Google handles more than 8.5 billion searches everyday. That’s more than 100,000 searches per second, of which thousands could lead a user to a purchase.

It is therefore not surprising that 60% of marketers cite a list SEO as their number one inbound marketing priority.

But creating organic traffic brings challenges. Google has hundreds of billions of websites index, competing for the top spots on search results pages. Not to mention when you write for search engines, you have technically two target groups: bots and humans.

Let’s take a look at how this audience compares, and figure out who we should be writing for.

Writing Content for SEO: Who to Write for

Bots and people are the hen and egg of search engine optimization. You need people to sell, but you can’t get them without the help of bots.

The question is, which is first on your list of priorities? To answer this, we define each of these target groups.

Writing for people

Human readers are the ones who can eventually make a purchase and become a customer. When deciding to buy, people need product details and prices, but this type of information is usually not enough.

To create content that resonates with a human audience, your content needs empathy, storytellingand emotional reasoning. Studies show this in particular, storytelling releases oxytocin in the brain, a hormone associated with positive feelings such as happiness and trust.

Narration also helps you structure your writing in a way that readers can easily follow and understand. After all, when you write for people, you want to have a clear message that connects with people.

Writing for robots

In this case, the robots we mention are search engine spiders or spiders. Unlike humans, web spiders cannot buy a product from you, no matter how good your marketing is.

But bots affect your position on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs), which affect whether readers will see your content or not.

Search engine spiders respond to indexing optimizations technical SEO. In other words, you want to use your keywords and title structure to make it easier for bots to determine the context of your content.

How to choose your audience

The analysis he performed FirstPageSage found that the top-ranked article on Google SERPs receives an average CTR of 39.6%. And when you get to 5th place, the average CTR drops to 5.1%.

If your goal is organic traffic, you need the help of search bots to get more human eyes on your content. But you never want to sacrifice your human audience. After all, they are the only ones who can become your customers.

So, the answer to our question of which audience to choose is: Both.

This sounds like a bit of a scam, but the good news is that they are not mutually exclusive.

Google kept updating its search algorithm better process natural language and measure performance measurements affecting the user experience. These updates have made it easier to create an SEO content marketing strategy that works for both target groups.

How to write SEO content for humans and robots

When writing content optimized for SEO that works for spiders and humans, it’s about balance. You need to understand which elements have the most impact on each target audience and include them without spoiling the experience for the other group.

Here are some steps to improve your SEO content strategy and promote more organic traffic.

Choice of words

The choice of words is most important to your human readers, but there are some aspects that apply to search engine bots.

For bots, you want to stay concise and make it easier for Google to read your content and create context. To do this, remove silly expressions, choose strong words instead of adjectives, and avoid long, multi-syllable words.

Here are some examples of how you can customize your word choices for Google bots.

• “Open application” instead of “simply open application”

• “We’re excited” instead of “we’re very excited”

• “Mandatory” instead of “mandatory”

Choosing words for people requires a little more nuance. First, avoid language that offends the reader’s intelligence, such as the word “clear”.

Second, opt for specific terms instead of general ones. For example, “50% of respondents” is clearer than “many respondents”.

Finally, use an inclusive language. Words like “humanity” and “they” encompass more people than “humanity” and “she”.

Reading rate

People search Google to find answers without reading college-level explanations. Lowering the reading rate of your content gives people a more enjoyable user experience.

The level of reading does not directly affect SEO ranking. However, it can affect site experience measurements such as downtime and one-page visit rate, which affects SEO.

Flesch Reading Ease is a tool to analyze the readability of your text. For example, you can take advantage of online tools such as Hemingway’s editor using Flesch’s assessment to test your writing.

The Flesch result uses average sentence length (ASL) and average number of syllables per word (ASW) to get your score ranging from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand your content. Your score can also be linked to your Flesch-Kincaid reading rate, which compares your writing difficulty to your school grade.

The grades are divided by grade:

• Any grade above 70 is easy to understand for 7th grade or lower

• Grades between 60 and 70 are reading grades from 8th to 9th grade

• Grades between 50 and 60 are reading grades from 10th to 12th grade

• Grades below 50 are at the level of faculty and professional reading

The Flesch-Kincaid reading level means that someone at this reading level could easily understand your content. Try to score 60 or more, even if you’re writing for a faculty-level audience. Remember, your reader came to Google to find a clear answer, not read a dissertation.

