12 Copywriting Hacks to Improve the Performance of Your Work

I’ve been a professional copywriter now for over 6 years. In that time, I’ve learned an unbelievable amount about digital marketing in general, and specifically about search engine optimization and content marketing. 

But mostly, I’ve learned about copywriting; what works and what doesn’t work, and how to get my work to perform. The vast, overwhelming majority of my work gets posted to websites with low domain authority scores that don’t focus on the UX afforded by the blogs. 

Which means the work rests squarely on me to generate traffic for those blogs. I need to find the keywords, search terms, and topics that are associated with genuine interest, convince Google to index and rank those posts favorably, and then, to get a live reader to click on my result and actually read the post. 

Sometimes it flops. And sometimes I write a post so good it gets thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of views per month. 

Here’s just about every little thing – call them copywriting hacks, if you will – that I’ve learned about how to get content to rank and get readers to show interest in my writing. 

Forget What You’ve Heard About AI 

AI is increasingly being leveraged by digital marketers, as well as by mediocre copywriters, because it is allegedly a panacea for all of creation’s woes. 

It is not. Granted, I have used and benefited from AI in the past but I have still not encountered a model that is effective at drafting copy that will perform. 

What AI does well is formatting; you can ask it to structure a blog and it will knock it out of the park. What it fails to do is get the information right. 

The problem, so far as I can see it, has nothing to do with “tone,” or “warmth,” although those are things commonly cited as issues with AI. Quite the contrary, large language models are becoming increasingly and convincingly realistic.

The issue is that it hallucinates. I’ve asked AI some pretty basic questions and been downright alarmed at how factually inaccurate the outputs have been. 

When we’re talking in generalities, this is not a big deal notwithstanding the fact that increased reliance on the outputs of AI models is probably going to bring down the collective intelligence of our species – but once we get to specifics, the issue is much broader, and much more serious. 

See, the majority of writing I do, I do for clients in the outdoor sphere. I have to furnish real information about shooting and fishing and outdoor sports in general. I simply can’t use AI for these things because (for whatever reason) it doesn’t give me accurate answers. 

I tell you the same thing. If you want your copywriting to rise above the rest of the average results in the search engine pages, write it yourself, the old fashioned way. 

Here, let’s put it this way. If you’re reading this post because you found it in the search engine results pages, that should substantiate my cautions against AI. 

I did not use AI at all for this post; not for keyword research, not for formatting, and certainly not for generative copy. 

Yet you, dear reader, found me in the search results and presumably are reading anyway. If that is not proof of my claim, I can say no more. 

The Value of Specificity  

Suppose you want to write a blog about – copywriting hacks. 

You need to give specific, actionable advice. Don’t speak in platitudes or generalities. You want to avoid telling people things they either already know in the backs of their minds or could figure out through minimal deduction. 

For instance, I’m not here to tell you that your copy needs to be personable and should be free of grammatical errors. Perhaps you weren’t actively thinking about that but even a little bit of cogitation would have brought you to that conclusion, with no help from me or anyone, else for that matter.

Taking this a step further, you need to actually write about something people need to know about and then tell them something they don’t know. 

So, for instance, let’s just say you wanted to teach your readers how to…clean a pair of leather boots. We’ll keep this in my wheelhouse since I specialize in writing about outdoor sports. 

I could tell you to brush your boots off and store them somewhere clean and dry. That’s true but it’s also kind of common sense. That means it’s probably going to be in every other article on the same topics. 

But, did you know that you should unlace your boots and meticulously clean out the tongue, where debris can hide? 

Did you know that if your boots are wet you should never place them next to a heat source like a furnace or a fire, which will dry the leather out too aggressively, and which can cause it to crack? 

Did you know that leather periodically needs not just to be cleaned, but conditioned with an oil like neatsfoot, which fills the leather’s pores, driving out water and keeping the leather fibers supple, so they don’t warp or crack? 

And did you know that compound neatsfoot oil should be avoided because it can be damaging not to the leather, but to the threads that hold the whole boot together? 

I could go on but I think you get my point. Whatever you’re writing about, make sure you are specific and carefully detail your observations. The more thorough you are in your exposition and explanation, the better your copy will perform organically, in the wilds of the internet. 

Understand Your Audience 

I won’t harp on this one too much because it’s a generality and I told you to avoid those. I will say a few words however since it is important to know your audience even though that’s sort of common sense. 

It’s often been said that an “SEO copywriter” can write about any industry, without any specific expertise. 

That is, lamentably, and categorically, true. I can write about theoretical physics or ballet, and I can structure that article according to best-practices for content marketing or SEO. What I can’t do is pass convincingly as though I know what I’m talking about – even if my research is good. 

Let me see if I can find an example. Take the following post on fly fishing basics. Here is an excerpt from this:

“These flies can be found in any specialty store in thousands of models. Knowing the right one to buy is related to the fish you are trying to catch and the type of water you are fishing.”

There are a few issues with this. One is that the writer calls fly patterns “models.” Anyone that knows a 3 weight from 5 weight will know that that terminology is staccato and, while not technically wrong, jarringly off-putting. 

