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Writing For The Search Engines VS Writing For Your Readers



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Writing For The Search Engines VS Writing For Your Readers

Over the last few years, there have been some big algorithm updates, especially noticeable with Google, that have changed the way websites need to have their content written and published.  Writing for the search engines and writing for your readers are two vastly different things now, which can make or break your business if you're doing it all wrong.  If you are still writing all of your own content, you'll want to make sure you're doing enough research prior to posting so you know if Google, Yahoo! and Bing will love what you're writing, and especially how you're writing it.

The grammar of your content can be perfect, but if you're not writing for your visitors, you will likely be seen in a bad light by the search engines.  A lot of people think they're doing everything right, but what they are doing wrong is over-optimizing their articles as well as making them unreadable.  You need a good structure for your writing, your content needs to show engagement and you need need to be seen as a real person and not a bot when the search engines come to crawl your content.  Yeah, a bot can evaluate you to determine if your content seems like a bot wrote it or not lol. 

In this discussion, I'll be going over what you should and shouldn't be doing when it comes to writing for the search engines VS writing for your readers.



Writing for the search engines
When someone is writing for the search engines, they usually have some understanding of SEO and how to rank pages on a website in order to hit the top page within the search results on Google, Yahoo! and Bing.  Writing for the search engines will usually backfire on you since it's something that they don't want you to do.  The search engines want you to be writing for your readers, not them, so the reader has a better experience when on your website.


Writing for the readers
If you're writing for your readers, you aren't caring too much about what happens after you publish your content.  You want them to read something they love, and you don't worry about getting top rankings for a specific keyword.  You likely aren't over optimizing your content because you aren't worried about your keyword density, your headers, your titles or your descriptions.  You just want to get some high-quality content in front of your readers in order for them to learn and hopefully engage with you.  Sure, you want to be big and popular within your niche, but you're not writing for the search engines and hoping they show you a ton of love due to your over optimization.


Why writing for the search engines isn't the best idea
Writing specifically for the search engines isn't the best idea in the world because you won't always get the best benefits from it.  Writing for the search engines usually consists of someone trying to optimize their pages to a point where they think that Google, Yahoo! and Bing will increase their rankings to #1 for their desired keywords, sending them thousands of visitors each month because of their top rankings.  In reality, if you're writing for the search engines, you won't always see top rankings because the search engines will catch on and not put you at the top because you're actually trying too hard.


Why writing for your readers is a great idea
When you write for your readers, and you don't worry too much about getting that top spot within the search engine results pages, you will likely be rewarded and given higher rankings.  It's kind of backward when you think about it, you write for the search engines and you don't get any love but when you write for the people, the search engines reward you lol.  Another backward thing is if you write for your people, you're actually writing to increase your rankings within the search engines.  So if you write for your readers, you're essentially writing for the search engines....


Engaging with your readers
When it comes to getting to the top of the search engine results pages, you need to show some sort of engagement on your posts and pages.  If you are posting quality content, you won't always beat out your competition who might be writing on similar topics and getting the engagement.  The search engines may boost your rankings simply based on your content, but it doesn't always happen that way Writing For The Search Engines VS Writing For Your Readers  If the search engines come to your pages and see some sort of engagement within the page, with your visitors, they will likely boost you more than if you didn't have any engagement.  They want to see people already liking, commenting and sharing your content so they know it's already showing some sort of popularity within the community.  They want to promote better websites within their rankings, so by getting some engagement on each of your posts is a great way to help boost your rankings Writing For The Search Engines VS Writing For Your Readers




In Conclusion
Writing for the search engines isn't a great thing to do because they will usually keep you on page 2 or higher on pages 3, 4, or even 5+.  They see you as a website that has potential, but they just don't think you're ready for the first page.  On the other hand, if you're writing for your readers, you're going to be noticing some higher rankings even though you're not trying to do it as much as some other people.  You'll need to start getting some sort of engagement on your posts in order to overtake your competition.  You can definitely get to page 1 without engagement, so don't try to call me out on this one lol.  It's not as easy to get top rankings without engagement though Writing For The Search Engines VS Writing For Your Readers  So get out there, write up some great content and try not to worry too much of how the search engines are going to view you.  If you act cool, like you don't care what others think about you, you'll likely be rewarded with higher rankings.



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

Comments

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potentialwriter
It's not good enough writing just for the search engines, but not for your audience. It does not matter to focus narrowly on pleasing the search engines or trying to make your website search engine friendly, but focus rather on providing quality. Quality should be your watchword ever. Once you write good contents, there is no cause for alarm about how you are going to be generating traffic to your website.



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Corzhens
I have read many discussions about writing for the search engines that the content should be like this or be like that. Perhaps I have come across more than a hundred of those discussions on the kind of content to write but there are only several discussions that say we should be writing for our readers. Maybe the craze of SEO for getting the traffic is changing the style of writing contents.



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augusta
Writing for search engine is a wrong approach in building a site or blog.Blackhat SEO might get one to rank on search engine but readers would elude the site because of poor and shallow contents.

it I'd pertinent to always write good content for readers to build a blog than search engine.



