Writing for SEO: the WHY and the HOW

EXCENTRIC SHEDS LIGHT ON THE DO’S AND DONT’S OF WRITING FOR SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the visibility of any website, blog or online store on search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. But why is it so important?

Globalization and a sheer explosion of Internet traffic and online data result in increased competition. More and more businesses, worldwide, are now competing for the same keywords. A search engine optimized site is essential to stand out from the crowd. SEO helps to increase keyword ranking and drive organic and referral traffic to your website. Having a presence in the top positions for the keywords also builds trust with your audiences.

There’s a definite need to write for SEO, to get people’s attention and to drive traffic to your website. Now that we answered the “Why”, shall we tackle the “How”? Unfortunately, it’s not as straight forward, and best practices have dramatically changed over the years.

What NOT to do:

DO NOT keep up the bad practice of Keyword Stuffing
DO NOT jam a keyword in any tag possible
DO NOT just produce web copy for search engines, neglecting your target audience
DO NOT exact keyword match

What should you do?

Content, content, content: Most importantly, focus on high quality content. What matters most is to solve the searcher’s query.
Intent matching has replaced exact keyword matching. Again, keep the end user in mind and try and figure out what the searcher’s intent is.
Tags: Include your keyword(s) in the title element and the body content. If possible, also include it in the H1 and H2, the URL field, the image alt attribute and the meta description.
Association: Aim to employ words, phrases and concepts that search engines would associate with the search query (for example, if you talk about New York neighbourhoods, name the boroughs).