Writing For The Web: How Good Copy Becomes Bad Marketing
When it comes to writing websites, what is good for the search
engines is often not good marketing. Why? Because almost
inevitably, when you write to please the search engines, you
write about the features of your service. But you should be
writing about the benefits for your customers. This is a
fundamental problem and one you have to take into account at
every stage of creating the copy for your website. You have to
achieve a balance between writing for people or writing for
search engine robots. The balance will be subtly different for
every business. You'll probably have to keep experimenting. It
all depends really on how important search engine traffic will
be to your organisation. First a quick recap on the basic issue
of search engine copy. Search engine optimisation (often
called SEO) basically means making sure your website ranks
highly with Google and other search engines. Google wants to
give people the right, relevant information. It does this by
reading the copy on your website. If certain words are used
frequently, Google will calculate that the site is relevant for
that "keyword". When people search for that keyword, Google
flags your site as one worthy of consideration. So, when a
copywriter creates his own website, he tries the use the word
"copywriter" as frequently as possible. It's no good just
listing the word either. It needs to be in real sentences.
What's more, it's much better to use the keyword at or near the
start of a sentence. You also need the keyword in the main
headline, in the first paragraph, and as often as possible
thereafter. So, you end up writing about you, the copywriter,
and the copywriting that you can offer. Features of your
service. Where are your customers in all this? Any good
copywriter, in fact even a complete beginner, knows that you
need to turn the features of your service into benefits for the
customer. It's just good marketing. The copywriter should
be explaining how he can increase sales, attract customers, save
the client money, provide exceptional service and so on.
The same is likely to happen whatever business you're in. If
you're a graphic designer, a client might come to you because
they want you to create a professional image for their
business. But they don't search for "professional image",
"design impact", or "creativity". They search for "graphic
designer." So your copy has to keep mentioning "graphic
designer" this, "graphic designer" that. What's the
solution? If you know an easy one, please share the secret. For
most organisations and businesses, the answer is going to be a
balance. You need to know how important Google searches
are to you. If the answer is "not much" because visitors come
from other sources - perhaps through a direct mail campaign,
Internet advertising clicks, or because they are a regular
customer and have you bookmarked - then your copy should
weighted more towards good marketing, with less emphasis on
search engine robots. But if Google searches are everything to
your organisation, then you'll have to play the game by their
rules. Carefully written copy can at least try to play both
games. You can keep using keywords, but always bear in mind that
you need to bring the focus back onto benefits for your
customer. It's not easy, and it can be a painstaking
process. But that in essence, is what good web writing should be
about: keeping one eye on the search engines and pleasing them
when necessary, but always bringing it back to people, to
customers, to benefits. Because that's good marketing.