SEO is slowly destroying our creativity.
My last article posted on this website was titled Do CEOs Get Speeding Tickets? If I had listened to all the rules of SEO, I would have chosen a boring title like Google Penalties Explained or Google’s SEO Penalties. You know, like everybody else.
The title tag on any page is an important ranking factor. No one denies that. But every once in a while, SEOs and Web Content Writers need to wake up and remember that content is still king – you should be writing for your readers. Readers don’t appreciate Keyword 1 Keyword 2 Variation of Keyword 1.
I almost feel disloyal to the SEO industry for attempting to remind them of the obvious, but here it goes: when writing articles or creating content, first, write purely for the reader. Next, revaluate the content in light of the SEO ranking factors you’re aware of – try to have a decent sprinkling of (relevant) keywords in the article and title. As creative as you are, you’re not going to rank for blue widgets if they aren’t mentioned. Finally – and I’m afraid this is the most overlooked – reevaluate it from a readers perspective.
If your valiant SEO efforts removed all flavor from your content, fix it. You want your readers to tell their friends about it. You want them to tweet about it, facebook it, and digg it. You want them to be so impressed by what you showed them that they can’t help but buy your product or at least remember that you’re an industry authority.
I’ll continue to write article titles that don’t make any SEO sense. I think you appreciate it. If not, let me know, and I’ll just scrape from some content farm.
