Content Development

I took Content Marketing with Sweet in the fall, and now SEO is helping me to look at content even closer and with a different view. The historical view is that content is king. Old School SEO developed content for digital agents- like Googlebot, Bingbot, and other similar tools. Now, relevance for users trumps it all, meaning that the user is king (not content). This shift helps to change the focus from being on the stuff produced to what the user needs.

Sweet suggests a few tips for being user focused…

• Use keywords that are naturally part of the text. Do not try to hide the words or keyword vomit into the content, but let it be provided within the context as is. This takes the keywords the user are searching and lets them be naturally answered, with their best intention in mind. Don’t be spammy and include jargon.
• Maintain user focus. It is not just focused on how you can benefit, but rather coming alongside and helping the user.
• Don’t write mechanically. Let the content you produce be natural and organic.
• Change from mechanical checkboxes to keywords with semantic relevance for the user. Once again, this helps to be user focused and not on just inserting specific words.

Sweet also discussed in class Black Hat versus White Hat SEO. Black Hat SEO is the use of aggressive SEO strategies, tactics, and techniques which often attempt to deceive both the user and the search engine, and which often fail to abide by the best practice recommendations articulated by the search engine; this sacrifices the needs of the human audience. On the other hand, White Hat SEO is the use of ethical SEO strategies, tactics, and techniques which honor both the user and the search engine, and which attempt to abide by the best practice recommendations articulated by the search engine; this focuses on the user experience.