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.

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.

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)

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 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.

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.