Terms
Please note that by placing an order on this site you automatically agree to these terms and in this FAQ have been furnished with extremely comprehensive information on what our Copywriting, SEO and link building services entail.
These terms are subject to change at any time.
Copywriting and General Shop Use Terms
Orders
1. We will only start work on your project when you have placed an order online and paid in full for your chosen service. For bespoke packages, we will send you a PayPal or Google Checkout invoice and will only start work when this is paid in full. This payment constitutes a legally binding contract between you and The Copy Box.
2. We always provide a fixed price for every product or service and charge VAT on all orders.
3. After payment has been made, a member of our team will contact you by phone to take a creative brief of up to 30 minutes. Your project will then be delivered in MS Word .doc format to a deadline agreed by both parties.
Payment
4. All payments must be made by debit or credit card through our secure online PayPal or Google Checkout system. All prices are subject to VAT at the current rate.
Revisions
5. You must review all submitted work within seven days and flag up any revisions. We will then make one set of revisions within the scope of the existing brief, to an agreed deadline. Items marked as “one draft/budget item” only include one version to keep our prices competitive.
6. We make every effort to ensure all copy is delivered free from spelling mistakes and other errors. However, it is your responsibility to check all work before final publication, as we cannot be held liable for any errors that may subsequently appear.
7. Copyright for your project is transferred to you on final payment. You can then use the work in any way you wish, although we strongly advise publishing the work in the media for which it was produced.
Changes
8. If you change the brief after a project has started, any extra time taken by us in researching, writing or producing your project will incur an additional charge.
Cancellation
9. If you cancel a project for any reason after you have instructed us to start work, a charge will be made on the actual time spent on your project to that point – to a minimum of 25% of the project fee. The balance will be refunded to you.
Promotion
10. We reserve the right to use your project or any positive feedback in order to promote The Copy Box.
SEO and Link Building Terms and FAQ
Keyword Research FAQ
Q. What are keywords?
A. Keywords are the words or phrases that a user is most likely to use when searching for your business on the Web. In addition to commonly used search terms, keywords should reflect the main topic or message of your Web page.
Keywords should be present throughout the Web page content – in page copy, title tag, Meta tags, headings, attributes and link text. Such on-page optimisation (content on your site) is only 20% of the equation though – the other 80% concerns off-page optimisation (building links into your site). It is using keywords as anchor text to build high quality links to your company website that we are most concerned with in providing our service.
Q. What is anchor text?
A. Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive in the search engines.
Q. Why is keyword research so important?
It allows the right audience to find you. And you have quite a bit of control over that audience just by focusing on different keywords. And yes, you can have different pages focusing on different keywords and then you can gear each page to its specific audience. If you target the right keywords you will be able to drive qualified traffic to your website. These visits don’t always come from big top level words like “cars”, but rather they come from long-tail search terms like “red sports car”. With the longer phrase, you have more of an idea of what the searcher is looking for and this allows you to be super targeted on your page. This also means that you may not see huge amounts of visitors, but the traffic you do see will convert at a higher rate.
Q. What exactly are long-tail keywords again?
Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases composed of two or more words that collectively are more specific than a single keyword. Long-tail keywords are more likely to convert to sales than shorter, more generic keywords because there is less competition for them. Generally, the more specific the search, the closer the searcher is to the act of purchasing a product or service.
Q. Is keyword research included in your service?
Yes. For the budget price of this service and for the reasons outlined above, we are never going to rank your site for very competitive short terms. If you had an unlimited budget (such as the SEO spend of a large corporation), you could rank for just about any term you liked. However, the purpose of our service is to rank your site for these long-tail phrases, that have low top 10 competition but enough monthly searches to attract new customer to your site.
The keyword research process is crucial to your success, and we offer this high value service free of charge with ongoing link building packages. However, we do charge for this for one-off packages and new site builds. We will suggest some low competition, medium search volume targeted keywords with good commercial intent – and agree upon these with you before we start work on your link building.
Link Building FAQ
Q. Why are inbound links important?
A. According to search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing, inbound links are the single most important factor in determining a websites’ success in ranking well and staying there. Search engines used to just count the amount of links coming into your site, but now the likes of Google also assess the quality and relevance of each link coming into your site.
