Editing requires the human factor
Fair and healthy competition can only help your business to grow. . . unless you happen to be an editor.
Many will appreciate the importance of selecting the right keywords when advertising your services online, and tailoring your campaign to match the search terms most likely to being potential customers to your website.
However, had I realised nearly 20 years ago when I embarked upon a career as a journalist that I would eventually be in competition not only with other humans but with the basic software built in to every PC on the planet, I might have thought twice before progressing to the role of copy editor or sub editor.
The term “editor” now seems redundant when announcing my presence via search engines such as Google and Yahoo! after a 10-minute analysis of my blog with Google’s keyword tool revealed who my real competitors are.
Did I say “who”?
Photo editor; photo editing; html editing; edit pictures; pdf editor; video editing software; editor de fotos; video editor; video editing — These are the non-human terms I’m in competition with for search engine ranking.
Clearly, none of the above software types can replace the human factor when it comes to revising text and images to the standards expected by paying customers, but their presence on the internet can make a human editor difficult to locate.
However, in highlighting the usefulness of Google’s keyword tool when considering the importance of search engine optimisation, I must come to the conclusion that I have the advantage. Unlike the shareware text, movie or registry editor, I have the capability of adapting my own language to select effective keywords at will, including the more offbeat designed to attract passing attention.
In describing my site in the fewest possible keywords for maximum impact, I may choose to focus on terms that are distinctly human and whose functions cannot be fully replicated by artificial intelligence. I have little choice when the most obvious terms have already been hijacked by spammers or wordbots: “Copy, draft, proof, revision, correction . . .”
One keyword, “proofreading”, convinces me that some traditional skills will never be replaced by machines. Even the best automatic spellchecker is only useful if you can be bothered to use it, and understand its limitations.
Your brain is editing information 24 hours a day and the effectiveness of the most “intellegent” software tools depends upon your own skill and experience. I recently met an hotelier who was convinced his computer’s spellchecker was at fault, unaware that he’d been spelling “accommodation” as “accomodation” throughout his career.
Draw your own conclusions, but in planning and writing for the web, you could do worse than analyse your site with Google’s search-based keyword tool. It can be a humbling experience!
Tags: copy editing, editing, keywords, proofreading, SEO, sub editing, text editing
Categories:
blogging, language
