The SEO Paradox

By Jim Cassidy

Clients often ask me to include as many SEO-friendly keywords as possible when I'm writing for a website. And I don't mind doing it – because the primary way to get people to read your work is to get them to navigate to the website, and to do that, you need to appear at or near the top of a page of search results. No SEO keywords and your meticulous wordsmithing may never be found. It's the online equivalent of that tree falling silently in the forest.

But there's a fundamental paradox about SEO writing that's impossible to ignore: SEO writing aids the search, but too often can hinder effective communication when you arrive at your destination. I'm sure we've all had the experience of searching for something and clicking on a promising-looking link, only to wind up on a page that's chock full o' keywords, but virtually devoid of meaningful content. Result? A high Google ranking, but low customer conversion.

The trick is to be judicious about the number of times you repeat keywords on a page – and to ensure that the content surrounding those keywords is rich and informative, rewarding readers for arriving at the website and guiding them along their conversion journey, step by step.

Until search engines become better at understanding context and nuance, the blunt instrument of SEO is here to stay. There's no reason why we can't work those terms into the text artfully – to improve Google rankings – and still make website content worth the search.