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“Why Bieber SEO Copywriting Sex Doesn’t iPad Work Minecraft” plus 1 more

Why Bieber SEO Copywriting Sex Doesn’t iPad Work Minecraft

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:00 PM PDT

This guest post is by Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash.

Today, I bring you heresy. Not on the scale of Galileo trying to convince Pope Urban VIII that the sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, but close enough.

Stop believing the lies. SEO is a fool's errand.

SEO copywriting is the worst invention since the vuvuzela, and does at least as much to drown out coherent thought. I'm not talking merely about the damage SEO does in the hands of independent bloggers like (presumably you) and me. Visit the landing pages of some major corporations and other business entities, and you'll see particular words and phrases dispersed and repeated through the text so awkwardly that the finished product barely qualifies as English.

Here's an excerpt from a famous American hotel's landing page. Discretion forced me to substitute the name of another city for the hotel's actual city, which will make it .002% more difficult for you to figure out what hotel the passage refers to:

Your Ultimate Cincinnati Experience Begins At Our Cincinnati Hotel Resort.

Elevate your experience at the (5-word phrase describing the hotel). See all the changes that make our Cincinnati hotel new – up down and all around. The best value on the Cincinnati Strip, the (5-word phrase describing the hotel) offers affordable dining, spacious hotel accommodations, exciting Cincinnati hotel casino games, headline entertainment and some of the best thrill rides in the world, all in a central location. Boasting the tallest freestanding observation tower in the United States west of the Mississippi, this iconic Cincinnati hotel is recognizable all over the world. Visit the indoor and outdoor observation decks in the (5-word phrase describing the hotel) to see why our panoramic view of Cincinnati was voted the Best of Cincinnati for 2010 and 2011 by the Cincinnati Review-Journal. Dine in the city's only revolving restaurant, Top of the World, offering 360 degree views of Cincinnati. Grab a drink at one of our many lively bars. Take advantage of our exceptional Cincinnati hotel deals and relax in our spacious rooms.

Wait, where are you located? And what type of establishment is it again? Thanks, I wasn't sure. The accompanying photos of the hotel and the iconic skyline it inhabits weren't giving me a clue either.

No one has ever read that preceding dreadful paragraph in its entirety, possibly not even the person who wrote it, ran it through an SEO program and then posted it.

The worst part is that the people responsible know that SEO "copywriting" results in non-syntactical gibberish, yet don't care.

Why?

SEO devotees got trapped in the minutiae and lost sight of the ultimate objective: getting people to buy. Everything else is secondary, including intermediate and tertiary goals such as moving up in Google rankings.

It's as if you were to make it your life's work to keep your car's license plate as legible as possible. You shampoo it daily, then buffer it with the most reflective wax you can buy, letting the plate serve as a gleaming reminder to the vehicle behind you of who you are and what state you live in. Meanwhile, you never bother to change the oil, check the tire pressure, fix the shattered windshield, or even confirm that you filled the tank and inserted your key in the ignition.

SEO not only shouldn't be an end in itself, it runs counter to the more basic goal of getting people to hear what you have to say. The above paragraph could have read something like this:

The best value on the Strip boasts affordable dining, enormous rooms, casino games, spectacular entertainment and world-famous thrill rides, capped by the highest observation tower west of the Mississippi. Stand behind the glass, brave the elements, or even enjoy a gourmet meal, 1,149 feet above the ground.

It's not Shakespeare, nor even Dickens, but it gets the point across. More importantly, it would get read. Perhaps not by Google crawlers, but by eyes connected to heads (and indirectly to wallets.)

If you're writing for Google crawlers, or anything other than humans, the battle is already lost. Otherwise, who are you writing for? Literally no one. For people who preach SEO as a moral imperative, verbal resonance doesn't matter as much as strategic keyword placement.

Oh, isn't Greg being cute and naive. His right-dominant brain thinks that cold science is sullying his precious art.

