SEO misconceptions that drive copywriters mad

Most copywriters who have written content for websites will have come across the SEO brief from hell. It’s a long list of stringent requirements that kill all creativity and make it difficult to even write coherent sentences.

In fact, I recently saw a Tweet complaining that SEO is the copywriter’s worst enemy.

I actually disagree. I don’t think it’s SEO that’s problem: it’s people’s misconceptions about SEO.

Having worked for a few years as Head of Content at an SEO agency, I have seen great SEO results achieved simply by creating well-researched, relevant copy and articles on the subject in question.

Sure, a few tweaks may be needed, but while keyword targeting and optimisation are important, they are no more important than user-friendly content that answers search queries.

Here are the SEO misconceptions that drive copywriters (or me, at least) up the wall…

1. “The keywords must appear X amount of times”

Keyword targeting is undoubtedly an important part of SEO. Your keywords need to be included strategically on your web page so that search engines understand what your page is about and can include it on the relevant search engine results pages.

However, there is a misconception that you need to include your keywords a certain amount of times, even if they don’t fit naturally in the text.

This may be a hangover from the old days of SEO, when people used to spam their web pages full of repeated keywords in an attempt to rank. This is called keyword stuffing, and Google soon caught up with it. The 2011 Panda algorithm update targeted this practice, and since then websites have actually been penalised for doing it.

The thing is, if you are writing about “cake decorating”, for example, you are naturally going to use the phrase “cake decorating” in your text, as well as related words such as “cakes”, “icing” and “sprinkles”.

However, there is software that will perform in-depth analyses of competitor pages and give you an optimum amount of times you should use each keyword.

Don’t get me wrong, this can be useful for SEO professionals when thinking about optimising texts. But all too often, people who know nothing about SEO get their hands on these numbers and percentages and unnecessarily inflict near-impossible briefs on poor, unsuspecting copywriters.

The bottom line is that there is no “magic number” for keywords, so you shouldn’t ruin good copy by trying to achieve one.

2. “The text must be X words long”

You might have heard of the 500-word rule for SEO texts. Namely: you need to have at least 500 words on a web page for it to rank in search engines.

Now, this is a good starting point, as it is based on the principles that:

Google needs written text in order to understand what your page is about

and;

Pages with lots of written information provide value to the user and will be deemed higher quality as a result.

However, the great/annoying thing about SEO is that there are no hard and fast rules. How many words you need on a page depends very much on the industry, the type of search query and on various other factors.

For example, for “how to” queries, Google favours clear, concise bullet points. So 500 words plus in long paragraphs is unlikely to rank for “how to bake a cake”, for example. Especially if the bulk of that text is about the history of cakes, because your copywriter ran out of things to say but had to hit the 500 word minimum.

For some search queries, Google even favours video content, in which case, putting time and effort into creating an explanatory video may be of more use.

Ultimately, SEO content needs to find the balance having sufficient length to be useful to humans and search engines, but not containing endless filler text that adds no extra value.

Not least because it will make the copywriter tear their hair out.

Say no to arbitrary word counts!

3. “Every blog post needs a target keyword”

Everybody loves a good blog post. A lot of the time, this is because of their proven SEO benefits. You can cover more topics than on your core web pages and they signal to search engines that your site is kept up-to-date and full of useful content.

One common misconception, though, is that every single blog post you publish needs to have a target keyword – ideally, one with high search volumes and low competition.

However, your blog is not simply a tool for targeting more keywords. As mentioned, regular blogging signals to users and search engines that your company is active and providing useful content. When search engines are crawling your site, lots of posts with industry-relevant information and thought leadership help show that you are an expert in your field.

What’s more, a really unique, well-researched article might earn you some valuable backlinks, in turn helping your Domain Authority and overall ranking potential.

All of this argues for the fact that your blog posts should be written with your customers and industry in mind, focussing on topics that interest and inform people.

You may want to create some blog posts with specific targeting, but your overall priority should be well thought-out, quality posts.

And you certainly shouldn’t be trying to shoehorn in keywords that don’t fit.

So there you have it: a few of the most irritating misconceptions about SEO. Ultimately, the art of producing good website text is striking a fine balance between writing for the machines (Google’s crawlers) and writing for humans.

Ignore SEO completely and your web page probably won’t rank, but create copy that’s purely based on numbers and percentages and you’ll likely switch off human users, and maybe even damage your rankings in the process.

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