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Written by Michel Fortin
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Can Copy And Content Commingle?

Can Copy And Content Commingle?

Fire and iceLast year, a bunch of copy­writ­ers who also blog — like yours truly — shot the breeze on the Nuts and Blog­bolts talk radio show.

It was an inter­est­ing and at times spir­ited discussion.

After some talk about con­tent and copy (or should I say, writ­ing con­tent ver­sus writ­ing copy), the show’s host, Mike San­sone, asked each pan­elist if we would indi­vid­u­ally respond on our blogs to this question:

“Writ­ing for the vis­i­tor is more impor­tant than writ­ing for the search engines. Can both be met with­out sac­ri­fic­ing quality?”

Ryan Healy posted his answer on the sub­ject. Good answer. I agree with him, because he makes some great points. But I also dis­agree as I think there are ways around it.

So I guess my answer is both “yes” and “no.” Here’s why.

First off, I’m not a search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) expert by any stretch. How­ever, I do know enough about SEO to know that it’s pri­mar­ily based on three major factors:

Code, links, and content.

Let’s take a look at each one…

1. Code has to do with ensur­ing the con­tent is pre­sented in a way that makes it more appeal­ing to the search engines. Said in a dif­fer­ent way, the code is opti­mized so that the search engines can find your con­tent and read it more easily.

Why is this impor­tant? Because, in real­ity, your code not only helps search engines to find, crawl, and prop­erly index your con­tent, but also helps them present that con­tent, when searched for, in a way that appeals to their users. Human beings.

2. Links are links within your con­tent, as well as links to your con­tent — the lat­ter being more impor­tant, of course. When peo­ple link to you, they are indi­rectly telling the search engines your con­tent is of value, and there­fore of inter­est to their users.

Unde­ni­ably, this requires some writ­ing skills, such as know­ing how to write con­tent that cre­ates inter­est (i.e., what you write), and write it in a way that makes it inter­est­ing, too (i.e., how you write it). Which, by the way, is still copy­writ­ing. Isn’t it?

3. Con­tent, which is third in this list but by no means the least, is the one on which the ques­tion behind this post really hinges. I think a bet­ter ques­tion to ask is, “Can you write con­tent and copy at the same time?” Yes. But there are three ways of doing this.

Ways of doing it that doesn’t force one to sac­ri­fice the qual­ity of the other.

First, under­stand the dif­fer­ence between con­tent and copy. To me, con­tent informs. Copy invites. Con­tent edu­cates read­ers. Copy elic­its a response from them.

But can you be both infor­ma­tive and response-​​driven, too? Absolutely.

I do believe that you can write con­tent that’s appeal­ing to both the search engines and its users. At the same time. (And really, it’s all about the audi­ence, isn’t it?) To ensure it’s cap­tur­ing read­ers’ atten­tion and inform­ing them, while also gen­er­at­ing a response.

Per­son­ally, I don’t spend time on key­word opti­miza­tion, key­word den­sity, or things of that nature. I sim­ply try to cre­ate good con­tent. I look at it this way: I try to give what my users want, and by the same token I will nat­u­rally give what the search engines want.

So the objec­tive is to focus on your audi­ence. Find out what they want and bring value to them. Because that is why your web­site exists in the first place, whether it’s to edu­cate or to sell. (It’s also what makes copy truly com­pelling in the first place, too.)

In terms of what kind of con­tent to write, you can post a lot of it so that you nat­u­rally mul­ti­ply your key­word den­sity. You can focus on a par­tic­u­lar niche so that you can zoom in your tar­get audi­ence. And you can also write con­tent that’s buzz­wor­thy, too.

Do either one of these, and you will nat­u­rally attract a lot of organic traf­fic as a nat­ural byprod­uct, with­out much extra effort. That’s been my sole, core strat­egy for as long time.

But what about blend­ing copy? Well, if you want to max­i­mize your con­tent and make it response-​​driven at the same time, I believe there are three ways to accom­plish this:

  1. Guid­ing
  2. Fun­nel­ing
  3. “Newsi­fy­ing”

1. Guid­ing

The con­tent guides peo­ple into tak­ing action, whether it’s directly or indirectly.

