Clients sometimes ask me to clarify the copyright position with text I write for them. (I also receive the occasional enquiry about ‘copyrighting’ someone’s intellectual property.) Since I’ve had to research copyright for myself, I thought it might be helpful to share my knowledge in a post.

Please note that this post refers only to UK law on copyright.

Who owns copyright in text?

In simple terms, if you write something, you own the copyright in it. No-one else can copy, distribute, publish or adapt it without your permission.

Written materials – or ‘literary, dramatic and musical works’ – are protected by law under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). They must be recorded in writing or otherwise to be granted copyright, and copyright subsists from the date at which recording takes place.

The fact that a third party is a subject of the work makes no difference. For example, if I take a photo of you, I hold the copyright in the photo, even though it contains your likeness. If I interview you and write it up into an article, I hold copyright in the article, even though it contains words that you spoke.

Only content can be copyrighted, not ideas. If you’ve written a book and I write a summary of the ideas in it, copyright in that summary belongs to me – regardless of how unique or new your ideas are. However, I can’t quote your text word for word, only quote short passages to review or refer to your work.

How do I acquire copyright?

You don’t have to do anything to get your writing ‘copyrighted’. You automatically have copyright in anything you write. You can assert this with a statement somewhere in the work (such as ‘© 2010 ABC Copywriting’) but this is purely for information – you hold copyright whether you say so or not.

How long does copyright last?

Under the CDPA, copyright in written works lapses 70 years after the death of the author. Given the likely lifespan of most written marketing material, that effectively means that copywriters hold copyright in their work forever.

Assigning copyright to copywriting clients

Even though a client might pay you to create some text for them, you still hold the copyright in that text unless you assign it to them. They have paid you to do some work, not for the right to exploit the product of your labour.

(Note that this only applies to freelance writers. If you are employed and you write something as part of your work, your employer holds the copyright in it.)

In practice, most writers and their clients act as though copyright passes to the client when the invoice is paid. But legally, that’s not the case. To make it so, you need to include a clause somewhere that explicitly states how and when copyright in text you write will pass to the client. You could put it in your terms and conditions, on your invoice or even ask a lawyer to draw up a contract (something you might consider for longer works, such as books).

Wherever your clause appears, you need to make sure the client actually agrees to it in writing – by confirming their acceptance of your terms in an email, for example. This is the method I use. My own terms and conditions include the following clause:

Copyright in all published content (such as text and designs produced on your behalf) will pass to you on payment of your invoice.

Before I start a job, I make sure the client confirms their order in an email, along with their acceptance of my price and my terms and conditions. Then, if there’s any query later on, I can state with confidence that they have copyright once they’ve paid.

In some cases, you might want to retain copyright in your work – for example, if you write an article for publication in a magazine and you want to retain the right to publish it elsewhere as well. In this kind of situation, it’s probably worth having some sort of letter of agreement that clarifies exactly what rights you’re granting to your client in return for the fee, just to avoid any doubt or confusion.

Protecting against copyright infringement

One interesting question is whether you could have recourse to legal action if a client uses your text without paying. For example, if they published your text on a website without settling your invoice, they would technically be infringing your copyright, and you could take (or threaten) legal action. However, I’ve never tested this in practice or received legal advice about it – so consult a solicitor before you consider it.

Another possible scenario is writing material as a sample of your work, or as part of a proposal. If you don’t know the client well, you might feel there’s a risk of the content being used without permission or payment. To give yourself ammunition for a dispute, you can send your content to a trusted third party (I use my accountant) and simply ask them to retain it. You need to use a despatch method that incorporates the date, such as email or post. This allows you to establish later on, perhaps during a dispute, that you had created the content at a particular time.

To make it clear that any copyright infringement will be challenged, you can include a warning somewhere in your proposal, alongside an explicit claim to copyright. I use a form of words along these lines:

The content of this proposal is © 2010 ABC Copywriting and is not to be used without permission. ABC takes active steps to protect its intellectual property.

Finally, just in case you were wondering – the keystroke for the © symbol is alt-G on Macs, and Ctril-Alt-C on PCs (in Microsoft Office). In Microsoft Word, you can simply type (c) and it will be corrected to © if you have AutoCorrect activated.

This morning, I noticed the following text on the back of the Alpen bag (no copyright infringement intended):

A breath of fresh air – brought to you by Alpen…
We know you know this is just another promotion on the back of your bag of cereal, so we’re not going to pretend it’s anything else.
It’s simply a chance to win great prizes…

This is what we might call a metanarrative: a story about a story, or a text whose subject is itself. Instead of promotional text talking about the benefits of the product, or the prizes you can win, the first paragraph here talks about the promotion itself.

That metatextual Alpen bag in full

I find metatexts fascinating, partly because I enjoyed studying them as a literature undergrad many years ago. But do they really work as marketing copy? Let’s unpack the pros and cons of this particular example.

On the plus side:

• It’s unusual. Metacopy is very rare, and this in itself generates interest. Not many cereal packets are written like Borges, Beckett or Baker. And this is, as the Alpen packet observes, a breath of fresh air.
• It’s exciting. In a world where corporate- or consumer-speak stands in for real human communication, honesty has a frisson of risk. So there’s a certain excitement to seeing metanarrative actually being used. You’re thinking, ‘Did they really say that?’
• It can build rapport. In metanarrative, the authorial voice shrugs off its bonds, breaking through the boundaries of the text to address the reader directly. This can generate a sense of one-on-one interaction, of talking to a real human. In a marketing context, this could build trust and a sense of identification.

And on the downside:

• It’s thin. By which I mean that there isn’t a lot of meaning there. The two main ‘takeaways’ from the Alpen copy above are ‘You’re clever’ and ‘We’re not lying’. While that’s an unusual message, it’s arguably not a very compelling one. The reader might well respond, ‘So what?’
• It’s egotistical. There’s always benefit in flattering the reader, but in this example most of the credit is being given to the advertiser themselves, for being so honest about their promotion. And that’s a turn-off.
• It’s weak. When you get to the second paragraph in the Alpen example, you discover that behind the pretence, it really is just the same as other competition promotions – which is exactly what the first paragraph said, but it’s still disappointing somehow. All that difference ended up as just more sameness.
• It’s still marketing. Post-structuralism succeeded structuralism when it became clear that there could be no fixed point ‘outside’ the text from which to determine its ‘real’ or ultimate meaning. In other words, a book about books is still a book. A literary critic is still a writer. ‘Freedom’ from narrative, like moral certainty, is an illusion and all meaning is ultimately relative – or endlessly deferred, as Derrida postulated. In the present context, that means that ‘honest’ marketing messages are still marketing, because the medium is the message. Any text included on a cereal packet – even a Zen koan – is intrinsically commercial; this is a place where we expect (and get) material transaction, not friendship or truth.
• It’s cynical. Following on from that point, marketers should always, always remember that people aren’t stupid. They’re not going to buy into your message just because you said it in an unusual way. To expect them to is profoundly cynical and manipulative, so don’t kid yourself. (The only exception is if you manage to generate a positive emotional response, as opposed to a wry intellectual smirk.) Perhaps there’s greater honesty in selling with genre and cliché – giving the readers what they want, know or expect – than putting on a pose of originality for purely self-centred reasons.

On the whole, I think the cons outweigh the pros. And yet, I think there are circumstances when metacopywriting can work. Predictably, they’re the times when the metanarrative can allude to some benefit for the reader, or a problem of theirs that could be solved.

