Every time you try to improve your copy you have to worry about the strategic placement of keywords, tags and phrases in your Web copy to optimize search engine rankings.
But powerful copy, is written to a real audience and you should concentrate all your effort on writing to that one audience. When I write copy, that audience is the prospect or the potential buyer of the product I am attempting to sell to.
However, to optimize your web site for search engines, you must pander to another “audience” — the search engines — and not to the reader. But by attracting search engines, you are, weakening your writings power to sell. You dilute your message because you are worrying about two audiences — the reader and the search engines — instead of focusing every word on the customer. That’s not how to sell. Here, is a better way to write Web copy:
- Write the strongest selling copy you can aimed at the human reader and forget the search engines.
- When finished, check to ensure keywords are appropriately placed, but never change a word of strong selling copy if that change will make it even one iota weaker, even if SEO best practices would endorse that change.
- Once the page is up and working (i.e., generating strong conversion), optimize for engines by experimenting with word changes, testing to ensure those edits don’t reduce conversions.
In other words, write for the customer and not SEO. Top copywriters — writers with track records of making the cash register ring — agree.
“I’d rather invest my time and energy in proven factors I can control, such as a potent headline and interesting, informative and fact-filled copy,” copywriting legend Chris Shirman (www.NIT.cc ) said. “Write your sites using the exact words that match the extremely narrow and specific way people search for information online. Nobody searches for ‘automotive accessories.’ Way too broad. They search for ‘leather golf club covers’ or ‘white speckle tees.’ A lot of SEO advice comes from people who peddle it for a living. I’ve heard that search engines modify their methodology regularly to thwart those who try to ‘fix the race.’ So I view SEO as a road runner that the fox will never be able to catch.”
Steve Bridge, a recognized expert in business-to-business marketing writing with extensive knowledge of SEO, takes pains when writing copy to optimize each page’s search engine ranking: “As a marketing writer — one who is trying to get a prospect to take action — I write to that audience. But I also write with the search engines in mind. There is no point in writing good copy on your site if no one can find you.”
“Most of the good SEO things you can do have to do with structure and linking relationships among pages, not the copy,” Jeremy LaDuque said. “Getting incoming links from reputable pages is much more important than having copy that is somehow ‘search engine friendly’ on its own. We all know it is true that you can improve your ranking in the Google search by focusing on the right keywords and looking at lists of keyword usage. It is really amazing, how easily this can be done.”
Today, one has to look closely at the business model. I have yet to see any study correlate high rankings in the search engines directly to greater sales. Most major successes online are from people who have found ways to actively drive known prospects and repeat customers to their sales promotions. This might mean e-newsletter-driven sales, print advertising or inserts, well-placed endorsements or editorial mentions — but not, to any great degree, the randomness of a search engine search. This is not to say there’s NO money to be made with SEO marketing. Just that there are much more lucrative ways to increase your response rates.
“Second, a lot of what counts for success in SEO marketing seems so obviously connected to just hitting the right ‘hot buttons’ for your prospect in the first place. A good direct response writer writes very specific and, usually, benefit-oriented headlines and leads. This means using words you believe your prospect is most likely to respond to when he or she reads them. What’s the secret to good SEO copywriting? Figuring out the specific, benefit-related keywords your prospect is most likely to type into a search engine. That is, the words he or she most likely connects to your product.
“Want to be a great SEO copywriter? Then just be a great copywriter, period. When you’re done writing, match your lead against an online list of the highest related keywords and maybe you’ll end up tweaking a word or two.
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