SEO Copywriting – Strengths and Weaknesses
By : Nidhi Gupta
SEO Copywriting strengths
One thing that can be said about search engine optimization copywriting is that it works for suitable websites and for suitable search terms. SEO Copywriting can achieve rankings that tend to do well across the search engines, although no page can do equally well in all engines.
It is sometimes said by practitioners of search engine optimization copywriting, that the method tends to maintain its rankings as the engines tweak and change their algorithms, whereas other methods produce less stable rankings. This can’t be true. If 2 pages are in the top 10 search results; one getting there by the SEO copywriting method and the other by different search engine optimization techniques, they are both there because they match the engine’s criteria (algorithm) quite well. When the criteria is changed, the match that each of them had is necessarily changed. The matches could become closer to, or further from, the engine’s criteria. Whether each page goes up or down in the results depends on what changes have been made to the engine’s criteria. It is a matter of chance, and not a matter of whether SEO copywriting was used or not.
Competitive search terms
The technique only works for search terms that are not particularly competitive. Competitive search terms are those where many people are trying very hard to gain the top rankings for their sites. Casino, sex, insurance, health and hotels sites are among the most competitive, and there are many other topics where people fight for rankings. For medium to highly competitive search terms, other, more vigorous, methods are needed.
Suitable sites
Not all websites are suitable for SEO Copywriting. Many simply don’t have sufficient text on their pages, and adding text would spoil the design or nature of the sites. Also, some sites that do have sufficient text sometimes don’t want to be forced into changing what is written on the pages, just for the sake of the search engines.
Cost, and the limitation of targeted search terms
SEO Copywriting is a time-consuming process, and professional SEO copywriters are not cheap, therefore the cost of each page is significant. Since each page can target only one or two search terms, it would usually require a good number of pages to be made-over in order to target all the required search terms.
Tied to a copywriter
What happens when a website owner finds it necessary to alter the text on a page that has been worked on by a professional SEO copywriter? It can’t be done without either ruining the costly SEO work and, with it, the page’s rankings, or re-hiring a professional copywriter to redo the work once the changes have been made.
Slipping in the rankings
If a page is successfully optimized by SEO Copywriting, and is ranked in the top 10 search results for its targeted search term, then the optimization was worth the cost. But what happens when someone else decides to optimize a page from a different website for the same search term? If their optimization technique is successful, and the page gets into the top 10, the #10 page will slip to #11 - and off the first page of results. Then suppose another website does the same thing…and another…and another. Sooner or later, the successful page will slip from the first page of search results. As soon as people decide to optimize their pages for the chosen search terms, existing top 10 pages are on the way down. Then what?
If the sliding pages were professionally SEO copywritten, there is nothing else that the technique can do for them, or if it can, the whole costly copywriting process must be redone. Adding one or two instances of the target search terms isn’t merely a case of typing them in somewhere, because the final text still needs to read well for the site visitors. Again, the website owner is tied to a copywriter.
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