Quality Writing vs SEO

Does the process of optimising for search engines lead to poor quality writing? If you believe this article, then yes, it does. However, I think the writer is kind of missing the point, or at least assuming that it is inevitable. Personally, I don’t think so. Of course there are commercial sites which adopt the practice described in this article, but they aren’t the norm. And, what is more, they will find that offering poor quality content will actually be to their detriment. Very few people buy anything on their first visit to a website, in fact it can take up to seven visits before a visitor becomes a customer. The sites that get the return visits are the ones with good quality content, not the dull, overtly commercial ones.

I can understand why site owners feel they need to place search engine optimisation above readability and interest. This is a rule that is drummed into them by the professional SEO companies. ‘Get those keywords and terms in place, make sure you use just enough to achieve a high ranking with the search engines, but not so many that you are labelled a spammer.’ This rule is fine if the only visitors you want are search engine bots, but for real people, you need real content. The good news is, most websites do provide this, for every overly zealous SEO-er, there are a dozen other site owners, who know little to nothing about SEO, yet whose sites perform well, receive many regular visitors and even make money. So, the moral of this post is, use the title and description tags in your page headers, use the alt tag with images, but don’t get your knickers in knot about SEO, your vistors will thank you. Oh, and not all SEO companies are the same, for really good advice go to Highrankings.com, their free newsletter is full of great info.

Well, the snow has finally arrived here, TFIF and I don’t need to go anywhere.

Listening to: Around the World – Red Hot Chili Peppers