- Copywriting, SEO and PR 

SEO Copywriting: Do You Speak Geek?

There was a time when SEO was a minority sport - and SEO copywriting was strictly for the geeks.  Now, of course, SEO is a mainstream dinner party topic - chic and sophisticated.  

That's because everyone in the working way has a website now, don't they?.  And everyone thinks they could easily be on Page One of Google - "Just give it a bit more time.  Just build a few more links - know what I mean?"

Of course, every fly on every dinner party wall has seen it all before.  Number One on Google?  It's simple.  All they have to do - these geeky wannabes - is learn a bit about SEO here, a bit about 'content' there.

It's all so easy: content is king and keywords are queen.  Just marry the two together and - hey presto! - your website will be welcome at Google's top table.

SEO is Darwinian, right?

"It's Darwinian," they say, pouring another drink and marvelling at how conversations ever became so clever, so obscure, so ridiculously pedantic! 

"Google only bestows largesse on the finest and fittest of websites which speak the same language as their own robots, etymologists to a man.

"SEO is the currency in which we deal.  Anyone who can't second-guess a convoluted algorithm deserves to flounder and disappear into the black hole of Google's Supplemental Index."

Yes, SEO is Darwinian - especially if you simply don't get it.  When your carefully crafted web page sits at Number 479 on Google's search results for the keyword whose success would otherwise take you half-way to becoming a millionaire - and you don't know why - now THAT is Darwinian!

Google moves the SEO goalposts

The worst thing about all this SEO stuff is that Google keeps moving the goalposts.  Just when you thought you'd mastered the whole keyword density thing, along comes link building and semantic clarity and fast-loading websites.  It's enough to drive an Internet marketer mad.

And yet, there is a consistent element in this world of change.  SEO copywriting is its name.  No, not the SEO copywriting of five years ago when one word in every twenty had to be a keyword.  Or even the breed of two years ago when meta tags had to be meticulously ordered - or you were dead.

Today's SEO copywriter is an altogether different creature.  All that's needed now is to write in a fluent style, being careful to insert a few anchor tags in strategically vital places and keep those new links coming in faster than the old ones fade away.

It may mean more leg work to send out quick-fire online news releases or optimised articles.  However, the responsibility of keyword density has been lifted off the shoulders of the SEO copywriter to return free-form syntax to its rightful place within Google's ample bosom.

It's almost as though the prefix 'SEO' is now redundant in the term 'SEO copywriting'.  "Just be yourself" is now a more apt mantra.  Hot on the heels of this may be the line: "Don't worry about keyword research".  The only keywords that count nowadays are the words you've already used in your copy.  Anything else either doesn't matter - or you can inflate its importance as being part of a 'long-tail keyword' strategy!

SEO copywriting may once have been the preserve of those who understood HTML and other esoteric things.  With the advent of CMS websites and a more 'organic' approach to the content Google still declares is king, speaking 'geek' has almost passed into the vernacular.

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