You can cer­tainly turn your con­tent into copy to a degree. You use the con­tent itself to elicit a cer­tain response from your audi­ence, or add copy to exist­ing con­tent to accom­plish this. (The con­verse is what I call “newsi­fy­ing,” and I will come back to it later on.)

Press releases, prod­uct reviews, and even arti­cles can be both edu­ca­tional and pro­mo­tional. But guid­ing can also be as sim­ple as adding links or forms within the con­tent, and even adding words or phrases that lead peo­ple to take a cer­tain action.

There­fore, the copy may or may not be part of the con­tent proper. If it is, you can mas­sage your con­tent so it leads the reader. Even if it’s just a few key phrases or pieces of tran­si­tion copy, like “keep read­ing for…” “later on I will…” “next you should…” and so on.

But it can be sep­a­rate and dis­tinct from the con­tent, and can either blend within the con­tent, or be placed in side­notes, in pul­lquotes, in John­son boxes, or in sidebars.

How­ever, in the case of a strictly long-​​copy saleslet­ter, I agree your aim is to elicit a response and not sati­ate the engines. If you were to opti­mize your copy for the search engines, its qual­ity may suf­fer at some point. So the trick is to find the proper balance.

As the say­ing goes, you can’t be all things to all people.

But this is where the next two options come into play.

2. Fun­nel­ing

This is the process of using con­tent to gen­er­ate organic traf­fic, such as on land­ing pages, and siphon­ing that traf­fic to a copy-​​focused, response-​​driven page, site, or saleslet­ter. It can be part of the same web­site, or it can be on another site altogether.

These content-​​only pages are bea­cons or baits that attract peo­ple who are inter­ested in the con­tent first and fore­most, and are then led to take action else­where. Unlike “guid­ing,” this step involves two sep­a­rate processes that are dis­tinct from one and other.

Now, these may be con­cur­rent or not. For exam­ple, you can fun­nel traf­fic to another page, or through a multi-​​step process where one only occurs after the first has been com­pleted. Such as with optin pages, or what is often referred to as “reversed optin.”

For exam­ple, we see this in part with prod­uct launches that deliver con­tent before­hand to increase expo­sure, cre­ate inter­est, and build lists of eager sub­scribers who are later noti­fied when the prod­uct is launched and the sales copy published.

But whether it’s con­cur­rent or con­sec­u­tive, when you really think about it you are still direct­ing your vis­i­tors, are you not? So the con­tent acts like copy, to some degree. It’s still call­ing for some kind of action, even if it’s to get peo­ple to read more.

3. Newsi­fy­ing

This third step is where the two blend.

The term “newsi­fy­ing” means turn­ing copy into some kind of news­wor­thy piece — such as copy that tells a good story, reads more like an arti­cle or edi­to­r­ial, or edu­cates the reader whether they take action or not. It’s a saleslet­ter in dis­guise, in other words.

Rather than adding copy to your con­tent (as in “guid­ing,” above), in here you are doing the oppo­site. That is, you are adding con­tent to your copy, or con­vert­ing your copy into an infor­ma­tive, valu­able, news­wor­thy piece in and of itself.

Even though the pur­pose is to elicit a response (a sale, in most cases), by mak­ing your copy read like an edu­ca­tional piece you also make it more palat­able to both users and search engines — and per­haps even more so, since you’re not overtly promotional.

In other words, it appears as a softer sell, where the con­tent doesn’t appear as an out­right pro­mo­tional or sales piece. But it’s not nec­es­sar­ily a “soft-​​sell” in all cases, too. You can newsify your copy and still be strong, hard-​​hitting, and benefit-​​rich.

For exam­ple, in my white paper, The Death of The Saleslet­ter, I talk about the increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity in copy that’s news­wor­thy, intrigu­ing, and infor­ma­tive, rather than copy that’s overtly hypey, aggres­sive, and mim­ic­k­ing every other saleslet­ter out there.

Tests show that saleslet­ters pro­vid­ing valu­able con­tent in them­selves are get­ting bet­ter results than saleslet­ters that appear salesy, over the top, and patron­iz­ing. These look less like saleslet­ters and more like arti­cles or edi­to­ri­als (think “advertorials”).

