Writing Naturally Versus Writing For Search Engines
November 1, 2006 – 11:13 amby Darren
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With this blog, I’ve tried very hard to write very naturally, and to make sure that I don’t place too much emphasis on writing material for the search engines. And I’ve definitely done this. And it shows. In my stats 
When I was totally obsessed with search engine traffic, and wrote all of my material strictly to rank well in the search engines, I got a TON of traffic from search engines. Now that I’m just writing “whatever pops into my head”, I find out I haven’t been able to amass the same kinds of numbers.
Blogging forces you to write clean content
And this is a good thing, because it gets you in the habit of doing what’s important: providing quality content for the reader. But when it gets in the way of what’s really important (getting paid), then we might have a problem on our hands. The fact is: if you don’t have search engine traffic, then you have to rely on the social traffic you can acquire from commenting and the likes. This traffic will make it so your blog grows, but it might be at a slower than expected rate.
The trick is in finding the balance between the needs of the readers and your needs
You need to get paid, and people who visit your website need to find good information. In order for both parties to get what they want, it’s important for the blogger to do some research, and find out what’s popular. Depending on your niche, this may be really tough to do. At least check out some basic keyword research, or you may be in big trouble.
You can overcome low search engine traffic
If your blog really is “high quality” and the information is unique, you should still be able to carve out a small audience. And this audience might even be profitable. But to hope for any decent earnings, it will require finding a sweet spot that allows for fresh visitors to arrive every day via the search engines.
Do you write for the search engines or for the readers?
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5 Responses to “Writing Naturally Versus Writing For Search Engines”
1. Writing for search is great if you are trying to optimize certain pages on you website.
2. Writing naturally is great if you want to attract visitors to you site.
The thing is to combine those techniques, unless you don’t have any visitors you won’t be able to sell your services, or what ever you are trying to sell. But if you are only focusing on search engines I doubt that your visitors will return back to your site again.
By Anghus on Nov 2, 2006
Thanks for the nice post! For myself I tend to balance my articles a little. What I normally do is to first let it all flow out from my head, unconcerned about search keywords.
Then, as I do my re-reading of the post before I click publish, I go back and edit some words so that at least the search engines can find me.
By Kian Ann on Nov 2, 2006
Darren,
This is one of your best posts I have read recently. I think it is so as you followed your head and not keywords for the search engines. Of course, if one can do a little bit of editing to be drawn by search engines, then it should be a good cocktail.
By Satish on Nov 2, 2006
Thanks for the kind words everyone.
I think blogging is less reliant on search engine traffic than a static website, but it can’t hurt to get some.
By Darren on Nov 2, 2006
I would have to agree that finding a middle ground is best. When forced to choose though, I would have to vote for writing for the reader. It just seems to me that if your content is not readable, as in it is just keywords with a few verbs plopped in every once in awhile, what good is all the traffic in the world going to do? I suppose it depends on exactly your objectives, but for me I’ll always aim for reader friendly!
By Dana Wallert on Nov 4, 2006