The other night my girlfriend and I, in casual conversation, came upon the topic of The Never Ending Story. Ok. So chit chat doesn’t usually tread upon the dark and misty paths of 80’s fantasy flicks, but our cat was looking just like that pearly dog/dragon that befriends Atreyu and for the life of me, I couldn’t remember the name of the beast. So, being the 2.0 bipeds that we are, we turned to the ubiquitous search engine and Google’d it to find “Falkor” without so much as opening a link.

The beauty herein is that Google’s number one link was what I needed because I knew exactly what I wanted. I didn’t search with vague terms like dragon or movie but for “white dragon from The Never Ending Story.”

This made me think about SEO copy because, per my example, it’s easy enough to see that a focused person searching for a certain product will see through the ruse and beeline to their desired location, much like Atreyu bravely challenging and evading the Sphinx to reach the Oracle. All the keywords, links, tags and titles won’t distract a determined person from finding what they want, so than whom exactly does one write for when creating search engine optimization copy?

Sticking with our theme, I write SEO copy for people like Bastian, the “real-world” reader of the story and hero of Fantasia. Bastian is like the perfect customer: open to new things, yet in search of particulars. This dynamic customer will search with vaguer terms than a purple buffalo hunter from the plains might, in fact, this customer will read the blurbs beneath the links, will look at the ads and may even, gasp, look at the second results page. So let’s say Bastian’s looking for a new fantasy novel now that he’s turned the last page, as impossible as it sounds, in the Never Ending Story. He isn’t going to search authors or titles; he is going to search for “fantasy novels” or “magical ways to beat up bullies.” This vague and, excusing the latter, common search terminology is the reason search engine optimization is necessary.

People don’t turn to search engines because they know what they’re looking for; they turn to Google or Yahoo so that those search engines will find it for them. Just like the creatures in the Ivory Tower who send Atreyu to find a way to save Fantasia, people trust Google to find what they want, and it’s an SEO copywriter’s job to make sure that once a potential customer comes across your site, they stay.

There are a lot of theories as to how to keep a customer on the page, but far and away the most effective search engine optimization tool is to know your customer. If you are using broad base keywords, you will come off as sounding generic, if you niche the page too much, you risk alienating the reader. The trick is to find the common ground between specificity and generalization while keeping it enjoyable. Use your content wisely, know your customer and use the right keywords in the right context.

It’s a narrow road to ride, but by writing for the customer first and the search engine second; you can do the impossible and boost your ROI, bring traffic to your site and keep customers happy; maybe not as happy as if you were riding on the back of Falkor the luckdragon, but it could be close.