The majority of the Internet marketing advice that you come across will tell you to write for the users. Always write for the users, and never write for search engines, say the search engine optimization gurus. And I agree. Why? Because jamming as many keywords into a post will just lull your listeners, and your page will never get shared through social media – or any other medium for that matter. Even if readers don’t know what SEO is, they do catch on when someone is just trying to saturate a page with content that isn’t focused on the reader. You can expect them to leave your page upon immediately getting that feeling. Chances are, they will never return.
Of course, you can’t appeal to everyone’s desires. Even the folks in your target audience have different tastes, preferences, desires. However, that doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t try to picture who their audience is. Trying to get a sense of who the customer, or user, or visitor is will always be indispensable, no matter if you are running a business on or offline. For SEO purposes, of course, it is even more important to try and identify who the audience is going to be. This is definitely not easy. And for this reason, it is preferable by many to just not focus on the user and focus on the search engines instead.
Assumptions
Many SEO specialists assume that just because the target audience is difficult to identify, that it is not so important to create content that is appealing to others. Why? Because what is appealing is subjective, they say. And to appeal to one sector of your audience means that you must exclude another. Just forget about appealing to an audience, they say; instead, focus on keywords. Only keywords. Clearly, this is a hasty generalization. The logic is: because the target audience is difficult to identify, and because so many people have so many preferences, trying to write an article with a certain preferred style in mind is of no value, and for this, focusing on the audience isn’t as important as focusing on the search engines, because at least with the search engines you know some of the specifications that need to be met for an article to be of quality. This is clearly flawed reasoning, but sadly it is the kind of reasoning that is all too prevalent in the SEO world.
Conclusion
The problem with the reasoning is that acting on the particular conclusion leads to rather undesirable implications – implications that limit leads, and further limit one’s potential market share. As mentioned above, dull content will never be shared. Content that is not shared but is rich in keywords may receive a high quality score from SERPs at first, but eventually SERPs will reward those whose content is actually being shared. This pushes you down the totem pole. Sooner or later, you will be left in the dust – far behind your competitors in terms of search engine visibility. And all because you chose to focus on the short term, instead of working on creating content that is invigorating, stimulating, and that brings people back for more. Of course, the latter takes more time, and is the long term approach. It is the approach that takes the developing of writing skills, of a better understanding of the market, among many others. No question, it is compelling to just appeal to search engines, as you still do get rewarded for doing so, but nobody is going to last with such a strategy. Those who are in it for the long haul are the one’s who are going to reap the biggest benefits. Don’t ignore your audience for the sake of a few more keywords. In a few years time, after your website no longer appears anywhere close to the first page on search engine results, you will greatly regret it.
Networtech is a top-notch web design and online marketing team. Their team has years of experience under their belts in the search engine optimization domain. They have helped many businesses reach the apex of search engine visibility.