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If You're Clumsy with Keywords Customers Click Away

SEO and PR

If You're Clumsy with Keywords Customers Click Away

Written by Jay Shapiro for Gaebler Ventures

Here we look at some of the more canny devices that SEO content providers use in order to keep a natural flow to their work and maintain their readers' interest.

It's easy to write clumsy SEO copy, and most of us have read awkward content online at one point or another.

More often than not, when we come across written work that is awkward to read we click the back button on our browsers and go elsewhere. But why does some SEO copy read in so ungainly a way?

Well, when those obligatory keywords are misplaced they are the written equivalent of speed humps in the road; they slow progress and make us curse. But it is not to toward the keyword that we should point our fingers, it is to the writer who put the keyword in the wrong place that we need to turn our attention. After all, it is the writer's job, as a provider of SEO content, to think primarily of his or her reader.

With the best will in the world, no discerning reader will stay with the task if the content he or she is reading seems it be littered with keywords that appear to have been randomly thrown at the page in a mud-at-the-wall fashion. Okay, it has to be acknowledged that it's often a tricky task to incorporate certain types of keywords, especially keyword strings, into the body of a text and do so in an unobtrusive manner. But, learning to keep a natural momentum within a written piece, and include the important keywords without them 'screaming' off the page at the reader is a skill that every SEO writer should learn.

Remember that internet users are often a little on the impatient side (and we're all guilty of that, aren't we?) If it's hard work, we don't do it, we click away. That applies if a site won't load and it also applies if reading online copy is like deciphering hieroglyphs. SEO content is best kept simple and keywords, if they are overly dense in the piece, lose their impact, so striking a balance is the key here. Underuse will result in the message being lost, and overuse will slaughter it altogether. Aim for the middle ground with SEO writing.

Writing good and natural-reading SEO content is not, perhaps, as easy as it sounds, but it's important to do so if you want to avoid having your website penalised. In addition you want to please your visitors by offering them content that reads well and is informative. The danger with SEO content, if it is not put together well, is that the keywords dominate and stick out like a sore thumb, thus detracting from the value of the piece and driving away custom.

One very clear piece of advice is to write first and foremost for a human reader – the search engine robots must be the second consideration. Just because the internet works on a largely automated basis that doesn't mean you can get away with clumsy use of keywords. Your prospective clients are human beings, after all.

Jay Shapiro is a freelance writer based in the UK. Jay has a particular interest in the emotive aspects of the entrepreneur's character. "Alongside the nuts and bolts of business, the character of the person is often the ingredient responsible for success."