These days there is quite a bit of talk about the importance of SEO and how it relates to the copy on your business website. Much of it is nonsense.

Yes, SEO is an important consideration in how your website functions and its ability to attract customers. As important as SEO is, however, it is also complicated, ever-changing, and dynamic.

The combination of preeminence and the fact that few really understand how SEO works creates a series of problems. In an attempt to optimize their websites for search engines, many business owners turn to:

• Companies that will take thousands of dollars to perform complicated, esoteric scopes of work that produce little actual impact on performance.
• Hire SEO writers to stuff their web copy with more keyword filler (and pig lips) than an off-brand hotdog.

Neither of these approaches are good. At Wizard of Ads, we are fortunate to have digital partners that understand this landscape and what steps are necessary to make your website sing. There is none better than Vi Wickam.

This is not a description of best practices for SEO for your website. Rather, what follows is physical, visual proof that “writing for SEO” can destroy the impact of even the most powerful language ever written. And make no mistake, if it can destroy the best writers in the history of the English language, imagine what it’s doing to your website.

The 5 Tenets of SEO and Writing

It starts with 5 Tenets of SEO Writing that I promise are true:

  1. The human brain is hardwired to respond to powerful language.
  2. SEO writing, as it is most commonly done, kills writing’s impact and resonance. Rather than helping attract customers, it makes businesses that employ it sound like they suck.
  3. Effective SEO has more to do with website structure and headings than with web copy itself.
  4. Your website CAN feature powerful writing AND be optimized for SEO purposes.
  5. A website that is optimized and powerfully written not only attracts customers, but influences, persuades and makes them feel good about the business once they get there.

Proof That SEO Writing Sucks

What we’re about to do hurts me. I am fisherman and a writer. I’ve made much of my career chasing marlin and tuna around the world (need proof? Just Google “Elliott Stark Fishing”).

How much do I love Hemingway? When I’m not writing ads or charting strategy for Wizard of Ads clients, you might find me drinking in some tropical place starting bar fights.

Hemingway is powerful, direct, and visceral. Perhaps nothing exhibits these characteristics better than the opening lines of A Farewell to Arms.

You could argue that this is the most evocative introduction in the history of American literature. And we’re going to use SEO writing to screw it up.

Here’s the process:

  1. First, read it as it appears. Read it aloud.
  2. Then, we’re going to “optimize” Hemingway for SEO. Read that aloud, too.

Ernest Hemingway. Introduction to A Farewell to Arms

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.

Did you read it aloud? Good stuff, right? Not for long…

Introduction to A Farewell to Arms, “Optimized for SEO”

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village BIG BAG OF MASHED UP ASSHOLES HENDERSONVILLE, VIRGINIA. That looked across the river and the plain to the mountains BAGS OF ASSHOLE DELIVERY SERVICES NEAR ME. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops carrying BIG BAGS OF MASHED UP ASSHOLES went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves and THE BIG BAGS OF MASHED UP ASSHOLES HENDERSONVILLE, VIRGINIA.

Did you read aloud (hopefully not too loudly)? What happened to the flow? What happened to the impact?

SEO writing turned this from a farewell to arms into a farewell to conversion and customer connection!

The Characteristics of Good Web Copy

Effective web copy is written for people, not machines. It is written in your brand’s voice and showcases your brand story, your points of difference and all of the wonderful reasons that your customers trust you.

When done right, it is powerful and it creates incredible competitive advantage. After all, your website will evoke feeling and connection and your competitors will be carnival barking using keywords and bot-speak.

There are more places on the internet to get bad web copy than good. That said, if you’d like copy that sings (and converts), we know some people. And I promise not to use the phrase “big bag of mashed up assholes.”

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