Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

Most ad agen­cies have his­tor­i­cally hired spe­cial­ists to han­dle the dig­i­tal part of the equa­tion – leav­ing cre­atives to play and not worry so much about the tech­ni­cal details. After all, they’ve got plenty on their plate learn­ing pro­grams, pro­duc­tion skills, and just crank­ing out killer cre­ative. Who needs another skill set to worry about?

Now with job scarcity the way it is, agen­cies are rais­ing their expec­ta­tions of dig­i­tal knowl­edge. Par­tially because clients are start­ing to demand it of agen­cies as well. And, of course, they haven’t done a great job of train­ing cre­atives in these concepts.

It’s up to us as pro­fes­sion­als to take our own devel­op­ment seri­ously. Shit always rolls down hill, doesn’t it? So here are a few things copy­writ­ers should think be think­ing about in rela­tion­ship to SEO.

1. SEO isn’t an even suck­ier new ver­sion of REO Speed­wagon. It means Search Engine Optimization.
2. You can­not ignore SEO any­more. Your job now includes dig­i­tal and no one else will fix your mistakes.
3. Even if your boss doesn’t get it, you bet­ter. It’s called responsibility.
4. Their are no magic bul­lets or tech­niques that make it easy. That was Black Hat SEO and its days are over.
5. Never let the devel­oper or Art Direc­tor put the con­tent in Flash or images.
6. Buy a book on SEO like this one. (Worth­while, I’ve actu­ally read it).
7. Google doesn’t want you to game the sys­tem so there are no hard and fast rules.
8. You won’t loose your mem­ber­ship to the cre­ative club if you add key­words to your copy. Well, unless you do it hackneyed.
9. If you’re aware of SEO when you start a project, you can make smart word choices and design deci­sions that won’t screw up your concept.
10. Search engines rank key­word den­sity but they are also pro­grammed to notice too many key­words. If your copy is super-laden with key­words it will suck and no one will read it or share it. Dou­ble foul, shame on you.
11. You can still make fun of the tech guys if you take dig­i­tal seriously.
12. SEO isn’t every­thing. Social Media Opti­miza­tion is now very impor­tant. Oh, and there’s that whole well designed and writ­ten thing too.
13. Peo­ple will think you’re a geek when you cor­rect them on SEO in meet­ings. But at least they’ll respect you.