Let Your Salesletter Sell.

A salesletter shouldn't be optimized for a certain number of keyword density. If you want search engine traffic, you should be driving it through other means. Don't water down your salesletter because of this. Your salesletter has ONE PURPOSE—MAKE A FREAK'N SALE!

A regular website's purpose is to get leads—that's it! If your website and your salesletter are the same thing, you'd better split them up by registering another domain or you make the home page your landing page and your salesletter on another page.

Don't waste your time, money and effort on a salesletter that is keyword-rich. Let your sales letter do what it's suppose to do—sell! That's why it's call a salesletter. It's not a SEO letter.

I have no problem in including keywords into a sales letter, but I don't want it to be the PRIMARY FOCUS. In fact, I make it a RULE to do keyword research and analysis. This allows me to know what my client's customers and buyers are looking for in a product. This helps me write a more powerful sales letter. However, it doesn't mean I chime in on every single keyword phrase because the keyword phrase might not make sense.

Being able to do the research myself, I can analyze it and act accordingly, but my client isn't responsible for conversion—it's me. So if they want to include the keyword phrases without my suggestions, then there's no point in hiring me. It all depends, but as the copywriter, we know what sells and what doesn't.

So to reiterate: I find it to be very helpful in doing keyword research when writing for a client—especially on a product I am not familiar with. It's all part of researching the product and the audience to know what their "hot buttons" are. Only when you find them and KNOW them will you then be able to push them. If you can't find the hot buttons, there's nothing to push. Salesletter is for sales, not SEO.

This piece is written by Kevin Lam and appears in his Texas SEO | Dallas Marketing Forum.