Stop worrying about SEO and focus on your reader

Like most things in life, popularity is more complicated than it may seem at first.

Mitch Pristein, professor and director of clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina and researcher on what is the popularity and the effects it has, distinguishes that there are two types of popularity: that which some people get because they are nice and their colleagues trust in them and they want to be with them, and that popularity that pursues in some way to gain a certain status and use that power to influence others.

The results of the studies of Pristein, which I comment a little later, we can apply perfectly to our blog. But first, let me ask you what is the purpose of your blog. To achieve a better positioning in search engines or to please your reader? And before answering, keep reading to understand what I mean with each of the two options.

Objective: improve SEO

If your goal is to improve SEO, the process to follow when writing an entry to your blog should include the following steps:

# 1 Specify keywords

If you want search engines to place your entries among the top positions, you must be clear about what keywords or keywords related to your blog or business you want to be well positioned. The keywords are those that should better define the content of your website and that best respond to user searches.

If you still do not know how to search for keywords for your blog, I recommend this article by David on the subject.

# 2 Optimize the design

The design of your website has to be optimized for SEO. Above all do not forget to have a web design optimized for mobile. Make sure your website is fully responsive, that the loading speed is optimal and that it can be displayed perfectly on any type of small device. Nowadays, all users use smartphones and also use them to access the internet. If your website is not adapted to navigate through your mobile, you will lose a large number of visits.

# 3 Optimize content

Once the keywords are defined and with a fantastic design, you have to determine the categories of your blog and the labels that you will use in your posts, which, of course, should coincide to a large extent with the keywords identified. If not, you start having a coherence problem.

But not only that, the titles of pages and entries should also include some of your keywords. And of course, the URLs of all your entries should include some keywords that you have defined.

When you enter the entry, if the title already includes keywords, surely keywords will also appear naturally in the body of the entry. But you always have tools like Yoast SEO that can help you make sure the text contains words that improve SEO.

And neither should you forget to put keywords to all the attributes of any image. However, it is clear that there are images that do not have to be directly related to the entry. Therefore, here the important thing is, first, make sure you optimize your images for SEO, and second, try to find images that are related to your keywords.

As regards internal links, it is assumed that all web pages should be accessible from any other page in a maximum of 4 clicks. And if we talk about external links, some companies have found that linking to external pages that also use our keywords (although they may be from the competition), has benefited them in the face of SEO.

Ready! You already have your content optimized for SEO.

# 4 Promote your content

Finally, you have to make sure that all the content you create on your website is promoted on social networks to the maximum and that you have created a Newsletter in which many followers have signed up. This way you make sure that your content reaches a large audience and you will be happy to read it.

Let’s now see what we are talking about when we refer to the reader’s focus.

Objective: focus on the reader?

What happens if your goal is to focus on the reader instead of SEO?

Starting point: as for tastes the colors, assumes from the beginning that your entries are not going to like everyone.

The sooner you assume it, the sooner you will feel the freedom to be yourself and decide what kind of relationship you would like to have with your readers. A blog, unlike other media, allows you to decide who you want to tell us and how you want to tell it. You can decide to be yourself or reinvent yourself and become that character you always dreamed of being. You can talk about your hobbies or your experiences. Share your unique knowledge and help others solve problems … The list is endless.

But to what we were going, what does it mean to focus on the reader? In this case the process happens yes or yes by:

# 1 Define who your reader is

For example: you are one of the finalists in the world championship of sliding stones on water that takes place every year on the Scottish island of Easdale (The World Stone Skimming Championship).

And as it is your passion, you want to create a blog to explain your tricks and experiences to improve the technique and the art of throwing and sliding the stone over the water. In this case, from the beginning, it will be very easy for you to define your reader; You already know all of the championships you’ve attended. You know the hobbies that you have, what you do in your free time, and surely you have many things in common with you.

But sometimes it can be a little more complicated. And in case you do not know where to start or need a little help, I recommend that you read the article in which we explain how to define your Buyer Person.

Defining your reader allows you to write in a much more personalized way. You already know who you’re talking to. And this allows you to add a certain affection and sense of humor to all your writings.

