I was in a meeting with a client once where we argued good naturedly about the “best” way to write content for websites. The client was a marketing agency, so there were several of us on the call. One person said she writes content for humans, whereas her coworker writes content for robots (i.e. Google’s algorithm).
It’s definitely a balancing act, and as someone who understands both SEO and good writing, I often find myself arguing with myself as I try to determine the best way to phrase something. Should I use that keyword, or should I say it in a way that sounds like something a human would actually say in conversation?
As hard as writing for SEO and for humans can be, there are instances where you can have it both ways. First, let’s take a look at what it means to write for SEO.
Table of Contents
Writing for SEO
Since we can’t convert any leads if they never find us, let’s start with talking about how you should be writing for SEO.
Keywords
There’s more to SEO than just content with keywords, but that is an important part of the equation. Google crawls your content to get an idea of what it’s about, and if it sees certain words and phrases in your content that people are putting into Google’s search bar, Google will assume your content is relevant to the searches those people are conducting.
Keyword Frequency
Even with Google there’s a fine line you have to walk between including your target keyword enough times to convince Google you’re relevant, but not so many times that you resort to keyword stuffing. In the early days of SEO and keywords, you could cram a piece of content with one keyword and get on the first page of Google, but now Google recognizes that as a black-hat tactic, and is more likely to punish, rather than reward, keyword stuffing.
Keyword Placement
Where you put your keywords is more important than how frequently you include it throughout your content. Your target keyword definitely needs to go in your headline and your URL. It’s also a good idea to include your keywords in your subheadings if you can, but that rule is definitely flexible. I’ve seen plenty of blog posts rank on the first page of Google that don’t have their target keyword in any of their subheadings.
Length
Google prefers longer content over shorter content. Several years ago, Google started prioritizing content with 500+ words. Generally speaking, the longer your content is, the more inclined Google will be to like it.
The average word count for content that ranks on the first page of Google is around 1,760 words. People often take this to mean all their content has to be 1,760 words long, but that’s not the case. It’s the average word count of articles to rank on the first page of Google, which means there are longer articles that rank, but there are also shorter articles that rank.
People often ask me if the ideal length for a blog post varies by industry, but it really doesn’t. People ask this because they think their prospects don’t read long content, even though that rarely turns out to be the case.
What does matter is the keyword. If you research the keyword and you find other pieces of content that are very long, you probably need to write a very long post. If you find short articles ranking on the first page of Google for that keyword, then you can go ahead and write a shorter post.
What matters more than word count is making sure you cover everything there is to cover on that topic so your content becomes the definitive guide to that topic.
List It Out
Google loves lists, so if you can organize your content into a list, you’ll have a better chance of ranking highly for relevant keywords. This is the same reason headlines with numbers in them tend to rank well. Things like, “10 tips to” or “7 ways to” get people’s attention, including Google.
Make It Original
Google prioritizes original content over duplicate content, so make sure your content is unique. If you’re hiring someone to create content for you and you want to make sure they aren’t ripping you off by copying content from another site and pasting it onto yours, you can run the content through this software and it will alert you if it’s too similar to another piece of content out there on the internet.
Optimize Your Meta Description
Honestly, this tip might be obsolete by the time you read it, but I wanted to mention it just in case it is still relevant. In the early days of Google, you just got a headline.
Then Google started taking the first few lines of text from your content and displaying that below the headline to try to give readers an idea of what your content is all about. This is why SEO tools like Yoast still recommend including your target keyword in the introduction, even though it’s an outdated strategy.
Then we got the option to include a meta description to go along with our content and Google would display that content below our headline.
But lately Google has started grabbing whatever snippet from your content it thinks is most relevant to this particular query and displaying that instead, even if you had written out a different meta description. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t hit the mark. The question is whether this will become the norm, making meta descriptions obsolete.
For now, it’s probably in your best interests to continue writing meta descriptions and including your target keyword in the meta description. Better safe than sorry until it’s confirmed that Google has officially stopped using meta descriptions.
Link Up
Backlinks are the best way to convince Google you’re an authority in your industry, so any chance you have to get another site to link back to the content on your site is an opportunity you should grab.
Another site linking back to yours is an external link, and while they do have more SEO juice than internal links (which is when you provide a link on your website to another post or page on your website), internal links are not to be ignored, so include them whenever you can, as long as it makes sense to do so. Whatever you do, don’t include a link just for the sake of including in a link.
You can also include links in your content that lead to other websites. The downside to that is it does risk people clicking away from your site for good. You can mitigate that by having the link open in another tab, but there’s still no guarantee people will return to your tab. The upside is that it will show Google you play well with others, and the people visiting your site will know that, even if you don’t have all the answers, you know where to go to get the answers, which establishes you as an authority in your industry.
