I have been doing a lot of writing or the web recently and it seems to me that there is a real difference of opinion between what is appropriate for web content from a copywriter’s point of view and what the search engine optimisers want to achieve.

This difference of opinion over writing for the web relates to the word count.

I was with a SEO expert today who was pointing out that for the search engine ‘spiders’ to shoot a page up the search engine tree then around 20 per cent of writing for the web should be devoted to just a few key words or phrases.

This is fine until you realise that for this to not look ridiculous, you have to have a very big word count. For example, if you are selling widgets then it is probably OK for 20 per cent of 600 words to be devoted to the phrases “we sell widgets” or “buy our widgets”.

But we all know that people don’t actually read that much text when they visit a site. Their boredom threshold is zero and apparently visitors spend two to five seconds per page. If they have to scroll down, then they rarely bother. So, that means most of the 600 words written for the web page will go unread. It is there solely for the ‘spiders’ and not the potential customers.

Ideally, writing for the web involves about 200 words of text per page, but 20 per cent of 200 words devoted to key words could make the text look, at best, contrived or, at worse, ridiculous.

Writing for the web is serving two purposes: to appeal to your potential customers on the one hand and to optimise the search engine potential on the other. The two simply don’t go.

So, here is my answer. Write for the web – or get in a professional copywriter – so that it appeals, in the first instance, to your potential customers. Make the sentences short and snappy, make the amount of copy digestible and devote a proportion of the text to your keywords in a way that doesn’t look forced.

Then, use other techniques to get in extra keywords, such as having a footer sentence on every page that includes keywords and making sure the headings of each page reflect keywords.

Crucially, have back pages on your site which may or may not be visited or thoroughly read by your customers but which are there for the benefit of the SEO spiders. For example, you can write a regular blog, a page for news, or a tips/advice page.

I have now written nearly 500 words for this blog which contain a few of my key words and phrases – copywriter, writing for the web to name two. I have highlighted some of the services I offer – writing for the web and copywriting. In short, as well as giving a bit of useful advice, I hope this blog has given the spiders something to chew on.