We all know Seth Godin is a god (its even part of his name).  I’ve been reading his free e-books on blogging and making lenses on Squidoo. 

(Go here to find them.)

Seth talks about making blog entries short and sweet.  Good strategy.  What I find very interesting, though, is the contrast between the blog-writing manta of short and sweet and the craft of SEO web writing, which I’ve recently been doing a fair amount of. 

SEO writing is all about verbiage.  Lots and lots of it.  You’re writing to a word count, and writing original content about things you’ve probably not spent a lot of time pondering in the overall scheme of things.  So you end up writing 10 words when 5 would do and 3 would be even better.  Its all about reaching that word count–and using the key word as many times as possible.

Truth be told, its actually quite entertaining.  I find it a challenge to come up with new topics, pad the article with keywords, and still make it informative and sound natural. 

If nothing else, its great practice for overcoming writer’s block.