Keywords? Why would anyone want to pay for words?

Text rules. Companies use text rather than images to do business. Business people sign contracts, read reports, write emails.

Text can handle all other forms of content. We routinely use text to discuss movies, TV shows and music. We rarely use images to review novels or sounds to describe a film plot.

On the web too text rules. Search engines use text rather than sound to find, index and rank websites. They examine anchor text, alt text, body text and the first few words in your headlines. If you don’t use the right keywords, search-dominant users may never find your website.

HTTP. It’s called hypertext transfer protocol for a reason.

Text — copy, writing, words — remains the most important form of content. But when people repeat the cliché that content is king, they don’t usually mean text. They’re talking about maps, podcasts, user generated video, games and, uh, ringtones. Even ringtones are more exciting than writing.

Why is that? Here are some tentative answers:

1. Text has been around for a few thousand years. It’s old hat.
2. They teach it in primary school. Unlike authoring Flash, for instance, writing is not a specialist skill and, in theory and at some level, almost anyone can do it.
3. Copy is low tech. It’s so basic you can use Notepad. No application suites, no “native environment”, no development teams. Why would anyone pay for something that simple?

So how do you persuade a client to spend serious money on something that is old, basic and simple?