Writing for Humans
The good news is that Google’s ultimate goal is to help its users find the content they need. In theory that means Google should be prioritizing content real humans want to read. In practice, it doesn’t work out so smoothly, but Google is constantly tweaking its algorithm, so hopefully it will continue to get closer to that goal. In the meantime, since we’ve already taken a look at how to write for SEO, let’s look at how to write for humans.
Keywords
While people might not prioritize keywords as highly as Google does, it is still something we look at (especially in the headline and meta description) to make sure the content is relevant to what we’re searching. This is especially true as you get into long-tail keywords. If someone is looking for something specific and they see content that contains part of their keyword, but is missing an important word or two, they’ll probably keep scrolling until they find something that contains the entire keyword.
That said, once they’ve clicked through to your website, they won’t be looking for keywords. On the other hand, if you’ve stuffed your content with keywords so many times it becomes repetitive, that might turn readers away.
People often ask me how many times they should include a keyword in their content, but there is no one right answer. Include it as many times as you can without sounding repetitive. I would say aim for an average of every other paragraph if you can (especially if you’re writing short paragraphs). Fewer than that is OK, but not more.
Just use your best judgement. If it starts to sound repetitive, change some of the keywords to synonyms.
Another point I want to make about keywords is phrasing. I’ve researched plenty of keywords that turn up things like “business coach Toledo.” Those people are obviously searching for business coaches in Toledo, but just because they don’t include the word “in” or “of” or “to” in their search term, doesn’t mean they don’t want to see it in your content.
This is where writing for SEO vs writing for humans can get really tricky. On the one hand, including those little words can mess up your SEO. On the other hand, not including them can make you look like someone who doesn’t understand the English language, and if you don’t understand the English language, most English speakers won’t want to work with you. Again, you have to use your best judgement, but I tend to err on the side of writing for humans. You can also usually finagle your target keyword into something that is both SEO friendly and human friendly.
Length
As I mentioned above, the ideal length for a piece of content depends more on the keyword than anything else. People don’t always prefer longer content over shorter content, the way Google does, but Medium took a look at user data on their site a while back and found that the posts with the most engagement were about 1,000 words long, which means people are more likely than we give them credit for to stick around and read a bunch of text.
That said, the average time spent reading a blog post is only 37 seconds. That means, while some people are taking the time to read everything you write, most people are just skimming to get the nugget they need and then clicking away.
Subheadings
Rather than bemoaning the fact that people are skimming your content, rather than reading all the words you so carefully crafted, make it easy for them to skim. Not only does this mean including subheadings throughout your content, but it also means creating a Table of Contents at the top of your post that lists all the subheadings and provides a link to each one. That way, if someone is looking for something specific on your topic, they can look through your Table of Contents, click on the one that answers their question, get their answer and be on their merry way.
Even if you don’t include a Table of Contents, having subheadings throughout your content, not only breaks it up for your readers, making it easier for them to consume, it also makes it easier for them to skim your post and find the answer they need.
Keep It Short
I know I just talked about the value of long content, but when I say “keep it short,” I mean your sentences and paragraphs.
Leaving a lot of white space in your content makes it easier for people to read. A giant block of text can be intimidating, even to people like me who love to read, but have limited time. We tend to look at all that text and go, “Do I really have time for all that?”
But if we see a paragraph that’s just a line or two, we know we can read it in a few seconds. Then the next paragraph is short, so that’s just a few more seconds. Then the next. And before we know it we’ve read 1,000 words!
Talk to Your Reader
Conversational content that makes the reader feel like you’re talking directly to them is much more likely to get their attention than content written in the third person, or even the first person. So pull out that marketing persona and pretend you’re writing a letter to that person.
Include Images
We are visual creatures, so we tend to gravitate towards images. Not only can images help break up your content, they can also help your readers understand the content, especially if you’re presenting a lot of data in the form of numbers and statistics. By presenting that information in a visual format, such as a chart or a graph, you help them understand your content, and also increase the likelihood they’ll stick around to keep reading the rest of your text.
Conclusion
There’s no denying that there’s a fine line between writing for SEO and writing for humans, but I would err on the side of writing for humans. Choose your keywords carefully and write everything you can on the topic, but after that, your focus should be on the real, live humans reading your content. If people don’t like what they read, chances are small that they’ll stick around, much less take the next step in the buyer journey, and why are you writing the content in the first place if not to attract, engage, and convert high-quality leads?
If you found this content useful and would like to receive more of it, you can sign up for our newsletter in the space below to make sure you never miss an update. You can also see what we’re up to by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
If you don’t want to bother writing for SEO or for humans, you might want to check out our writing services.