Google gives more weight to inbound links from important pages than they do to inbound links from lesser pages. They call the idea “Page Rank”. Google is the world’s number one search engine, and currently provides the results for around 65% of all the searches done in the world. Because of that, it is vitally important for any website that relies on search engine traffic to do well in Google. Doing well in Google means making the site ‘important’ in Google’s eyes and, to do that, the site must have good inbound links – as many of them as possible, and preferably from important pages (pages with medium to high Page Rank values). Think of each quality inbound link as a vote of popularity for your company website, a very powerful factor when combined with good web design and relevant, engaging on-site content.
Q. Why is it important to build links naturally?
A. Search engines like Google don’t like it if you try to ‘game’ their listings by building huge numbers of links too quickly to help your business gain an artificially high ranking in the ‘natural’ search engine rankings, (the natural rankings are on the left after a search, paid adverts are at the top and on the right). As each link into your site can be viewed as a vote of popularity, it would be too easy to build thousands of links very fast and get top rankings for all your web pages.
Google in particular wants to provide users with valuable and relevant information on pages in its index that exactly match what the user was searching for, so they don’t appreciate you building millions of spammy automated links just to try and sell stuff. They expect links to be built in a natural way based on the merit and relevance to search of your on-page content – and will drop sites in the rankings if they abuse this principle. We build links up over time in a natural way – based on the authority of your site and relevance of your content – which ensures a high quality foundation of incoming links into your website that the search engines will love.
Q. How long does it take to get to the top of the rankings?
A. This depends on the competitiveness of your keywords and the industry you work in. Some keywords will rank very well within a few weeks, while others will take longer. Once you have established the position of your rankings, it’s important to keep up your link building efforts -because you can be sure your competitors will keep link building for the same keywords and after time you will start to drop down the rankings again.
Link building is an ongoing organic process much like losing weight – you have to put in an initial effort to shed the weight, and then maintain your exercise levels to ensure it stays off. That’s why we recommend a minimum of three months with our service – but it’s advisable to keep going month-on-month to keep ranking well for your chosen keywords.
In general, your experience of our link building service may pan out like this over a three-month period.
Month 1
New sites – your site will be indexed by the search engines and usually come in from outside the top 100.
Established sites with domain age and existing links – existing rankings will consolidate and rise slightly as the process of ‘reigniting’ the link building on a previously dormant site is re-instigated.
Month 2
New sites – rankings that have come into the top 100 will consolidate and further rise to usually settle on pages 3,4 and 5 across a pack of five chosen keywords.
Established sites with domain age and existing links – rankings will further consolidate and start rising more quickly, potentially reaching pages 2 and 3.
Month 3
New sites – Rankings will continue to rise to higher pages in the index, such as 2 and 3, with perhaps one or more keywords reaching page one.
Established sites with domain age and existing links – the continued rise in rankings will see your site reaching pages 1 and 2 with most keywords.
Month 4 onwards
Once keywords hit page one for both new and existing sites, you then have to keep link building to progressively get a larger amount of organic clickthroughs.
The breakdown of clickthrough rates in the top 10 organic listings of the major search engines is approximately:
Position 1: 42% of clicks
Position 2: 12% of clicks
Position 3: 8% of clicks
Position 4: 6% of clicks
Position 5: 5% of clicks
Position 6: 4% of clicks
Position 7: 3% of clicks
Position 8 onwards – all the remaining searches
What is the Google dance?
When building links to a new site or an existing site that has been dormant, Google’s algorithms obviously become alerted to the new activity – meaning software programmes called ‘robots’ are sent to your site to index your pages for your new chosen keywords.
For both new and previously dormant sites, this new activity means that most times the search engines will automatically pull your site from the rankings for review, to check if your keywords and in-links are relevant to the content of the page. Nine times out of 10, your site is then placed back in the index, often with higher rankings.
This process (which can happen at any time within this first three months), is called the ‘Google dance’ – and is nothing to worry about. Sometimes the process is carried out by a real human operator but this is rare given that Google indexes millions of web pages a day.