Best practices for improving readability include adding transitions, writing shorter sentences, and using active verbs.

Content structure

The structure of your content affects people and bots. Titles and subtitles should make your post easier to read. If you include a table of contents at the top, the reader should understand what your post is about and find the information they need.

In addition, the headlines of your columns are opportunities to grab your reader’s attention. Descriptiveness is therefore not enough; you have to have a hook. For example, “10 Ways to Improve Time Management” is friendlier and more specific than “Time Management Tips”.

As for the search bot, the structure helps it determine the context of your article. To optimize for bots, include primary and support keywords in your addresses. You can even use it GPT-3 AI Tools to help create contours when you do keyword research.

Remember that artificial intelligence tools are great for pointing in the right direction when it comes to ideas, but you need to make sure your finished text still makes sense to the human reader.

Visualities

Using images and other media to break up large chunks of text helps improve the user experience. Like structure, visual elements are important to both of your target audiences.

When it comes to your human audience, you want to choose visual elements to help readers understand the text they complement. So make sure you include images close to the appropriate text and avoid general photos.

Instead, try:

• GIF

• Embedded videos

• Infographics, statistics and graphs

• Screenshots with notes

• Professional pictures of quotes

To optimize images for search bots, Google recommends using high quality images and compressing files so as not to reduce your page speed. In addition, you should add descriptive metadata (such as title, caption, and file name) that includes keyword phrases where appropriate.

Finally, pay attention to the replacement text (or replacement text). Alternate text describes images for search engine bots and screen readers for people who cannot see. Writing descriptive alternative text is an essential part of writing accessible content.

While the robots are scanning this text, you end up wanting to create a description that will help your reader show what’s in the picture. In other words, avoid filling with keywords and opt for a description of what is happening in the image.

For example:

• Alternate text filled with the keywords: “shoes sneakers sneakers fashion shoes footwear women’s shoes accessories sports shoes”

• Descriptive alternative text: “pair of women’s sneakers in white”

Grammar, spelling and capitalization

Proper grammar and spelling help you build trust among readers.

According to the allegations Google Search Central, grammar is not a direct factor in search engine rankings. However, if the search bot is unable to crawl your site due to errors, this will be detrimental to your search performance. On the other hand, correct spelling can improve your site’s authority rating.

Spelling is especially important when it comes to brand names. As the author of Dale Carnegie How to make friends and influence peoplehe says, “A person’s name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

This may seem like a small factor, but the brands you write about worry if you spell their names correctly (and write with a capital letter).

Here are some brands that people often misspell:

• TalkPress, not Wordpress

• nodeSpot, not Hubspot

• mailchemp, not MailChemp

Some word processors may not have the brand names included in the spell checker, but you can use them. Grammarly style guide feature for auto-correction for trademarks that you often write about in a group of writers and editors.

Length of content

Although Google has confirmed this Word count is not a factor in SEO rankingthat doesn’t mean you have to ignore it.

Google prefers comprehensive responses to search terms, so long-form content can be more effective. In other words, the length of the content can show how well your writing fits the purpose of the user search compared to the competition.

SEO optimization tools such as Clearscope offer suggestions for the number of words according to the length of the highest ranked pages. However, don’t sacrifice quality content to create longer articles. Adding nonsensical content to achieve the goal of word count can be detrimental to the reader experience.

Page titles

Page titles should be written for bots and people. Writing for bots means including the target keyword in your SEO title tag and meta description. This gives search engines more context and improves your chances of ranking on the right keywords.

Page titles for people should contain keywords, but they should also arouse the reader’s interest so that you can increase clickthrough rate. You can make your titles clickable emotional wordsthey add urgency and make them personal.

Here are some examples.

• Emotionally: “5 Proven Ways to sleep Easily”

• Urgent: “How to stop procrastinating Right now”

• Personally: “The role of a resume for land Yours Dream Service “

Addresses are one of the main factors influencing the amount of traffic your site receives, so they are a great place for A / B testing.

Search Engine Writing: Optimize for Robots or Humans?

When it comes to writing SEO friendly content, it’s not about people versus robots, but how to optimize for both. The actual steps in this article are a great place to start if you want to create content that ranks SERP and resonates with potential customers.

To read more about creating consistent brand style guidelines and writing texts for an online audience, check out my book Writing for humans and robots: new rules of content styleavailable in print and Kindle on July 18, 2022.