard about digital marketing, in fact I’d say most people can do it.

But you do need to be organised and you have to be in a position to want to do it.

Let’s be honest, there are 101 things you could be doing rather than stressing over your keyword map or your off page SEO right?

In fact it’s probably much more cost effective to pay someone else to do it than learn it yourself, make the mistakes and then actually do the work.

That’s where I come in.

If you want someone to help, who won’t fill you email inbox with jargon and BS, then I’m your man.

Contact me here and let’s see if I can help