Category: SEO Website Copy

AI Generated Content – NEW Editing Service

Post author By Claire Taylor
Post date 12 April 2024

With the latest Google algorithm updates resulting in dramatically less AI generated being returned by them, Raspberry Flamingo have decided to officially offer an editing service.

Google announced in March 24 that it wanted to reduce unoriginal content (that means AI generated content in Google speak) by 40% immediately. And that figure will only increase.

What this means in real terms is that websites which have done well in terms of ranking, organic traffic, and enquiries are seeing a significant drop off.

The issues with AI generated content

I have always said AI should only be used to generate short form content – social media posts and maybe emails.

I have no problem with it being used to research subjects, get ideas for content, make suggestions for content structure…

However, AI generated content cannot meet Google’s requirements for long form text – website copy, blogs, articles, etc.

What we are now finding is that clients are coming to us with their AI generated content so that it can go through our editing service or be completely re-written.

In some instances, the AI generated content has been wholly inaccurate and in others the content has been on two very different subjects within one piece of content!

It’s really not good.

What Google are after with long form text

Google have some quite specific requirements for both website copy (pages) and content (blogs and articles).

They want specific primary keywords for each page/blog/article.

Each web page needs a different keyword to the next.

The primary keyword must be used in certain places on each page/blog/article and in a particular density (keyword stuffing is a thing of the past!)

Content must not be duplicated from one page to another.

The copy and content must address the reader.

So, the old fashioned ‘we’re an award winning service with excellent, highly trained staff’ kind of copy no longer works as that’s about you and not the reader.

You must demonstrate E-E-A-T on every page/blog/article.

That stands for experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. (You can find more on this in another blog on here.)

They also like links – both internal and external.

That’s quite a lot for a non-SEO copy or content writer to take into consideration, and that’s why we have launched our editing service – or, of course, we can write everything from scratch for you.

I have always said, and I will continue to say, if you are writing (or worse still paying for someone else to write for you) copy or content to publish digitally that does not contain the correct on-page SEO, you are wasting your time and money.

And now nothing more could be true due to the new algorithm.

Raspberry Flamingo’s Editing Service

If you are generally happy that the copy and content on your website is accurate and covers everything it needs to, then our editing service is for you.

We’ve always provided the service, but we’ve never advertised it – until now.

It’s a quick, easy, and cost-effective way to get your website updated, on-page SEO inserted, and all the other elements Google are looking for ticked off.

Some clients are asking us for our editing service for their whole website, others for their blogs and articles… whatever element you need us to look at, we can.

We are happy to audit your website for you and let you know what needs to be done.

And our editing service can be implemented in a phased approach, if you wish.

Some clients ask us to update their last 10 blogs. Others their pages. Some ask us to do a certain number per month until the project is complete.

If you would like a chat about our editing service, then please contact Claire through the contact form at the bottom of the page or by sending her a Whatsapp message (QR code below).

The author

Claire Taylor Foster is the founder of Raspberry Flamingo Copywriting and Content Marketing.

She started her copywriting and marketing after leaving school way too long ago to mention! Direct Response Copy is her passion. Read more on Claire here.

As far as Claire’s concerned, if copy and content doesn’t contain ‘on-page’ SEO, then it’s pointless publishing it! (Unless of course, paid advertising is going to drive the traffic.)

To Book
a consultation

Email: claire@raspberryflamingo.com

or call/message on 07595 756450

To Arrange
a callback

Tags content editing, content editing servcie, copy editing, copy editing service, editing service

SEO Website Copy Websites

E-E-A-T

Post author By Claire Taylor
Post date 13 November 2023

No AI here

E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – In website copy

Have you heard of E-E-A-T in the context of website copy?

In my experience, as an SEO website copywriter, not all that many people have.

But including E-E-A-T in your website copy and content is essential.

Know, Like and Trust

Most people have heard of ‘know, like, and trust’.

It’s talked about extensively in branding, marketing, and networking.

Because people tend to do business with people they know, like, and trust.

It is, therefore, really important to build relationships with others and for your brand and marketing to continue to this for you when you’re not there in person.

