Are You Writing For Your Readers Or Google?

by Scott Bishop on February 22, 2010

Are You Only Writing For The Search Engines?

Read anything about blogging advice and SEO is bound to enter an early chapter.  I say throw out any thoughts of writing for SEO traffic.  Your readers are your top priorities, not Google.

Drop the SEO mindset…at least at first.


Yes, organic traffic is great.  I track mine on a daily basis about what is drawing in new readers and what’s not.  But I DO NOT let SEO control my posts.  I admit, my traffic from search engines is small, very small.  Right now I only have about 8% of this blog’s traffic coming from Google and other search engines.  Any blogging expert evaluating that stat would say that this blog is a miserable failure.  But it’s obviously not or you wouldn’t be reading this right now.

You most likely came across this post because you are one of the 761 readers who subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter, or saw someone who did that passed it to their networks.

I write for my readers…not Google

Yes, I have no doubt my traffic could be higher if I wrote topics for SEO.  But I’d rather have an engaged community of readers that are loyal, active, and interested in my content post after post.

When you’re thinking about a post only in terms of SEO, you’re putting content on the back burner.  Don’t.  When you’re starting out your blog you need to be focused on content.  Build up a base of readers by having interesting and engageing topics.

The trouble with the SEO mindset is that the topics you write about aren’t based on your readers interest.  Your posts are based on what you think will get the most traffic from Google.  Your creativity is at the mercy of the search engine.  How boring is that!

I’m not the guy that’s trying to teach you how to make $10 a month from your blog.

I am the guy who will do everything he can to offer suggestions and information to build a brand…a real brand.  Something that conjures up real emotions when your targeted prospects think of it.  If that’s what you want, write content with your readers in mind.

Focus on building a community of readers that will come back to your blog time and time again because you’re a trusted source of information.  You should optimize each post to the best you can, just make sure that this mindset doesn’t invade your creative thinking.  There are still certain techniques you can use or WordPress plugins that optimize your posts that I use.  But I’m not writing post topics because they got 2400 searches each month.

Build your base of loyal traffic first.  Write such fantastic content that your base spreads the word for you to gain even more traffic.

Communities and social media empires are built from loyal relationships…not from search engines.

This is DAY 22 of my “28 Day Blogging Challenge“

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Scott S. Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and a marketing strategist with a specialty in social media.  He is an avid blogger and active across the net.  He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

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Tagged as: Blogging, community, google, Search Engine Optimization, search engines, SEO

Article by Scott Bishop

Scott Bishop is editor for Real Time Marketer and is the Director of Social for an integrated marketing firm. He is an avid blogger and active across the net. He is @thescottbishop on Twitter

Scott has written 125 awesome articles for Us.

  • http://www.opheliaswebb.com Elisa Doucette

    When people write for SEO or sensational traffic it is painfully obvious. Dropping names, topics, current events that are barely relevant to the post…sad you don't have good enough/don't believe enough in your content to let that speak for itself.

  • sbishop

    Yeah, you can always tell when random words are highlighted for no reason and when topics are from left field. I say build the audience from content. You can always insert some SEO posts here and there, but it would be so out of place to write a “What is Twitter” post. Anyone that reads this thing would be like…really dude?

  • http://angelobeltran.com/blog Angelo Beltran

    I think majority of people who write for SEO are the one's implementing ninja tactics to boost their AdSense and AdWords sales.

  • sbishop

    Agreed, but these “ninja” tactics often lead to half-assed content. I try to write my posts in a way that offers solid content, but also shares a bit of my personality and who I am. I feel like if I insert keywords every other word the structure of the post is dictated by SEO and not by my thought process. The sense of personality in each post will be lost.

    I understand the need to SEO, I should prob do a better job of it myself…but I'd rather get a small army of readers thru content.

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