When I’m comparing my unique visitor stats to the number of leads I get through the site, this thought gives me pause. Are visitors put off by my Twitter content, or perhaps even this blog? And more broadly, does social media – even when done exactly as the gurus suggest – invariably enhance reputation?

Talking to strangers

Everyone understands that different online media require different tones (I’ve covered it in this post). For most businesses, Tweeting in the same voice as you use on your corporate site would be absolutely deadly, resulting in a desperately dry, po-faced and self-centred feed. While competitors were asking their customers what they did on Friday night, you’d be Tweeting about your dull-as-ditchwater product launch. You’d have no followers, no profile and no ROI.

Does careless talk cost reputation?

However, what works for friends and followers might look strange to newcomers. A prospect clicking through to my Twitter profile will see my last Tweet prominently displayed in 28pt type. If that Tweet is frivolous, or even offensive (a subjective judgement, after all), it surely won’t make a good impression. At the very least, the positive ‘he has a personality’ points could easily be offset by a ‘not very professional’ penalty.

I serve clients from all over the world. What would a visitor from Russia or El Salvador make of a conversation about liking cheesy biscuits, on Monday morning, from someone who presents themselves as a professional? In fact, what would a UK visitor who just didn’t know much about Twitter think of it?

For me, casual Tweets are the online equivalent of having the radio on in the background when you answer the phone. Some people just aren’t going to like it. That’s why, when I remember, I’ll try and make sure that I leave the feed with something relatively sensible or useful at the top, like a retweet from @econsultancy. Sure, it’s inauthentic, but it feels safer.

Unseen damage

I often point out to clients that a poor website can do serious harm to their reputation without them necessarily being aware of it. A site riddled with ancient content, inconsistent formatting and spelling errors won’t have the phone ringing off the hook with complaints. Instead, visitors will come, form a negative impression and leave – almost certainly without comment. If they judge by appearances – and why shouldn’t they? – you’ll simply never hear from them.

When I view some firms’ websites, I’m astonished at the substandard content they leave online for years on end, apparently oblivious to the impression it’s giving. If I work with such firms, it often transpires that they are aware of the problem, and plan to sort it out. But with no negative feedback from the prospects that got away, there’s no sense of a ‘burning platform’ to force them to act.

Reputation bomb

With that in mind, consider a Twitter feed that’s easily accessible from the home page, or actually visible on it (as it should be, according to the received wisdom). It could easily be a reputation bomb primed to explode.

If you’re an active Tweeter who combines business and pleasure in one account (as most sole traders and SMEs do), you’re Tweeting stuff you’d never dream of publishing at your main site (humour, politics, personal life etc) on an hourly basis. And if you don’t mix in some personal stuff, your feed will be too dry. Who’s to say a fantastic prospect might not click into your feed at a time when it shows something catastrophically trivial?

I’m relatively paranoid about Twitter. I aim for friendliness, humour and relevancy and set myself strict rules: no politics, no swearing, no arguing, no boasting about work, no chat about clients. (The one evening I did Tweet about politics, I lost a follower for every Tweet I posted.) But many Tweeters don’t police themselves in this way, giving their language, feelings and reactions free rein. I respect that – after all, I’ve argued before that we should market honestly and be ourselves in social media. But some Tweets are so pointed that they elicit a sharp intake of breath as you read them. Does the author really want those words online?

Broadcasting trivia

We’ve all seen the alarmist, ill-informed articles in mainstream media about the perils of Facebook, when in fact it’s easy enough to restrict access to your page (or at least it was, until the privacy options started to look like this). Twitter, as most people choose to use it, exposes your posted content far more widely.

Each Tweet lives forever at its own URL, and Google now searches Twitter in real time, more efficiently than ever before. And it might not index the Tweets you want it to. For example, my highest-ranking Tweet on a search for my name (mercifully on page 2) is this effort (presumably because of its keyword density for ‘Tom’):

Not offensive, but hardly inspiring, and undeniably trivial. On balance, probably not a URL I’d want a prospective client to see. And it could have been worse.

