Recently someone asked me to write for “SEO Purposes”.

Now what does that mean? Perhaps it means using a certain keyword density, or at least somehow dwelling on certain keyphrases to attract organic traffic. Well I’ve read content like that, and most of the time it is a complete waste of time  - “vacuous waffle” as one gent put it. The very idea of foregoing the subtlety and persuasiveness of human language just so that we can pander to some supposed algorithmic predilection for saying the same keyphrases over and over again ~ really is a bit silly, isn’t it?

The same goes for LSI - “Latent Semantic Indexing”. I really haven’t got a clue how this affects search engine rankings at all, and as such I see little point in speculating on it which is what most of the talk on LSI seems to be nothing more than. I do know roughly however what Google’s overall aim is - to deliver results algorithmically that match as closely as possible the intentions and needs of a human being. That’s a tall order, and however they try surely the blunt tool of indexing however many billions of pages and ranking them on a scale of 1-whatever is, again, going to pale into insignificance compared to the miracle of human decision making.

As an SEO, it simply isn’t necessary and even counter-productive to write for Google. Because Google, at the very same, is straining every fiber to identify content that is written for people. So if you write “for SEO Purposes” as opposed to writing for actual people, you are actually doing the exact opposite of what Google wants.

Want to write for SEO Purposes, or want to do LSI, or just want to write at all?

Then write. Write good content, worth reading, helpful, informed, honest, selfless. When it comes to writing content for any medium, surely that’s the only thing that matters at all.

N.B. This article has been written without givin’ a dime about keyword density, SEO purposes, or LSI. Yippy-skippy!!

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