Copywriter vs. SEO Guru

by Lyndi Lawson

It’s Friday and I’m sitting at my desk, contemplating the month of February and SEO copy that needs writing. And I am perplexed. Really; how many ways are there to insert (IMAGINE BORING, REPETITIVE SEO PHRASE HERE) into a body of text?
This calls for drastic action, but time is short and options are few. 

I could gather the (notoriously vicious and unpredictable) copywriting contingent from the office and storm the SEO corner, demanding original and creative keywords backed by the threat of violent dismemberment, a life-time of curses or the mysterious disappearance of their treasured notebook computers.
Alternatively, I could strike, much like the series writers in America but with a distinctly South African flavour – toy-toying and all. In this vein, I could even prevent (with whatever means were necessary) the rest of the copy team from using their less-than-imaginative keywords for the month – Kelly and Sarah beware…

As exciting as this escape from daily routine sounds, I was reminded of something crucial at Tuesday's eMarketing over Breakfast lecture; the SEO Gurus with whom I am proposing war, are not merely criminal fiends with hungry eyes poised to capture and torture the delicate flower of my creativity. Their keywords are thoroughly researched and based on the phrases that search engine users actually use. Sigh.

And the process of choosing these ruinations of the English language is in fact, a complex one, occasionally described by some as an art. Keyword research is not only about being able to read stats, it's understanding search psychology and thinking through three key factors:

• Search Volume: How many searchers are using that phrase to find what they want? For example, there’s an estimated monthly search volume of 14,685,930 for the keyword “hotel” while a key phrase like “cape town waterfront hotel” has an estimated 330 searches per month.
• Competition: How many other websites out there are targeting that same phrase? For example Google finds 1,210,000,000 results for “hotel” but only 921 for “cape town waterfront hotel”.
• Propensity to Convert: What’s the likelihood that the searcher using that key phrase is going to convert on your site? When we speak of a “conversion” we are referring to a specific action taken by the visitor to your website. For example, the typical conversion on a hotel website would be an online booking.

You see, in the light of their skill and hard work, it may not be fair to decapitate them and feed their severed limbs to the Rottweilers guarding my car downstairs.
A lucky escape guys, but never-the-less, I’d watch my back in dark alley-ways if I were you.

The temptation of course is to re-divert my potentially violent rebellion towards the users but I realize that it might be slightly unreasonable to expect the average Joe when looking for, let’s say a Bed and Breakfast in Brakpan, to search for… well, anything other than just that, really.

The challenge of SEO copywriting is thus this; finding new and imaginative ways to write about (IMAGINE BORING, REPETITIVE SEO PHRASE HERE) without gouging the eyes out of their esteemed SEO colleagues’ eyes.

This takes creativity in itself. Happy February :-)

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