As a website copywriter, I hear this myth repeated back to me all time by new clients and prospects. "Don't bother search-engine-optimizing content," they say. "Just make sure it is well written and keywords will flow naturally into content." Self-styled gurus constantly repeat, "don’t write for search engines, write for people who will be reading what you write"--as if there were necessarily a conflict of interest between SEO and humans.

If you're one of people who says that, you're operating under two misconceptions:

• Misconception 1: you know more about what people want to read on web than search engines do.
• Misconception 2: you know more about both search engine optimization and what people want to read on web than people who making a living out of this stuff.

Search engines know more about your website visitors than you do

"I want a well-written web page, not a list of keywords." It frightens me a bit when I hear this, since it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of both SEO and what search engines do.

A search engine is not simply a massive find function, like one in "Edit" menu of Microsoft applications. It does not just pull up any page that has keyword in it X number of times. If it did, all pages that show up on search engine results would simply contain a list of keywords. You see, you're not only one who would like to rank high in search engines. If there were an easy trick to do it that didn't involve expending resources on good content, you would have been beaten to punch.

Ultimately, writing for search engines means writing for web surfers. Think about it: services like Google thrive on giving people pages they want to read. If they consistently failed to give people what they wanted, people would stop using them.

Writing what people want to read on web

Most of time, people don't want to read on web. Reading on a screen hurts eyes. It doesn't help that a lot of web pages make it harder with text that's too small, backgrounds that are colored rather than white, and lots of extraneous graphics. Besides, an unfortunate amount of what’s on web isn’t worth reading, and there is an overabundance of choice. Time must be rationed.

In fact, people treat a web page much as a search engine does: they scan it. In particular, they scan it for keywords they entered into search engine. If they arrived via a link from another website, they are still looking for keywords related to their interest--which are generally same as keywords people enter into search engines.

In short, Nobel-prize-winning literature makes bad web content. You have to write specifically for web. That's why web hasn't fueled much of a resurgence in short story or other literary writing, dashing many hopes. Ebook versions of paper books have also disappointed expectations. Newspapers are only paper publications that have made a smooth online transition, precisely because they are written to be scanned rather than read word-for-word.

Still think good SEO web content makes for bad reading?

You've just read almost to end of a piece of search-engine-optimized web content. This article was optimized for keywords, "SEO," "search engine," "search engines," "keyword," "keywords," "search engine optimization," and "writing."

The keywords were present in headings and throughout content. The content itself is easy to scan: paragraphs of one-three sentences, broken up by sub-headings every four paragraphs or so, and keywords in boldface.

Naturally, those keywords are too competitive for this page to have a chance of ranking high in Google for them. But they will help with all atypical search keywords that account for as many as half of all searches. So, if someone types in a phrase like, "keyword writing search engine optimized content," this page would have a pretty good chance of showing up.

To be sure, this article is on long side for a web page. Most people won’t even scan more than 600 words of text; 300-500 is ideal. But this article is destined primarily to be shown in an email newsletter, where attention spans are longer since people are more confident source of content can be trusted to repay their investment of time. Besides, as a well-structured page, it can be split into two or three pages according to subheadings.

In short, there’s much more to writing well for web than just writing well. If you’ve had enough sense to have your web content written professionally, have enough sense to take advice of most website copywriters: search-engine-optimization for keywords and good web writing are same thing.

About the author
Joel Walsh is the head website copywriter for UpMarket Content. He suggests you visit this web page to get SEO website content copywriting services or information: http://upmarketcontent.com/seo-content.htm

An open letter to a web content copyright violator who pled ignorance to DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act).

Dear "Muffin,"

You don't know me, and I don't know you, except that you are a thief, and a pretty shameless one at that. Please, don't take offense at that. If you'll recall, you already admitted to being a thief in a public web message board. The topic of message board was Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Let me refresh your memory with what you wrote:

"I've use some picture from japanese artist on my web and this morning i've receive email about to sued me..... I never hear about DMCA before....PLEASE....i don't know what to do...."

Funny thing was, your message almost made it sound like you were a victim.

Muffin, not only were you not a victim, you were very, very lucky. You see, your victims actually asked you nicely to stop stealing from them. They even implied they wouldn't call in cops if you stopped stealing and promised not to do it again.

Muffin, let's conduct a little life experiment: next time you’re in a shop, walk out door with a bit of merchandise stuffed down your trousers. It doesn't have to be anything too expensive. Just make sure it has some kind of inventory-control tag so people who run shop will be sure to know what you've done, because that's whole point of this experiment.

You see, Muffin, more than likely--and I mean, much, much, more than likely--the shopkeepers will not just ask you nicely to take their merchandise out of your trousers and put it back on shelf. You might even have to pay for that stuff! Heck, if they really are out to victimize you, they might even call police! Seriously!

Muffin, I have to be honest: I would not be so nice to you as people you stole from. You see, I'm one of those crazy creative types who actually create stuff from scratch or maybe pay for it rather than just take it off someone else's website. (I know, if all of us creative types were as smart as you we'd all save a lot of time just copying stuff rather than putting it out there for other people to…ouch! Excuse me, I think I just stumbled over a logical paradox.)

You see, Muffin, I'm a writer, and a pretty generous one. I even let people put most of articles I write on their websites for free. All I ask for is that at end of article, they leave in little link to my site I include there.

Muffin, would you believe there are people who put my article on their site without link to my site?

And when I told those site owners about their mistake, some of them just took article down off their sites! As if that undid fact that they had already been using my article and making money by showing advertisements next to it.

The owners of those websites were not as lucky as you, Muffin. You see, I'm like shopkeeper who doesn't just politely ask you to put stuff back on shelf. No, I called in police.

More to point, I called in Google. You can read Google’s official policy here: http://www.google.com/dmca.html Yes, that's dmca as in DMCA, as in Digital Millenium Copyright Act.

Don't worry, Google lets you file a counter-complaint when someone reports you as a DMCA violator. And you can feel free to email your counter-complaint to all people who won't find your site when they do a web search.

Of course, I didn't just send a message to Google's legal department. You see, some of those thieves' websites were even showing Google Adsense advertisements. Note that I said *were* showing advertisments. You see, Google's Adsense TOS doesn’t take as rosy a view of copyright violations as you do, Muffin.

The companies that owned those websites' internet hosting servers didn't like being accessories to crime, either.

Well, Muffin, in closing let me just introduce you to a PDF of Digital Millenium Copyright Act: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf Sadly, this definitively means you can't say anymore that you have never heard of DMCA.

But maybe you can still try telling shopkeepers you never heard of shoplifting?

About the author
Joel Walsh is the owner and head writer of UpMarket Content (upmarketcontent.com), Check out the website promotion content package by clicking here: http://upmarketcontent.com/website-promotion-package.htm.