Digging further, we have:

“Fishing freshwater fly requires you standing in the water, mostly in waders casting your rod in a way that imitates a dancing fly on the surface of the water.”

I’m not sure if I’ve ever read a worse, though technically not inaccurate, categorization of fly fishing. You most certainly do not need to wade in order to fly fish, and in some instances, it might be advisable not to do so – for instance, if you want to avoid spooking wary or skittish fish. 

Secondly, the manner of your casting, and the techniques you employ while doing so, have utterly less than nothing to do with the action of the fly once it hits the water. You cast to present (or place) the fly – what you do after is what gives the fly action. 

Anyway, I don’t want to get too deep into beating up a writer I do not know and probably never will. I’m just making a very important point that I hope you understand: if you want to understand your audience, you will need to do more than 5 minutes, or even an hour, of research. 

Here, let’s take a slightly different approach with a stock image that I found:

Look closely that image, and you’ll see that the “fisherman” in it is using a massive, conventional big game reel. Those reels are reserved for fighting the biggest and strongest of fish – sturgeon, tuna, swordfish, sharks, and species like that.

I don’t know what that guy in that image is doing on that little creek, but I know what he isn’t doing: fishing. To make matters worse, he has the reel basically inverted. It’s literally upside down. That’s the icing on the cake.

So you can see, lack of authority in a vertical doesn’t just come across in copywriting. Photographers are guilty of it too, and a photograph that doesn’t understand his or her audience will take glaringly unconvincing, even cringey, photos, like the one above.

Truth is, there is no substitute for experience, and this alone is the single best way to become a good copywriter. Know what you’re talking about; that’s how you’ll know your audience. 

Don’t Get Too Hung Up on Keywords

Let me be clear: keywords are important. They are still the single most important (and primary) way that Google determines whether to index a page and where to put it. That’s just the nature of the beast. 

But if you write something so damn good that readers find it, stay on the page, and even, dare I say, link to it, Google will get a lot more flexible with what it indexes that page for and where it places it in the rankings. 

Point is, if what you write is really good, it may eventually rank for keywords that aren’t even directly present in the article – or at the very least, which don’t appear in it as an exact match. 

Don’t get me wrong. Focusing on keywords is a good way to get started and it will help you build authority. But once you have a bunch of posts ranking on a domain, you can start to lay off the SEO-stringency a little bit. Write about what you want your readers to know about and what you know will provide interested readers with value. 

If you can do that, that post will most likely get indexed, most likely be ranked favorably, and if found, will more than likely generate positive interaction metrics like a high CTR and time on page. 

Here’s another proof-is-in-the-pudding moment. You found this post in the organic search results, right? I did no keyword research for it. Let that be a lesson.

Post Structure Matters 

Keywords don’t matter that much. Post structure does. 

What I mean, specifically, is that the way your post is laid out will have two big impacts. One is on how crawlers interact with it and thereby how it gets ranked, and the second is on actual user behavior. 

In the first instance, a post that is laid out appropriately, sectioned off with headers that break up all the relevant sections, Google and other search engines will look on it more favorably than one that is just a solid wall of text. 

Granted, a solid wall of text can still rank well, if it contains good information. But if you write in stream-of-consciousness, you will be fighting against the current. 

Secondly, breaking up your post into short, digestible sections (as I have done here) and according to subtopics, readers will find the whole thing more palatable, too. The chances are that some of them only landed on your post looking for one small specific thing you were writing about and will skip reading the whole thing just to home in on what they want and read that section. 

Breaking up your posts makes them friendly to skimmers and also makes it easier for readers to find the most relevant (or just the most interesting sections). 

Pose Questions, and Answer Them, in Headers 

On the topic of post structure, the single most important piece of actionable advice I can offer is this: take advantage of headers by making them into questions, and, where possible, answers. 

For instance, let’s say I wanted to write a post about how to get an article to show up in the search results. 

My title might be something like:

• How to get your post to rank in the search results.

It’s simple, straightforward, and structured like something someone would actually type into the Google search bar. 

Then, in that same post, I might have some of the following as subheaders: 

• Insert keywords in your H2s and H3s
• Answer common questions in the headers 
• Take questions from the people also ask section 
• Skyscrape the titles of the top 5 entries in the SERPs 

In each case, the header is offering a small bit of digestible and highly actionable information. Direct and succinct, they are all perfect in their own way. 

Know What Tools to Use for Inspiration 

You can learn from what posts are performing currently in the search engine results pages, whether you wrote them or not, to make your writing better. 