The purpose of the review is to establish the relevance, authority and trust of your site in relation to the search experience of the user. This is why we should always build sites that offer genuine value to the target audience, and ensure our on-page SEO efforts reflect this trust and relevance to search.
Q. What methods do you use to build links?
A. We use only honest and transparent methods to build your links, often known as ‘white hat’ link building. These strategies include article-marketing, links from authority sites in your industry, social bookmarking, blog posts and directory submissions. This mix helps to create a solid foundation of high quality links over time. However, should you require us to buy or rent links from unscrupulous link farms or similar link building schemes – you will have to go elsewhere.
Q. Can you guarantee my website gets a number one listing in Google?
A. No we can’t I’m afraid, and anyone who says they can is not being straight with you. Due to the organic and ever-changing nature of link building, rankings will go up and down over time as your competitors add new content to their own websites and build more links into their sites. In the face of such uncontrollable variables, our best practice service builds links to your site in a natural way that in all probability will increase your overall visibility in the search engines for your various keywords. Over time and with consistent attention, this will drive more traffic, leads and sales to your company website.
Website Traffic FAQ
Q. What exactly is website traffic?
A. Web traffic is the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a website, which is determined by the number of visitors and the number of pages they visit. Usually, companies monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic on their website to see which parts or pages of their site are popular and if there are any apparent trends, such as one specific page being viewed mostly by people in a particular country. You can monitor traffic by installing Google Analytics.
People tend to talk about ‘hits’ on their website as being important, but it’s the actual unique visitors you should be looking at. Hits include all the pages visited and actions taken by individual website users, plus software programmes called ‘robots’ crawling your site to index pages for the search engines. Although the latter are important, it’s the real unique visitors who can actually buy things that we should be most interested in monitoring when looking at website statistics. Although we don’t do this monitoring on your behalf, our link building increases the amounts of real targeted and unique visitors to your website over time – building leads and sales for your business.
Q. Can you guarantee my traffic will always go up?
A. Not for all of your keywords, no. Although your overall search engine visibility will have a general upward trend over time, there may be peaks and troughs in your rankings over time, despite constant link building. This is because link building is an organic process and your competitors will keep building both web content and inbound links, and you have to keep chipping away with your own link building efforts to stay in contention.
We have a proven track record for increasing our clients search engine rankings over time, but you will have great months, good months and average months in the course on an ongoing campaign. What is crucial is that you keep going, as if you stop building links your site may drop out of the rankings altogether in due course.
Q. My site is getting increased traffic but no new sales, why?
A. Our side of the bargain is to drive targeted traffic to your site in the form of highly relevant unique users, and to help your site rank better in the search engines. If you see an increase in traffic but you’re not making any extra sales, this is because your website is not converting customers well enough. To increase onsite conversions you need to constantly split test your headlines, offers, body copy and other on-page elements to ensure that your message is relevant, compelling and can drive sales.
We strongly advise you to install Google Analytics and Webmsater Tools onto every page of your website, including any order fulfilment or contact pages, so you can analyse the traffic coming to your site. If you do this in conjunction with calculating your average order value and website conversion rate – you can work out what a great return on investment link building services provide.
Q. Can I stop building links once my traffic goes up?
A. Yes you can, but it’s not recommended. You may see an increase in traffic and sales from using our service and decide to stop building links, but while you rest on your laurels your competitors will continue their link building efforts – meaning over time you will drop out of the top listings for your chosen keywords and all your hard work will be undone.
Q. Why can’t I just build links myself?
A. You can! There’s nothing to stop you building links to your company website yourself. But bear in mind that if you choose the wrong keywords, build links too fast or in an unnatural way – your efforts will be wasted. Link building is also very time-consuming to do properly, that’s why clients outsource it to us and get on with what they do best.
Q. Do you provide monthly reporting on my rankings?
A. Yes, we provide a detailed monthly report on the various rankings for your chosen keywords in the UK search engines, compared to their previous positions. We can provide reports for other countries too if required, such as the USA, Australia and Canada. Unless requested, your report will show your rankings in the top three search engines of Google, Bing and Yahoo.
