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Nearly all writers concur: understand your audience. Then write to them.
Here’s a perspective on understanding your SEO audience, which occurred to me as I was reading a comment by Jan Geronimo concerning SEO.
Jan notes that a writer can’t be just a writer anymore, especially a writer who blogs. A writer has to be a writer, then has to be at least an amateur search engine weenie.
That’s no fun.
Nobody wants to be a weenie, so let’s think differently. Let’s think of a search engine as being a particularly stupid reader, like an editor for a prestigious publication. An editor who is less concerned with your brilliant, paradigm-shattering prose… than with making sure your margins are 1″ all the way around, the font is 12 point, the lines are double spaced, and you use accepted markup for bold, italic, etc.
That’s the search engine.
Since computers don’t have eyes, ears and legs, they can’t walk around and accumulate evidence of how the world really works. Without a hippocampus, they can’t get a feel for emotional context. All they have is ordered streams of characters, which we see as glyphs, but they see as sequences of 1s and 0s. Sucks for them.
So we have to help the computer along, and that’s where SEO comes into play.
Think about SEO as writing for a deaf, dumb and blind kid (who can’t even play pinball). Just like your editor, this kid isn’t going to process anything that doesn’t fit into it’s narrow pre-conceived structure of How The World Works. And since the computer heavily influences something you want (eyeballs), it must be catered to.
SEO is simply catering to the computer’s craving for structure. No more, no less.
If you’re in it for the long term, and have weak competition, or you just don’t care, you don’t need any special SEO juju. Just write your thing and it will eventually float to a level reflecting your personal popularity among readers. Your reputation will carry you in the long term.
If you have no reputation, or you want fast results, you’ll need to learn a few basic skills (conveniently outlined in “How to Really Publish a Blog Post” I might add; 75% discount for newsletter signup) to give the computer context it’s unable to acquire on it’s own.
By the way, all reputable SEO gurus assert “content is king.”
That feels ironic to me.
So write for readers first, and SEO second.
In the end, dealing with SEO is little different than preparing a manuscript for any other sort of publication, except it’s easier. Anyone who’s spent a full working day finalizing a draft for publication knows exactly what I mean. Five copies on heavy stock, double spaced, figures (originals only, please) floated back, captions numbered and listed separately, tables & captions floated similarly to figures, etc etc etc. ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Learning a little SEO magic, much of which can be dealt with as part of the writing process, is a small price to pay for freedom from the tyranny of FedEx’ing revisions.
It’s all a matter of perspective, and this one is mine.
Go visit Jan Geronimo at Writing to Exhale. You’ll learn something, I guarantee it.
At last, something that 1′s and 0′s in my brain can understand!
You’ve broken it down nicely for me. I don’t have a choice now, do I. Just have to subscribe now to learn more how to be more awesome and get some search engine loving my way.
Your perspective looks promising. I’m now more inclined to give SEO my best shot. Thanks for making it interesting.
.-= jan geronimo´s last blog ..Giving Good Loving To My Top Follow Friday People =-.
@jan –
Wait ’til you get a load of what’s currently in the queue for Monday: “What the Heck is HTML <title> element and why do I need one?”
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..Writing is pain. Not writing is worse pain. =-.
I’d look forward to that post, Dave.
Guess what. After subscribing to your feed on my reader, I’ve found this gem in one of your posts: ” Getting questions answered is passive learning.”
Guilty. That’s me all right. I’ve been blogging for 9 months now and all this time I’ve been stumbling along and always in search for getting my questions answered. Yeah, quick fixes. The post is about CSS and you were replying to a reader’s concern about over-riding the code or something.
I’m glad Holly wrote a guest post for you. Otherwise, it may be a long while before I bump into you. :)
True that! For as ‘clever’ as google & other engines are, they’re all about a system…. Lately I’ve been having a laugh at my adsense ads, as they mainly advertise the things i’m against and whinging about in my posts! If only the google spiders understood sarcasm….
@jan –
Definitely let me know if you need anything explained in better detail, or rewritten for clarity. Actually, that goes for any reader.
@Andrew –
On the one hand, things are going to get much better once the semantic web starts to operate. On the other hand, I’m sure there will totally wack kooky stuff resulting that we can’t even imagine.
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..Writing is pain. Not writing is worse pain. =-.
Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3…and quality content all about.
That’s what works for me!
.-= Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach ´s last blog ..A friend is ALWAYS a priceless gem and you’re never too old for more =-.
A little SEO knowledge goes a long way in helping to structure content in a way that is search engine friendly. Search engines are a separate audience which brings more traffic and is worth pleasing in the long run.
.-= Walter´s last blog ..Wing Yu, Geotechnical Engineer =-.
The way I look at it, SEO has dictated a sort of “web writing style”.
I learned in high school how to write the “5 paragraph essay”, learned a bunch more in college about structuring a paper with a thesis and supporting information, and now I am learnign about how to write for the web.
Just a different format for a different purpose.
.-= Sean´s last blog ..Web Art: Some Examples =-.
@Barbara – So many people don’t manage to figure out even that much!
@ Walter – In the long run, about half anyone needs to know about WordPress-specific SEO can be learned in a short afternoon. 90% in a long day… leave the remaining 10% for the spammers, scammers and black hats!
@Sean – Yep, the Web doesn’t replace anything, it’s supplants, extends, enriches everything! I have newly defined types of “todo” blog posts coming up shortly on There Is Box Box. You’ve seen them before, but this new way of seeing them totally rocks.
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..Join A Mastermind Group For Personal And Professional Success =-.
It’s nice to see it put out there in very basic terms that a normal human can understand, I have always said that just sticking to writing about things you enjoy and writing the way you want to will captivate a larger audience. Search engine or human.
.-= Extreme John´s last blog ..Community Coffee Carnivale Cake Review =-.
@Extreme – Thanks! I’ve enjoyed reading your blog all of one day… you are capturing some of what the Wild Wild Web used to be like, back in Olden Days.
.-= Dr WordPress!´s last blog ..Join A Mastermind Group For Personal And Professional Success =-.