Here’s a forin­stance: you sell an infor­ma­tion prod­uct on how to reduce stress. Rather than a sale­s­piece that extols the virtues of stress reduc­tion and the ben­e­fits of own­ing your prod­uct, you can write a free report on 16 tips for reliev­ing migraines with­out drugs.

While the report talks about how to relieve headaches nat­u­rally, it con­nects with the effects of stress and how reduc­ing it can help. Later, you intro­duce your product.

Peo­ple will not only under­stand the real prob­lem behind most headaches and become bet­ter edu­cated on all the other effects caused by stress, but also under­stand the ben­e­fits of reduc­ing it, and there­fore the ben­e­fits of own­ing your prod­uct and ulti­mately buy it.

(Of course, I’ve just pulled this exam­ple out of thin air for illus­tra­tion pur­poses only. I am not a doc­tor, nor do I play one on TV. But hope­fully, you get the picture.)

Any­way, this is just one exam­ple. There are so many dif­fer­ent ways of doing this. In the above sce­nario, you write con­tent that log­i­cally fits with your prod­uct or market.

But you can also pull one topic from the many cov­ered in your prod­uct, offer con­tent that teases your audi­ence to want to know more, or pro­vide con­tent that’s sep­a­rate from your prod­uct but proves it, sup­ports it, or empha­sizes any of its key benefits.

(These arti­cles are mini-​​salesletters in dis­guise, in other words.)

Nev­er­the­less, the answer to the ini­tial ques­tion is to use one of the above three steps. But in the end, keep in mind that we don’t — and shouldn’t — write for the search engines. Not really. Even when we do or think we do, we are still writ­ing for the vis­i­tor.

Search engines exist pri­mar­ily to help peo­ple find infor­ma­tion. So the sac­ri­fice, in many cases, is caused not by writ­ing more for one or the other, but when we stray from either one by fail­ing to focus on our audi­ence and instead focus too much on ourselves.

Because I believe the more you focus on what peo­ple want and give it to them, the eas­ier it will be to get both the search engines and your vis­i­tors to do what you want.

After all, it’s all copy.

About the Author

Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, author, speaker, and consultant. Visit his blog and signup free to get blog updates by email, along with response-boosting tips, tested conversion strategies, the latest news, free advice, additional resources, and a lot more! Go now to http://www.michelfortin.com. While you're at it, follow him on Twitter.

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Category: Articles
Tags: content, copywriter, copywriting, Internet, keyword, newsworthiness, psychology, quality, response, search engine, seo
This post was written on Thursday, December 10th, 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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  • MIchel

    Quoting you:

    "Personally, I don't spend time on things like keyword optimization and density. I look at it this way: give what your users want, and you will naturally give what the search engines want. ... The objective is to focus on your audience.... "

    Right on the money:

    This for me is almost the complete answer, because the search engines, above all else, now look for "experts in the niche" websites.

    This is why so many niche enthusiast sites do so well: They are chock full of niche jargon that someone unfamiliar with the subject could never write. But the search engines (Google in particular) know all about that jargon, by constantly comparing and contrasting websites on the same subject, and arrow in on those websites that not only use that language but frequently add more of it .

    The good news for real experts is that keyword optimisation which uses keywords in websites or articles that are from 'top paying keywords' type lists will not cut it at all soon in terms driving traffic.

    Worse still, the number of inbound links to a website (or votes for the site if you like) is beginning to play a far smaller role now than it used to, and will count for less and less.

    By contrast, expert text (like yours on copy writing) glows with oblique references, weird aphorisms, strange but wonderful jargon, special phrases, and word relationships that a non-expert does not know exist.

    This is the great user experience Google wants in its search results, and by God they are going to have it.

    Try looking at a Hobbyist forum. The rankings are often far higher than commercial sites who don't know the buzzwords and jargon....

    The day of the keyword stuffer is rapidly ending, and the dawn of the the expert who freely writes about a subject he loves is to hand. Watch out for it: Soon everyone will be talking about "Latent Semantic Indexing" otherwise known by Google as 'true expert context'.

    Jeeez that was a bit of a rant eh?

