I have a customer whose retail business is entirely on the web. I am writing copy for one of his product landing pages. He provided a key word phrase and I wrote the copy.

When I sent him the draft I suggested that perhaps he'd like his home page copy revised as well. He agreed and sent me to a competitor's site who has a letter to customers on his home page. He liked the concept and wanted me to replicate the idea on his site.

I visited the site which is loaded with great product pictures but no real text immediately visible. I scrolled down and at the bottom found a traditional single spaced letter to the customer. I copied it into Word for the purpose of analysis and learned that it was in 8 pt font and had over 1100 words, single spaced.

If my mother wrote me a 1100 word letter in 8 pt font, I wouldn't read it, and I love my mother.

So I suggested to my customer that he might like a letter to his customers that starts at the top of the page, is key word rich, includes bullet points and is chunked throughout the first page around his product photos instead of all one block of text.

His response was that the text was for the search engine spiders to find not for the customer.

Whoa there doggie. What?

My passion is writing for the benefit of the reader; understanding them, their needs and explaining how my customer's products or services will benefit them. Part of what I love about websites people read is the dance between writing to capture the reader's attention while solving a problem AND using key words that are search engine friendly.

When did we start to ignore the potential customer all together and just focus on those intrusive spiders?

Now I will find a way to meet the customer's expectations and still be true to what I believe is important in website content, but I have to ask you...

Who is your website written for? Your potential customer or the search engine spiders?

Deborah Chaddock Brown
Writer, writing Words People Read