Search Engine Copywriting: R.I.P??

In 2005, the value of website content writing, which should be on the rise as more and more businesses go online, is in my opinion being devalued by the advent of SEO and the search engines' relentless focus on keywords.

Here's an example. I recently dealt with an SEO company interested in subcontracting their clients' SEO copywriting work to me. One of their customers spent $3000 on an optimized web design, but only budgeted $600 for search engine copywriting... not even ¼ of his design budget.

Which would be fine if he didn't hope to generate income from his online business. But he did. And simply failed to realize that it's the words that do the selling. Not the design. Not the cool flash intro. Not even the search engine optimization tricks he paid so much for.

Many SEOs are contributing to the confusion by selling optimization packages that don't place enough importance on quality search engine copywriting – by which I mean copywriting that not only includes a healthy search term ratio but also uses proper sales writing techniques that help ensure visitors are hit with a message that:

• gets and keeps their attention
• engages them in a personal, meaningful way
• persuades them to browse the product/service line
• motivates them to buy or make contact
• convinces them of the company's credibility and reputation

Cheap SEO copywriting will not deliver all that. What it most often delivers is spammy, keyword-stuffed copy that teeters on the brink of readability.

And sadly, this seems to be okay with a surprising number of SEO clients who just want to rank more highly in the search engines. So they hand over their site to the SEO company believing that rankings is the magic bullet that will make it all worth while.
It's no wonder their new, SEO content often gets dumped onto pages where human visitors will never see it.

Here's another tale from the SEO copywriting trenches. As a website content writer and search engine copywriter, I have two types of clients. Those who come to me wanting professional copy to sell their products. And those who want optimized content so the search engines will give them better rankings.

I ask all of them to answer some fairly in-depth questions about things like their target audience, their unique selling proposition, their competitors, etc.

The first group of clients eagerly tackle their homework and usually put some thought into it, recognizing it's important stuff that deserves their attention because it will ultimately contribute to their goal of a more effective and profitable website.

The second group, the optimizers, tend to rattle off a few pat answers or just don't respond. I can only assume that for them, website content is solely a tool to appease the search engines, no more important than monthly search engine submissions and meta tags.

This is a frustrating time for web copywriters in the evolution of search. We want to be able to provide the full monty... quality sales writing that's optimized well... but a large segment of the SEO marketplace seems to be demanding bargain-basement copy slapped together with a maximum of keywords and a minimum of thought.

Personally, I foresee a time hopefully not too far down the line when things begin to swing back around to where they were four or five years ago... when the search engines were A fact of life, not THE fact of life.

When the power and relevance of the message mattered more than keyword saturation.

When copywriters were judged on their ability to write gripping and persuasive content, not on the speed with which they can churn out drivel in the name of SEO.

Can Google and the other engines create an algorithm clever enough to rank a site based on the quality of its writing without counting keywords?

It can't happen soon enough.