This example is taken from Ian Moore’s excellent book Does Your Marketing Sell? It was used to promote a new insurance product introduced by Royal & Sun Alliance to brokers, who sell insurance on its behalf. At the time it was used, insurance brokers were having to put up with fluctuating service levels from insurers, as a result of internal upheaval following big structural changes in the insurance market. Rather than gloss over that background, it made a virtue of the fact that R&SA wasn’t perfect:

Announcing the launch of yet another household product that’s not quite right for your customers (and seven reasons you should sell it)

The body text went on to appeal to brokers to help R&SA develop and improve the product.

In my opinion, this is a more successful metatext because it engages the emotions, rather than just playing games with meaning. It talks directly to a problem that the readership had. And the body made good on the promise of the headline, using it as the jumping-off point for a set of real benefits, honestly presented and maintaining the metatextual authorial voice established by the headline. Alpen, by contrast, stoked up the fire of expectation with its metanarrative, but threw cold water on it by bookending it with cliché.

So in summary, meta isn’t always better. This most radical of copywriting strategies works best when it’s allied with the two most traditional – focusing on the customer and communicating benefits.

Persuasive copywriting is a matter of exploiting a number of proven, well-established principles. Those who persuade well know how to appeal to particular human desires and needs. By understanding these needs and appealing to them, we can become more persuasive copywriters.

The principle of scarcity states that people value something more if it is in short supply; perceived value has an inverse relationship to availability.

Some things are valued because they are useful, beautiful or powerful. And others are valued simply because they are scarce. Minerals such as gold and diamonds hold their value because they are so rare; all the gold ever found would fit into a 150ft cube.

For the purposes of persuasive copywriting, using scarcity means emphasising that your product or service (or something about it) is scarce or restricted in one or more of these dimensions:

Quantity

Only a few exist, or are available. Examples: ‘limited edition’ products, ‘collectors’ editions’.

Just 500 of these beautiful limited edition Star Trek commemorative plates have been produced.

Easyjet uses temporal scarcity to persuade travellers to act

Time

Only available within a limited time window. (See image)

Fantastic sale must end 31 January!

Competition

Other people might get there first. Most likely to be used in conjunction with another dimension of scarcity.

Demand for this unique cruise is sure to be intense. Act now to book your place before the May 30 deadline!

Threat

The opportunity will be taken away permanently if you fail to act.

Post Office closure plans are based on usage patterns. So use your local PO – or lose it!

Profile

Only available to certain prospects or existing customers. The group can be defined on the basis of age, buying history, geographical location or any another attribute.

As someone who’s previously bought Lawnmower World, you’ve been selected to receive details of this incredible subscription offer…

Invitation

Only available if an existing customer invites you.

Spotify Free is currently in an invitation-only beta, which means you need to have received an invitation token to access the service.

Scarcity derives its psychological punch from two sources: loss of freedom and fear of regret.

As things become more scarce, we progressively lose freedom – and we hate to lose freedoms that we already enjoy. In our context, marketing and advertising, a product that was previously freely available is suddenly restricted somehow. We react against that by trying to grab it and keep hold of it (i.e. by buying it).

At the same time, we have a strong fear of regret – that is, an anxiety that acting (or failing to act) in a particular way will bring us remorse when it turns out to be ‘wrong’ after some irrevocable future event. If the fear of regret is strong enough, it becomes easier and more desirable to spend money on a purchase than to risk regretting not buying. Buying is effectively an insurance against feeling bad about not buying in the future – a psychological investment. And it may have little or nothing to do with the tangible benefits provided by the product.

To use scarcity, simply invoke whichever of the dimensions listed above are applicable to your product, service or promotion. Scarcity is often used to add impact to calls to action – telling the audience what to do while giving them a powerful reason to do it right now.

Of course, it may be that your product or service isn’t actually scarce in any way. In fact, it’s very likely you want to sell it to as broad a spectrum of people as possible, and manufacture or deliver it in massive quantities in order to realise economies of scale. But you still might want to artificially invoke one of the scarcity dimensions above in order to make it feel rare and desirable.

For instance, the ‘invitation only’ launches of Google Wave and Spotify made them feel exclusive and exciting. However, the actual number of invitations is infinite, since each new invitee is given ten invitations to hand out.

If you’re going to use scarcity, it’s important to remember that people aren’t stupid. A ‘limited edition’ that’s clearly mass-produced, with no numbering of individual editions, isn’t going to be that compelling. A time window that’s endlessly extended, like those shops that are forever having ‘closing down sales’ and then returning to normal trading, will soon lose its power to motivate.

‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…’

If, like me, you fondly remember being taken to the cinema to see George Lucas’ magnum opus in the late 1970s, you probably can’t read those words without a little shiver of anticipation. Appearing silently in cyan text on a black ground at the beginning of the film, they conjured up far more magic than the doughty, bisyllabic title ‘Star Wars’ ever could.

Such is the power of the tagline. Even if your company name is an emotional blank (‘IBM’), you can always bolt some words on to it to make it sing (‘I think, therefore IBM’). Provided your audience makes a lasting link between the phrase and your brand, you’ve added a new verbal and emotional ‘hook’ to your value proposition.

This article looks at a few types of company tagline, weighing up the pros and cons of each, and discusses the special case of B2B company taglines.

What is a company tagline?

A company tagline is simply a brief phrase that is closely allied with a company name or brand.

It can appear in a range of media, typically including websites, stationery, printed marketing collateral, TV advertisements and so on. Often, the tagline appears in close proximity with the company name and/or logo; in some cases it is ‘locked up’ with the logo so that graphic and phrase form a single visual unit.

Is there a difference between a slogan and a tagline? Well, in my mind, a slogan is associated with a particular product, service or marketing campaign, whereas a tagline is associated with a company or a brand. Some marketers express this distinction as ‘product tagline’ vs ‘company tagline’. So you can have several slogans or product taglines, but only one company tagline. And your slogans are likely to change more often than your company tagline, which is a key part of building equity in a brand long-term.

Every company tagline is different – or should be. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Lloyds TSB – see below.) However, there are recognisable types. Let’s look at a few of them.

Factual taglines

These taglines simply state a fact about the company.

• ‘Gaming since 1981’ (Computer & Video Games)

Whether these taglines work depends on whether the fact invoked constitutes a customer benefit. Many facts of which companies are justifiably proud don’t actually translate into benefits. For example, will I give more weight to CVG’s views on Heavy Rain because they were around to review Manic Miner? Well, I might, but someone born in 1995 probably wouldn’t – in fact, in the fast-moving games arena, being around for decades won’t necessarily establish credibility. As in other areas, longevity is a boast rather than a benefit.

Egocentric taglines

These taglines aim to encapsulate what you do or who you are as a company.

• ‘Touching lives, improving life’ (Procter & Gamble)
• ‘We try harder’ (Avis)
• ‘We’re Exxon’ (erm, Exxon)
• ‘Good with food’ (Co-Operative)
• ‘Beyond petroleum’ (BP)
• ‘We’ll choose your words carefully’ (ABC Copywriting)

In some cases, egocentric taglines can allude to a customer benefit – they offer, at some level, a promise of value. (One could argue that the P&G and Avis slogans do this.) But at other times, they’re simply corporate chest-beating (Exxon’s above being an egocentric boast par excellence). And because the best copywriting focuses on the customer, not the company, that’s probably best avoided. You want your tagline to leave at least some space for your audience to inhabit. That’s why ABC’s tagline includes the word ‘your’. Saying ‘We choose words carefully’ would be far less engaging, inviting the response ’so what?’