No. SEO isn't a hard discipline like chemistry or physics. It's an attempt to codify a metric that has only a tangential relationship (and occasionally an adversarial one) with the more important one of attracting customers. You remember customers, right? The people who buy your products?

Telling a talented writer to write for SEO is the equivalent of someone having told Mozart, “Those concertos of yours are okay, but you should include at least one diminished seventh chord and a couple of appoggiaturas every ten measures.”

There are even better arguments for the death of SEO, one of which is an insurmountable little mathematical problem. Just as not all children can be above average, not all sites can be optimized. If they could be, then your definition of optimization is wrong. If every blogger in your field intersperses the same select words and phrases throughout her copy, the result is nothing. You can't have everyone move up in the rankings. If you have 100 competing sites, and they all adopt the latest SEO practices, what remains are … 100 competing sites. When every blogger spends less time creating content and more time trying to please algorithms, the result is that no one benefits and readers now have a more difficult time sifting through everything. It's the Tragedy of the Common Nouns.

And another thing. No one mentions that every time you Google something, the initial page grossly overstates the number of results. People see an intimidating 7- or 8-digit monstrosity that's supposed to represent how many instances of the relevant phrase exist online, and then those people panic.   For instance, entering "control your cash" (with quotes) ostensibly returns 8,410,000 results. (Fortunately, the top six that appear in the screen capture all happen to reference my site.)

Of course, I indeed searched for that phrase when I was thinking of names for my site. At that time, had I wanted to, I could have thought, "Oh my Lord. Even if I somehow add enough keywords in my copy that I reach the 99th percentile, there will still be 84,100 results ahead of me. Google displays them ten to a page, so unless a searcher is willing to press the arrow labeled "Next" at the bottom of the page 8,410 times, no one will ever see me."

Try pressing that "Next" arrow anyway and see what happens. Go ahead, I'll wait and meet you back here 8,410 clicks from now.

"Control your cash" doesn't return 8,410,000 usable results. It returns 479 unique results. And that's for a fairly generic phrase. If you want people to search for something more specific, such as ("heating ventilation and air conditioning" + "Fremantle" + "open Sundays"), you don't need to season your pages with endless repetition of the same words. You just need to exist and be a little self-aware.

Writing is still the fundamental form of communication among literate people, last I checked. And those same literate people expect other literate people to speak to them as clearly and concisely as possible. That sound you heard was Strunk and White emerging from their graves, bloodied but undead, ready to tap a bony finger on anyone who thinks that doing the opposite of writing something compelling is going to boost business.

Greg McFarlane is an advertising copywriter who lives in Las Vegas. He recently wrote Control Your Cash: Making Money Make Sense, a financial primer for people in their 20s and 30s who know nothing about money. You can buy the book here (physical) or here (Kindle) and reach Greg at greg@ControlYourCash.com.

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Why Bieber SEO Copywriting Sex Doesn't iPad Work Minecraft

You MUST Post Every Day on Your Blog [Misconceptions New Bloggers Have #2]

Posted: 27 Jul 2011 07:01 AM PDT

This post continues our Misconceptions New Bloggers Have series and looks at one of the most common questions I’m asked about when speaking about blogging—posting frequency.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard prebloggers dismiss the idea of blogging because they don’t have the time or discipline to produce daily blog posts.

The belief is that to be successful they need to get posts out daily (if not multiple times per day). The reality is that there is no single approach to successful blogging when it comes to how often one must post. There are plenty of examples of highly successful blogs that operate at both ends of the frequency spectrum (I’ll highlight some less frequent posters below).

So what can we say about how often you should post? Let’s take a look at some of the factors we need to consider.

Regular contact builds relationships

The blogger/reader interaction is a lot like any relationship—the more you see one another as friends, the more you begin to know about each other, the more intimacy develops, and the more you get to trust each other (a big generalization, I know).

Regular posting on your blog puts you and your brand in front of people on a regular basis, and this opens up the opportunity for a deepening relationship. Infrequent posting can lead to readers feeling disconnected, and to even forget who you are completely.

