Maybe you can answer a question for me. I have several clients who only want non-optimized copy for their sites. I don't charge that much more for SEO copy and - judging by the quantity of work these people send my way - budget isn't a factor with any of them.

If you're going to have copy professionally written for your site, why not spend a little extra and get it optimized? Why wouldn't you want to do everything you could to help your site rank on organic engines even if you have plans for PPC or other online/offline campaigns?

The first thing that comes to mind is that they need copy for another SEO to optimize it for rankings. Either that, or maybe they don't really know what keywords to go after.

Yeah, not a lot of logic there to answer that question.

I would just 'include' it within your services and charge accordingly but not get into explaining the details if they are not interested. Make it standard and charge for it, imo.

I would say that they believe the myth that if copy is SEO'd, it is not good copy. They do not understand that good copy can also be good SEO’d copy as well. One does not have to compromise the quality of their copy just to optimize it for the search engines.

You have a point, my friend. I do hear that a lot. People just don't understand that an excellent, natural balance can be obtained when writing SEO copy. There is so much junky SEO copy online these days that I think people can be afraid of it. :)

I do hear some clients saying, "I want customer-focused copy, not SEO copy" as if they have to be two different things.

I guess it depends on the company. With my employers we get approximately 98% of our hits from none search engine sources because our brands are so well established.

Until recently we paid an external company to do all our SEO at a very high cost and with some success (a google ranking of 8). Given so little of our traffic comes from search engines and the fact the conversion rate for search engine traffic was much lower we have stopped using the SEO company. Since then we have seen our google ranking drop to 6 but no noticable change in traffic or sales (taking out all other factors).

Whilst those of us that have worked in web design/ development and related industries see SEO as one of the most major parts of a good website - after all if no one can find your site it doesnt matter how good it is - there are companies out there who do not see this as a cost effective activity.

Yeah, not a lot of logic there to answer that question.

Interesting you say that because I have specific client experience with both. If the client sees that SEO copy costs extra then why pay extra if they are developing content they know will be SEOs by another. Pretty logical to me. Though I'll lean towards David's response as being the more likely one.

I guess, because I know there is a HUGE difference in the quality of SEO copy written from scratch and edited SEO copy, that I have tunnel vision so I see the opposite. Why pay an SEO to hammer keyphrases into existing copy when, for a little more, you can have exceptional copy written from scratch with your keyphrases in mind? Plus, if the copy isn't converting, well... that's a whole other issue that editing can't really touch.

Given: there are some instances where copy can be edited with little damage to the flow or message, but I don't see it often.