While more business owners are recognizing the benefits of hiring professionals to compose copy for websites, confusion remains on what the following three types of writers can deliver. Here’s a brief breakdown:
Copywriters
“A copywriter is a salesperson behind a typewriter,” wrote Bob Bly, a celebrated American poet. Typically writing for ads, articles and brochures, copywriters aim to persuade an action by tapping into an individual’s greed, need or fear. While professional copywriters are able to craft compelling copy, keywords and search engine optimization (SEO) is normally not a part of the equation.
SEO Copywriters
An SEO copywriter strategically weaves keywords in web content to achieve higher search engine rankings. With more than 500 million searches made daily, and search engines accounting for over 85 per cent of all new visitors to websites, SEO is a very effective marketing strategy to gain online presence. SEO copywriters often have technical SEO-related backgrounds versus writing or marketing backgrounds.
Web Copywriters
Professional web copywriters write for two audiences: humans and search engine spiders. Keywords are used to satisfy logical needs of search engine spiders in a bid to boost search engine rankings and drive traffic to websites. The web writing also caters to the emotional needs of visitors to engage them and ultimately convert sales. Top web copywriters usually have communication and marketing backgrounds with subsequent SEO training.
Quality Web Copywriting is Key
While keyword count and placement are important to improve search engine rankings, there are several other elements required to promote online presence and readability. Regardless who writes for you, ensure your web content is:
- Concise
- Objective
- Fresh
- Informative
- Scannable
Following these basics will make our website appealing to humans and search engine spiders alike. In time, both will reward you.
The technical reference to SEO copywriters seems to be true. I once hired an SEO copywriter who added keywords to my existing web content. While my traffic increased almost 30% within a month, the copy did not read well. At the end of the day, all the extra traffic didn’t generate any additional sales for me. It worked with the search engines, but not the visitors. The moral of the story I suppose is to make sure the person you hire writes for visitors as well. Otherwise, it’s all a waste of time and effort — and dollars!
This report on web writers is bang-on. While working for a small agency, I hired an SEO copywriter who basically stuffed keyword randomly throughout a website. It read like crap, we almost lost the client,and we eventually reverted back to the original copy, which didn’t generate any traffic or leads. If I had to do it again, I’d hire an SEO person AND a talented writer to work together.
Hi,
Excellent article. Both SEO and Copywriting are important but I see them as two different fields used to two different ends.
Good SEO is fodder for search engine robots. Search engine robots have never spent a penny on any product or service to my knowledge. Yes it’s important to get folks to your website and that’s where savvy SEO comes it but…
Good copywriting should have a different focus altogether. Copywriting conveys your sales message and persuades real people to a desired action.
With the increased focus on LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), one could argue for SEO. However I’d like to suggest that the goal of LSI is to extract the real meaning from intended content so a naturally well-written sales letter should also naturally rank high for keywords.
Yes, make sure your web pages are search engine optimized, but I maintain it is more important to optimize your pages for maximum customer impact – i.e. getting the desired results.
This can be done by testing your sales pages. The upside is testing increases your bottom line no matter where your traffic comes from.
God bless,
Andy
Bah! Web writers, SEO writers, copywriters – call them what you will, they have little consideration for delivering valuable information…for them it’s all about the SALE!
GA, I believe you aren’t looking at the big picture when it comes to “quality” web content. What you deem valuable information could be very different from what others consider to be valuable information on the web.
What a facinating article. I’m looking for a marketing expert to help with a project, could you help?
This is classical in terms of google. Nada looks to bother upon it than this!Amusingly enough, this is exactly was talked about several years ago at the last big internet about seo some number of years ago in ’94!