Happy World Poetry Day! The purpose of this day is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world. Here is my contribution….
When you write for search engines
your writing might sound strange.
The words you choose, the style you use,
Lots of things may change.
Change your title? How could you?
You’ll compromise the page!
Keywords, linking, headers, tagging
Like writing in a cage.
You might feel like a criminal
committing writing crimes.
Repeat that phrase ‘til it displays
five to seven times!
Don’t go too far for rankings’ sake
by changing all your text.
When keywords cram, you sound like spam
Your visitors, perplexed.
Step once for you, and once for rank.
soon you’ll walk that line.
You’ll rank high and still get by
with writing that sounds fine.
“But I don’t want to compromise.
My writing art is true.”
You keep your art, but I’ll be smart.
I’ll see you on page two.
Every poet surely knows
how good constraints can be.
The rules of rhyme and metered time
force creativity.
Singers sing and poets rhyme
To get the girls to ogle.
I tweak my copy all the time
To win some love from…Google.
Writing in rhyming quatrains with iambic meter isn’t easy. But it forced me to think differently and it (hopefully) made this page more interesting. This may be the nerdiest thing I’ve ever done.
Writing for search engines? Much the same. Harder but more rewarding. And when done well, the writing can still be good. And it’s fun! So embrace the constraints.
