SEO COPYWRITING FOR ‘NEWBIES’ – DAY 2
Posted by:
Barry Byers on April 15th, 2008
In Search Engine Optimization
Okay…. I admit it…. I’m a newbie….
After writing college newspaper articles, academic papers in law school and all-too-often dry, sterile legal prose as a practicing lawyer – and adding the occasional bon mot as an amateur blogger from time to time just to save my sanity – writing copy for a dynamic SEO firm seems to be both a challenge and a lot of fun. At least, at first….
Q: What do lawyers use for birth control?
A: Their personalities!
“The Challenge” seems to lie in writing for three audiences at once: First and foremost is the faceless guy or girl sitting behind their keyboard, perhaps impatiently searching the web for the information they need. Second is the client, who in the end is the one who ultimately pays my salary. (A fact I’ll have to consider at greater length, as I suspect I would only forget his or her interests at my own peril.) Third, there is the ubiquitous ‘spider’ endlessly trolling the net for its prey.… Or, worse yet, bypassing me and making my best efforts its unwitting victim.
What will the friendly spider’s clinical machine language make of the language I have to use to keep my copy human and accessible for audiences one and two? Will Google’s friendly search engine spider come back and visit me often? Do spiders have a sense of humor? I rather suspect not….
“The Fun?” That’s a no-brainer. Who else gets to come into work, idly surf the net for topic subjects and then gets to write about whatever seem to pique his interest? In a venue where “content is king” and one may be writing for clients as diverse as mortgage brokers, digital broadcasters, trucking outfits or computer leasing firms, the grist for the daily mill seems almost limitless. (And, yes, it seems I’ve heard the mantra “content is king” repeated almost endlessly … even on Day 2. Thank you, Mark Jackson at Search Engine Watch. They were almost the first words out of my prospective bosses’ mouths during our first sit-down.
Of course, this begs the questions. Will there still be a challenge on Day 50?Will writing SEO copy still seem as fun on Day 5,Monday morning? Are there any good SEO jokes out there??? Surely not as many as there are good lawyer jokes….
