Should SEO Be Targeted at the User or Robots?

The world of SEO can often feel like it is totally geared to supplying Google crawlers and algorithms with the right signals to help your site rank better. But behind every search is a user, this blog explores how much weight we should be giving to their experience.

What Do Search Engines Say About SEO?

As you can imagine sites like Google and Bing take the line that it is always more important to target the user. In 2022, Google pushed out their “Helpful Content Update” which aimed to promote content that focused on people-first content. Whereas Bing has been developing a “Web Content Reliability Classification” which reviews the reliability of a website and its content to provide users with more trustworthy information.

Both of these updates look like major search engines are rewarding helpful content and user experience over, content created primarily for search engine traffic.

Does SEO Still Matter?

In a single word; yes!

SEO is not just about getting keywords on a page. It’s understanding who your customers are, and what they are looking for. It’s also about making sure that content is readable and meets internet standards, and that your website is technically sound and operates quickly and as a user would expect. Google’s Search Off The Record podcast regularly remind people to get the basics right first.

With this in mind, it is important to perform keyword research, follow web standards, and ensure that your site performs the best you can. Getting as mentioned the basics right will go a long way in getting your website to rank the best that it can. Research has shown that the conversion rate drops by 4.42% for each second it takes a page to load.

Tips For Writing For Humans With SEO in Mind

When you write content, think of the users who visit your site and keep the following questions in mind as they will provide you with the insight to write helpful and SEO-friendly content.

Who Will Be Interacting With Your Content?

By understanding your customers you will write content that is more engaging and attractive to them. Search engines, use real-world user data to help inform ranking performance.

What Will Your Customers Be Looking For?

This will help you use the same language and terminology as your customers, which when combined with keyword research will ensure that you are using the best terms to attract new customers.

Does This Content Present a Solution or an Obvious Next Step?

Users who land on your site will be looking for a clear answer to the query that brought them to you. Make this clear and any next steps easy to identify. This will help increase engagement, which will present the site as trustworthy to the search engines.

Is the Content Clear and Easy to Read?

Similar to the last point, use headings to break content down into easy-to-read sections. This helps with both readability and SEO, as this gives you space to organically add keywords to the content.

Is Your Website Quick and Easy to Use?

A quick site has a higher chance of retaining and engaging a user. Not only this but, you want users to easily have the ability to purchase or convert.

Does Your Site Meet Best Practice Standards?

You can possibly spot the common theme here! Making sure that a page has a title and a meta description, as well as using the correct heading structure, will help a search engine interpret the content on the page. But it will also help a user of the site read and understand the content.

Is There a Conclusion or a Final Point?

Often the last paragraph wraps things up, but it gets lost in the layout. Making the conclusion deliberate, makes the next step and call to action clear and obvious.

Conclusion: Good SEO Informs Content Writing for Human Readers

Digital marketing is an ever-evolving medium, and SEO still has a role to play in marketing strategy, but rather than dictating keywords and structure as it has in the past, it is a tool to inform decision-making. Data from SEO research can be used to make sure you are targeting the right audience, and generating the right types of content. Keyword information can be used to inform content, but shouldn’t overwrite the need to write in an engaging and human-readable way.

At the end of the day creating content that is engaging with the audience and drives interactions, will always perform better than, content put on a site purely for SEO needs.

If you need help developing a positive keywords strategy, and creating engaging content that performs well for SEO, whilst remaining engaging talk to us at Brave. With a team of search experts, we have all everything you need for a successful SEO campaign. Get in touch with us today and discover how we can help your business reach new audiences.