Benefit taglines

These taglines communicate a benefit that you offer to your customers.

• ‘Every little helps’ (Tesco)
• ‘Reach out and touch someone’ (AT&T)
• ‘Feel better, look better’ (Boots)
• ‘Discover a world of flavour’ (Unearthed)

To write a benefit tagline, you need to isolate the single most important benefit that people get when they choose your products or services. As I’ve suggested before, your selling point doesn’t have to be unique. But it does need to be compelling.

In some cases, such as Tesco above, the benefit is very loosely defined, or only alluded to tangentially. But it’s still there. The Tesco tagline positions the chain as a ‘best price’ value proposition (‘every little saving helps’) while also faintly evoking its broad service portfolio (‘every little extra service helps’).

Often, benefit taglines are written in the imperative (as with AT&T, Boots and Unearthed above) – a direct command to the reader. The unspoken postscript is ‘…by choosing our product’. AT&T aren’t suggesting that you reach out and touch someone in the queue at the chemist’s.

Abstract taglines

These taglines, increasingly popular in the post-Lovemarks marketing world, express almost nothing concrete about the company. Instead, they abstract tangible customer benefits or brand values into an emotional state or abstruse metaphor.

• ‘For the journey’ (Timberland and, bizarrely, Lloyds TSB)
• ‘See what you can do’ (O2)
• ‘I’m lovin’ it’ (McDonald’s)
• ‘Just do it’ (Nike)
• ‘Make. Believe’ (Sony)
• ‘It’s you!’ (Yahoo!)

The most obvious problem with this kind of tagline is that conjures no benefit, and therefore creates very little ‘glue’ between the phrase and your brand. So while these taglines might be striking in the context of a particular campaign, they might not give readers a lasting, memorable reason to buy from you specifically. ‘For the journey’ might prompt me to get some kit together for my outdoor holiday, but it doesn’t give me any particular reason to choose Timberland – unless I recall the phrase and the association with that particular brand when I shop.

As these examples show, abstract taglines are the preserve of companies whose brands already have strong ‘recognition’ and ‘penetration’, in marketer-speak, and they’re looking to give them an intriguing new twist to keep them fresh in people’s minds. Multinationals have enough above-the-line spend to throw so much branding mud at the wall that some is bound to stick – but that kind of marketing muscle is beyond the reach of most middling or emerging brands.

Abstract taglines magnify the mystique and aura of ‘touching’ a major brand. If you’re a sole trader or SME, they may not be so effective: you probably won’t be able to deliver an experience that lives up to the glitz, or promote the message in mass-market ‘push’ channels like TV or outdoor advertising. A plumber who sticks a phrase like ‘For the journey’ on his promotional pens probably won’t gain any new customers as a result.

Question taglines

These company taglines pose a question to the reader. The question may be rhetorical, or there may be an implication that the company asking the question can somehow help with the answer.

• ‘Where do you want to go today?’ (Microsoft)
• ‘What’s in your wallet?’ (Capital One)
• ‘Doesn’t your dog deserve Alpo?’ (Alpo, a US dog food)

Question taglines tread the fine line between intrigue and irritation. Generally, questioning your audience is risky because you’re asking them to think when they probably can’t be bothered. It doesn’t help if, as with Microsoft, the question you’re asking them is open, abstract and not directly related to your product. The Alpo/Capital One method is much better – ask a leading, rhetorical question that, when the natural answer is provided, implies or leads to a purchase.

B2B taglines

You’ve probably noticed that most of the examples I’ve given so far are B2C (business-to-consumer) taglines, rather than B2B (business-to-business). That’s because creating and using a B2B tagline is a very different – and far more difficult – proposition.

B2B taglines are fundamentally unlike their B2C counterparts because the mindset of the target customer is so different. Whereas B2C brands usually seek to establish ‘soft’ emotional connotations for their products, B2B marketing is much more focused on concrete benefits. B2C brands are often trying to attract disposable, personal or leisure income to an optional purchase; B2B is about securing budgetary commitment for a carefully considered commercial project.

While some B2B brands do have emotional overtones, they’re much weaker, rarely feature in buying discussions and never constitute an overriding reason to buy. While I might spend extra cash to get a Mac rather than a Dell at home because I love the Apple brand and experience, I’m probably going to have a harder time convincing the financial director that we need them for the whole office on those grounds.

Stripping away the emotional elements of the buying decision effectively levels the playing field between B2B brands, commoditising their products to some degree. For many high-end B2B providers (i.e those likely to market themselves using a tagline), the justification for their higher prices revolves around premium quality, better service or superior RoI. Ultimately, most B2B benefits boil down to ‘make money’, ‘save money’ or ‘save time’; they’re not about the customer feeling, believing or loving anything unique.

The perennial problem in B2B marketing is that everyone else is saying the same kind of thing and invoking the same kind of benefits, obliging the B2B firm to go into detail (e.g. with testimonials or case studies) to make their case. But that type of detail is the exact opposite of a tagline, which is essentially a broad-brush, unsubstantiated statement of a brand value.

Because they can’t encapsulate differentiation, many B2B taglines end up sounding generic, bland or non-specific:

• ‘Syncronising the world of commerce’ (UPS)
• ‘Invent’ (Hewlett-Packard)

Others end up relying on copywriting clichés that do accurately describe the benefits on offer but have lost their communicative power through overuse.

• ‘High performance. Delivered’ (Accenture)
• ‘Simplify, Automate, Secure’ (Computer Associates)

The hazard here is the same as with abstract B2C taglines – you end up making a generic case for using someone like you, rather than promoting yourself uniquely. The benefits are real, and the words are the right ones to describe them, but there’s just no differentiation to be had at such a macro level.

Many B2B taglines could be swapped with those of direct competitors, or even firms in other industries, with precious little effect. But you can still stand out if competitors have dissimilar taglines, or no tagline at all. Just don’t fall into the trap of using something crashingly unoriginal – see this post on the many firms who use ‘Our people make the difference’.

When I’m asked to come up with a B2B tagline, I often suggest that it should be informative rather than touchy-feely. If the brand is completely anonymous (e.g. ‘GHD Technology’) then the tagline can give the audience an insight into what’s being offered (e.g. ‘On-site PC service and repairs’).

It’s dull, but effective. The initial touchpoint for B2B brands is very often online – and when people are surfing, you need to hook them by confirming that they’ve reached the right place. If your brand doesn’t do it, the tagline should; visitors might not bother to hang around and discover exactly what kind of ‘proactive solutions’ you ‘deliver’, or in what area you’re hoping to ‘exceed expectations’.

By precisely positioning a B2B firm, the right descriptive tagline can turn an also-ran into a specialist player – perhaps even a unique one. Many service providers want to look big by claiming a ‘one stop shop’ or ‘full-service’ offering – in many cases, they’d be better off admitting their limits and turning them into selling points (see Let’s be honest).

One final thought – if you really love your tagline, why not turn it into a song? It worked for KPMG in 2001, when their corporate anthem ‘A Vision of Global Strategy’ became an explosive internet meme, albeit not really for the right reasons. Firms would kill for that kind of viral exposure today. Listen to the song here, or sign up to its Facebook appreciation group here.

