It was more than eleven years ago that I started my academic career at the M.Sc.-program for media technology at Linköping Institute of Technology. Way back then, the web was completely different, Google didn’t exist (it was actually founded the same year), and ICQ was the name of the game for communication.
But it wasn’t too long ago that I went to ad school, and now that I think of it, I find a few things about my education there quite strange. While I was there I did a bunch of interesting stuff. Formally, I was a copywriter student at Berghs School of Communication, but in reality I was more into strategy, and I also did one of my internships as an art director at BBH New York (who also have an SEO-questionable big Flash-behemoth as their site by the way). I have always loved trying different things, and this was certainly a great opportunity to do that.
Oh, nostalgia. My desk at BBH New York.
But the copywriting education itself was flawed in one key way – whoever put it together didn’t seem to be aware of something called “the internet”. I never once in two years heard anyone talk about web copy, much less give a lecture on SEO. I’m not sure how it is there today, but if they don’t dedicate time to that, I think it is very strange.
But the problem isn’t just in the schools. I read an article recently in the Swedish advertising magazine Resumé by a young and successful copywriter who said that web copy doesn’t differ very much from traditional copy. This is what he said:
“Jag ställer mig också ibland frågande till definitionen av webbcopy. Skillnaden är inte så stor, det är bara de dramaturgiska förutsättningarna som är lite annorlunda. Men i grunden handlar det om att kunna skriva intresseväckande”.
or in my own humble English translation:
“I sometimes question the definition of web copy. The difference isn’t that big, it’s just the dramaturgical premises that are somewhat different. But basically, it’s all about writing to awaken interest”.
Assuming he was quoted correctly, I find this strange. We can of course have different perspectives on what constitutes a big difference, but I would say that the difference is definitely significant! And more importantly, most copywriters don’t have any knowledge of, or experience from writing for search engines.
Google isn’t like your normal target audience. For one, Google doesn’t read between the lines. Humans understand that a passage like “…the dark mysterious pulse of the the night…” refers to, say, dance or sex, but can Google understand that? Google does, on the other hand, read around the lines, takes context into account, weighs remote links, clusters and evaluates what others have written – stuff that humans have a harder time doing.
I tell copywriters “to write for the hearts of men and the mind of Google”, and that is much harder than just doing one or the other. Good copywriters will need two sets of skills, and will be harder to find, harder to educate, and much more expensive to buy, simply because of the upcoming imbalance between supply and demand of this skill combo.
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I really like your SEO passages the last posts you’ve written. It warms my heart to see someone not from our side write about it. And as the previous posts – this is also an interesting topic.
Because writing good text for Google is really hard. The basic stuff to put keywords in the right place is not too hard but it requires a lot of research and also some “smartness”. What will a person search for? How can we create a page that can come up high when people search for x,y, or z?
But the hardest part here to write copy is the copy that generates a lot of links and therefore you’ll climb in Search Engines. Often this is called Link Bait and a good Link Bait can take a lot of time to craft, expecially when it comes to copy. It differs quite much from ordinary copy because it demands that people will write and link to it – not just buy the concept.
Web copy is hard work, for all the reasons you mention. And especially because it’s something you have to learn as you go along, and not in marketing school.
I think one of the big misunderstandings about web copy is that it has to be short. I’ve heard numerous times that “writing for the web, you have to be short, because people don’t have the patience”. Well, that’s far from true, isn’t it? Because when you’re interested, you may well spend hours on the Net reading about something you’re committed to. That’s one of the reasons I would say that web copy doesn’t differ that much from printed copy. And perhaps that’s resembles something of what Mattias meant in the article you quoted. With that said, putting web copy under the SEO light, well, yes, of course you have to be more concerned with thinking like the customer and how they themselves would write the phrase looking for what you want them to find.
Yes. I would say that long vs. short is not relevant in the discussion of digital vs. analogue. Other factors determine that.
However, I still think that it is an easy way out for old school copywriters (By which I don’t mean Mattias. I have no knowledge of his skills.) to say that there is no big difference. In web copy you have more factors to take into account than otherwise, while also writing “for the hearts of men”. This makes it harder and more expensive. And certainly quite different from page 3.
Thanks for commenting!
I think most copywriters are intimidated when questioning the nature of their work. As you say, there are big differences between web copy and traditional copy. Most of these differences require knowledge to detect. And when you do not have that knowledge, you get intimidated. I still belive that great copywriting is about telling a story. Learn the concept of SEO and tell your story in a way that works under those premises.
I agree with Gustav! A good copywriter that doesn’t know the premises of SEO can NEVER admit to web copy requiring anything other than traditional copy. (As would any other group facing the same problem)
You say “hearts of men and mind of Google”, Walter. It’s a GREAT sentence, but it is hardly ever the case, right?! The reality is, sadly, that it’s a game of either or..
At least, my biggest experience from people’s view on SEO is “the icing on the cake” and – since GOOD SEO is invisible and works behind the scene (much like a good assistant) – we will have hell of a time showing good examples, and making ppl ignore the “copy for SEO” examples that no living person wants to read (but that they will most certainly find in a search engine)
By the way. I just came back from an interviw at an agency. What happened made me think of an old blog post of yours. They said “We love your portfolio. It’s very creative. Good ideas. But do you have any traditional work? Broschures or sales letters?”.
Well, I do. They are pretty good to. But if that’s what they are interrested in- I have been focusing on the wrong things. Things like actual problem solving. Things like creating value and communication worth talking about. The wrong things.
I think you have to take into account what kind of text you are writing. How is the reader supposed to “use” the text? I often distinguish between information texts and emotional texts.
Informational texts isn’t a problem (or at least shouldn’t be). These are texts with a very pragmatic use. Somebody wants to know the facts as fast as possible. The tricky part here is to now what search words somebody looking for such a text may use. But here you really don’t need to put in any artistic efforts, just let the information be dominant.
Emotional texts on the other hand is texts that the reader don’t know that he or she is going to find. When somebody stumbles across one of these they need to be “captured” to continue reading. In marketing that might mean a campaign site or some other kind of communication where the reader don’t necessarily know what he or she is looking for. They might have gotten there through a banner, a recommendation of some sort or some other way.
In this case I’d say you should write for the human firstly. Partly because the drive traffic strategies are often not solely built upon search engines (it may not even necessarily be the prime goal to get hits from search engines). And partly because if the visitor doesn’t know what he or she is looking for you have to convince them that they want to stay on your site.
However, when you’ve written that formidable text that gets everybodys eye watery, then you should run it through your seo machinery to see what changes you could make without losing the artistic parts of it. And by artistic I mean those parts that talks the language of humans, not less not more. It would be nothing but stupid not to do the compromises and don’t get the chance to place high in the search engines for your relevant words.
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