# 2 What message do you want to convey

This is the most important point of any entry in your blog. If you write an entry in your blog it is because you want to transmit some type of message. Therefore, throughout your editorial process, the next point would be to think about those titles you want to write about (in fact, the title of your entry should already serve as a summary of the message you want to convey, do not you think?).

If you want to focus on your reader, think about their life, their problems and difficulties and concerns, in what doubts may arise to end up going to read one of your articles. In the context of inbound marketing they will tell you to focus on the entire sales funnel through which your potential buyer passes. Anyway, what question in a search engine would make the answer precisely in your article?

And if you do not know what messages you want to transmit with your tickets, here we explain some techniques that can help you and the tool that will make everything much easier for you.

# 3 Write with passion

When you write your entry, do it with passion. You have your style and we want to hear your voice, not your neighbor’s, or your mother-in-law’s or a seller’s. Precisely what makes a single entry is that it is explained by someone from his point of view, which is always unique. Make sure you include those images or gifs that you think will bring some value or sense of humor to your tickets and make your tickets much more enjoyable to read.

Even if someone does not like the way you write, do not change your style if it’s the one you’re comfortable with (let’s see, it’s always positive to be open to constructive criticism). But, is not it a while ago that you had assumed that you can not like everyone?

Think of all those bloggers who read assiduously. Surely you keep reading them because you still like not only the content that you learn but also how they tell it and their personal touch. And if in a blog you suddenly perceive a change of style to more commercial roll, surely you will stop following it because it will have become more of the same.

# 4 Promote your content

This point is exactly the same as point 4 above. Remember that your quality content is useless if you do not promote it.

# 5 Listen to your audience

A blog does not consist of you posting a stream of tickets and that’s it. One of the charms of a blog, unlike a book, for example, is that it is a writing that allows you to have a certain level of interaction with your reader. If you encourage your readers to write comments and you answer them helping them in what you can or simply thanking them for their contribution, you will be able to create a group of friends who will be continuously waiting for your next entry.

Why is it better to focus on the reader?

And now is when the question comes: if we are all aware that if we do not get positioned on the first page of Google, it is as if we were invisible, why am I insisting that you should focus on the reader instead of SEO?

Here, allow me to correct myself: indeed, you are right, you should not forget SEO. But my recommendation is that you simplify and automate any of the tasks related to SEO and that your effort and work is focused on providing value to your readers.

How? In this blog we do not stop explaining tricks and strategies to simplify and be more efficient throughout the editorial process. You can also control the quality of each entry and make sure it does not lack the category, tags, images, links etc. And of course, the whole promotion can be automated. Another example: David recently told you how you can improve SEO thanks to artificial intelligence.

Basically, what I want to say is that SEO is important but making sure that you comply with it should be incorporated in a semi-automated way throughout your editorial process, period. It should not take up many more neurons.

Your coconut should only focus on transmitting a message to your readers, whichever you want, and how you want. But above all (and never forget this) it is important that you have a good time while preparing that wonderful content. This ends up being the key to the success of any blog.

And there is another reason. And it is here when I return to what I said at the beginning about the study carried out by Michael Pristein on the two types of popularity, which is achieved by being nice and empathetic and seeking a status to be able to influence others.

The results of Pristein show that people who seek to be nice tend to end up healthier, in better relationships, with a more satisfying job, and even live longer. And on the contrary, the seekers of status, often end up anxious, depressed and with problems of addiction. Therefore, according to these studies, you should not be surprised when you read some news from a YouTuber, influencer or celebrity who closes your account or website because it no longer supports the pressure that was supposed to generate content in it. How sad, do not you think?

With your blog, something similar happens, if you do not obsess about the metrics of vanity, you can continue to enjoy every time you write an entry in your blog. What would you like to grow faster? Yes, quiet, we all pass. But a blog can have a very long life and I assure you that in Elitech Systems team, if our obsession was exclusively to increase the number of visits, I think we would have ended up burned and plated the bar.

And, do you know the best of everything? Being ourselves as we are (ok, I accept that a little weird) and writing about what we believe will bring value to our reader and explaining it with the style that we like, visits to our website continue to rise.

So you know, focus on your reader who will appreciate what you value!