Here are a few ways to gain some inspiration:

• Look at the top several posts in the search engine results pages. Look at the title, the topic, then dive into the post and see what sorts of topics they’re covering and questions they’re answering. Use that information to fill out your post. This will increase its chances of ranking well. 
• Look at the People Also Ask section of the search results. This will show you what questions you need to answer in your post. Answer as many of these as possible to increase the chances that you show up. 
• Log into Facebook or Instagram and see what posts a company you follow has created. Consider taking the subject matter of a post that got a lot of attention on social media and reconfiguring it into a blog to increase the chances that it ranks well and gets attention. If it did well on social media there’s a good chance there’s buzz on search engines surrounding the topic. 
• Use tools like “Answer the Public” and other social listening tools that will give you some insight into the sorts of topics that are trending around search terms, as well as what questions people have. 
• Look up a keyword you want to write something about, find a forum entry that’s in the search results, and reverse engineer a long-form blog post or news article about what you see people talking about in the forum. It’s effectively guaranteed to be interesting information since people are talking about it of their own free will and volition.

These are just a few of the tools that you can use to come up with questions that you can then answer in your copy surrounding a topic cluster. 

Use Facts and Figures 

I can write an article about basically anything without including any facts or figures, but the more figures you can include, the more convincing your article will be because it will be inherently substantiated by data. Just make sure you understand the implications of the data you’re publishing because, as they say, figures lie and liars figure. 

Anywhere you can get away with including data, be sure to do so. It will benefit your writing and Google will be more likely to respect your post as an authority. 

Fall-Back on Proven Post Techniques and Formats 

Sometimes, you need to write something that you expect to perform and are just fresh out of ideas and creativity. As a copywriter I can sympathize. I pride myself on interest and proficiency but I’ve still been there. 

On those days, I just use what I know works. Here are some ideas you can put into practice that don’t take too much effort. 

• Create a list of FAQs and answer them all in sequence as thoroughly as you can. This is a proven format that offers a lot of value and has a good chance of generating a lot of visibility. 
• Create a listicle of “best of” products, practices or ideas.
• Write a how-to on some process; it could be basic and high-level or highly detailed and specific. The concept is a proven performer in both cases even though specific is usually better. 
• Write a Q&A on the topic. 
• Do a review of a specific product or technique relevant to the topic. 
• Write a checklist for people looking to get started with something relevant to the topic about which you want to write. 
• Write a high-level “Everything You Need to Know About…” type of guide. 

This is of course just a short list of ideas, but they are all low-hanging fruit and proven to work by results. 

Learn from Your Past Posts 

As a copywriter, maybe you don’t spend too much time in Google Analytics or Google Search Console. Let’s change that. 

These are arguably your two best tools as a copywriter, hands down. In them, you can see which of your posts is getting visibility, what it’s ranking for, what its average position is, and how many clicks it’s getting. 

Through Google Analytics, you can glean even more information, such as the number of sessions and how long people are spending on the page. If you write for eCommerce clients, as I do, you can even see through GA4 if the blog page has any conversion value. 

If you see that a post has no sessions and no time on page, well, little explanation is needed there. For some reason or other, it flopped. I hate to be the guy to tell you this, but you’re going to have posts like this. Don’t let it discourage you. 

On the flipside, Google Analytics will also show you which of your posts are top-performers, how people are landing on those pages, and how they’re interacting with the page once they get there. 

Filter by time on page or sessions, then see which blogs have the best user engagement metrics. Those blogs are performing for some reason or other – visit them and see what you wrote about (if you can’t remember) and then structure a new blog on a totally different topic, but using the same format or technique. 

You will find that you can write more and more effective blogs down the line by learning from which of your past entries did not perform – and which did. 

Leverage the Authority of Those Previous Posts 

Here’s a quick copywriting hack, and one that I won’t beat to death. If you have a post that is performing well and are planning on writing a post for that same domain, go into that previous post and embed a link in there to your new post once you get it posted. 

That will leverage the authority of a post that is already ranking, and ranking well, to transfer some authority to the nascent post in order to give it a leg up in the world. 

Just use this copywriting hack sparingly, because you don’t want to ruin the UX of an old but good post with a bunch of outbound links to new posts that readers might not be too interested in – yet, at least. 

Be Sparing with Outbound Links 

Last but not least, here’s one more copywriting hack – not quite a copywriting technique – to apply to your articles. 

You can use outbound links to increase the credibility of your post, but be very sparing with them, especially if you’re taking ideas from the post to which you intend to link. 

Google will see that and then will sort of see your post like a copy, even though it might not be. Therefore, use outbound links as little as possible because you want your post (not some other) to be the authority. 

By the way, this does not mean not to use outbound links. Just keep them to a minimum and use only where they will make your post better and more believable. 

Want More Copywriting Hacks from Yours Truly?

There you have some of the best copywriting hacks – if I can call them that – that I’ve learned in my time as a professional copywriter. All I can tell you is I’ve leaned on all of them at some point or other and they have definitely helped me produce copy that generates sessions, time on page, and leads for my clients. They can do the same for you. 

If you’re looking for more actionable information, check out: 

• How to Get Images to Rank
• How to Write to Get Featured in a Google AI Overview
• How Do Blogs Help SEO?
• Answering User Queries for Better SEO
• How Many Blog Posts Does It Take to Get Traffic?

Alternatively, you could get in touch with one of our SEO specialists and they may be able to help you out.