Your website is your ultimate marketing tool

Websites are a huge investment for any business, whether you are a freelancer or a large corporation.

In an ideal world, your website should be generating new leads for your business and, perhaps, even taking those leads through a marketing and sales journey automatically (if and where appropriate).

Brochure websites

Brochure websites were all the rage a few years ago.

Each page was written to say how wonderful the company was but they didn’t give an real information.

Google turned these websites on their heads in September 2022 when it changed its on-page SEO requirements.

Your website now has to be focused on the reader.

People occasionally tell me they’re not interested in SEO… their website is just to show that they’re a genuine business.

And, in one way, I can see their way of thinking.

However, people are not as used to landing on a website which is just singing the owning company’s praises anymore.

People want information.

They want to educate themselves on your product or service, and often the price, before they buy.

So, if your website doesn’t give them the information they need… the chances are they’ll just move on to a competitor’s who’s does!

Google’s ‘People-First Approach’

As I mentioned above, Google want your website copy and content to be about the reader. They call this a ‘people-first approach’.

They pose the following questions to you:

Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find your content useful if they came directly to you?
Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge?
Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?

If you can answer yes to these then you are using a people-first approach.

Keywords and E-E-A-T

I go on about primary and secondary keywords all the time. So, I’m not going to go into too much detail here.

I will just confirm that each page of your website must have a primary keyword which is unique, on your site, to that page.

That primary keyword needs to be used in particular places – such as the title and at least one sub-heading – on the page, and at a certain density (approx. 2-4% of the word count).

But your keywords don’t show E-E-A-T – experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness.

AI’s failing

Many people are being tempted to write website copy and content through the many Ai writing tools which are flooding into the marketplace.

Whilst these might save people a great deal of time, the information created is generic and could well be inaccurate.

It could be well written, it could also contain keywords… but, trust me on this, people can tell when something has been AI generated.

It’s got no personality.

It’s too bland.

It’s too perfectly phrased.

It can’t show your E-E-A-T – experience, expertise, authority, or trustworthiness!

And, even if you fed your qualifications and some other details into the AI tool, it still wouldn’t sound like you.

The importance of consistency of copy and content style

Here’s a perfect example of consistency and how AI can negatively affect it.

I have a friend who runs their own business.

They send emails out on a fairly regular basis.

Often, they have an odd typo or spelling mistake in them – and the grammar may not be spot on.

I like these emails because they are representative of my friend – they sound just like they would speak.

Then one arrived which was perfectly written and didn’t sound like them at all.

It was AI generated.

A few emails later, another caught my eye for its style…

The content was exactly like my friend would talk about… but it was perfectly written.

The phrasing wasn’t theirs.

There were no mistakes.

It was just too perfect.

They had drafted the email quickly and then run it through an AI tool to ‘make it read its best’ … but it didn’t. It didn’t sound authentic.

Getting E-E-A-T into your website copy and content

A fantastic page to demonstrate E-E-A-T is your About page.

Here you can tell your story, detailing your experience, your qualifications, your memberships, and accreditations. You can talk about what type of clients you work with and provide the all important social proof (testimonials and reviews), amongst lots of other things.

Your About page should be full on E-E-A-T!

But other pages too can include elements of all of those things… just more interspersed amongst the other information.

Remember, we’re no longer singing our own praises – like those old brochure websites – we’re demonstrating E-E-A-T in other ways.

E-E-A-T in summary

To demonstrate E-E-A-T, use your customers words. Use results you’ve achieved for your customer. Tell people how many of a particular item you’ve sold. Give your experienced take on a subject.

Once you get into the right mindset when thinking about your website copy and content and including E-E-A-T, it really isn’t that difficult to include. But, as always, if you want to know more or I can help in any other way, please just let me know. And if you want to know more from Google, here’s a link to their Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

The author

Claire Taylor Foster is the founder of Raspberry Flamingo Copywriting and Content Marketing.

She started her copywriting and marketing after leaving school way too long ago to mention! Direct Response Copy is her passion.