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DarthHazard
If you are writing for search engines then you're not doing it correctly really. Why have a blog when all you care about is your ranking on a search engine page? Your blog content should be focused on the readers that follow and read your content. They are the reason why your website is doing well and the main reason why you will make money from your site.



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JoeMilford
I totally agree with this post. I do no think that I could write for the search engines even if I actually tried, lol. My mind just does not work that way when approaching the writing act, and I think that this would just suck out all of the fun and inspiration for me even if I tried to attempt it. I love creating meaningful content, and although I also like maximizing traffic to my blogs and making potential income by doing so, I am sure that I would lose the loyal followers who I currently have for my writing if I started to write simply for the SEO results. The audience is looking for consistent and meaningful content, and they are coming to your blogs and sites to get that. Sure, one would hope that the content is searchable and that new audiences flock to your work because of that, but one needs to stay true to the creation of good content and not to the desire for successful search engines all of the time.



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vinaya
If you are writing for readers, search engines will automatically love your writing. Writing for readers means, your article has high readability score, your article is unique and interesting, your article is well written. These are the qualities also loved by search engines. If your articles are loved by search engines, you will rank high. However, you need to tweak your article little bit to impress search engines, for instance, using keywords on the title and the body, using meta tags and meta descriptions having images and using alt tags on the image and building backlinks.



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overcast
I think writing for both search and the readers is necessary. You can see that writing for readers require you to be original and real. And that also means that you have to consider keywords for the search engines. Such type of writing takes time. And something you can't really get it done properly. You can see that some of the time writing for search requires you to properly manage your content too. I think some people manage such balance and it shows in their writing.



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TimothyAlex
I tend to believe writing for readers is writing for search engines. Search algorithms have become extremely intelligent, They pull in all types of user signals. The goal of search engines it to satisfy user's demand for the most relevant and reliable information. You can follow any formula you want, but if you are not creating content that reduces bounce rates and increases time on site, you will not rank well over time.



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keen2write
I write for the people and the search engines, but also people come first and it is a good idea as well if you know about the things you write. If you are blogging about a true passion and hobby then writing the blogs should come to you like second nature giving the readers what they want and what they need to know. Also, search engines will see this as a positive.



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Baburra
Thanks for sharing this. I write on a blog and because I treat it just as a hobby, I never really felt as inclined to write it for search engines as I wasn't treating it like a business, and by doing that over the years, I think I've garnered an audience that I otherwise might not have if I was doing things more rigidly. However, I don't know if I would have been able to come up with a compromise and satisfied both markets, but I do think that since I write more organically then hopefully that translates to the audience and that attracts them to my site.



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jaymish2
To my understanding, writing for readers has become writing for search engines. I don't think you can really separate the two.I know Google particularly has changed its rules from ranking pages based on keywords to ranking pages based on excellent content. In my opinion, this is good for anyone who does internet research. There is nothing more frustrating than looking for something on the net and finding a list of useless first pages. The internet is information based and should be kept as so. I know now search engines require you to have informative content. Fine with me!



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Barida
You're right that it's all about content at the moment and not really about how you try to rank your keywords. I've always try to focus on my readers for the more they visit, I've noticed that the content rank higher on search engines as well.



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mildredtabitha
I really do not know how to write for search engines. I have always wrote for readers. I also agree that writing for readers is the best idea because they will give you direct feedback about your content and make you improve while writing more.



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overcast
It's just adding more keywords for which you want traffic. Say like you have keyword "white widget" then your post title would be something like. "12 white widget you should use". And then content would have be something like this "white widgets are in the world since the man". You get the idea. I guess writing for search engine here means using the keywords more often so that search engines can read it.



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mildredtabitha
Thanks. I now understand. I think writing for search engines must be tough for beginners than those who are used to doing it. I better write for readers than focus on keywords which might not flow with my content because I might end up forcing it.



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overcast
Yes it is tough for any writer. Because here you may end up sounding like robot. And there is no human voice. Because humans don't use that many keywords in their writing. So that may lead to the scraped type article. So this is something many writers want to avoid too. That being said, you can surely understand that part hopefully.



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Krisleen
I personally prefer to write for readers. They are the audience in the first place. Whatever page your article appears in the search engine, your readers will still be the ones who will use your article for their reference at the end of the day so it's pointless to chase the rankings and make it to the first page as your goal. I believe that excellent quality will always come first before anything else. The ranks and ratings will follow once the readers are happy and very appreciative of your work. Nothing is more fulfilling than to add value to your readers with the work your have done. It's like hitting two birds with one stone. They love your work and at the same time, you get rewarded for the quality of your work.



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vinaya
You should always write for readers, however, it is also true that your content should be found by search engines. So how do you ensure that your articles will be liked by the readers as well as search engines? Your readers will like your content if it is interesting, informative and unique. Search engines will also like these things. Search engines will like the contents that have focus keywords. When you repeat the same words too many times, it will bother the readers, therefore, you ned to take care of it.



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Corzhens
I have read in one discussion that it is best to be natural with your writing and that it is not a good idea to be writing with SEO in your mind. It is like saying that you are writing only for the money. In the first place, you are writing because there are readers so you should be writing for your readers, give them what they want to read otherwise they may leave your website if the contents are not that relevant to them anymore. And who would be interested to read a content that was made intentionally for the search engine?



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