Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO Content: Users First, Bots Second

Posted in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) by Dan Taylor on 10th of September, 2008

Search engines rely on a number of sophisticated algorithms and indexing factors to help judge how well a particular page should appear in their indexes. The aim of all of them is to provide their users with web pages that are relevant to their search and contain high quality, natural web content. As such, while on page optimisation is an integral step in SEO, it is better to concentrate your efforts on providing good quality for users first and bots second.

SEO will direct targeted traffic to a website but if the content is poorly written or appears to be written solely for the purpose of search engines then it is unlikely to perform and generate decent conversion rates. Including keywords and ensuring that the spiders can properly crawl a site is very important but shouldn't be done at the expense of your human visitors.

High quality SEO content is also more likely to generate links from other websites. Some websites and other online publications like to link to pages that benefit their own readers. These portals can be trusted and widely used resources and so the links themselves can drive traffic while also affording you the SEO benefits of high quality links.

Adding fresh and unique content is good for human visitors and, as a happy consequence, it will also provide the search engines with more content to work with. Additional pages can be used to attract more links, target more keywords, and to divert traffic to the most relevant and best performing pages.