Further reading

• List of slogans at Tagline Guru – long list of high-profile US B2C slogans
• Top 10 brand tagline trends for 2009 – fascinating details of the most-used words in brands’ taglines (also fairly US-focused)
• The Tagline Trap (PDF) – article on the perils of B2B firms attempting to imitate B2C taglines (written by the wonderfully named Gib Trub)
• Taglines: The Cheesy Way to Express What Your Business Does – article suggesting that B2B firms should not have taglines, with a link to…
• What’s your company slogan? – UK Business Labs forum where many B2B and B2C SMEs have posted their own slogans
• A nice beat, but can you dance to it? – Fast Company’s survey of corporate songs, including background to KPMG’s anthem

Content To Serve, the Silicon Valley-based web application developer, has launched the world’s first completely automated solution for copywriting. The Holistic Online Automated Content System replicates all the functionality of a human copywriter, with none of the inconvenience and at a fraction of the cost.

Joe King, head of development at CTS, outlines the rationale behind the HOACS. “Essentially, copywriting is a lot like digging up turnips,” he says. “Humans can do it, but ultimately a machine can perform the same task more quickly and effectively. Our modular online application provides all the benefits of flexible, on-demand content generation – without the hassle of dealing with a thinking, feeling human being.”

Marketing content on demand

Perhaps surprisingly, the core ‘writing’ module of the HOACS was the easiest to develop. “In business-to-business mode, it just rehashes a competitor’s online content, inserting the words ‘solution’, ‘proactive’ and ‘flexible’,” explains Joe. “Article marketing turned out to be a breeze – just copy an existing article and rearrange the paragraphs, always remembering to change the byline and the backlink of course.”

Over 90% of online content is now created for blogs, SEO, PR or articles – media characterised by a read-rate of practically zero. “Recognising that no-one has the time or inclination to read their content, our clients are happy to accept a cost/quality trade-off,” says Joe. “Why overpay for material that even GoogleBot struggles to get through? To cut costs even further, HOACS leaves sections such as ‘about us’ and ‘our values’ completely blank, with no noticeable impact on sales.”

Social media capability

The ‘moaning about clients’ module of HOACS was far harder to develop. “As it happens, this is one of the few areas where humans may still have the edge,” reveals Joe. “Client behaviour has to be analysed for reasonableness, anonymised and then posted in cryptic snippets to social-media sites. If too much detail is given, there’s a risk of the client recognising themselves; if too little, the material isn’t juicy enough to get retweeted.”

HOACS offers full online integration with the functionality of ‘find a freelance’ sites such as People Per Hour and Elance, as well as with ‘content on demand’ services such as Demand Studios. “With this feature, clients can often receive the content they need within seconds of posting a requirement online,” enthuses Joe. “The whole process is completely automated, from scanning the online brief through to nicking the content off Wikipedia. As a virtual copywriter, HOACS can submit highly competitive bids, and is happy to work unpaid on the strength of ‘lots of work in the pipeline’. Very soon, I believe we’ll see automation of the client’s role too – it’s really just a case of monitoring Google Alerts for key words, generating a simple two-line brief and posting it online.”

Improving on nature

However, HOACS doesn’t mimic every attribute of the biological copywriter. In terms of attitude and personality, CTS have made some marked improvements. “Human copywriters tend to be pedantic, self-important and rather smug,” notes Joe. “Our solution has an ‘utter humility’ setting that forces it to accept all amends uncomplainingly, even those that result in grammatical errors, inconsistency or rubbish word choice. You can even send the HOACS content written by your ten-year-old nephew and it will respond with sycophantic flattery.”

Traditional copywriters are highly inefficient, needing large quantities of tea, Cheddars and red wine just to achieve a basic working day of seven hours, of which at most two or three will actually be productive. While additional time can be extracted, the extra wine required makes for an unrealistic cost-benefit equation and a marked decline in quality. In contrast, the HOACS, being web-based, consumes only a nominal amount of electricity and is ‘always on’. “The different in carbon footprint is dramatic,” says Joe. “Plus you can impose the most ludicrous timescales without the tedium of negotiating.”

CTS’ next project is even more ambitious: a completely automated graphic designer. “We’re working hard on eliminating pretension, surliness and foot-dragging over client amends,” enthuses Joe. “Our aim is to create something rather like a Spirograph, but easier to use. And cheaper.”

In his review of Andy Maslen’s Copywriting Sourcebook, Ben Locker approvingly notes that Andy ‘hasn’t fallen for the fashionable bullshit about online copywriting – that it has its own rules, techniques and formats that exempt it from being treated like normal sales writing’. Following up, Andy wrote this post, endorsing Ben’s appraisal and developing the theme. Later he also tweeted a link to this article, where Paul Boag casts doubt on the faith that firms put in SEO as a marketing channel.

I don’t know Paul, although his article is readable, cogent and well argued. I have huge respect for both Ben and Andy, both of whom I do know (slightly). Their copywriting experience and knowledge far exceeds mine, and they’ve both helped me out with invaluable advice and support. So this post isn’t intended as a smackdown of their opinions – it’s just a different view. And my view is that online or SEO copywriting is very different from ‘traditional’, ‘normal’ or ‘old media’ copywriting – and, furthermore, that SEO itself is a worthwhile (or at least inevitable) marketing discipline.

The user journey

Ben and Andy were right to reaffirm one of the fundamental truths of our trade. It can never be stated too often that copywriting is about communicating with people, and selling. And this is exactly the same online. Web pages should connect with people, convince them of benefits and convert interest to sales. A site built purely from an SEO perspective might be a powerful traffic magnet, but how many visitors will go on to make a purchase?

So web pages must sell. However, we have to guard against regarding them as standalone conversion tools that can be compared like-for-like with other media such as direct mail. In fact, they must do much more than just retaining and converting interest, because they form just one part of an online journey (as I’ve argued in this post). Online, the user’s voyage from search to sale extends across many sites and, potentially, multiple browsing occasions too. It’s a journey where the user is a driver rather than a passenger, and the content of web pages along the road has a direct influence on how – and whether – they play a part.

Pushes and pulls

In other media (print advertising, direct marketing) the copywriter creates messages that are then ‘pushed’ to readers through certain channels. For example, they might write a sales letter about dentists’ chairs that is then sent to every dentist on a mailing list. In this model, there is no causal relationship between content and audience; the copywriter defines the content, while the audience is determined by the distribution list or channel. Simple.

Moreover, the audience is passive; they don’t have any control over what they read, beyond the option to disregard or stop reading it. So we can use whatever terms we like, within reason, to describe what we’re selling, provided we get the message across. We can also place adverts for our dentists’ chairs in Fisherman’s World, if we want to, and be confident that at least some of the readership will see them. If we feel like it, we can mail our letter to milkmen instead of dentists; our response rate will be low, but the audience will at least have contact with the message. In short, we can push our message.

Online, the picture is completely different. It’s a ‘pull’ medium – or, to put it another way, a much more passive one for the marketer. The audience decides where to go and what to read, shaping and controlling their own experience. If they don’t click, they don’t visit – and they don’t read.

Since search engines account for the bulk of traffic to web pages, and since they prioritise those pages based on a combination of content and popularity, the content of a page has a direct, causal relationship with the type and volume of traffic that it receives. In other words, the content of a web page defines its audience.

We cannot ‘push’ a web page onto an audience that does not want it. We can’t even decide the context within which it will be viewed (it could be from the home page, directly from search results, from a bookmark, etc). In the absence of any traffic-driving backlinks or PPC activity, all we have to attract traffic – and customer interest – is the content on the page.

