If you’re running a business or nonprofit (or even considering it), you’ve probably heard the acronym SEO thrown around more than once, and for good reason! SEO can be important, but when we’re talking about your website copy (not your blog), email marketing, etc. that’s where the power of artful copywriting comes in – not the science of SEO. 

Let’s take a step back first and make sure we all know what SEO is.

What’s SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which according to Search Engine Land, it is “the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines. The better visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.” 

Now that we’re on the same page, let’s move to my argument of when copywriting is more powerful for audience engagement than SEO.

Colleagues Not Foes

Copywriting and SEO aren’t mortal enemies. Rather, they work in the same building, on the same floor, but have different responsibilities under their job descriptions.

Have you ever worked with someone that does something different than you, but their job impacts your job and visa versa? That’s how SEO and copywriting work together. They do different things (SEO’s job is to direct more traffic to a webpage (picture the guys waving in the airplanes when they taxi in) and copywriting’s job is to fix people’s problem before they even realize they have a problem), but without each other, their job is less impactful.

If there’s no one on your site to ready beautiful written copy, then it’s pointless.

If there’s a lot of people going to the site, but the writing is boring, then they will just leave.

Now, I don’t think that you always have to hire a SEO expert to make sure that your website or blog is found and here’s why….if you’re creating exceptional copy then inevitably keywords will be included!

Great copywriting happens only after you:

1. Know your brand’s tone and voice and stick to it in all of your writing 
2. Research your audience to see what content they resonate with
3. Find out the questions they are asking (or, examine the questions you’ve already been asked by your audience), 
4. Then pull all of that research into copy that your audience will resonate with! 

If you do these four steps (which sometimes there are more steps than this, but this gives you a good idea of the rough steps of a copywriter’s research prior to writing), then you’re sure to include keywords that your audience would be searching for in their browser, or once they read your website they will recognize the words and know they are reading something that will help them solve their problem.

Why you should hire a copywriter, not an SEO expert (in my humble opinion)

Hire a copywriter for:

1. Website copy
2. Email marketing
3. Anything for sales
4. Blogs (if they aren’t for the sole purpose of just bolstering SEO ratings on the back end)

Copywriting is an art, not a science. Yes, to create exceptional copy you must research, but it isn’t research that tells you how many times to include a keyword in your content, it’s about researching the very people you are writing for. It’s about getting to know the person on the other side of the screen.

What I am not saying: SEO experts are pointless. I want to be sure you don’t hear me saying that, because it isn’t true (and, I would make a lot of enemies), but there’s a place for SEO experts, and there’s a rightful place for copywriting. 

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