Recently someone asked me to write for “SEO Purposes”.
Now what does that mean? Well, for many it means creating content with an emphasis on particular keyphrases in an effort to attract the attention of search engines. What it really implies however is a decision to reverse the criteria of well-written language and place the labored repetion of keyphrases over language that means something worthwhile.
Such content simply is not worth producing. The very idea of foregoing the subtlety and persuasiveness of human language just to pander to a supposed algorithmic predilection for repeating the same keyphrases over and over again is by it’s very nature counter-productive.
The same goes for LSI - “Latent Semantic Indexing”. I simply do not know how this interesting SEO developmnent affects search engine rankings at all, and as such I see little point in speculating on it, which is what almost all talk on LSI is. 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 the blunt tool of indexing however many billions of pages and ranking them on a scale of 1-10 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.
If you really want to write for SEO purposes, and if you want to write content around the principles of LSI, and if you want to write for Google, and if you want to write for people, your strategy is simple.
Write well.
That’s it. Honest, almost childlike, and deception-free. Write good content, worth reading, helpful, informed, informative, honest, and selfless. When it comes to writing content for any medium, surely that’s the only thing that matters at all.
P.S. This post has been written with no consideration whatsoever for keyword density, SEO purposes, or even LSI. Yippy-skippy!!
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