Writing SEO Friendly Content That’s Human Friendly Too!

If there was no such thing as SEO, would the content on your website be drastically different? The answer should be no.

We all know the importance of SEO and the significant role that content plays in the campaigns. But do we concentrate so much on the SEO value of our content that it often comes at the detriment of its real value to our core users – the humans? In a good SEO campaign, the answer to that is no. Good quality content that’s SEO friendly and appeals to your human readers is a fundamental part of a well carried out SEO campaign. But there is no shortage of examples online of bad SEO campaigns on websites containing paragraphs and paragraphs of text that is keyword stuffed to the extent that it makes little if any sense. So how can you go about writing SEO friendly content that is human friendly too?

Clear Article Titles

Let’s take this article, for example. I want to target the search term, ‘SEO friendly content,’ and have included it in the title. Page titles and H1 tags carry a lot of weight in SEO terms. Therefore it makes sense to include the keyword or search term in your page title and/or H1 tag. This has SEO benefit but is also human friendly too. It gives your human readers a clear indication of what the article is about therefore telling them instantly whether it is something of interest to them.

Keyword Rich, Not Keyword Stuffed!

A lot of people find it difficult to fit their target keywords into their content and still make it sound natural. This isn’t always an easy thing to do but it really is absolutely essential if people will return to your website a second time! The Google algorithm is pretty advanced now and spots spam. Hence simple lists of keywords or hidden repetitions of the same keyword over and over no longer working to positively increase rankings. Essentially, the crawlers want to know what your page is about. A few mentions of the keyword will give the crawlers the idea. Going overboard to a point at which it sounds unnatural will get you a nice spam penalty. Read what you have written aloud to yourself. Does it sound natural? If not, don’t post it to your site. It’s often easier to find more naturally fitting places for your keywords at the beginning of paragraphs, particularly where they keywords contain a noun.

Use Unique Content

While it’s tempting to use an article (with permission) from another source, this isn’t always the best SEO practice. Unique content really is King (sorry about the cliché). From an SEO perspective, unique content gets you Google brownie points. Repetitions of the same content over and over mean that many of the sites featuring said content find themselves hidden behind that link on Google that tells the user that ‘similar results’ have been ‘omitted’ and that they can click to show them. But by that point, most users have already gone on and read that article on another site. Offering consistently unique content gives your users a reason to come back and read your material again as well. If you always post unique content, your readers know that the only place they can go for that article (at least as soon as it’s posted) is to your site.

Write Like a Reader and Think Like a Searcher

What I mean by this, essentially, is that SEO friendly content is content geared to be found easily. Human friendly content is content that human readers both benefit from and can read easily. If someone is looking for ‘budget recipes’ they are more likely to search for ‘budget recipes’ than for ‘financially resourceful food formulae’. Keep your language simple. Search engine users tend to search in easy to understand terms and your content should be written with this in mind. Add to that the fact that nobody really enjoys reading an article when every other word is six syllables long and they need a dictionary just to get past the opening line and keeping it simple really is the winning formula for SEO friendly content.

Put the Keyword in your URL

If you are posting your content to a blog or website, adjust your url /permalink to incorporate the keyword you are going for where possible. Not only does this enable search engine crawlers to more easily decipher the topic of your content, but it also offers the readers you give the URL to some idea about the subject matter beforehand.

These are just five ways that you can create SEO friendly content that pleases your readers as well. It’s great to have an optimised site that people can find, but unless your content is good and appeals to people, your conversions and/or return rates will be very low.

This was a guest post written by Josue Habana, an online marketing specialist and virtual worlds enthusiast. Josue has a Second Life Music and arts blog and a satirical Second Life blog.