S.E.O. – Natural Versus Optimization
A question about S.E.O. occurred to me one day. Is it best to follow a natural process of writing content or should one pursue the option of trying to fully optimise every piece of content written? By ‘optimise’, I am referring to the practice of searching for and stuffing content with keywords and phrases. Which is better?
Here is my opinion/answer to that question.
Let’s say two people have a website. One person may just stuff their content with keywords and phrases. Even if the content is not that great, I actually believe that the person may rank higher initially than the other person who writes naturally and has very good content. Eventually, the person who was just trying to optimise on keywords and doesn’t have great content is going to be penalised by the search engines and the one who has been writing naturally with great content will be ranked for those particular keywords because the content meets the desire and needs of the searcher.
I actually believe it is essential to start by writing content naturally, particularly if you have been working in the same space for many years. You can put together your content based on these 3 simple steps:
- Introduction
- Body
- Conclusion
If you assume that you are writing a piece of content about Ford cars, the ‘introduction’ will include deciding on colour, mileage and how far you are willing to travel. The ‘body’ may include the 5 places to get the best priced Ford cars and the ‘conclusion’ can give a ‘call to action’ plus include a number to call if all else fails. The content will be written as though you were speaking to the person right in front of you.
Now that you have written the content naturally, it is time to combine it with optimisation. In essence, the key to successful content has to be Natural + Optimisation. In other words, combine the natural flow process plus the tactical element of optimisation.
So let’s have a look at the definition of what optimisation is:
“an act, process, or methodology of making something (as a design, system, or decision) as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible;”
Therefore, what we are really trying to do is make our content naturally perfect for our clients (searcher and search engines).
What’s your opinion on this matter? Please leave a comment below.
You can also find out more about this topic by viewing my #1 SEO Biggest Secret Youtube video.