SEO Optimization? Optimising your SEO (and ignoring your copywriting)

By Mindy Gofton in Copywriting on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 @ 12:05

I keep seeing SEO sites plastered with the keyword "SEO optimisation" or, in America, "SEO optimiZation". If these were better sites, I would assume that they were doing it because the numbers of people searching for "SEO optimisation" is high, not because they don't realise that "SEO optimisation" means "search engine optimisation optimisation" - which makes pretty much no sense at all.

Think about it - how do you optimise your SEO? Is it even possible to do optimisation of search engine optimisation? If it's necessary to optimise your SEO then the SEO work being done on your site is probably not very good to begin with and you should have hired a different SEO company to optimise your site.

Humour aside, the fact that SEO companies are having to optimise pages for "SEO optimisation" suggests that searchers don't always consider the syntax of their search terms. So, when optimising a page using SEO copywriting, how do you balance the need for your copy to be grammatically correct and written with the proper English syntax with the need to target the right keyword phrases?

You can do two things:

You can compromise. Even though as a copywriter you know that "SEO optimisation" is a ridiculous phrase, you use "SEO optimisation" on your pages instead of just "SEO". Most people won't notice, a few will know why you're targeting "SEO optimisation" instead of merely "SEO" and a few grammar fascists such as myself will make fun of you on their blogs.

You can get creative. Instead of talking about "SEO optimisation" you can use such tricks as splitting the phrase up with punctuation. For example, by saying, "Why do you need a professional SEO? Optimisation can be tricky and it's easy to make mistakes."

It's especially easy to make mistakes when you hire an "SEO optimiser" to work on your copy instead of an SEO copywriter. I'm sure better professional SEO copywriters than I will have loads of creative ways to optimise a page for "SEO optimisation." But I'm struggling to think of another....

Mindy wrote:

@sugitha - A good SEO copywriter will know how to choose keywords that searchers use and he/she will also know how to craft copy using those keywords without making your business sound illiterate. People may search for shortened versions of phrases like "SEO Manchester", leaving out articles, prepositions and conjunctions, but they certainly don't find a business credible if the same words on the page don't make any sense or make the copy read like it was written by an 8-year-old.

Websites are for visitors and SEO consultants should bear that in mind at all times when optimising sites.

@Vincent - One more important than the other? Not at all. You need great copy on a site to explain the context but you also need links to demonstrate that people find the site useful. You can't have one without the other and be effective.

vincent wrote:

Great topic & it has covered several points regarding search engine optimization. But I got a question, do you think onpage factors or offpage factors play a bigger role for SEO? Please advise.

sugitha wrote:

In Keyword optimization, keyword selection we have to be in very careful, we have to select the keyword from the users point of view then only we can get correct keywords and traffic.