Writing for SEO

I’m often asked whether I can write for SEO. SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation to give it its full title, is the latest trend. Everyone will tell you that you won’t get your site found without it, and people spend hundreds — if not thousands — of pounds to ensure that they come within the first page of a search engine’s results.

But while it’s true that your website should be structured in a way that makes it easy for both spiders and humans to gather information — pages properly labelled, title tags and alt tags in place — I’m going to stick my neck out and say that copywriting for SEO is a bit of a fuss over nothing.

For one thing, no-one is 100% certain what works and the rules seem to change all the time — precisely to prevent any one site ‘winning’ the SEO race.

Another consideration is quite how unimaginative we are when we type something into a search engine. Have you ever typed, “Marvellous lodgings Blackpool”? “Splendid accommodation Blackpool?” No, time after time, we lumpenly write, “B&B Blackpool” or, at a pinch, “Good hotel Blackpool”…which means that there are an awful lot of people chasing after the same few keywords.

And ‘stuffing’ your pages with keywords in an effort to please the search engines will turn human readers right off. It’s just not possible to cram the phrase “carpet fitter Milton Keynes” eight times into 150 words and still have copy that’s pleasant to read. Let’s not forget that our potential customers are human, not bots.

But packing your keywords in like sardines isn’t just unattractive because it’s difficult to read — it reeks of hard sell, too, which is a real turn-off for most people . It makes you look calculating, hard-nosed and sales oriented, rather than focussed on customer care.

What’s more, I think that by writing knowledgeably and fluently about your subject matter, you inevitably include a whole range of keywords. Even within this short article, I’ve managed to include SEO, spiders, bots, crawlers, keywords, title tags, alt tags… and now I’ve just done it again. Cunning, eh?