* Please note: We do not provide lists of where links are placed – not because we have anything to hide but for the simple reason that we build links in a variety of ways and preparing lists of exactly where each one resides would be too time-intensive for our pricing model. In fact, adding this feature would make our budget SEO service unprofitable at the current advertised prices. The best testament and proof of our work is your rankings in the search engines for your various keywords, and we find the vast majority of clients are happy to receive their ranking report as evidence of our work.
If you are not happy with this element of our service, please do not place an order as we do not want to disappoint you.
On-page FAQ
Q. Can you write my meta tags?
A. Yes. Indeed we can’t start your link building until you have made some changes to your on-page set up to match the keywords we have researched for your site. This process is simple but you will need ftp access or help from your web designer to ensure it is done properly.
As stated above, SEO is 80% off page factors (link building), and 20% on-page factors – including meta tags and content, design, navigation, structure and load time amongst others) – but if you don’t have relevance between the two, the process just won’t work.
For example, if you choose keywords about ‘outdoor fireworks’ for a site about ‘indoor fireworks’ – the difference might not seem huge but Google will not rank your pages well for these terms as they will seem irrelevant. This might sound obvious, but if at the very least your on-page title tag, description, keywords and H1 tag don’t match your chosen keywords – we are not adequately telling the search engines what your website is about. To this end, we will provide you with the meta tag code to cut and paste into the header of your pages as part of the service.
Site security
It is your responsibility to ensure your site is properly protected from hackers. This means changing ftp passwords regularly and in the case of content management systems like WordPress, ensuring the most up to date software version is running so you don’t leave any security holes to be exploited. If your site is hacked during the link building process we can’t be held responsible for any drop in your rankings.
Site changes
During a project, if you modify the URL, meta tags or page content of the pages to which we are building links, without agreeing such changes with us first – we cannot be held responsible for any drop in search engine rankings that occur as a result. Unless we advise otherwise, it is best to leave your pages alone for the duration of the link building campaign.
Pricing and Getting Started FAQ
Q. What type of company is this service best suited for?
A. We have a proven track record of driving targeted visitors to the failing websites of companies of any size and in any niche. However, some industries are more competitive than others and good rankings may take a little longer to achieve in these cases. In general, our service is perfectly suited to small to medium sized businesses looking to attract more customers to their company websites.
Q. How much does your link building service cost?
A. Please refer to individual package pricing on each product in our shop. 100% payment in advance is required through our online Google Checkout system to start work.
Q. What happens after I sign up?
A. After you place your online order, within one working day we’ll send you a report of the keywords we have researched for your site, and that report will include where your site currently stands in the search engine rankings for those chosen keywords (depending which package you order). We’ll then start work on the link building for those set of keywords, sending you a new report on your rankings or evidence of link building every month (depending on the package you choose). If you want to add more keywords to your account, simply place another order with us for a new package and we’ll add these into the process.
Other factors
If you perform your keyword research correctly, get your on-page SEO factors in order, and build good quality relevant links – then in the majority of cases your site will rank well for your chosen keywords. However, there are a number of factors that also play a part in this process that are out of all our control – and you should be aware of these before we start.
These include amongst other things, at what frequency your competitors build links (and how many), how persistent you are in building links (this is a long term investment and you are not going to outrank your competition overnight), the conversion rate of your site and average customer value so you can assess your ROI – and the structure of the site itself.
These metrics should all be taken into account, and installing Goole Analytics and Webmaster Tools will help in this regard. Your web designer can install both of these easily and as mentioned it is recommended.
Finally, we review all websites for ‘seo-friendliness’ before we start link building, and it’s a sad fact that with some sites (especially content management systems and online shops), the site infrastructure is just not set up properly to encourage good search engine rankings. If we find this to be the case, then unfortunately we won’t be able to work with you on that site and a refund of any monies paid will be given if you’ve already placed an order online. However, this is a rare occurrence.
Just to reiterate:
Please note that by placing an order on this site you automatically agree to these terms and in this FAQ have been furnished with extremely comprehensive information on what our Copywriting, SEO and link building services entail.
These terms are subject to change at any time.
