Hi everyone,

Just wondering if any of you raised your fees for providing copy that's enhanced for the search engines.

I read one 'tips on finding a good copywriter' article online that stated to 'never, ever hire a copywriter who charges extra for SEO copywriting'.

However, while perusing copywriting sites on the web, I notice that many of them distinguish "SEO Copywriting" as a separate service and it's often double the rate of so-called 'normal' copywriting.

Thoughts?

Copywriters who write standard web copy and charge extra for SEO copy, is the case where they shouldn't, in my opinion. Because SEO copy, and standard copy, are similar. You pay for either one job or the other.

But direct response copywriting is different. Particularly salesletters (where the previous paragraph was standard web copy). If you write for direct response or salesletters, this is "extra" work, in the case of someone who offers typical copywriting. And oftentimes, is a lot of extra work. Because you either write copy to induce action, or SEO. The two often don't really mix. And to mix them, you need to work a little extra harder -- and therefore charge a little more, in my estimation.

I believe in the John Reese philosophy, where you should have content-based landing pages with optimized copy for SE's, but driving traffic to a salesletter or direct response web page which is optimized for CONVERSIONS. Not search engines.

My 2 pennies worth.

Good topic - I'll be looking forward to seeing other people's experiences/views.

I have been conflicted over the whole SEO or direct response copy thing - because as Michel points out, they are not really compatible. In fact, SEO writing is often not even really compatible with a "standard" information web page. If you read pages written for spiders rather than humans, they are usually either interminably dull and repetitive, or completely incomprehensible!

Jane

This is a good topic...

As Susan notes many copywriters charge (or at least list that they charge) higher rates for SEO copywriting. At first, I would wonder, however, how many of these folks are actually pulling in the double-down rates for their SEO work.

It's interesting to note that, in some venues, where "generalists" rather than "copywriters" run the roost, SEO content is actually priced *lower* than any other of the writing types.

A lowbrow case and point, take Elance, for example. Two jobs posted side by side:

1. "SEO articles," 500 words, bids considered $3-5/article
2. "Magazine-style articles," or "well-written articles," 500 words, bids considered range $15-$50.

Neither admittedly glamorous, but the disparity is obvious. In addition, the difference between "good" and "SEO" writing is always interesting to see.

I wholeheartedly agree with the tactic and pricing schema Michel advances. Convincing clients on a budget that they're actually hurting themselves in the final analysis without a landing page is another post altogether!

Well,

You might remember that to produce 'good' SEO content should take longer. I mean magazine style articles flow pretty easily. When you're writing SEO content, it's sometimes tricky to get the natural flow but keep the keyword density.

Still, I don't charge extra for SEO content.

Thanks for the feedback, all.

I suppose I'm with theengel. Having done a bit of SEO copy myself, it's definitely a challenge getting all of those little golden nuggets (keywords) into the copy and still maintain a somewhat elegant and polished flow.

When I see these higher "SEO" rates, I assume that these writers are charging extra for the additional effort on their part.

I wonder, though ... should all website copy be written with the search engines in mind, rather than differentiating between 'normal copy' and 'SEO copy'. More and more of my clients lately seem to be concerned about search engine rankings.

Lately, I've stopped worrying about SEO in my own website.

But customers want it, so I have to keep up with the latest trends.

I agree.

SEO writing is definitely an exercise in Creative Word-smithery Meets Formulaic Template, but isn't that true of all of our writing. Perhaps our other writing simply has more subtle ways of templatizing the creative.

At the very least, with every project we have the"template" of our client's expectations that define the limitations of our canvas (whether that be budget constraints or personal preference of the client). So, our task is to be as creative within the realm of constraint as we possibly can to do the task at hand.

Admittedly, SEO is not necessarily a company favorite here, but it is effective when used correctly for relevancy concerns within the engines. However, if a business actually has a valubable product, but clunky SEO copy, s/he'll quickly wish s/he'd paid the money for natural writing versus SEO any day of the week. It'll definitely be interesting to see how 'natural language' evolves in terms of page ranks and relevancy within the engines and if all this $$ people have spent to create keyword-rich pages is ultimately rewarded or penalized in the long run.

I believe at the very heart, SEO and direct response copy are completely different animals, and I would never take on a job where the client insisted on a piece which incorporates both. It would make the piece ineffective for either purpose, IMO.

In my opinion, mostly no. If you are writing good copy that connects with your reader and moves him to action, you should already be using the vocabulary that they are expecting to hear ... which may well be the terms they're searching on. But that's as far as I would take it.

And I know this may raise a few hackles, but I think those kinds of clients are often wrong. Search is important. No doubt about it. But it is not the be-all and end-all of marketing, and in fact can be very time consuming or expensive. The opportunity cost can be high - a marketing budget is finite, and often there are better ways to spend it than on high SE rankings.

I will not spend time or money trying to achieve high SE rankings as a copywriter. The competition is too fierce, and the cost is too high. However, a colleague of mine is in a specialized industrial field where none of his competitors have even thought about SE rankings - and he consistently achieves #1 SE rankings with modest time and budget.