Many moons ago, I was beavering away at an internship for an online women’s fashion magazine. One day, I was given a curious task. I was told to write articles on how to match your make-up to your skin tone and to include “keywords” because it was good for something called “SEO”.

“What on earth is all this about then?” I wondered.

“Trust me, this will put you in good stead for the future!” the boss lady said.

And how right she was! I didn’t know it at the time, but I was sowing the seeds of my future writing career by learning the art of content writing for the web – a very different discipline to traditional journalism.

Many years on, with thousands of SEO blogs under my belt and a diverse range of website content clamouring for attention in my portfolio, I consider myself fairly expert at this sort of writing now. However, I must admit that I do still struggle with the many ways in which it challenges traditional ideas of what constitutes a ‘good writing style’.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

As a child in primary school, one of the first things I remember being taught about writing was to try to avoid repetition. Of course, a degree of repetition is often unavoidable, but you must, “young Sam”, try your darndest to introduce some variety of expression into what you’re writing. Find an alternative way of expressing the word, look up a synonym in the thesaurus if you must, but whatever you do, don’t churn out the same phrase again and again.

Well, guess what? SEO writing reverses this rule. The more you say the same thing, the more Google appears to like it. It’s not an easy principle to overcome!

Clichés and mundane phrases

Not only must you drive your point home again and again in the same manner, but you must also include search terms that the majority of people actually use. Traditionally, as a writer, you’d seek to avoid clichés and trite sentences and aim to come up with something fresh and original. This is the exact opposite of what’ll score you SEO points. Digging out an obscure word from your hard-earned vocabulary that comes from all that reading, and substituting it for an obvious one, is not at all what’s needed. My goodness, this can be a painful thing, but it must be done!

Keywords

If there’s one thing everyone knows about SEO it’s that you must include keywords. This one really is the bane of a style-conscious writer’s existence.

Trying to insert numerous keywords into a carefully thought-out piece of writing is like trying to place chunky house bricks into a lovely mosaic. It’s a horrible thing to have to do in itself, and also brings together the other two points I’ve already mentioned – repetition and inclusion of clichés.

Final thoughts

So what am I really saying here? Is this just an extended rant that is likely to lower me - a persevering freelance writer - in the estimation of any prospective clients who happen to see it? Umm… maybe.

Seriously though… I think I’m making a point that nearly everyone can relate to, (it’s good to share the pain!) and that is that, as writers, marketers, creators and indeed people in general, we have to find balance. That balance between:

• The ornamental and the functional

• What’s aesthetically pleasing against what earns its keep.

• Artistic sensibilities… and the need to earn that wonga!

And having now taken a moment to express these cathartic reflections, the content writing show must go on…

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