Writing Content for Users First, Search Engines Second

Search engines use many factors and complex methods to rank websites in their index. Their goal is to provide users with the most relevant websites and the highest quality content when they search. Getting on-page SEO right is therefore an essential part of ranking highly and attracting visitors.

With this in mind, it can be tempting to think about content only in terms of how it will be looked upon by search engines and how it will contribute to the search engine ranking position (SERP) of a website. This is something to avoid – it’s always best to write content with human visitors in mind first.

A website with content written solely for the benefit of search engines may result in good rankings, but what impressions are visitors going to get? Content written specifically for search engines is usually low quality, repetitive and stuffed full of keywords and phrases. This certainly isn’t interesting for visitors and will not give a good impression of a business. Ultimately it is likely to result in poor conversion rates.

Of course, that isn’t to say that search engines should be ignored. The most effective method is to write content that is unique, informative and written for human visitors, but always with search engines in mind.

In addition to the on-page SEO benefits, high quality content is also more likely to be linked to from other websites. Since off-page SEO is just as important as on-page SEO, backlinks are essential. High quality content is also likely to be shared on social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, and also on social bookmarking tools such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.

Regularly publishing content is a massive positive in terms of both search engines and human visitors. A website that is updated often with unique, informative content is looked upon favourably by search engines, while offering something new on a regular basis is likely to keep visitors coming back again and again.