This was highlighted to me once at a conference when, after getting off the stage from speaking, I was almost knocked over in a warm embrace from one ProBlogger reader.

Through her tears she stammered, “I … just … feel … sob … like … I … sniff … know … you … so … well!”

Why did she feel that way? Every day she’d received an email from me with advice on how to build her blog.

Over-posting can be annoying

Of course if we look at “real life” relationships we also have to acknowledge that the amount of time you spend with someone can also have the opposite effect. Have you ever had a friendship with someone that became a little too much? You know the relationships … where the other person leaps in so far that you end up feeling a little smothered!

Posting too regularly can get a little like that too.

I once surveyed readers here on ProBlogger about the reasons they unsubscribed to RSS feeds and the number one answer was “posting too much.” Respondents expressed that they developed “burnout” and would unsubscribe if a blog became too “noisy.”

There’s a tipping point for every blog where one more post just becomes too much and readers begin to disengage.

It comes down to usefulness and relevancy

So what’s the tipping point? How many posts will grow the relationship and how many will destroy it?

Unfortunately there isn’t a single number that will work for every blog—instead I suspect it really comes down to the relevancy and usefulness of the content you’re producing. If what you’re writing is going to solve problems and be valuable to them, they will forgive a lot, whether that’s lots of posts or a long period between them.

One question to ask yourself on this front is, “What do my readers need?”

On one hand, you might find in answering that question for your readership that they need lots of short, sharp posts because there is a lot of breaking news in your niche that they want.
In other cases you might find that your readers actually need thoughtful analysis—longer posts that they have time to chew on before moving onto another topic.

The answers to this question will depend a lot on the type of blog that you’re running, the niche or topic, the style and length of content that you’re producing, and the types of readers you’re hoping to attract.

Benefits of less frequent posts

On the flip-side, there are benefits of less posts, too:

Potentially higher reader engagement: I’ve noticed on my own blogs that if I post once in three or four days, the posts tend to get higher levels of comments and conversation among readers when compared to times when I post two posts in a single day. I guess frequent posting pushes posts off the radar of readers faster, as there’s always something new coming out.
Absence can make the heart grow fonder: I know of a couple of bloggers who post quite infrequently, but have built up almost a cult following, and who build a lot of anticipation among readers for the next post. Posts become highly anticipated and valued, and they get shared around the web at a higher rate than if the posts were coming out multiple times a day (I’ll give some examples of this type of blog below).
It helps to avoid writer burnout and can lead to higher quality content: After the initial adrenaline rush that often comes with launching a new blog subsides, many bloggers hit a wall when, a few months in, they begin to struggle to find things to write about. The pressure of daily posting can add to this, so a less frequent publishing schedule can give a little more space to write only about the things that they think really matter. They are free to write the most useful content, and to avoid burnout as they do so.

Examples of blogs that post less often than daily

I asked on Twitter for examples of blogs that post less frequently than daily, but which still have been successful. I was inundated with examples. Here are some that were most commonly suggested by my followers:

Zen Habits: updated an average of eight times per month over the last few months
The Art of Non Conformity: Chris Guillebeau’s blog, which has averaged just under ten posts per month lately
SimpleMom: posts more regularly than the above two, but usually has a day or two off per week—a good example of regularity with breaks
The Four Hour Work Week: as you’d expect, Tim’s not going to be updating daily on this given his topic (he posts three or four times a month), yet it gets a lot of engagement
Unmarketing: Scott Stratten commented on Twitter that “infrequency is my middle name.” However, keep in mind that Scott’s working hard on developing engagement on Twitter—he’s closing in on 75,000 tweets!
Social Triggers: Derek Halpern posts two to four times per month, but the quality is high and there’s a lot of reader engagement.
Penelope Trunk: Penelope is another great example of someone who has regular posting but doesn’t feel the need to write something every single day.