Marketing Through Web Content: Content for Search Engine Spiders and the Human Eye
I had come across a comment by an SEO writer recently about SEO articles being easy to write because they’re written for the search engines and not for the human eye. This argument means that SEO articles could be slapped together haphazardly without much thought to what is actually written as long as the keywords and keyword density are implemented. Though it’s true that search engine optimized content is created for the sake of the crawlers; that doesn’t mean you should sacrifice readability.
I’ve been online since the 1990s and have seen, for my own eyes, what kind of content populated the web throughout the years. More recently I was appalled by the types of articles I came across. Many are utter nonsense — merely amalgamations of keywords thrown together to form 500-word crap articles (pardon my language). I understand that this happens because many web content writers are underpaid but for the web masters to think that such content is acceptable is beyond me.
Here are some tips on how to produce content for both the search engine spiders and humans:
1. Maintain a reasonable keyword density to word count percentage. A short 400-word article for example should not have a 5% keyword density.
2. Put some substance into your content. Humans don’t want to read keyword-stuffed articles. There’s only so much one can take. Just imagine having to read 3 or 4 key phrases over and over and over again for the whole 1,000 word content of a page, for example.
Here are the reasons why it’s important to have content suitable for both spiders and humans:
1. Spiders index keywords. I think that’s self-explanatory.
2. Humans only bookmark your web site if they find it interesting and informative. If your content is keyword-stuffed crap, don’t expect any returning visitors at all. Put yourself in your readers’ shoes, would you want to read keyword-article slush over and over again?
Bottom line is, web content optimized for SEO is good but that doesn’t mean you’d overlook the fact that it will still be humans who will read your web pages. The quality of optimized content should be a marriage between SEO purposes and human readability.
Filed under: Website Content
