“An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house…” (bar joke)

“So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor”
 
This joke has been cited in print since at least December 2010 and became viral in January 2011. A search engine optimization (SEO) copywriter supposedly tries to fit in all the keywords into the classic “walks into a bar” joke.
 
However, not everyone thinks that the joke is funny or makes sense. Unmemorable Title (An SEO & Copywriting Blog) pointed out that an SEO copywriter who produces this gibberish is not helping a client.
   
 
Wikipedia: Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s “natural” or un-paid (“organic”) search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine’s users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.
 
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms or keywords typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content, HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.
   
Twitter
Merlin Mann
‏@hotdogsladies
That was cynical. I apologize, SEOs.
apologies, apology, sorry, best apology, cheap apology, horny apology
12:28 PM - 19 Oct 2009
 
Reddit
So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar… (self.funny)
submitted 3 years ago by popecorky (December 4, 2010—ed.)
bar and grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor, four loko.
This was stolen from a friend’s Twitter and he might have stolen it from someone else, but I still wanted to post it.
 
Twitter
Michael Karlsson
‏@mickejkpg
“So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor” #nördhumor #seose
RETWEETS
1,902
FAVORITES
334
4:03 PM - 7 Jan 2011
 
Brian Frank
SO THIS SEO COPYWRITER WALKS INTO A BAR…
Posted by Brian on 11.01.2011 (January 11, 2011)
So I saw this SEO copywriter joke a bunch of times yesterday. I love it:
 
“So this SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish bar, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor”
 
(If you don’t know what SEO copywriting is, it means writing with specific keywords in certain orders to help sites rank higher in search engines like Google. Hence writing “bar, grill, pub,” etc. to get into more searches. I’m tempted to demonstrate it here but I don’t know what I’d want to optimize for — other than the joke, the funny joke about the SEO copywriter on Twitter.)
   
The Atlantic
Twitter’s Best Joke: An SEO Copywriter Walks Into a Bar…
ALEXIS C. MADRIGAL JAN 12 2011, 1:23 PM ET
This has been the big joke on Twitter for the past couple days, and I have to admit that it’s pretty funny:
 
An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor…
 
I haven’t been able to track down who first tweeted this, mostly because it’s spread so far and wide that Twitter search can’t get far enough back in time to find Tweet 0.
     
Unmemorable Title (An SEO & Copywriting Blog)
An SEO Copywriter Walks Into a Pub…
by ANDREW on Oct 21, 2011 • 9:00 am
An SEO copywriter walks into a pub, bar, public house, venue, beer, lager, wine, spirits, cocktails, pub food, gastropub, happy hour…
(...)
So any “SEO” who’s noticably filling your pages with synonymous guff isn’t doing a very good job.
 
In fact, they’re doing a terrible job, because creating pages with ridiculous, useless content is a great way to have your site disregarded by users and crawlers alike.
 
So if the synonyms are out, the SEO copywriter doesn’t walk into a pub, bar, gastropub, hostelry, drinking house, boozer… They do what everyone else does. They just walk into a bar.