Thursday, May 31, 2007

Confessions of an SEO Copywriter

I have a lot of people contact me about SEO (Seach Engine Optimization) copywriting.

In the two years that I have been writing blogs I have had quite a lot of success with SEO.

When I wanted to square off English Copywriter, I got that, Freelance English Copywriter, I nailed that too, and previously I wanted Sustainability Advertising…and BAM! You betcha.

Okay, truth be told I totally stumbled across the tricks of the trade by pretty much making every mistake in the book. I’ve been banned from Google, Adsense (twice), Yahoo and even our good friend Jeeves.

By making these mistakes I know a bit about what not to do, so that’s a start.

I go about SEO in what is known as the ‘white hat’ way. In other words, I provide content that search engines like. It’s not a bunch of garbage spewed out by outsourced man-machine-animals for $5 a page (or worse).

As I’ve said before, if you buy cheap SEO, it will only come back to haunt you sooner or later. Either you’ll get knocked off the rankings entirely, or you’ll damage your brand with that nonsense.

To be a full-on SEO guy you have to know how to program websites as well, which I don’t. What I do is strictly through blogs (and other things). It’s a very labour-intensive system (just look at this blog and you’ll see what I mean). But it makes you a resource in your field, and that’s cool.

I also have a few other tricks up my sleeve.

But the reality is, to stay at the top you need to put in a lot of work and if you want it done right, it will cost a pretty penny.

That said, am I looking for SEO clients?

Not really.

There’s money to be made doing this stuff, but right now, my heart is in advertising.