    :-)

    Jonathan
  • I for one believe that writing content copy for the search engines and the visitor is easily accomplished. I do it every day and it is how I make my living. For instance the page http://www.traffic-n-more.com/identity/lead.php came out of the sandbox within 3 weeks. It only has on page optimization completed and carries a PR3 right out of the gate. It only reached the 5th page in Google under "identity theft recovery" but, I assume that I can easily forced it on top if given the time to start the off page optimization.

    Bonus: The page still makes an income from the lead generation and only from organic search results.
  • Sid
    MIchel,

    You're exactly right. When you have a dynamic site like a blog or CMS site, and you continuously write quality content that uses phrases relevant to your niche, you'll naturally draw the attention of the search engines.

    And all content is really copy, whether it's simply there to draw people to the site, or explicitly enticing the visitor to a take a particular action. For one thing, your content title can read like any headline, creating curiosity, controversy, or whatever to get the user to click on the link. Then, there's what you put in the meta description - it's like the lead in a sales letter. You can write it such that you draw the user further into the article or to click on the link from the search engines.

    Writing naturally has another side benefit with the search engines: you'll create more long-tail references, which can bring you more traffic to the site.

    The article itself can easily be written like a sales letter without being a sales letter. You've got a strong headline (title), solid lead (first paragraph that entices them to read further), provide benefit statements (the main points of your article), and creates a close (the conclusion). The difference is what you do with your close/conclusion. One trick is to close with a reference to another, related article on your site. Another is to close with a reference to a resource that provides more information or assistance. This resource can be your own product, or ideally, an affiliate product.

    Sid
  • Great piece! I absolutely agree with you. I never really bothered with optimizing my content for SE (I'm lazy...) and I just really focused on providing great content to people, and it's been working out fine.

    cheers
    Adam
  • Hi Michel

    Thanks for this thoughtful and practical post.

    I think there is a big risk of people getting hung up on writing with the IT in mind. This gets in the way of the things that are really important to quality writing like flow, or finding your own voice. (I am thinking here of people new to blogging rather than professional copywriters).

    I liked the way you framed the technical end of it (like search engines, code, additional traffic) as part and parcel of the same thing: your audience, your visitors, your readers. And that at the end of the day is who and what we are writing for.

    Joanna
  • @Adam:

    That's the way I've always done it. I never really spent time on SEO. That said, there are tweaks to the code I do that help the search engines index my site. But for links and content, I just keep focusing on providing my audience with what they want. The rest works itself out in the end. (In fact, that's how I've been doing it for over a decade online.)

    @Joanna:

    Exactly. Right on. I tell my clients to hire SEO experts when it comes to coding or some link building (even that is arguable). But as for content, just keep focusing on the audience. Because it's ALL about the audience, isn't it?
  • Michel;

    White papers can be a great example of copy and content living happily.

    I like how you put this out there.

    I have never heard these terms before.

    Well put.

    Mike
  • Copy and content don't always have to play along nicely. In fact, it's
    better if they didn't. Separate your sales site from your optimized content site and shuttle traffic from the latter to the former. It's easier for the search engines and you don't have to spend all your time trying to compromise.
  • Bob
    Hi Michel,

    You are a copywriter so I'd just like to inform you of the following thing that could be fixed in your post above:

    "This is not because I disagree with anything Ryan said, because he makes some great points. But because I think there are ways around it." - Michel fortin

    This quote displays incorrect use of punctuation and the word "but." It should be rewritten as follows:

    This is not because I disagree with anything particular that Ryan said, as he makes some great points, but because I think there are ways around [this issue].
  • Bob.

    I suspect Michel knows the finer points of grammar but like many of us deliberately creates grammatical hiccups. (Notice how I left out the words 'that' and 'he'?)

    I won't put up with bad grammar, but if disruption creates attention then all bets are off.

    Oops. Let me reword that:

    Bad grammar is something up with which I will not put.

    He he :-)

    Jonathan
  • lorrainegrula
    Thought provoking post as always sir and a subject quite close to my heart.

    IMHO, well-written copy can attract both search engines and people. Clear and to the point is important for both. Not STUFFING with keywords but frequently using the common phrases that relate to people and not being so esoteric (creative!) in your word choice that a non-thinking machine would get confused.

