Who will you write for the reader or the search engines
Posted by Will Blears on December 12, 2008 in BloggingWho will you write for the reader or the search engines
This is the sixth part of 11 things to consider before you start blogging and in today’s chapter we will be looking at the choice that bloggers have to make when they start blogging. Whether they will write their articles for their readers or for the search engines. This is an extremely important topic to cover and the choice you make will affect your blog’s growth in terms of readership, search engine rankings and the overall life span of your blog.
You might be wondering what the difference between writing for the reader and writing for the search engines is, well I am going to explain that now.
What is writing for the reader?
To write for the reader you incorporate several important points which should be combined in each and every article that you write.
These being
- Make the article entertaining
- Add some personality to the article (Include your own opinion or past experiences)
- Keep the article flowing (add structure to the article)
- Make the article scannable (allow the reader to scan over and still pick up the main points)
- Ensure the main point is not lost within the article (keep it focused)
- Take advantage of customisable texts (bold, italics, underlining, quotations)
Now these are not the only things you can do to make sure its reader friendly but these are the six main points that I try and add to each of my own articles. The fourth point and the last point are two that I am currently working on. With my switch over to WordPress it has been made much easier, hopefully I am growing more succesfull with making my articles less boring, more entertaining and easy to scan.
Anyways the idea is that writing an article should be more about entertaining the reader whilst giving them the information they were looking for just not in a boring manner. If your not used to writing or you are but your not very good at writing then don’t worry with time and practice comes perfection (well not perfection but as close as you can get). Believe me this time last year my articles were far worse than this, I rambled on about nonsense for half of the article and then the last part I may of added what the readers wanted to know. Through time your articles will increase in quality and its likely that your readers will notice this and they may even respect you more for this.
Now at this point you may be wondering, well OK Will I understand what writing for the reader is but what the heck is writing for the Search engines, well I shall explain this to you now.
What is writing for the Search Engines?
To write for the search engines you will have the keywords your targeting for the article in mind. You will write the Title with nothing but the search engines in mind and you will ensure in each and every sentence or near enough you have placed your keyword, even if it doesn’t make complete sense.
Take this parapgraph below for example; Where I shall use red car as the main keyword.
So I received my red car today, the red car is amazing it has all the features you would dream about getting in a red car and on top of all that it is a convertible red car. You may be wondering where I got the money for the red car from, well I won a competition and the prize was the red car. I could of had a different colour but red is my favourite so I chose the red car instead of the rest. I shall update you soon with more news on my red car and I will also take some pictures of the red car for you.
This peice of text is a classic example of a person writing for the search engines and not for their readers. After reading that you was probably getting annoyed at the amount of times red car was used and to think if the writer was talking about his red car for the length of this article no one would read it. Now this isn’t just because its a daft example and no one would ever want to read an article about a red car anyways. Its because readers will get annoyed at being reminded what the article is obviously about. Instead of getting to the point the writer will circle around the main point for several sentences so that they can include six or seven more main keywords.
Now writing for the search engines is about more than just stuffing your article with keywords (known as Keyword Stuffing) its about over optimising your title tags, meta tags and adding too many links. By doing all this you are not satisfying both your reader and the search engines. Instead your going to make your reader click away from your blog and the search engine is not going to respect you for over optimising your blog.
Instead of making the choice between writing for the reader or the search engine you need to find the balance. This article wasn’t about making a choice between the two it was about informing the bloggers on the two extremes. One extreme is writing too much for your reader and forgetting about the search engines and the second is writing your article with your keywords in mind instead of having your readers in mind.
The balance should be considering both when writing your article and the way you do this is by considering both as your writing it. This is much easier said than done however it can be achieved through practice as well as re-reading content over and over again before you click publish.
Before I publish this article I will re-read the article then try and make it a little more scannable, make sure it all makes sense and the points I wanted to get across have been established. Then I will move on to editing the title so its eye catching to the reader and ensuring it contains my main keyword. Even after I click publish I will view the page and check that everything lines up OK and that the bold is not too overpowering in places.
Overall you need to find the balance, in some cases its hard to find keywords to optimise your page for and in other cases its hard to select add your own experiences or personality, it might be hard to make an article entertaining if your talking about a difficult or uncomfortable topic but there are always ways to make an article easier to read and take in. Remember by writing a great article for your readers they will reward you by linking to your article, telling friends, stumbling, sphinning and increasing traffic to your article.
I hope you enjoyed the sixth part of 11 things to consider before you start blogging the seventh part will be published next week. Thanks.
Enjoyed this, why not download the 11 part series as an E Book at 73 pages long I am sure you will find it helpful. Subscribe and download right here.
STUMBLED!
One of the toughest parts of blogging is walking the fine line of who you are blogging for.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the rat race of PageRanks, SERPs and backlinks that you sometimes forget none of that matters if you don’t have readers/traffic.
Good post.
Excellent comment Geo it definitely is hard to stay on the right side of blogging.
It is very easy to get caught up in the rat race as you so well put it. I think it doesn’t help when you have many of the beginners being faulsy told that pagerank is important and search engine traffic is everything. When it is not, although search engine traffic can be one of the best forms of traffic it doesn’t mean you should rely entirely on this type of traffic by doing so your putting your blog at a large risk.
Its good to diversify and as you said without readers what is the point.
Very good comment, thanks Geo.
Thank you as well for the other comment and for kindly adding it to FAQ Pal.
What I see more often than not is bloggers writing exclusively for their readers without thinking of the search engines.
It’s quite a balancing act to reach a balance between the two. I encourage clients to write for their readers WITH the search engines in mind and not vice versa! (The search engines are constantly changing their algorithms to MATCH the human experience and not vice versa!)
@ Kathy great point to make. Yes there is a balance that some people often find hard to distinguish.
Good comment thank you.
Balance is the ultimate force that we should follow in this life. In any field, any activities, balance tends to perfection.
dont you think article like red car would irritate reader .
写的很不错 ，感谢你的分享。
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