I constantly see requests for copywriters who are SEO experts. But the fact is, anyone who tells you that they’re an SEO expert is either lying or has a crystal ball somewhere. I know I’ve received instructions from my clients to fill my copy with keywords, and not in a natural way.
It usually goes something like this:
Them: “We want you to put ‘Atlanta ad agency’ and ‘ad agency Atlanta’ in the copy just in case people search for one or the other. Oh, and also have sentences that use ‘advertising’ in place of ‘ad.’”
Me: “So, in this three sentence block of copy, you want me to put ‘Atlanta ad agency,’ ‘ad agency Atlanta,’ ‘Atlanta advertising agency’ and ‘advertising agency Atlanta’ in the copy?”
Them: “If you don’t, I’ll pay someone else to.”
Me: “Consider it done.”
Unfortunately, in the real world, this kind of keyword loading doesn’t really help get you higher in the search rankings on the respectable search engines. Worse yet, that technique makes the copy unreadable by humans. So what happens is that if people find you high in the rankings, they’re less likely to trust you because your copy reads like a machine wrote it.
There is, of course, a happy medium. Most of the clients who are upset about their search placement feel that way because they jumped on the “make my whole site out of Flash” bandwagon six or eight years ago and didn’t quite realize that that made them virtually invisible to the search spiders. Their solution, it seems, is to go to the other extreme, when simply having well-written, human-friendly copy satisfies everything. They get higher search rankings (maybe not #1, but higher), readable copy, and cash registers that ring like the bells of St. Mary’s.
Of course, there are other ways to improve your presence. Blog. Tweet. Become the industry expert that you’ve always wanted to be. Share your expertise with the world. And absolutely seek out the help of experts in not just the SEO field, but in effective copywriting, social media management, website development, information architecture and more. In fact, shoot me an email. I’d be happy to help out.