Vanessa Jones – freelance copywriter
SEO copywriter
Experienced freelance copywriter
I am a talented freelance copywriter, content strategist and number one bestselling author based in Adelaide with more than thirteen years of copywriting experience and a solid background in marketing.
I have worked with some of Australia’s most recognisable brands, including Mitsubishi Motors, Australian Institute of Business, TAFE, Southern Cross Care, Pinterest and more.
My clients know me as someone who doesn’t just write excellent and high-quality content but has a unique SEO skill set that helps people get the results they dream of. My unique ability to capture the perfect essence and tone will position your business at the forefront of your industry. With a powerful mix of marketing experience and exceptional writing skills, I’m your “go-to” copywriter for compelling copy.
Professional marketing copywriter
An impressive background
Before I jumped into freelance copywriting full-time in 2016, I worked for marketing agencies, not-for-profit organisations (including SA Great and SA Writers Centre) and even a beloved bookstore.
Not only am I an experienced and award-winning writer, but I have also worked as a marketing manager, a publicist/copywriter for marketing agencies, and a booked-out freelance copywriter. This means that I know the machinations of effective copywriting and how to make your assets or campaign shine even in a noisy market. And where they fit in your broader marketing strategy.
To back up my years of freelance copywriting experience, I’ve also studied professional writing, psychology, philosophy, creative writing and am a qualified yoga teacher. So, not only do I know a lot about copywriting, but I also know a lot about people!
Professional creative writer
Writing credits
As well as producing exceptional copywriting for clients, I am a professional creative writer. Here is a snapshot of my writing credits and achievements over the past few years.
Article published in Flying Solo, May 2017
Article published in WYZA, May 2017
Published my marketing book, Oct 2015
Article published in The Hoopla, Sept 2012
Article published in Southern Write, Sept 2012
Article published in Lip Magazine, June 2012
Article published in Southern Write, Sept 2011
National Year of Reading short story comp online audio recording, Sept 2011
Poem published in Independent Weekly, Dec 2007
Poem published in Independent Weekly, Aug 2007
Professional writing achievements
Runner up in Script Pipeline’s Great Movie and TV Idea contest, 2022
Shortlisted for Mercury CX Hothouse screenwriting residency, 2021
Mentor to TAFE SA writing students, 2016
Published author, 2015 to current
Winner of Hay House Australia Audition Competition, 2014
Panellist at 2013 Emerging Writers Festival in Melbourne
Qantas Spirit of Youth Awards commendation, 2013
Highly Commended, Creative Marketing, Australian Catalogue Awards, 2013 (for CitySA magazine)
Chair of SA Writers Centre Emerging Writers Forum, Jun 2012
SA Writers Centre Youth Ambassador and editorial member of Dubnium, 2011
Editor, Australian Poetry Anthology, 2011
Co-panellist of young writers at the SA Writers’ Festival, Sept 2011
Presented workshops at SA Writers Festival, 2011, Salisbury Writers Festival 2011 & 2012
Co-winner of Adult Learners Week, National Year of Reading short story comp, Sept 2011
‘Outstanding Achievement in Writing Poetry‘ at TAFE SA, 2010
Commendation for poem, Melbourne Poet’s Union International Poetry Comp, 2004
Check out my wide range of copywriting and marketing services
Here's what some of my clients have to say...
Meet my clients
Who I've worked with:
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Three quick content writing tips
1. How do you develop rich content writing for your demographic? Research! In depth research about your client or customer should always form a part of your marketing and content writing plan. Otherwise you may be anticipating needs and wants that may not even fit your target demographic. Ask them… through surveys, focus groups, feedback, industry research etc what they really want to know, what they are feeling as part of the customer journey and what they need and meet those needs for them. 2. Engaging readers and customers is a life long journey Although this depends on the industry, a good content writing campaign should be ongoing and nurture the customer/client every step of the journey. From before the decision making process has even begun, to post purchase and beyond. The term “life long” refers to the life of the customer journey, rather than the life of the customer. Although in some cases this can be one and the same. For example, if you had a product or service that your customer requires from infancy to old age, then you would adapt to suit their changing needs throughout their lifetime. An example of this might be a medical/doctor service. 3. Content writing needs to be fresh but reusable Again, industry and topic dependent but well written content is usually evergreen or at least, able to be repurposed. If it’s news content that is being uploaded straight to a website, for most clients the content can stay on the website perpetually. Unless it harms the company (perhaps there has been a change in research or they no longer offer the product or service) there’s no reason why it cannot be archived. In terms of fresh content writing, it really does depend on the client’s audience. Some may be content hungry and others are “slow burners”. As long as fresh content is going out at least weekly (for most industries), then it depends on the audience. For professional SEO content writing, hire one of the best Australian copywriters today.
SEO questions: page authority and domain authority
You may have come across the terms page authority and domain authority when reading about SEO and wondered what they mean. As an SEO writer, it’s imporant that I educate clients on these terms. In this article, I’ll explain what both terms are and how they affect your visibility online. What is page authority? Simply put, page authority (PA) is a numerical score that predicts how a webpage will perform on search engine result pages (SERPs). PA scores rate the performance of each specific webpage from 1 (bad) to 100 (excellent) using ranking algorithms. How are PA scores calculated?PA ranking was developed by the SEO company, Moz. And is based on specific data from their web index. It take factors several things including quality of page content (what you’ve written and the images and how useful it is to your audience) and domain authority. It also uses shrewd machine learning to predict how that page will rank across thousands of SERPs. This produces a comparative metric showing how well different webpages rank using a 100 point scale. You can improve your score (and thus your SEO) but it does depend on your starting score. Funnily enough, it is easier to grow from 20 to 30 than it is to grow from 60 to 70. In most cases, it is slow and difficult to get a score greater than 75. Pages higher than this will often be found on really high performing sites such as The New York Times and similar. Building your page authority for SEO Page authority is an aggregate score comprised of different metrics making it hard to influence directly. However, there are several ways you can try and improve your score, which will also help with your SEO. Link buildingLink building is the process of creating links on other website pages that point back to your own. These links (called backlinks) will increase your page trust and relevance scores in search engines. Here are some excellent link building techniques. Guest postingAnytime you publish an article on a site that shares content related to yours, you can embed backlinks to help readers to find out more from your site. This will establish you as an authority on the topic and increase your visibility. Guest or cross posting is one of my most recommend techniques to increasing your SEO and website traffic. Especially if you are in the early stages of your SEO strategy. Forums and directoriesAnother good practice is submitting your links on large forums and web directories (such as business directories). You can link people back to your website by answering specific questions on forums and dropping your link for them to learn more. What is domain authority? Domain authority (DA) is another SEO ranking score developed by Moz. But in this case, it predicts how well a whole website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs), rather just a single web page. DA scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores showing a better ability to rank. How are DA scores calculated? Domain authority scores are calculated by analysing several factors including the total amount of links and root domain age. This score is used to compare different websites and track the ranking progress of a website over time. This is a composite score that varies more frequently because it covers more data. Your DA score can also be affected by the performance of other websites and this makes it difficult to influence. Improving your DA Improving your domain authority is much harder than influencing your page score. This is done to maintain competition and encourage websites to always publish high quality content. The best way to improve your DA is by improving your overall SEO both onpage and off site. But— I cannot say this enough— the most powerful way to improve your SEO is to consistently keep creating high quality content on your website, especially blog posts. You need to be blogging weekly. Fortnightly at most. Limitations of PA and DA Even though both scores are considered to be an accurate estimate of a website’s performance on SERPs, these metrics are actually not used by Google (or any other search engine) in analysing search rankings and have no effect on SERPs. However, they are still a good indication of performance and quality of your website. You can also use it as a barometer of how well another site is performing so you know which beneficial sites to pitch your guest posting to. Why are PA and DA important for good SEO? Having an objective audit of your website performance is a good way to boost SEO. The good part is that page authority and domain authority both share a mutually beneficial relationship. DA improvements on your website will help boost your PA score and vice versa. The trick is to use these metrics strategically to track your SEO efforts and see how your website performs under different circumstances over time. How to check your domain authority Check your DA here. If it’s low (think lower than 50) it’s time to start implementing some excellent written SEO content. Hire a freelance copywriter that knows SEO to help improve your website today.
Does AI-generated Writing Hurt SEO?
Will Google automatically penalise you for using AI-generated content? No. Especially with their announcement that they will be releasing their own AI software, Bard, to the public mid to late February 2023. Here’s what Google says about using AI-generated writing when it comes to harming search engine rankings: ‘Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years. Focusing on rewarding quality content has been core to Google since we began. It continues today, including through our ranking systems designed to surface reliable information and our helpful content system. The helpful content system was introduced last year to better ensure those searching get content created primarily for people, rather than for search ranking purposes.’ But be careful! It’s not all roses… ‘Using automation—including AI—to generate content with the primary purpose of manipulating ranking in search results is a violation of our spam policies.’ So what can you do to ensure you’re not penalised when using AI-generated content? ‘As explained, however content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T.’ So if you are creating your content with the help of AI, you must make sure it’s meeting the EEAT standards. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, AI software is fine for filler content, but you really want to be doing all of the following to help appeal to search engines and your audience. Make the content your own You can do this by adding in personal anecdotes and case studies and really expanding out the text with examples of your own. Make sure you include examples that have actually happened in your real life or in your business life. Because, at the moment, the software can’t replicate that. Add recent statistics To stand out from other AI-generated content, consider adding statistics, quotes, and data that are recent. At the moment, chatGPT can’t access data after 2019. So you can set your content apart by adding in statistics from the past couple of years. And it’s good practice anyway to try and add statistics to back up your messages using data from the past 12 months anyway. And on that note, it might be worth you going through old blog posts and updating them with recent statistics, links and resources now. Did you really think you were going to read one of my blog posts without getting homework? As if! Create a tone of voice guide and use it One of the things about AI-generated writing is that it can often sound like a machine or robot. So one of the things that I’ve been doing with my content— and with my clients’ content— is deliberately making it sound more human-like so that it stands apart from the rest of the generic content that exists out there. And also ensuring that it talks more closely to their target audience. Before you start blogging or creating a website, I recommend creating a tone of voice document that you will always adhere to. If you’ve already started, it’s never too late to create this tone of voice document, or style guide, as it can be a really handy reference tool to go back to and pluck out words that you will use in your content. Plus, it really guides the language and style that you use time and time again. It takes some of the guesswork out of having to plan how to write something. Again, giving you a distinctive voice and sets you apart from the generic content that will soon hit many blogs. One of the easy ways I am able to be so prolific when it comes to my blogging and copywriting clients is that I use voice dictation to take down my key messages and write paragraphs for me. This gives the dual purpose of being able to produce content relatively quickly. Plus, it writes it in my unique voice because it’s so easy to talk in my natural sounding way, using everyday language. You might like to try this hack next time you write a blog post. And who knows, this actually might be a quicker way for you to write rather than getting generic content from AI and having to basically edit it from scratch. As a professional writer, I often find it takes just as long to edit a piece of work as to write it from scratch. And with voice recording, it’s done in literally a matter of seconds. Editing Always ALWAYS edit your content so that it sounds like you and it has personalised dialect and nuance in it. You would be crazy just to cut and paste any AI-generated content straight into your blog or website without editing it within an inch of its life. Rewrite it so that it sounds like you, your business or your brand because audiences are not dumb! They will know generic copy straight away and will zone out and won’t pay attention to the important stuff that you’re trying to tell them. Make sure that you check any AI-written stuff for plagiarism and spellcheck your work. Don’t forget that you need to add your SEO factors to the content as well to actually start ranking. It’s not enough just to have this content written for you. Want to learn to write better than software ever could? Join BLANK TO BRILLIANT now. This post contains affiliate links for software that I genuinely use and recommend.