Keyword destiny

That ‘pull’ paradigm puts online copywriting centre stage when it comes to marketing online – not just in terms of conversion, but in terms of building a web presence with the power to get itself in front of relevant visitors and give them what they’re looking for. So while online writing certainly should include all the traditional skills of selling with words, it goes further. It has to.

The implications go far beyond achieving a particular keyword density on particular terms. Selling online is (or should be) about creating a user experience that resonates with the way customers think, how they want to find things out and how they want to buy. It touches every aspect of online marketing – domain names, site structure, navigation, internal links, content. And online copywriting and SEO are at the very heart of that.

Imposing discipline

The knock-on effects can even extend offline. I’ve had several serious discussions about changing a company’s name because the existing one, as reflected in its URL, would not click with potential customers searching online. Any startup looking to sell online would be foolhardy not to at least consider such issues.

When you can no longer ‘push’ your chosen terms on to customers, you’re obliged to use theirs; that’s how firms who aspired to provide ‘affordable HVAC solutions’ end up writing web pages optimised for ‘cheap central heating’. SEO imposes both discipline and humility; online, you must operate at the customer’s level.

But immersing yourself in your customer’s interests, priorities and thought processes is a very good idea anyway, regardless of how you’re going to reach them. Honestly appraising SEO keywords could easily be the starting point for a root-and-branch rethink of an entire value proposition. Does that often happen as the result of writing a press ad, or a mailing?

Why invest in SEO?

Moving on to Paul Boag’s post, we move beyond copywriting to the broader question of whether SEO merits the effort and investment that firms put into it.

Any search affiliate who had made their living from search for the last five years might be bemused to see that question being asked seriously. And the many search agencies who run highly profitable businesses by increasing sales and conversions for their clients through search would probably echo their sentiments. But let’s give the benefit of the doubt and presume that, behind the façade, SEO isn’t actually ‘all that’ in terms of business results, and that therefore we need to make a persuasive case for it.

Paul’s points (picking up his subheadings) are that there are no guarantees of success with SEO, that it’s about gaming the system, that it can damage the user experience, that it’s is passive (i.e. customers must seek you out) and that it lacks the weight of personal recommendation (i.e. you’re taking Google’s word on the worth of high-ranking sites).

I’d like to deal with these points in turn.

No guarantees of success

First, it’s true that there are no guarantees of success. Paul contrasts SEO with PPC and newspaper advertising, observing that both of these offer guarantees of position and therefore exposure. But this isn’t really a fair comparison.

As I’ve explained above, organic SEO is not about ‘pushing’ messages in a straightforward cash-for-exposure way, but about finding a way to figure in your customers’ thought processes, as expressed through their online activity. Google, for all its faults, has done the best job so far of building an algorithm that matches thoughts in your head with things in the world. So it follows that ranking highly with Google is the most direct way to link up with people thinking about your product.

The search experience is not perfect. It offers no guarantees, either for advertisers in terms of ROI on SEO or for searchers in terms of satisfactory search results. But it’s still clearly worthwhile for advertisers to consider it, at the very least. After all, it usually represents the most cost-effective way to link up with potential customers who are actively searching for your product. Worth a punt, surely?

A further point is that organic search activities such as link-building are investments rather than overheads. High-quality links will pass linkjuice to your site for ever. PPC adverts stop driving traffic the second you turn off the money tap.

Gaming the system

Is SEO about gaming the system? Yes, but no more so than any other form of marketing. Marketers do whatever is necessary to get exposure for their brands. If a marketer can get their message on a football shirt, or a carrier bag, or a hot-air balloon, and it makes sense to do so, they’re going to do it. PPC is mercilessly gamed through brand bidding, much to the chagrin of the brand owners affected. Everything is fair game for the gamers.

It would be nice if we could all just ‘provide high-quality content’ (as we’re endlessly advised to) and let benevolent Uncle Google sort out the nice sites from the nasty ones. I’m sure that’s what would happen if Makka Pakka set up an online shop in the Night Garden. Unfortunately, back in the real world, Google’s search algorithm is not perfect, meaning that some ‘spam’ techniques can be effective (although the line between content and spam can be fuzzy).

So as a website owner, you may be contemplating a rank of #35 with solid gold, user-oriented content, while a competitor rockets to #3 with 100 cheaply produced spam pages. Their traffic is likely to exceed yours by many, many multiples. Yes, Google will change its algorithm eventually, but will you still be in business by then?

So Google does what it can to improve the system, while marketers do what they can to game it. And, in the end, it’s only through the interplay of these two interests that the search experience evolves. The ‘game’ develops continually through the efforts of both ‘sides’, who are in opposition in one sense but also share the common goal of matching up customers with products they want.

User experience

SEO certainly can damage the user experience, but it shouldn’t. A good SEO copywriter or web developer is looking to combine the two goals of a website – to be visible online and appeal to visitors once they arrive. That may entail some compromise (on either side), but that doesn’t mean that SEO and user experience are irreconcilable, polar opposites. If they were, sites of proven worth such as Amazon and Wikipedia would not consistently rank #1 for many thousands of terms.

SEO is passive

This really comes back to the ‘no guarantees of success’ point. Yes, SEO is passive, but that’s its strength. You’re trying to link up with a motivated, proactive set of web users. Your aim is to smooth their path as much as possible.

No personal recommendation

This is perhaps the strongest of Paul’s points. When you use Google, you’re putting your trust in its algorithm. However, that algorithm determines the value of websites largely by the number of links they attract, which is at least partly determined by their popularity with humans. So Google ranking does, to some extent, reflect a kind of recommendation.

And, as I’ve argued in this post, and my guest SEO commentator argued here, Google is practically certain to integrate some sort of social-media popularity gauge into its results over the next few years. Once that’s done, user opinion will loom much larger in the search profile of every site –  and many currently effective SEO tactics will fall by the wayside.

Is it all worth it?

In his post, Andy notes that ‘You can’t spend PageRanks. You can’t invest Google top spots. You can’t bank visibility. It’s a new version of the old canard we got so used to hearing as a justification for masturbatory advertising. “It’s there to raise awareness”… Awareness is worthless.’

It’s certainly true that awareness is worthless in itself. But investing in achieving a Google top spot is a very long way from splurging millions on a brand-building campaign aimed purely at building ‘recognition’ or ‘penetration’. As I’ve argued, search visibility remains the prime way to figure in users’online journey, and therefore in their journey towards a sale.

Providing you’re targeting the right keywords, it’s by far the easiest and cheapest way to attract relevant visitors. With 80% of users clicking the first three natural results, and the vast majority never looking further than the first page, it’s hard to argue otherwise. Of course, there’s more to it than that – most notably, converting the resultant traffic to sales and delivering the promised experience. SEO certainly isn’t the whole story, but it is the first chapter.

Also, in some ways, rank is reputation. It provides reassurance. And that can certainly help a sale; it’s about something much closer to customers’ hearts than just ‘awareness’. When you conduct a search in an unfamiliar area, you’ll generally find it easy to believe that high-ranking sites are pre-eminent. But you’ll have a far harder time convincing yourself that a site you found buried on page 7 is actually the right choice. As long as search results are presented as a hierarchical ‘Top 10’, it’s human nature to adopt the mindset implied by the format, which is that rank reflects quality. Only more confident, informed or search-savvy web users go much deeper than that.

