Should Your Write For Your Visitors Or The Search Engines?
If you spend any time reading articles related to search engine optimisation then you may be becoming a little confused when it comes to keywords and content development. Keywords are important but how important? When writing your content, should you be focused on the reader or the search engines?
I could say both and I could say neither. I think it is obvious that any written piece, whether it is a blog post, a website article, or even an advertisement, needs to be readable. That means everything is written in an easy to read manner. If you throw keywords in all over the place it will not only read wrong, it will make you look like a bad writer – the end result is that readers lose faith in your ability to help them and move on to other sites.
There is a simple solution to generating content. Start by writing a draft that targets neither the search engines nor the reader. In other words, you have a message you want to deliver. Write it!
Once you have completed your draft, go over it and start to make it web friendly. There are millions of posts around that talk about web friendly content. In a nutshell, short sentences, bullet points where necessary; clear, concise and to the point. People don’t want to read an artistic novel. Most people now scan when reading so – make your writing scanable.
Now you can move onto the final stage, making your copy SEO friendly. You should have target keywords in mind and your written piece should have some strong relevance to those keywords. How many keywords should you use? There is no rule. However, keep in mind what the purpose of a keyword is – it is purely designed to tell the search engines what the written work is all about. So, what better place to start than with the title? If possible, use your primary keyword in the title.
From there, a small scattering of keywords is all you need. There is nothing wrong with the philosophy of including your primary keyword in the first and last sentences of the article, and one or twice in the article itself. If you can manage it, adding a few variations of your keyword can also help. There is plenty of information around about how to complete your on page search engine optimisation.
Once completed, you should have an article that delivers the message you started with, has been edited to make it easy for the visitor to read, and has just enough keyword use to keep the article looking natural whilst telling the search engines what the article is all about.
An easy way to control your content development so it satisfies everyone – the reader, the search engines, and just as importantly, yourself.
Recent Entries
- Why A Search Engine Googopoly Is Bad For The Internet
- Blogging For The Sake Of Blogging Is Not Blogging
- How To Create An Effective Social Marketing Tweet
- Internal Linking – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Long Tail
- Adding Your Scotland Based Local Business To AOL
- Don’t Be Too Quick To Dismiss Google Buzz
- Are Guest Posts A Bad Link Building Strategy?
- Can You Overdo SEO?
- Review Sites And SEO For Scotland Local Businesses
- What Effect Will HTML5 Have On Web Design And SEO