What’s a product without convincing, unique, and clever copywriting? Yeah, you guessed it: just another product that none of us actually NEED to survive. If you think that consumers buy a product for the actual product, you’re stuck in another time—a time that, I’d venture to guess, has never actually existed. To put it bluntly, products only matter in so far as the words used to sell them matter to potential consumers. And if you use the right words, rest assured that you can convince just about anyone that they and their family will be afflicted by cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, and the bubonic plague all in one fell swoop if they do not buy into your brand and purchase your product.

In the same vein, your website and everything is stands for is worthless if the content that is meant to give it meaning—to breathe the life of trends and traffic into its very soul—is as bland and unconvincing as the Love, Eat, Pray-inspired European travel blog of your mother’s best friend. You may think that all it takes is passion, enthusiasm, and some other vaguely entrepeneur-ish sentiment to produce high quality, unique content. In some cases, perhaps this is true; in others, however, this could not be further from the truth.

Many people will probably disagree with me, but I will always maintain that writers are born, not made. Along with enthusiasm, passion, and whatever else, you’d think that of all people, you, with the extensive knowledge you should have of your own brand and product, would be the most qualified to write your own content and copy. Yet, as I’ve already hinted at, it’s usually not about the knowledge and information itself, but the manner in which it is communicated—how it’s translated from a raw, abstract, nebulous form into concise, concrete words that immediately hit the consumer in a way that sticks with them.

So, other than attempting to write subpar copy on your own, what are your options as a business owner? Well, there’s always freelance copywriters looking for your dollars, but as many in the marketing industry will tell you, using freelancers can be expensive. Another option is to hire a marketing firm to help populate your website with content and copy that will drive and maintain traffic. However, many marketing firms are still living in the hey day of print advertising and marketing, giving them a totally skewed view of what really works when it comes to copywriting and content building in the age of Google.

At last, this brings me to the real thesis of this article: copywriting is no longer what it used to be. If you’re a business owner attempting to expand and improve your web presence, you can’t afford to exist without the assistance of an SEO firm that has at least one well-educated, experienced SEO copywriter. No longer can you count on the kind of copywriter who could, at one point in time, increase clam chowder sales by using the words creamy, warm, family, and the onomatopoeia “Mmmmm.”

SEO copywriters have the advantage of being knowledgable of three basic things that make Internet marketing successful: algorithms, consumer psychology, and language. The right SEO copywriter should be able increase traffic, generate interest, and optimize landing pages, all the while boosting rankings by mere consequence. A good copywriter has the ability to strike a compromise between language that will grab and hold the attention of visitors and language that will satisfy the insatiable hunger of search engine spiders.

More than ever, the era of information is an era of perception. Quality control is not only something that must be applied to the actual products your company is offering, but also something that you must apply to your brand’s image as it is perceived by potential consumers. Bad copywriting will kill your business, as will outdated attempts at copywriting. From here on out, we need to think of SEO more in terms of words than numbers, because we all know that that’s where it starts: quality content that appeals to humans and robots alike.

For more information and arguments on this topic, check out Stephen Logan’s article on why more SEO firms should offer copywriting services.