Do you write for search engines or readers or both?
Easy options to make a choice right?
Reading through all those blogs that’s sprouting up every day, I can clearly distinguish between one that’s written for search engines and one that’s for human readers. In fact, I instantly classify a new blog that I come across to either of these categories.
A blog that’s written for search engines will have the following features -
Fancy titles that’s more like keywords re arranged in no particular pattern.
Very less content mostly redrafted or copied.
Fewer links, internal and external.
Abnormal placement of keywords in between the body.
Bolding of keywords/use of strong attribute.
There are many more features that you might be able to tell me, but these are some of the common ones I see. The author’s intention is clear. Just to make an article revolving around the high paying keyword. He is not worried about duplicate content or end user satisfaction or anything in between.
I can’t possibly call them a waste of time or junk though I’d love to because they make the authors good money. Mostly from AdSense, so they are indeed helping people if not for a long time.
But honestly, this kind of blogging is not done in the right spirit of blogging. It kills the blogosphere. I think bloggers should strike a balance somewhere and write content that’s equally palatable to search engines and enjoyable to readers. Both the other options eventually become the two extremes of the game.
Fat Kid Unleashed | January 20th, 2008 at 11:30 pm #
Very much agreed, Mani. I would rather just write my post, keep a clean title, good keywords, link well throughout my post and not have to worry if its “SEOed” to the fullest. The search engines can read, but they aren’t benefiting from my content, the readers are. Great post
.
Wayne Liew | January 21st, 2008 at 6:02 am #
I won’t risk losing my readers by writing posts for search engines. It’s awkward for me to read through those posts for search engines and what more my readers?
However, I do use the All-In-One SEO Plugin to put in a more SEO-ized title if necessary, META tags and description tags. I do have some internal linking within my posts as well.
Motivator | January 21st, 2008 at 10:57 am #
Mani,I very much agree with you..Yeah readers are the kings for bloggers like us
monsenior | January 21st, 2008 at 11:46 am #
http://www.money-on-blog-easy.blogspot.com
Ann L. | January 21st, 2008 at 4:04 pm #
The search engines can’t actually ‘read’, they have an algorithm to work with. What I wonder is if their is any ‘direct’ way to influence Google (their have 50% of the business for some reason) so optimizing is more reader friendly.
On the other hand, I can ‘optimize’ the hell out of an article and end up on top of a search that I never intended to show up on. I once wrote a piece using ‘fly fishing’ as an example. I wrote the term ‘fly fishing statistics’ within the piece and for a while I was on the first page of that search and had visitors at least weekly to my blog that had NOTHING to do with fly fishing directly!