I hope I’ve succeeded in making a few points in SEO’s defence. It’s not that I particularly love it, or feel duty-bound to proselytise for it. Although I do a lot of search work, I can easily see why people dislike the search industry. But there’s no getting away from it and, for the copywriter, it does require some very special skills and thought processes – at least until Google finds a way to evaluate websites the same way people do.

One of the cornerstones of economics is the theory of rational choice – the idea that people decide how to act by carefully weighing costs against benefits.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, largely unforeseen by economists, rational choice theory is looking a bit tattered.  The rationality of the big players in finance, as well as the supposedly corrective hand of ‘the market’, has been shown to be an utter fallacy. Investors systematically ignored huge long-term risks, with catastrophic consequences.

Maybe the economists should hang out more with their colleagues over at psychology and organisational behaviour, where researchers have been investigating and documenting flawed decision-making for decades.

For the psychologist or sociologist, a human decision-maker still acts to minimise costs and maximise benefits (or to avoid pain and seek pleasure). But their assessment of those costs and benefits is likely to be hopelessly inaccurate, biased or incomplete.

All this is good news for the copywriter, because these decision-making biases can be exploited in order to nudge a reader towards a buying decision – even though the purchase may not benefit them in any rational or quantifiable way. This post outlines a few of the most common biases that affect our decisions, and how they can be exploited.

Bigness bias

Bigness bias is the tendency to discount relatively small amounts that are measured against much larger amounts. For example, you might regard £1000 as a lot of money to pay for a suit. But to secure a house you really wanted, you wouldn’t hesitate to increase your offer by £1000 – or even £10,000. Context is everything. For example:

For just 1% of what you take home each month, you can protect every penny you earn from the threat of serious illness or redundancy.

Distinction bias

Viewing options in conjunction makes them seem more different than when they are viewed in isolation. Exploit this by juxtaposing the promoted offering with an alternative option and emphasising some distinction between them. For example:

The EconoHeat offers four different ways to programme your heating – most controllers have just three.

The money illusion

We tend to focus on the face value of money rather than its actual purchasing power. That’s why a £10 cashback offer is so appealing – it’s free money! – whereas a voucher worth £10 is less powerful, and a free saucepan worth £10 even less so (even if we need one). Exploit this bias by quoting as many cash amounts as you possibly can when savings or reductions are concerned (i.e. talk in pounds or dollars, not percentages or fractions).

Reactance

Reactance is the urge to do the opposite of what you’re told. (As the parent of a three-year-old, I can confirm this from extensive field research.)

Right-wingers in the US often harness reactance by suggesting that a ‘liberal mafia’ is destroying America; by doing so, they position voting for the profoundly conservative Republicans as some sort of rebellion.

Apple did something similar with its 1984 and Think Different campaigns, encouraging computer buyers to resist the domination of IBM. Reactance favours new market entrants, minority choices and fringe players, who can turn their underdog status into a virtue in their marketing by inciting customers to rebel against the established order.

Neglect of probability

Human beings are awful at estimating and comparing probabilities. That’s why millions play the Lottery, even though the chance of winning (the ‘positive expected value’, in risk terminology) is infinitesimal. (Premium Bonds are a much better bet.)

This is great news if you’re selling the chance to be, do or acquire something – simply emphasise a desirable upside and people will wildly overestimate their chances of success.

Apply for our copywriting course today and you could be earning big money from home in under two months.

Every new applicant gets the chance to win a fabulous city break for two in Prague.

Déformation professionnelle

Déformation professionnelle is the tendency to view things through the lens of one’s own professional skills or culture. You can exploit it when writing for trade magazines or niche websites – since no-one else is reading, go ahead and trot out the jargon, prejudices and petty concerns that your audience love, and generate instant rapport. (Obviously, you need to be able to do this convincingly, and sound like an ‘insider’, or it will backfire badly.)

Bandwagon theory

This is the tendency to jump on the bandwagon and do what others are doing. I’ve already covered it in my piece on social proof.

Illusion of control

We believe that we can control, or at least influence, outcomes that we clearly cannot. Most superstitions are rooted in this belief, but more ‘sophisticated’ systems of thought such as technical analysis (using charts to predict share price movements) are arguably manifestations of the same thing.

Many distress purchases appeal to the illusion of control. Insurance, for example, is often predicated on the idea that the dark, chaotic world out there can be kept at bay for an affordable monthly payment. Some cosmetic treatments also encourage us to change things that, deep down, we know we can’t.

When we use metaphors (or similes), we compare one thing to another so we can understand or explain it better. We do this to explain it, to understand it or sometimes just to make our language more colourful.

Life’s but a shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.

Here, the core of the metaphor is the equation ‘life=theatre’, with the secondary meaning ‘people=actors’. In these lines, Shakespeare is explicitly saying that our lives are as brief and futile as a play – a meaningless shadow rather than anything real. Implicitly, he’s also saying that we have little control over our destinies, like actors whose lines are written down for them. Once the parallel is drawn, a metaphor opens up a range of ways to think about something in a new way.

Metaphors in NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) takes language seriously, acknowledging that it shapes the way we think. NLP practitioners pay close attention to the words people choose. By really listening to what people say, we can learn about the way they see themselves or the world.

To an NLP practitioner, metaphors are interesting because of their limits. They illuminate some truths while obscuring others; in NLP terminology, there are things they ‘allow’ and things they ‘disallow’.

For example, we might say that a trusted friend is ‘a rock’. Obviously, there are lots of unintended literal meanings: our friend probably isn’t thousands of years old, rough to the touch or permanently rooted to the spot. When we liken them to a rock, we’re saying that they’re solid and reliable.

However, they are human, so their moods and opinions change. Since rocks don’t change, our metaphor obscures this aspect of their personality, locking them into an idea of stolidity that may be limiting (for us, or for them). This highlights the importance of ‘stepping out’ of metaphors when they are no longer useful.

Liquid engineering

Over 35? This might take you back a bit (click to watch the advert)

A good example of a strong metaphor in copywriting is the slogan used for Castrol GTX in the 1980s: ‘liquid engineering’. In just two words, it transformed an everyday, almost commodity product into something essential and sophisticated.

Copywriting metaphors like this derive their power from two sources: imagery and emotion. In general, people find it easy to grasp concrete images, and harder to understand abstract concepts. Moreover, they respond more strongly when their hearts are appealed to, rather than just their minds. ‘Liquid engineering’ equates Castrol’s oil (an inanimate object) with attentive, skilful human engineers, suggesting that it provides a similar level of care, while appealing to the customer’s desire to care for their engine and safeguard their investment.

Leaky umbrella

Castrol’s metaphor was apposite, elegant and memorable – a brilliant piece of copywriting. But it’s very easy to get drawn into using a metaphor for its own sake, or pressing one into service that isn’t quite suited to the job at hand. The following is the text of a magazine advert currently being used by a leading UK insurer:

Would you buy an umbrella, if it didn’t keep you dry?
Neither would we. So why should you pay for an insurance policy that won’t keep you properly covered? Unlike 8 out of 10 standard home insurance policies we include cover for your belongings if they are accidentally damaged or lost – as standard.

The text is accompanied by a picture of an umbrella, highlighting one of the key benefits of metaphors in marketing – they give you a handy hook to hang your imagery on when none is otherwise available. (Services are often hard to depict – it’s even worse in B2B marketing.)

Although ‘insurance=umbrella’ seems promising as a metaphor (if unoriginal), here it actually muddies the meaning rather than clarifying it. Have you ever had, or bought, an umbrella that didn’t keep you dry? How would you know that an umbrella wouldn’t keep you dry, before you bought it?

