Lastly, page had to uphold Cruise Vacation Center’s excellent search engine rankings. They were ranked at top of several major engines, and rewritten copy couldn’t jeopardize their positioning.

The Solutions

The first step was, without question, to woo site visitors with delightful fantasies about their next vacation. My goal was to conjure up all sorts of visions in minds of Cruise Vacation Center’s visitors. I wanted visitors to be dreaming of exotic places with lots of fun things to do, interesting sights to see, and 24/7 access to gourmet meals that rival any five-star restaurant. I wanted their blood pressure to drop 10 points just from reading about onboard staff of hundreds who would pamper them with VIP treatment. After reading this copy, I wanted them ready to leave on vacation today! However, I also had to persuade them to book online rather than calling CVC’s office.

During rewrite, I had to carefully plan use of their primary keyphrase, “cruise vacation,” so as not to disrupt their most reliable source of business… search engines. After all, there is a delicate balance between pleasing search engines and appealing to site visitors.

If I leaned too much toward search engine side of equation, conversion ratio of home page would suffer. In other words, Cruise Vacation Center would get lots of visitors, but few of them would book cruises.

If I leaned too much toward customer side of equation, CVC’s rankings would plummet, and they would need to find a new way to drive qualified traffic to their site. As is normally case with SEO copywriting, balance was going to be vital.

In conclusion to this two-part series, you’ll see how I handled rewrite and what end results of all work were. Curious to see new copy? You’ll find it on CVC’s site: You can see new copy on CVC’s site at http://www.cruisevacationcenter.com.

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.

And, of course, there was matter of letting visitors know that they would get a better bargain and save more on their luxury cruise if they booked online.

Starting at top, I changed headline of:

“Planning quality discount cruises for you since 1993!”

to

“Book Your Exotic Cruise Vacation Online and Get Rock-Bottom Prices to Hottest Destinations”

Next, I immediately began to entice visitor with visions of what s/he could expect - from their vacation and from CVC.

Rather than talk about company directly as original copy did:

“Dreaming of a cruise but don't want to pay full price? Cruise Vacation Center is one of nation's largest cruise agencies.”

I started copy with this:

“Just imagine… you’re walking along deck of a grand cruise vessel as it gently keeps rhythm with waves. The sun is on your shoulders and a soothing breeze wafts through your hair.”

I continued to build new copy with phrases like: “wander your way through medieval castles,” “stunning gardens of Mediterranean,” and “oceanfront luau in Hawaii,” while intermixing statements including: “deep discounts,” “book securely online,” and so on.

All while, I was dropping reminders to book online for biggest savings and offering explanations about why that would benefit visitor.

The call-to-action was designed to reinforce idea that customer *could* get more vacation choices for their money with CVC.

You can see end results for yourself at http://www.cruisevacationcenter.com.

The Results

It’s fun to see how these makeovers turn out. What did my client have to say? The response was astonishing and immediate. “…Weekend sales tripled! Usually around 10 online books over weekend. Last weekend had 30! [Also], they re-indexed and home page moved up [two positions] for ‘cruise vacation.’ It has a great lead-in on search page, too.”

Man… I just love my job!

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com. Be sure to also check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword.