Praising and Berating SEO Copywriting

Search-engine optimization, commonly mistyped “search engine optimization” and more commonly referred to as SEO, is becoming more important with each passing day, hour, minute and slick sales job from an “expert” to an oblivious business owner.

That is not to say SEO is not important. It is. If nobody’s ever heard of you, how are they going to find you on the internet when searching for someone who does what you do? You need your website optimized for search. That is a fact. But you need to understand why you need your website optimized for search, because with that realization comes the additional realization you don’t need to optimize for search. Don’t worry – I’ll explain.

I know some very talented SEO people. Within a few minutes or hours, they can come up with a list of keywords and a strategy that, properly implemented, will have you showing up at the top of search results for search terms you never would’ve expected.

This is where things can go very right or very wrong. There are good SEO copywriters out there and bad SEO copywriters. Definitions:

Good SEO copywriter: a copywriter with an understanding of SEO tactics.

Bad SEO copywriter: a person who knows how to jam keywords into alleged sentences.

There are many SEO tips freely available on the internet that will help complete novices and veteran search geniuses know how to get a web page to the top of a search. And that, dear readers, is valuable. If I had a research intern on staff, I’d give you the actual numbers, but I can say from foggy memory the percentage of people who actually click past the first page of search results is tiny. And the percentage of that percentage that goes to the next is even tinier. Et cetera. You definitely want to be on that first page.

But then what? Do you get paid for being ranked highly in search engines? More likely, you paid someone else to help you rank highly and need new business to pay for it. That’s why your website needs to sell.

A list of keywords jammed into a sentence is not going to sell. A seemingly endless scroll at the bottom of the page with white keywords on a white background is not going to sell. Not even exquisite headlines will sell. You have to have real content on your page, or people will go over to the next highest ranked page until they find one that appears to be written by a human.

This is definitely possible. Google is smarter than many people give it credit for and doesn’t need to be tricked into linking to your site. Google is interested in giving its users the best content for any given search, and is thus constantly evolving. It’s possible to game the system for a while, but eventually (and it’s already happening), Google is going to ignore keyword-rich headlines with no real content in favor of actual, good, quality content.

I’ve personally come across very few bad SEO copywriters, as defined above. But I know they exist. And since content is often an afterthought at best when it comes to websites (even though it should be a forethought), this is worth noting. You can rank high on a search engine and still have copy on your site that compels people to buy.

There are also plenty of articles on the internet with tips on how to “sneak in” SEO copy while remaining compelling. While a few of those tips are interesting and make sense, a lot of them still feel like robotic (and not futuristic robotic, but Vicki-from-Small-Wonder-robotic) drivel when executed.

Keywords are a great resource when writing a website, but they should not be the only focus of the site. The site is focused on the company, and the keywords support that. Not the other way around.

Why do you want your site to have a high ranking? So people visit, right? Why do you want people to visit? You probably want their money. Why would they give you their money if you can’t explain to them why they should?

Here’s a free tip to any of you young copywriters out there: if you’re writing a brochure or some other kind of non-internet media and you find yourself trying to cram keywords in where you know they don’t belong, perhaps it’s time you evaluate just how good your web copy really is.