Stop Writing For Search Engines!
If you are structuring your blog posts with a view to manipulating search engine rankings, without a full consideration to your reading audience, you have it arse about! Search engine don't read articles, people do!
Search Engine Rankings Matter
Yes, search engine rankings matter, but not as much as engaging your readers. How does it serve you to rank highly for a given phrase only to have the reader abandon the article because it is hard to read, or feels unnatural, or simply is structured for an algorithm and not for a human? It doesn't help you, that's the answer!
People Are Your Target
People read, people buy, people engage, people search, etc. It's people that are your target, not search engines. Your job is to provide information of value to your audience, and present it in such a way that it is a joy to read, and useful! That's it! People go to search engines, like Google, to look for solutions to their problems. Your job is to write about the solutions you provide to peoples problems. The search engines are pretty good and working out the matching of your solutions to the problems that people need to solve. They've come a long way and don't need to your help quite as much as you might think.
That's not to say that you can't structure your posts in a way that is easier for a search engine to index. You can definitely do that, and we'll cover it in another article, it's just that you should always write for people first and then modify for search engines. Never structure for search engine optimisation at the expenses of the people who are the intended audience.
If in doubt, write for your audience and let the search engines take care of themselves.
David Fuller
CEO - Rough Diamond Academy
For over 21 years David has been building websites for clients. In 2013 he pivoted from running a web design agency to working hands on with clients to help them build their businesses by reaching their ideal clients. Going beyond the website. The experience of working at the coal face is the foundation of The Rough Diamond Academy. Real life experience for real life businesses. It starts with building a site, but that's only the beginning!