Bob Bly, the well known copywriter, recently wrote an article about why he did not hold much stock in SEO copywriting.
To create powerful copy, you need to have a single core audience in mind and concentrate all your effort on writing to that one audience. When I write copy, that audience is the prospect, the potential buyer of the product I am selling.
However, with SEO copywriting, you pander to another "audience" — the "search engines" and not the reader. And by creating copy that's optimal for attracting search engines, you are, to some degree, weakening that copy's power to sell. You dilute its strength because you are worrying about two audiences - the reader and the engines - instead of focusing every word on the customer. That's not how to write copy that sells.
As a copywriter, I would expect him to say something like that. But to a large extent I think many people would be better off if page titles and content had viral marketing or conversion in mind more than the search engines.
If the page is good enough at converting the following will happen
- affiliates will push traffic at it
- you can afford to buy in on PPC
- you can afford to place many link ads or hire article writers or hire a public relations firm and the links will boost your natural rank
Using common permutations of your keywords in the anchor text will help you rank better. If the page converts at getting linked at or selling something that's about all you need...at least as long as you understand a bit about how search engines work.