As far as Claire’s concerned, if copy and content doesn’t contain ‘on-page’ SEO, then it’s pointless publishing it! (Unless of course, paid advertising is going to drive the traffic.)

Tags E-E-A-T

Grammar Blog Blog writing SEO Blog Writing SEO Website Copy

Why grammar is important

Post author By Claire Taylor
Post date 2 August 2023

I suspect you’d expect me to say that grammar is important with me being a copywriter.

And you’d not be wrong!

It makes all the difference to anything written.

Let me give you an example quickly right here at the beginning of the blog…

I love my friends, Freddy Mercury and Sheila Handcock.

I love my friends, Freddy Mercury, and Sheila Handcock.

The first sentence says that my friends’ names are Freddy Mercury and Sheila Handcock.

The second says, I love my friends and Freddy Mercury and Sheila Handcock.

School education

If you were like me, you may not have picked up on why grammar is important at school.

English was just another subject to sit through. Just another exam to take.

No one told us (I hope they did you) that English was the one subject that you would genuinely need for the rest of your life… unlike algebra and chemical formulas…

And, yes, I know… some careers do need algebra and chemical formulas… but I don’t believe the majority of us need them on a regular basis.

Realising grammar is important

It was really when I started work at The University of Sheffield in my early 20’s that I realised how important gramma was going to be.

How could I write emails, memos, and other documents to academics who held the English language in such high regard if I couldn’t use grammar properly?

So, I booked myself onto a course… looking back it was THE best thing I have done for myself in my career.

I became much more confident in my writing abilities and have never really looked back.

What I believe to be important in grammar

Now you have to understand that different people have very different standards for the use of grammar.

The Head of Language and Linguistics once said to me “Claire, a sentence can be an incomplete utterance”.

Now, I’m sorry, but school never taught us that!!!!

As a copywriter you can play with grammar in ways you couldn’t as a business writer or an academic.

I now also teach Functional English Skills to apprentices, and so I have to ensure I’m keeping myself in check to the standard!

The basics

Your sentence must have a capital letter at the beginning and a full stop at the end.

Names of things (eg, a person, a job role, a place) should use capital letters at the start of each word.

For example, Mark Smith is the Company Accountant and is based in Timbucktoo.

If you use commas in a complex sentence, the middle section must be able to be removed and the sentence still make sense when read.

For example: When I visited the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, last Tuesday, it rained all day but didn’t spoil our enjoyment.

(If you remove ‘last Tuesday’ the sentence will still make sense.)

Be particularly careful when using ‘and’ or ‘but’ in a sentence. Many people make the mistake of putting the comma before the ‘and’ or ‘but, when in fact it should come after. If you remove the middle part of the sentence, it will no long read correctly without the joining word.

Lists

If you are writing a list, make sure you use commas correctly. (This is one of my biggest soap box issues!)

As you come to the end of the list, you’ll more than likely use the word ‘and’ between the last two items.

If you don’t use a comma after the item before ‘and’, the ‘and’ joins the last two items together.

For example:

I went to the shop and bought bread, milk, salt, potatoes and cheese. (Wrong – to the best of my knowledge there is no such single item as potatoes and cheese!)

I went to the shop and bought bread, milk, salt, potatoes, and cheese. (Correct)

This rule also applies if you are using ‘etc’ at the end of a list. It needs a comma before it.

Bullet Points

If you are using bullet points, the correct way is to use a ‘:’ prior to them and not use a full stop at the end of each point.

For me, the use of the ‘:’ is essential… but then either use a full stop at the end of each point or don’t use any.

As long as it’s consistent I tend not to worry.

Length of paragraphs

This is where judgment comes into it.

Think about the audience when thinking about the length of paragraphs.

For something which is going to be published online – a blog, a social media post, etc – one sentence is long enough to make up a paragraph.

It’s all about making it easy to read.

However, if you were writing a letter to someone, or a business document, or an essay, then you use a new paragraph when the subject changes.

So, using the text directly above this line – if it were a letter then I would have written it more like this:

This is where judgment comes into it. Think about the audience when thinking about the length of paragraphs.