The umbrella is an everyday item, but the situation described is artificial and not one that readers will immediately recognise from their lives. As a result, the metaphor won’t have the sensual, concrete force that drives emotional impact.

Stop clevering off

Instead of providing a useful stepping-stone between something familiar and a new concept, the headline metaphor in this example is adding a cognitive barrier between reader and benefit – and therefore putting obstacles in the way of a sale. The headline is literally a riddle, and if you ask your reader to solve riddles you run the risk of them simply walking away.

Since the core benefit is easy enough to understand for anyone who’s ever bought home insurance (which is almost everybody), a better headline might be:

With [Insurer], cover for damage and loss come as standard.

Or, for a bit more spice:

What’s extra for others is standard for us: damage and loss cover included with every home insurance policy.

Of course, you wouldn’t be able to include a nice picture of an umbrella, but you would have a headline that would actually generate interest.

It’s well known that headlines with benefits outpull those without. So if you’ve got a benefit that’s easy to communicate, it should always lead your copy. If you want to connect with readers, resist the tendency for what my granny used to call ‘clevering off’.

Making metaphors work

Here are a few pointers for making metaphors work in copywriting.

• Use sparingly. Only use metaphors when they’re needed: to clarify points that would otherwise be difficult to explain or understand, to communicate a benefit or to add emotional or persuasive impact. Don’t use them for their own sake. 
• Choose carefully. The right comparison can illuminate a key point like a ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. But the wrong one can quickly lead you into deep water. Be sure your metaphor is appropriate.
• Dig deeper. Sometimes, metaphors have layers of meaning that you might not want. Consider what your metaphor really says about the product, service or company you’re promoting.
• Less is more. Metaphors are like tissues. At the moment you need them, they’re indispensable. But if you try to get too much use out of them, as I’m doing here, you’ll end up in a mess. In other words, most metaphors support just one or two strong points; after that, they should be dropped.
• Don’t mix it up. ‘Let’s run that idea up the flagpole and see if it holds water.’ ‘We weren’t on the same page because they were dancing to a different beat.’ Adding metaphors together doesn’t concentrate meaning; it dilutes it. Give your metaphors room to breathe, so your reader can absorb each one fully before you hit them with the next. If they’re too close, or if they overlap, the result is ludicrous. 

In my recent post on Copify and content mills, I suggested that the current vogue for pumping out reams of low-grade content in order to generate backlinks and/or attract natural traffic could not last. In this post, I’d like to expand further on that point, focusing on the issues facing natural search right now and what the future might hold.

The elephant in the room

Thank heavens we fitted that laminate flooring

An ‘elephant in the room’ is an inconvenient but hugely significant truth that no one wants to acknowledge. For SEO right now, that elephant is the unsustainability of current search-marketing practices.

The truth is that the long-term viability of the whole search paradigm (site publishes, user searches, user finds) simply isn’t served by the things many search marketers do: article marketing, online PR and ‘SEO fodder’.

While the music plays, we’re still dancing

All these tactics do is soak up resources to deliver a temporary advantage that a competitor can easily reverse by pursuing exactly the same strategy (even using almost identical content). On the downside, they clog up the internet with spam, degrade the internet experience and make it ever harder for the ‘proper’ search experience to take place. It’s a classic case of the tragedy of the commons.

The parallels with the financial crisis are striking. Far from ‘sleepwalking into disaster’, many senior financiers were fully aware that their business practices would be damaging over the long term – but the short-term profits were just too attractive to ignore. ‘When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated,’ said Chuck Prince, Citibank CEO, in 2007. ‘But as long as the music is playing, you got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.’

Indefinite articles

Search marketers would certainly leave the dancefloor quick smart if Google’s search algorithm reduced the weight attached to content published at article and online PR sites.

It’s been a long time since Google respected paid links. Yet a link from Ezine Articles or another article site is effectively a paid link – but purchased with content rather than cash. You give Ezine some content, you get a backlink. It’s a transaction. For PR sites, submission fees for the sites that can deliver the most backlinks make the nature of the deal even more explicit.

Online directories with submission fees are doing a similar thing. But the nature of the relationship between client and site is much clearer – plus you can only have one backlink from each directory, not keep plugging away indefinitely.

Since Google respects article and PR links, it’s simply a case of putting in the hours to create adequate content and ‘spinning’ it across as many sites as you dare.

Yes, there are quality standards, but they’re not particularly exacting. The sanity check is ‘value for users’. Give me ten minutes and I’ll find you ten articles – on almost any subject – that add no value because they are corporate puff, embarrassingly basic or near-duplicates of other articles.

The other main way of ‘gaming’ Google is by creating banks of SEO fodder: big chunks of content that is nominally relevant but actually not that valuable to users. Since Google can’t gauge the human value of content (yet), it sees this as worthy content and often ranks it quite highly.

The cynicism of all this is well known by anyone with the slightest acquaintance with search marketing. Yet we’re still recommending it to our clients – because as long as Google works as it does, it gets results.

But that could change. We’re unlikely to see existing article links deprecated, but it seems inevitable that new links will be gradually downgraded until they’re weighted appropriately. SEO fodder represents a tougher challenge for Google.

Dark satanic mills

To sate the voracious content appetites of article, PR and SEO marketers, we’re now seeing the advent and growth of so-called ‘content mills’ or ‘word factories’, which offer a highly cost-effective way to obtain large quantities of (allegedly) optimised text. Clients pay by the word, and obtain ready-made web content that they can use for their SEO campaigns. I’ve covered the drawbacks for clients here so I won’t repeat myself.

This AdWeek article argues that content mills are one of the key growth areas in digital marketing for 2010. Maybe so, but it’s going to be a case of making hay while the sun shines. Competition will force low prices even lower, while a game-changing new Google algorithm that reduces the efficacy of content spam will result either in fewer customers (why bother?) or lower prices again (why overpay for weak links?).

Eating sawdust

As a result of all this, the internet is filling up with unreadable rubbish, damaging the searching and browsing experience for us all, as this post vividly argues. Even the AdWeek article referenced above acknowledges the point:

‘The question for 2010 is whether this automation and data-driven approach will lead to a flowering of useful information or more detritus clogging search results with low-grade, ad-heavy Web pages.’

That is indeed the question for 2010. And my money’s on the detritus, because web publishers do not presently see any value or profit in providing truly useful information – and search marketers are doing little to persuade them otherwise. 

Some observers (such as Carson Brackney in this post) argue that there’s a place for lower-quality writing, and that web users aren’t as fussy or demanding as self-regarding copywriters would like them to be. Often, a food analogy is used: sometimes you like steak, but other times a burger will do.

For me, this is disingenuous. SEO pages are created purely for search purposes, with no thought of providing any value to the reader. SEO content differs from ‘proper’ web content not by degree, but by nature: it’s not a cut-price equivalent, but a completely different animal. Again, honest search marketers will admit this.

Reading SEO spam is more like eating sawdust than munching a burger: it will fill you up, but there is literally no enjoyment or nutrition to be gained from it – because it was never intended for human consumption.

Who could argue, with a straight face, that anyone is going to get anything out of an article like this? And more to the point, do the search benefits for the firm involved really outweigh the reputational damage of having this sort of rubbish associated with their brand?