But it doesn’t end there. You can opt to have your Tweets syndicated to third-party sites. One such is LinkedIn, surely the most pin-striped and buttoned-down of all the networking sites. It’s a place where serious job-hunting and reputation-building is the order of the day (along, it seems, with an ever-increasing volume of discussion spam). But depending on when a potential client or employer visits, your carefully edited CV could be gatecrashed by the most hasty, drunken, offensive Tweet you’ve ever Tweeted. That’s why I haven’t, er, linked in my Twitter profile to the site.

Imaginary walls

In my experience, although most people’s Twitter accounts are unprotected, in practice they still Tweet as if their accounts were somehow private – everything is ‘between friends’ in terms of both content and tone. Others go further, treating Twitter like a confessional, or even a diary – despite having thousands of followers. Certainly, many Tweets clearly originate with the urge to unburden rather than the need to communicate.

You might regard your Twitter account as more ‘personal’ than your business content, with a clear division between the corporate and social worlds, but in reality the distinction may be largely in your head (and not in your client’s).

This can apply to other types of social-media content as well. Many of my blog posts, for example, are primarily of interest to other copywriters, marketers or media professionals, and not really aimed at general business readers (i.e. my potential customers). Sometimes, the resulting comment discussion will stray into areas, such as pricing, where an honest response isn’t something I’d really want my clients to read. So, as with Twitter, I have to think carefully about everyone who might be reading, rather than imagining there’s some kind of invisible wall between my main site and the blog. It’s important to remember that anyone could be reading anything, at any time.

What do you think? Should we worry about the reputational risk of social media, or have we entered a new, more relaxed age where saying something online is no different from saying it in the pub?

• Thanks to Sarah Turner of Turner Ink for the conversation that inspired this post.

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.

In other words, marketing materials must be evaluated in context, not in isolation. And that’s equally true online.

As you plan your website, it’s natural to focus on the site itself. As the content is written in Word and the code developed on a test server, there’s a very definite boundary around the project. But this doesn’t reflect the way your site will eventually work. You’re creating an organism in the lab that must fend for itself in a challenging ecosystem.

Make sure you provide a suitable route for your website visitors

People sometimes plan sites as if the user magically arrives at the home page and proceeds in an orderly fashion to the ‘buy’ or ‘contact’ page. Of course, you should ensure that your site supports that ideal sequence. But in the real world, your site will slot into an online experience that encompasses multiple browsing sessions, searches, comparisons, visits and revisits. The user’s journey begins before they arrive, and continues after they leave. From search to sale could easily take months.

In this article, I’m going to look at optimising the four key stages in your customer’s online journey: finding, selecting, visiting and returning to your site.

The search

As Morpheus put it, ‘everything begins with choice’. Your user’s journey begins with your real home page – the first page of Google results for your key terms. Obviously, your site needs to appear on this page to figure in your user’s journey; unless you own a well-known brand, don’t flatter yourself that people will be making an effort to discover it on page two or lower.

First, you must identify some search terms that people use to find businesses like yours. Make sure you focus on the words your customers use (not the ones you like to use yourself). Use online tools like Wordtracker or Google’s keyword suggestion tool to take out the guesswork and home in on relevant terms you’ve got a good chance of owning. Competitor sites are another obvious place to look. (For more on choosing keywords, see this guide.)

Always remember that it’s far better to rank highly for less popular ‘niche’ terms (such as those that include place names) than it is to appear on page two or lower for high-traffic ‘generic’ terms. Research shows that almost 80% of searchers click on the first three natural results.

Pick your targets and cut your coat according to your cloth, making sure you can achieve your aims given the resources available. There’s very little point spending tons of time and money to effect a rise from, say, position 51 to position 19 – the impact on traffic will be negligible. A big, sustainable piece of a small pie is much better than a tiny, hard-to-defend slice of a huge one.

Limited resources is also the reason to focus solely on Google, which still accounts for the vast majority of search traffic (around 85%).

Even if you do appear in the first 10 natural results, you may want to grab more ‘share of voice’ (i.e. space on the screen) by placing PPC ads. It seems that some users (sole traders, in my own experience) like to click them, even with a good selection of natural results to go at. Set a tight budget and experiment!