For something which is going to be published online – a blog, a social media post, etc – one sentence is long enough to make up a paragraph. It’s all about making it easy to read.

However, if you were writing a letter to someone, or a business document, or an essay, then you use a new paragraph when the subject changes.

Five paragraphs have become three.

Words you can’t use at the start of a sentence

At school we are taught that you can’t use words like ‘and’ and ‘so’ at the beginning of a sentence.

Absolute rubbish.

Use whatever you want to.

Apostrophes

Ok, this is a big one for many people.

You use an apostrophe (‘) if you join two words together and remove a letter.

For example:

It is becomes it’s

Do not becomes don’t

You are becomes you’re

You also use an apostrophe if something belongs to someone.

For example:

Claire’s coat (it is the coat belonging to Claire)

The dog’s ball (the ball belongs to the dog)

It does get more complex than this, but I’ll leave apostrophes here for now.

The use of ‘therefore’ and ‘however’

If you use ‘therefore’ or ‘however in a sentence, a comma should be used before and after.

For example:

It was a hot day, therefore, I put my hat on to protect my hair.

The weather forecast said it might rain, however, I took a chance and went for a walk without an umbrella.

If used at the start of a sentence, as the first word, a comma must be used immediately after.

When to use ‘…’

The use of three dots indicates there is more to come.

I’ve used them a number of times in this blog already.

An Interrobang

My favourite word when it comes to grammar is interrobang!

‘What is one?’ I hear you ask…

It is a combination of question marks and exclamation marks…

!!?!!

Hyphens

Now this is another of my pet peeves.

I have no idea where this trend has come from, but I keep seeing hyphens attached to the end of a word… being used instead of a comma!!!

Why???!!!???

Let’s use the sentence I used earlier:

When I visited the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, last Tuesday, it rained all day but didn’t spoil our enjoyment.

How is it right to be written it like this…

When I visited the Yorkshire Wildlife Park- last Tuesday, it rained all day but didn’t spoil our enjoyment.

I ask you!!!

It’s just wrong.

Obviously, hyphens are also correctly used to join two words together, with no gap at either side of them.

For me grammar is important

We all make mistakes when we’re in a rush or just putting our thoughts out there.

I have to go back through my own work and correct my grammar.

And it’s probably still not perfect.

But grammar is important if you want to appear professional.

For me, I can’t send work to a client with incorrect grammar…

Grammar is also important if you want someone to be able to read your words and take the correct meaning from them – as the example right at the top of this blog demonstrated.

There are AI tools out there which will help if you’re not sure about your grammar skills. The only problem with these is that sometimes they don’t understand what you’re trying to say and so change the meaning from what you intended.

Anyway, grammar lesson over.

I know some people will disagree with some of the things I’ve stated above, and that’s perfectly ok.

For me grammar is important and so I set my standards for me and my business.

The author

Claire Taylor Foster is the founder of Raspberry Flamingo Copywriting and Content Marketing.

She started her copywriting and marketing after leaving school way too long ago to mention! Direct Response Copy is her passion. Read more on Claire here.

As far as Claire’s concerned, if copy and content doesn’t contain ‘on-page’ SEO, then it’s pointless publishing it! (Unless of course, paid advertising is going to drive the traffic.)

Tags English language, grammar, grammar skills, how to use grammar

The issues with AI generated content

What Google are after with long form text

Raspberry Flamingo’s Editing Service

The author

To Book a consultation

To Arrange a callback

E-E-A-T – Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness – In website copy

Know, Like and Trust

Your website is your ultimate marketing tool

Brochure websites

Google’s ‘People-First Approach’

Keywords and E-E-A-T

AI’s failing

The importance of consistency of copy and content style

Getting E-E-A-T into your website copy and content

E-E-A-T in summary

The author

School education

Realising grammar is important

What I believe to be important in grammar

The basics

Lists

Bullet Points

Length of paragraphs

Words you can’t use at the start of a sentence

Apostrophes

The use of ‘therefore’ and ‘however’

When to use ‘…’

An Interrobang

Hyphens

For me grammar is important

The author

To Book
a consultation

To Arrange
a callback