Semantic search

So the webwaves are choked with SEO flotsam and jetsam. Somehow, search has to get more sophisticated, to filter out the rubbish – or users will lose faith. And Google, though a mighty corporation, ultimately depends on users’ faith in the accuracy and usefulness of its results.

One option is a form of semantic search, where Google actually comprehends the meaning of content rather than simply analysing it with metrics such as keyword density. This could be applied to website content or backlinking pages. However, at present, it’s a long way off.

There are tools (such as this one for Twitter) that attempt to bring a basic level of semantic search to social media. However, as you’ll quickly discover if you give it a go, there’s more to analysing the emotions of a piece of writing than categorising particular trigger words into ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. We have a long way to go before machines understand that ‘good riddance’ is a negative sentiment and ‘killer post’ a positive one.

Social search

Another option for improving search is some kind of link-up with social media – seemingly a ready-made source of user opinion that could be used to shape search results. All Google has to do is find a way of mining the goodwill being expressed at SM sites every day. Instead of viewing backlinks as ‘votes’ on the quality of online content, it can use SM sentiment as a measure of what people think of a site or page.

Retweets are a good example of a ‘goodwill meter’. Although they could theoretically be paid for, RTs are one of the purest online votes of confidence there is. If my article gets tweeted, a human being thinks it’s valuable. Google already uses Digg links as a measure of popularity, so this seems like a natural next step.

Efficient refinery

One way of proactively digging out better results is by refining your search criteria, narrowing your focus down to filter out some of the rubbish. At present, it’s incumbent on the user themselves to try and refine their search by adding additional keywords or trying new ones.

Google knows that it has to guide users towards finer searches one way or another, but the lack of prominence it gives to its ‘related searches’ and ‘wonder wheel’ suggests that it only half-believes in them. It might have to do more in the future to develop tools that allow rapid, intuitive refining of results, including (perhaps) one-click filters to eliminate blog, article and PR postings.

Wait and see

Whatever the future brings, it’s going to be fascinating. Google’s success depends on providing useful, unspammy search results, so we can be sure that some sort of change will come. And whatever it is, it’s surely going to change the face of search marketing completely over the next five years.

Yesterday, I was approached by startup content mill Copify and invited to register as a copywriter. I decided not to, since the rates being offered (2p–4p per word) didn’t really stack up for someone with my experience (15 years).

Out of interest, I sought the opinions of my copywriter friends on Twitter, including @Mr603, @turnerink, @NoSloppyCopy, @shelovestowrite, @PenHire, @sarahcopywriter and others. Turned out a heated debate was already raging, with copywriters’ opinions ranging from the doubtful to the derisive, and many focusing on the fees.

Of course, we can’t really argue that any price agreed in a free market is ‘too low’ or ‘too high’. If both parties agree to make a deal, a deal is made. However, we can question whether the transaction represents good value – for buyer as well as seller.

I have no axe to grind with Copify or the other (mainly US) content mills out there, such as Examiner, Suite101, Associated Content, eHow, and DemandStudio. They’ve seen a gap in the market and they’re filling it. Good luck to them. However, I feel I should point out exactly what copywriting clients won’t be getting when they go down this road…

1.    Ability. Sounds painfully obvious, but there’s such a thing as writing skill, and people have varying levels of it. If you’re a UK white-collar professional using a content mill, you could be delegating your copywriting to someone with abilities only as good as (or worse than) your own. So what have you really gained?

2.    Experience. 2p a word does not stretch to a seasoned copywriter. But why should you pay for experience? All I can say is that the ‘broad but shallow’ knowledge picked up during my career has served my clients very well. Ideas from clients in other industries. Print techniques that work online, and vice versa. Ideas on ecommerce, SEO, social media and more. Ideas on improving value propositions. Ways to save time – and money. It all adds up – and you get a professional manner, calm demeanour and sense of humour thrown in.

3.    The right price. If you need to spend more, you should spend it. If my plasterer discovers rising damp, I want him to tell me, not just cover it up. Let’s say I’m working on a fixed-price job for a content mill. The client has directed me towards out-of-date sources. Halfway through, I realise this, but have no incentive to raise it since there’s no way to renegotiate the fee. So I just cut and run, having fulfilled the letter of the contract. The content is inaccurate, and some valuable learning is lost.

4.    Enough time. Closely allied to cost is the need for adequate time. Many copywriting projects throw up unforeseen issues. ‘The subject is more complicated than we thought.’ ‘There’s more to say.’ ‘Our structure needs work.’ ‘We need to rethink terminology.’ ‘Our industry jargon won’t work for SEO.’ ‘We’ve identified a new market segment.’ The professional copywriter works with the client to address these problems – with a time implication, yes, but what’s the point in rushing to the wrong destination?

5.    Reassurance. So you’ve chosen to use a content mill. Presumably you’re completely confident about factual accuracy, grammar and spelling, copyright and fair use, trade marks, US/UK language conventions, Google penalties, duplicate content and the legal implications of publication. If not, why not work with a professional whose reputation is on the line with every single job?

6.    Flexibility. Inspired by The E-Myth Revisited, I once dreamt of creating a one-size-fits-all ‘system’ for handling writing and design projects. I soon gave up. No one needed it, or wanted it. Marketing should be a bespoke suit, not a T-shirt from Asda. Savvy clients appreciate that service and expertise pay for themselves.

7.    Rapport. Clients who tender copywriting job by job never realise the benefits of working long-term with a copywriter who truly understands them. For them, every step is the first – every piece slightly off the mark, lacking sparkle, bringing nothing extra. They’ll never feel the thrill of receiving text from their regular copywriter that absolutely nails everything they wanted to say, and more – first time. (For a regular client, I recently wrote the president’s introduction to a brochure with no brief. He approved it without change.)

8.    Creativity. The fixed-price deal actively discourages discussion, consideration and indeed active thought. The copywriter’s only hope is to bang that copy out quickly and pray she doesn’t get RSI. She certainly has absolutely no incentive to put forward anything creative, inventive or alternative, even if it could help the client. The risk is just too great that it will be rejected – leading to a rewrite, obliterated profits and aching wrists.

9.    Intelligent SEO. Even basic SEO copywriting is an art – hitting keyword density targets for multiple terms without grammar and sense collapsing completely. But competent SEO copywriters take it to the next level, offering content that actually appeals to humans too. In other words, a landing page that isn’t a bouncing page.

10. Motivation. When prospects ask what I’d charge for ‘an hour’s graft writing fresh copy’ (a genuine quote), they are perhaps puzzled as to why their enquiry fails to excite my interest. The reason is that I prefer to strike a civilised, mutually beneficial deal in an atmosphere of respect, friendship and dignity. With that in place, I’m motivated to give my very best to the project. Without it, you’ll get ‘good enough’, but no more.  

Now, the most likely objection to all this is that it’s completely irrelevant to article marketing, or the creation of banks of SEO pages. I beg to differ. For articles posted at Ezine Articles and similar sites, your best chances of republication (propagating backlinks across multiple domains) come with a compelling, high-quality article. Better to have one killer piece than five embarrassing duds. And for SEO, as I’ve argued, you need your landing pages to convert the reader, not just attract traffic.

I also feel there’s a big cloud hanging over the in-vogue strategy of gaming the search engines by posting huge amounts of nominally relevant content, hoping to boost link velocity and backlink numbers. Google’s business model depends on search results that are relevant and deliver genuine value to users. Historically, it’s never failed to weed out any attempt to reduce quality to a formula, or mere gruntwork. Would you bet against it now?