The Difference Between SEO And Copywriting

Web owners are possessed by the idea of search engine optimization, believing that as long as their website is chock-full of great keywords that produce a high ranking in Google, their site will produce thousands of conversions. Hence many websites receive thousands of hits but few conversions. That’s because conversions aren’t produced by keywords – they’re produced by great copy.
You know the old saying, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ Well, if you’re the owner of a badly written website filled with great keywords, you probably understand the meaning of that age-old adage more than anyone.
If you want to convert visitors into customers, you need to combine good keywords with compelling website copy. Therein lies the secret of getting your stubborn horse to drink that water.
SEO specialists are not copywriters
Some web owners believe that web copywriters and SEO specialists are the same thing. Certainly, there are many SEO specialists with backgrounds in computer science and programming who’d like you to think that, though there are a few shinning literary stars among them.
What SEO specialists don’t want you to know is that SEO is easy – writing is not. That’s why they’re so good at SEO but not so good at creating conversions.
To the common not-too-savvy website owner, SEO has the appearance of a great white shark. But SEO is simple and not necessarily worth the bundles of money web owners pay the specialists they hire.
If your website is hundreds or thousands of pages long, hiring an SEO expert experienced with large-scale websites is worth the investment because you probably don’t have the time or knowledge to do it yourself. If your site is small, however, you can easily figure out the keywords on your own and hire a good copywriter to work the keywords into the copy. Most copywriters can also easily find the keywords for you if you don’t have time to do it yourself.
Good copy matters
Your product is great and you know how much people will benefit from it, but the question is, do they know how much they will benefit from it? Probably not. You might have what they want, but not the reason why they want it.
Imagine a shiny new corvette without the shiny or the new. It might have a great engine, but people won’t buy it if it doesn’t have a great look to go with it. That’s true even if their primary motivation is to buy a car with a fast engine.
Good keywords without sales-driven copy are no different.
Web users input keywords into search engines to find things they are looking for. They have an idea of what they want based on the keywords they use, but they depend on you to tell them what they really want, though they don’t know that.
Good copywriting convinces website visitors the product they are reading about is the product they want to buy. In many cases, the visitor came to the website not even realizing they wanted to buy a particular product until they saw that eye-catching tagline or product description that lead them directly to your online shopping cart and persuaded them to buy, buy, buy.
Generic SEO copy is self-centered while good copywriting is customer-centered
People are not rationale creatures. They do not buy products based on reason; they are motivated solely by emotion. Good copywriting grabs at the emotions of your website visitors, similar to the way the sleek, shiny body of a Corvette grips at the heart of its owner.
In other words, generic SEO copy is self-centered while copywriting is customer-centered. Good copywriting sells because it’s written from the customer’s point of view.
SEO and good copywriting are both important, however, you must use them together. Hiring a copywriter to write compelling copy that sells your product or service is well worth the investment. Copywriters will often charge a percentage of the profits you earned based on the number of sales conversions their writing produced, whereas many SEO specialists will demand a flat rate based on the number of hits your site received, which may or may not result in any conversions at all.
In short, you can save a lot of money by researching the keywords yourself and hiring a copywriter to convert the hits those keywords generate into sales through well-written, customer-centered, sales-driven copy. The income earned through the investment will speak for itself.