Early in 2014 Nicolas Di Tempora of Copywriting In Action, came to me, referred from a mutual friend (thanks Hilda!). Nicolas wanted to know what could be done to improve his rankings on Google for his most important search terms which were “Copywriting courses” and “copywriting course Melbourne”.
OK this is probably the worst blog image ever but hey, I AM IN DEMAND THUS VERY BUSY. Anyway it proves I got him on the first page of Google, so whatever.
At the time, he was languishing on the 3rd page. Anything off the first page is next to useless. We did some SEO magic that got him on the first page FTW!
Nicolas didn’t really know me from Adam but he took a chance and hired me to do an SEO audit of his website, make recommendations going forward and do a SEO Foundations set-up on his website.
First Stop: 2nd Page of Google
The results were not instantaneous (I never said they would be), we got him to page 2 pretty quickly but then we had to kick back and wait. Well, I did, but Nicolas needed to get blogging!
Second Stop: 1st Page of Google! Woot!
Fast forward a couple of months and I suddenly thought to check how Nicolas’s website was going in Google and was delighted to see that he is now ranking, in Australia, number 6 for copywriting courses, number 8 for copywriting course and a sweet, sweet number 4 for “copywriting course Melbourne”. And all of this in a HIGHLY competitive keyword environment.
Nicolas Di Tempora of Copywriting In Action. Can you tell the dude is a musician?
I Asked Nicolas a Few Questions About His Experience Working With Me
Me: What solution were you seeking when you hired me?
Nicolas: The same solution that everybody wants, I wanted to be on the 1st page of Google. I was getting on the 3rd page, sometimes the 4th page but getting to page 2 and then 1 was proving a difficult challenge. I was competing with the big players, so in the end a friend recommended you and I gave you a shot and it turned out the first shot was the right shot!
Me: What do I provide that you value the most?
Nicolas: You know the whole world of SEO. You understood the environment that we’re all in and you know how to navigate the ins-and-outs and the laneways and byways. I’m like a tourist with a map but a local knows the best place to get coffee – I only know the tourist spots –and what they say in SEO ads.
The way you worked was much more collaborative approach. We worked together. So at the end of it I have more of grasp of it so I can do some of the day to day SEO stuff rather than always having to go back to hiring someone to do it. And you allowed for that, which is the kind of working relationship I like.
Me: What has been the result of working with me?
Nicolas: Well – we got on to page 1 – and we got onto it pretty quickly!
What would you tell others who are considering hiring me?
Nicolas: Give him a go! I got onto page 1 and so I would certainly recommend you, both as someone who gets results and also because you enabled me, through your knowledge and insight, to have more control over the situation of getting ranked on Google page one.
What We Did To Get Nicolas’ Website The First Page of Google
Nicolas came to me with a pretty good website really. I get some clients come to me with either a terrible website or no website at all, and therefore really bad Google rankings and frankly, this is sometimes easier because it’s low hanging fruit, but Nicolas’s website was built in WordPress, had a blog that he was getting a reasonable amount of traffic for and he had a few plumb links which were great assets. Those links by the way are from .edu.au websites which are SEO GOLD. So it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park to fix up.
So to make a long story short, I had a good look through the site and really picked Nicolas’s brains regarding his strategy and focus. Now it turned out Nicolas had two areas of focus in his website, copywriting and art direction.
Sometimes Your Domain Name Has To Go
So what I recommended was pretty radical – I asked Nicolas to purchase a new domain name. The old one was fine but it was hedging its bets both ways and didn’t include the keywords in full. I knew we couldn’t buy copywritingcourses.com.au or the plural version either but I highly recommended getting the keyword copywriting in his URL. Nicolas did and in such a way that he also still kept his branding alive in the domain name too Copywritinginaction.com.au
Now it is not always possible to do this, but it can sometimes be very, very clever to do so. But that isn’t all that makes a great Google ranking. We also needed to get some of his on-site ducks in a row, so I made Nicolas go and rewrite some pages to make sure they really targeted his keywords very accurately.
And I did some work to of course! I ran his site through my SEO Foundations set-up process, which is a way of making sure that you get your WordPress site set-up in such a way that, basically, Google likes. This involves setting up the site in ways that mean that Google can more easily:
A) crawl your website, so that means, read your website and access every page that you want Google to access properly and…
B) determine what your website is about.
C) Not get its knickers in a knot about duplicate content and dead-end links.
A Website Is A Tool – You Have To USE It To Get Results
So it was a bit of work but it didn’t take years and we got a great result, but I cannot claim all the glory because Nicolas has been busy USING his website to get results. He has been busy blogging and optimising his pages each time he makes a new page or blog post, which I showed him how to do.
Regular fresh content is great for SEO as is any social activity you can get from Facebook or Twitter or whatever.
And OF COURSE Nicolas blogs regularly because he is a copywriting expert – I asked him a few questions below about what he does.
Me: Tell us about what it is you do, who your target market is and what value you offer your customers…..
Nicolas: My target market is aspiring copywriters and start-up businesses who can’t afford to hire a copywriter and need to do it themselves, and need some help (or a lot) and professional communicators who are already in the job of writing professional communication pieces inline and in print who have either been thrown into the job without much knowledge of the craft of copywriting and get up to scratch.
I teach on campus at RMIT and CEA – copywriting courses and editing courses and clear writing course – the various disciplines around the job of professional writing and I started my online copywriting course last year because I was getting a lot of really great feedback which gave me the encouragement to set up my online course for people who want to or have to do the course online. It is very much like a classroom situation – very interactive, very one on one, there’s no leaving it all to your own devices. And it’s interesting because everybody brings in their own projects so we do work that is relevant to today’s work environment because they are doing a piece they are working on (in their employment). Or I can give them something to do.
What super power do you bring to your courses?
Nicolas: I don’t know of any other copywriter who does this: thinking on my feet, solving problems on my feet, in front of the class, do or die – it takes a lot of courage! It makes classes more interesting. I doubt many other copywriters would put themselves on the chopping block! To me it is very closely related to music, it’s improvising!
You can contact Nicolas via his website.
And if you would like some help to get YOUR website higher up the Google rankings, just contact me and we can have a look at what can be done.
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