Search Engine Optimization (SEO) content is the current Holy Grail of Internet article writing services. This may not be beneficiary to creative writing, power-driven sentences, or even the essential need to communicate ideas in uncluttered terms. But like it or leave it, barring some change in search engine algorithms and ranking strategies, copywriting for SEO is here to stay.
Along with other article-specific requirements, content purchasing customers provide SEO specific instructions for words and phrases that must be worked into the article even when they do not fit the conventional manner of conversation. The Internet is a sales oriented media place. Buyers expect writers to produce material that provides functional search engine responses that lead prospective customers to niche websites designed to promote specific products, services or ideology.
SEO Specific Instructions That Stink
How may times have you been required to produce content around a keyword phrase that makes absolutely no grammatical or communication-related sense? Often times, keyword phrases can sound like a backwards sentence—something akin to a Yoda saying (“business you want? Optimization engine search, you must). When you get orders that require you to enter nonsensical phrases into your article, you might spend half your writing time working on making sense of that one part.
Unless you’re specifically writing for non-native English readers or people with dyslexia, it’s pretty hard to mask a backwards phrase as something other than an SEO trick.
So, whether you get a challenging keyword phrase or not, what should you do when you get specific SEO instructions on an article?
1) Understanding SEO helps keep writers from choking on what may seem foolish SEO specific instructions. This also explains the importance of viewing the SEO specs before taking a job. Count the cost of figuring out how to work the words into your planned material before you take the assignment on.
2) SEO content enhances a website’s visibility to search engine algorithms and ranking strategies. Although some customers may not really understand SEO, almost every customer acknowledges the effectiveness of the process when rightly applied. You are graded on your ability to deliver on all fronts.
3) Gaining a firm understanding of search engine algorithms and ranking strategies will help you produce content that works. Content that ends up in the SERPs (search engine result pages) always attracts the attention of your customers, and they’ll remember that awesome writer that got them there.
4) Having a solid understanding of SEO sets you a step above the competition. In myth, the world believes that web designers, content writers and copywriters have extensive training in SEO techniques. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Prove yourself in this, and clients will see you as akin to a leprechaun with the magical SEO pot o’ gold.
5) Knowing how to use your tools saves time and increases profits. Powerful copywriting demands focused actions. Keyword research, applied SEO, and competitive marketing go hand-in-hand. If you don’t understand the tools of the trade, your efforts take up additional time and produce feeble results. You get discouraged. The customer gets discouraged. Your opportunities for new and repeat business will decrease.
Copywriting for SEO Increases Your Business Opportunities
How to get new business that pays well is one of the most important topics in discussion among writers. Suggestions abound. Arguments over the value of SEO creep in and out of the message boards. Maybe you believe that it is not worth the extra effort. If so, give us your reasons. It seems that almost every customer now provides SEO specific instructions.
Do you really know of a better way to boast your writing career?
rmharrington r is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments. WriterAccess is powered by ideaLaunch.
