Why You Should Choose Chuck Lustig to Write All your Marketing Communications

I've been issuing these ExcitingWriting Advisories once a month for more than ten years. Faithful readers will attest that I rarely use this forum as a platform to directly hawk my wares. I would rather demonstrate mastery through thought leadership, and anyway it's a little unseemly to yell, "Chuck for sale" in a crowded, public place. It might cause a riot.

This is important: I've observed a tension between SEO web copy requirements and branding copy requirements, a tension that I am perfectly suited to leverage for the benefit of my clients.

What is this "tension?" Simply this:

SEO copy requires conventional words and groupings of words that consumers, clients or customers are likely to fill into Google search boxes. Think of them as generic words or phrases. The better the key words on your website align with the terms or words in the minds of the people you are serving, the higher your website link will rank in search engine results.

Branding often requires creative groupings of words, taglines and headlines, that are not necessarily the first words a consumer, client or customer is likely to think of when doing a Google search. This creative words often contain a surprise or secondary meaning that people commonly relate to as "clever" or "creative."

To give a few current examples:

A headline for a Korean Air ad: "Experience global networking on a whole new scale." The Google search engine doesn't know that the word "networking" is being used here as a pun—a network of aviation routes—so it throws it in with Cisco and throws it out when someone enters "networking" into the Google search box.

A headline for BNY Mellon Wealth Management: "What's that ticking sound in your portfolio?" What is a Google search engine to make of that? Will it classify BNY Mellon Wealth Management as a watch manufacturer?

My view is stark and simple: SEO web copy favors plain, straight, "uncreative" descriptions. Branding often involves superiority claims and metaphors, which are often lost on SEO search engines.

When you select Chuck Lustig as your website content creator, you get the benefit of a strategically-focused branding expert combined with the talents of an SEO web-content expert. Who better to manage the competing needs of branding and SEO content on the web? Answer: No one.

Correction

My October EWA incorrectly stated that a search engine ranks a website based in part on "the number of links to other websites" and "the websites it is linked to." Harry Lennard of Advance Web Promotions (LINK: http://www.advance-web.com/) reports that "…the linking information…is almost reversed. In fact, what is really important is the number, relevance (subject matter), and importance of the sites that are linking to your site. Anchor text, the words that are hyperlinked, is also very important. Outbound links may play a small role in SEO, but the inbound links is what really counts and everybody focuses on."

Here's the lesson: You can't boost your search engine results very much by linking to other web sites. The true test of influence and relevance on the web is how many websites link to your site.

Also, Pat Rosson questioned my use of the word "methodology" (also in last month's EWA). Why use a complicated word like that when the simpler form of the word, "method," gets the job done with fewer letters.

It seems the word "methodology" is preferred today over the word "method;" yet, unless an author is talking about a study of methods, using the word "method" is a better choice because it is a simpler word.

Next month: Keyword selection strategies.