The selection

To understand why I say Google is your real home page, consider how you go about researching a purchase in an area that’s unfamiliar to you. You’ll search, then click around a bit, unsure whether to go straight to a merchant, consult an information site or maybe browse a directory. And you’ll almost certainly backtrack to Google’s results at least once.

So your user’s first experience of your site won’t happen in a vacuum. You need to consider how your site stacks up against the other players on page one.

Ideally, you’re looking for your site to be among:

• irrelevant sites from which users will ‘bounce’ immediately
• relevant but inferior sites that won’t retain or convert ‘your’ traffic (you might even be content to rank below them, if you’re confident enough of your advantage)
• relevant but neutral sites such as Wikipedia that neither help nor hinder your chances of conversion (except insofar as they distract your customer)
• directories, comparison sites or aggregators where your site features prominently (i.e. on the first or second page reached from your search)
• articles placed by you that inform the user about your product, service or expertise and lead them back to your site (this is a big reason why people do article marketing).

Of course, you’ll rarely be able to achieve this type of line-up, except for on the nichest of niche searches. But it’s always worth considering which shops, libraries or malls are ‘next door’ to you in the online ‘high street’. If you’re up against sites that are equal or superior to yours (in your judgement), consider what you can add – a special offer, a unique product, service or bundle, etc – to bring some differentiation.

You may find that pages from your site other than your home page appear in search results, whether by accident or design. If so, make sure they can function reasonably well as ‘landing’ (arrival) pages. There’s no need to replicate ‘home page’-style text, which will be disorientating to those following an orthodox route through the site. Just ensure the page makes sense when read in isolation (i.e. without the home page to introduce it) and provides an easy way to reach the home page (one click).

The visit

Website usability is a huge topic, so I’ll restrict myself to the fundamentals.

• Bearing in mind what I’ve said about the hesitant, random nature of first-time searches, it’s clear that your home page must confirm clearly that visitors have reached the right place. Every relevant visitor who bounces from your site is a resounding fail. A dull but informative positioning statement is just the ticket; add a jazzy slogan elsewhere if you must. In general, don’t try too hard to grab attention; with an actively searching audience, you already have it.
• Remember that people won’t visit every page, and will only skim-read the pages they do visit. Working on web text in Word subtly instils the concept of ‘website as novel’, with the assumption of users reading from start to finish. Again, look to your own experience for what really happens. If there’s something people need to see (e.g. your phone number), include it on as many pages as necessary. Repeat key points as required.
• Make navigation crystal clear, ideally without rollovers. Use simple words that explain precisely what lies behind each link. Don’t try to be clever or different, the risk is too great. Group links thematically if you’ve got lots of them.
• For the main text, don’t let a designer bully you into having anything other than big, legible black letters on a white background. Ever seen a book with white text on orange pages? Well then.
• Make it easy for users to see what their next step should be. Include clear, eye-catching calls to action on every ‘business’ page. You can omit them on ‘background’ pages that just provide information.
• In general, don’t do anything to irritate, slow down or otherwise impede the user. Sounds obvious? You’d think so, but people are still building sites in Flash, which usually does all three.

The return

So far, so good. You’ve guided the user from search to conversion as well as you possibly can. But just as their journey doesn’t begin with your site, it doesn’t end there either. Many decisions to purchase are arrived at gradually, via a hermeneutic loop where the user acquires knowledge and confidence iteratively. So you need to facilitate their return to your site at a later time.

• Try to ensure your HTML page titles, so critical for SEO, also make sense (and ideally stand out) when viewed in a list of bookmarks. Choose a favicon that stands out next to those of competitor sites that users are likely to visit and bookmark alongside yours.
• Create pages aimed at different user groups, so there’s a reason for them to bookmark a ‘deep link’ once they’re within the site.
• Offer added-value content such as research or industry analysis that people will want to return to.
• Create regularly updated features such as a blog, ensuring an RSS feed is available. Resist the temptation to sell through your blog – just offer content, and they will come.

However, all these inducements are really just trimming and trappings. A well-structured, easy-to-use site is an incentive to return in itself. By contrast, a self-conscious, over-designed site may impress the user first time round, but simply irritate them during subsequent visits – the very time it should be working hardest to close the sale.

So there you have it – some useful ideas (I hope) for optimising the many steps that make up your user’s online journey.