Make Your Content More Reader-Friendly
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Are you spending so much time thinking of SEO that you’re discounting your readers completely? Don’t forget to make your content more reader-friendly, even while you keep the search engines in mind. Keep reading to find out how.
Optimize your pages! Use the right keywords! SEO! Are you staying so focused on search engine optimization in your content that you’re losing everything reader-friendly about those words? It’s important to use the right words to tempt the engines, but don’t forget that getting traffic is about more than correct keyword placement. Make your content more reader-friendly, even while you keep SEO goals in sight.
Search Engine Optimization
Is there ever a day that goes by when you don’t use an online search engine? Whether you’re shopping, surfing or just trying to find a piece of information, you probably turn to these remarkable Web pages first. Rather than randomly looking for Web sites, you can narrow your search to seek out the one page (or one hundred pages) you really want. Web sites which know how to use the search engines to their advantage, through SEO, enjoy better placement in results lists…and more traffic as a result.
Here’s how SEO works: web content is written specifically around certain keyword phrases. Usually, the more successful traffic-driving content is built around one or two keyword phrases, which generally range from three to four words in length. Why does this formula exist? Because it reflects how people search.
Think about how you use the search engines to find what you want. You pull up the site, type in a few words and click. Suddenly, a world of Web sites unfolds before you. The search engine in question scans all those pages out there on the Internet, searching for the specific words and combination of words you’ve typed. Sites featuring the most occurrences of this phrase get listed in your results first as the most likely matches for your topic. Rarely do Internet users type in a single word when they’re searching; doing so would yield far too many results.
So, when writing for the Web you make it a point to build your content around one or two three- and four-word key phrases. In this way, you optimize your content for the search engines and increase your chances of being read by a large audience. This helps your site by driving more traffic to your pages, and potentially helps you create revenue through page clicks. Often, page clicks are the method by which online writers earn some of their wages; the more traffic they get, the more money they get. This makes SEO extremely important. This is why so much time, thought and care is put into those all-important keywords. It’s equally important, however, to care about all the other words, too.
Is it possible all that SEO is actually alienating your readers? When you write for the search engines, are you writing off the people who come to actually read your content? Search engines may quickly skim your pages to pick out a few keywords here and there (the search string typed in by Internet traffic), but your readers are going to skim pages with an entirely different goal in mind.
Just what will they find…when they do actually start reading between the keywords?
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