    As a longtime journalist, I agree with your basic definition of content vs. copy. I think many people do not understand the distinction. I would add that content meant to inform should be as objective as possible. By it's very nature, quality "information" needs to cover it all, good and bad. Sales copy glosses over the bad and emphasizes the good.

    Copy meant to entice will not be objective of course because objective is actually kind of boring and that is generally not too enticing. So when choosing words, the content writer would opt for, "The eBook was lengthy and informative but was also quite redundant to other eBooks I have read on eMail marketing." The copy writer would opt for, "This incredible ebook is crammed full of the best info available on building your email list so you can rake in big bucks." At least that is how I would see it from my perspective. Which way one chooses to write is based on their personal goals and objectives.

    People are sick to death of being sold to, so if they think they are getting solid, object, "true" info they are more likely to trust it. Trust is everything of course. Most people feel sales copy is inherently manipulative so do tend to respond differently to something presented in a "newsy" fashion.

    Being a hard core journalist, the trouble I see with that is when there is no real news left and EVERYTHING is "sold" with the pretext of being information and not sales copy.

    The worst case scenario is starting illegitimate wars in this fashion. Lesser offenses include those obnoxious stories on your local news about the killer germs in your sink being worse than those in your toilet. Guess what folks? That video crap is produced by the makers of germ killing cleaners and the "content" is marketing in disguise and junk science to boot. But this method of communication helps them sell bottles of cleaner so who care if the entire population is running around scared to death based on erroneous info? And in other cases DEAD because of erroneous info. A lot of my time in journalism was spent as a health reporter and this issue ran rampant in medical news. Remember phen-fen? Wow, was that a case in point.

    Am I being cynical again?

    I liked your article Michel.

    You are a great example of presenting quality information that gives people what they are really seeking. The information they need to make well rounded decisions so they make sound purchasing decisions. They are not fooled by well-disguised hype that leads them to make the wrong decision and then regret it later. The way you do it is a long term strategy.
  • Writing naturally has another side benefit with the search engines: you'll create more long-tail references, which can bring you more traffic to the site.
  • ken ca|houn
    Excellent tip re newsifying copy; agree re no dedicated work on seo, I get top 10 kw placements for many sites organically by providing/writing about what's relevant, makes sense.

    Interesting re choice between concurrency for funnel, will study/test, seems like a valid concept. Well though out structure, thanks, will apply it.

    -ken
  • I think most webmasters miss out on the funneling concept. The idea for getting SEO traffic is not just to have them to go to your site, but to hold them by the hands and lead them to an action.

    The same goes with article marketing too. A lot of articles I see simply present the content, and doesn't direct the reader anywhere. I believe it was Jimmy D Brown that had some article templates and resource boxes that are constructed in a way that naturally leads the reader to click on the link in the resource box, and suggesting they take an action (usually signing up for a free report).
  • Great post! I think it's important to remember that for people like you and I with a lot of professional writing experience it's easy to blend copy & content - it's become our logical thought pattern over time. But since most bloggers don't have that background, they should consider other options such as a) alternating posts between content & copy, giving some fodder to the search engines while providing top content on other posts for those who find their blog, or b) sticking to what Yaro Starak calls 'pillar posts', heavy on valuable content without concern for the search engines, and rely on a bit of organic search traffic supplemented by Web 2.0 traffic generation. Unlike the early days when we started blogging, these days services like Technorati, MyBlogLog, LinkedIn, Squidoo, Digg, StumbleUpon and Twitter, amongst others, can all be used to drive traffic to one's blog, often surpassing the traffic levels provided even by great positioning in the SERPs.
  • Great answer!

    I think this issue is absolutely key to the future of copywriting in general.

    No longer can with pretent that content and copy are completely separate things and never the twain shall meet.
  • Gee Michel, I don't know... can it? ;-)

    Okay, I know this is an old post. Just giving you a hard time.

    Happy Holidays!
  • Thanks for an informative post. For my money, I think you hit the nail on the head with:
    Con­tent informs. Copy invites. Con­tent edu­cates read­ers. Copy elic­its a response from them.

    I believe that straightforward maxim will lead to editorial that performs when it comes to SEO, without selling its soul.

    Thanks for the post! Mark
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