Writing Arena

OK, so there’s plenty of information on the site about persuasive writing already, including the specific posts on persuasive writing ks2 and persuasive writing ks3, but I thought I’d do a step by step on how to write a persuasive essay.

This advice should cover all levels and aims to keep things as simple as possible, without leaving out any persuasive gems.

Planning a persuasive essay

Always give yourself enough time to plan your persuasive essay, even if that only constitutes a few notes. I always used to hate planning essays as it seemed like additional work that wasn’t really worth the effort. However, a quick brainstorming session before starting your essay can help you put together more ideas and improve the ones you already have.

Things you should consider when planning your persuasive essay:

1. What are you trying to persuade people about? Write it down and keep referring back to it when you get stuck.
2. What are your main points? For a good persuasive essay you need to think of at least four or five points to support your main point of view. Write down everything you can possibly think of, regardless of how weak it seems. One idea can help you think of others and no points should be wasted.
3. What are the opposing views? A great method for persuading readers is to think of the opposing arguments and how they can be discredited. You don’t want to base long parts of your essay on the opposing views, but a short paragraph shooting down the other side of the argument can be a good addition to any persuasive essay.

Starting a persuasive essay

Always start a persuasive essay by clearly stating your point of view. Don’t let yourself waffle on or elaborate on your point too greatly, as you’ll do that in the later paragraphs when you present your different points of view. In my opinion a good persuasive essay should have a two (or three maximum) sentence introduction.

Persuasive essay paragraphs

After your introductory paragraph, aim to have another four paragraphs. Each one of those four paragraphs should contain a valid point to support your main argument. The first sentence of each paragraph should be the point itself. The second sentence should explain fully why that point supports your main point of view. You might then have a third sentence with additional evidence or examples to support that point.

By the end of the main body of your persuasive essay, you should have at least four paragraphs of similar size and if you’ve followed the formula, it should flow nicely.

Concluding a persuasive essay

The last paragraph of your persuasive essay is the conclusion, which will probably be longer than your introduction but should be just as direct. Recap your strongest points and explain why they prove your bottom line point of view. The last sentence of the essay should be memorable and leave readers thinking about your opinion and why it is valid.

Persuasive essay tips

Here are a few more quick-fire additional persuasive essay tips to remember:

1. Don’t go on for too long. If you’re particularly passionate about the subject matter and have lots to say it can be easy to go on and on, but don’t. Edit everything down to the direct point and only keep the most important information. A concise, well written essay that communicates your best points will get a much better response than simply forcing as much in as possible.
2. Avoid repetition. You should never use the same words or phrases too much in any form of writing as it disrupts the flow of sentences and lessens the impact of what is being said.
3. Proof read. Make sure you read your essay through at least once or twice to fish out any mistakes and errors. This can be the difference between a top grade and a less impressive mark.
4. Consider your audience. Who are you writing this persuasive essay for? Do you have to explain everything in detail or can it be assumed your audience know a little bit about the subject in question. You should think about this and it should be reflected in your writing-style.

I hope this little post has helped you with your persuasive essay. Please feel free to use the comments below as your chance to ask questions, share views or add your own input.

I recently had to take some text that had been formatted into newspaper-like columns and put it into a word document. Only problem was, I couldn’t get it out of the the column format, no matter what I did.

Fortunately I found this cool little line break removal tool.

Just paste your text into the top box, push the magic button and it appears in the bottom box with the line breaks removed.

Easy.

In this section I will not only explain exactly what SEO copywriting is, but how you can do it yourself, the things you’ll need to be successful and what the benefits are.

What is SEO copywriting?

I’ll start by explaining the (very) basics. SEO means Search Engine Optimisation which is anything you do to a website to improve its visibility on search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN.

A website that does well on search engines (mainly Google) will get thousands or even millions of visitors a day so SEO is a huge market as you can imagine, particularly for advertisers trying to sell their products online.

Copywriting is one way of improving a sites SEO performance because search engines work out the best sites based on written content (as well as more technical aspects of the website design).

SEO copywriting is basically writing content for web pages that targets a specific set of words, so that when people type in these words on Google (and other search engines) it is your website that gets displayed.

SEO copywriting jobs

There are many companies that will hire people to just do SEO writing on their website and nothing else and this shows how important SEO writing actually is. Speaking from personal experience, my first writing job was as an SEO copywriter, even though I didn’t know it at the time. This has since developed into a strong interest of mine, hence why this website you see now stands before you.

Many SEO copywriters work on a freelance basis for different websites, so if you’re a writer and have some spart time or want to make some cash, this is certainly something you should look into.

Is SEO copywriting hard?

No is the simple answer. If you can string coherent sentences together then you already have the ability to do well with SEO copywriting. However, sometimes your integrity as a writer might become compromised because you’re asked to write quickly and not always to the highest standards. This is because a website needs a lot of pages to perform well on search engines. Hundreds, thousands or even millions of pages are required so often speed is of the essence with SEO copywriting.

Basics of SEO copywriting

What you’re trying to achieve with SEO copywriting is telling the search engine exactly what a particular page is about. So, if you’re writing a page about red curtains you need to damn well make sure that the search engines know your page is about red curtains.

The title of your page should always be the main phrase you’re targeting e.g. ‘Red Curtains’

The first sentence should always include the exact phrase you’re targeting e.g. ‘If you’re looking to buy red curtains then there are many styles to choose from…’

You should look to repeat the exact phrase at least 3 or 4 more times on the page in different sentences.

If you can’t find a way to fit in the exact phrase then use parts of it e.g. ‘Red is a great colour for any room’ or ‘Buying curtains isn’t always easy’.

To place further emphasis on your target phrase so that search engines know it’s important you can make it bold or italic or both.

Advanced SEO Copywriting

I call this section advanced because it probably goes beyond what has to be done to be successful with SEO copywriting. However, this advice will certainly be of use if you’re starting your own website or looking to boost traffic on an existing one.

Keyword research tools - Keyword research tools are huge online databases that track what people are searching for. You can use them to find out how many people are searching for your target phrase and similar ones. So for example if you typed in ‘red curtains’ you might get results like this:

red curtains - 52

red curtain - 37

spotty red curtains - 20

dark red curtains - 17

etc

etc

The benefit of these keyword research tools to SEO copywriting is that you can find other popular phrases to use. So you might include the phrase ’spotty red curtains’ in your writing to target another phrase other than just ‘red curtains’. Including all (or as many of) the words in your writing that a keyword research tool shows you will almost certainly boost the number of visitors you get from search engines.

Link text - If you use your target phrase as link it puts further emphasis on it so search engines are more likely to take notice. This is much the same as making it bold or italic but far more effective. So, if I mentioned ‘red curtains’ I would make that phrase a link to another page about ‘red curtains’.

SEO copywriting mistakes

Many people think that search engines punish websites that deliberately have SEO writing on their pages. However, the opposite is actually true. Search engines like to be told exactly what a specific web page is all about so repeating phrases and making things bold actually helps them and they reward you for that with higher rankings.

OK, you shouldn’t just repeat phrases over and over again like a huge list and write things that don’t make sense, but as long as you’re sensible, you can write uninhibited in whatever style you want.

I hope this has proved helpful (to someone). Hopefully you’ll have found this very page through a search engine which will prove my competence and also provide you with some light irony.