Who I Work With

I work with subject matter experts (SMEs), product owners, UX designers, brand and marketing professionals, lawyers, and developers.

What I Do

My goal is to develop copy that converts well, ranks highly on search engines, and is easy for users to understand and follow. I do this in a number of ways.

Digital Copywriting and SEO

I use plain language principles to ensure that sales or informational copy is clear and easy for customers to understand — because if people don’t know what you’re saying or how you can help them, you risk losing your audience.
In other words, I put myself in the reader’s shoes to figure out what questions they might ask ahead of time, then make sure that what I write answers those questions.

I also keep technical considerations in mind to ensure that online copy is optimized for search, including taking long-tail keywords and voice search trends into account.

Editing

You may think of an editor as just a glorified spellchecker, but that’s a myth. From making sure that copy is reader-friendly, to ensuring that content is consistent across several documents and webpages, to managing feedback from multiple people at once, editing means so much more.

On an average day, I may

  • draft sales copy for an upcoming promotion,
  • revise a landing page based on feedback from stakeholders,
  • research keywords to improve a page’s SEO, and
  • update copy destined for a mobile app based on wireframes and mockups from designers.

On projects like these, I ask myself the following questions:

  • Does the current order or flow of information make sense?
  • Are there certain elements that need to be moved to different locations of the text, expanded, or omitted?
  • Is there jargon, and is it appropriate to use in context? If not, is there a simpler alternative?
  • Is the language too formal or informal for its target audience?
  • Can a sentence be rephrased to avoid awkward constructions like double negatives or the passive voice?
  • Are headings, links, and calls to action (CTAs) formatted consistently within a page, and across multiple pages?

These questions go above and beyond issues of grammar, punctuation, and syntax. But even so, I’m an expert at those things too — I’m a Certified Copy Editor through Editors Canada’s certification program, an increasingly-recognized mark of editorial skill.

Content design, tech, and UX

Aside from crafting copy, I also work with developers, accessibility consultants, and UX designers to

  • track projects using Agile-friendly tools like JIRA and Confluence,
  • tweak copy to see what converts better using A/B testing,
  • monitor usability testing sessions and incorporate user feedback into future drafts,
  • develop text for user interfaces based on wireframes and mockups,
  • track search analytics using tools like Domo and Adobe Analytics, and
  • use SEO tools like BrightEdge for keyword research.

Types of Projects

  • SEO keyword research and competitive analysis
  • Landing page copy
  • Online sale and promotional copy
  • Support and FAQ copy for customer-facing webpages
  • Mobile apps
  • Blog posts
  • White papers