The right balance when writing for search engines and visitors

With a website, you always need text. It's tempting to focus exclusively on search engines and fill the text with relevant keywords in an artificial attempt to climb higher in the search results. Since the latest Google updates, however, this has become practically impossible. Instead, the focus should be on the visitor and, secondarily, an eye should be kept on the search engines. In this blog post, we look at which factors are important and how you can tackle them.

Understand your target audience

Before you start writing, it's important to understand your target audience. Identify the needs, questions and interests of your potential visitors. This will allow you to create content that meets their expectations. This will depend heavily on what industry your website is in. For example, if you are active in the technical world with a software solution, you can often write texts related to this solution.

For example, discuss a common problem that people often search for and discuss your software solution alongside other solutions, which naturally turns out to be the best solution. In this way, more general topics can be linked to your software, this approach can be applied to many different industries or niches. And you can fill your website hosting with interactive and interesting to read content. This allows you to rise naturally in the search results.

Keyword research

Conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant search terms. Use these keywords naturally in your text, but avoid overusing them. The key is to find a good balance, keep the text flowing and incorporate the keywords strategically. Thorough keyword research can give you an edge over your competitors by writing only or essentially only about what people are actually searching for.

You can also write about topics with low search volume, for which there is often less competition. The only question that then arises is whether it is worth it for the 10 visitors a month who land on it. Try to think about this carefully, but don't be afraid to experiment with it. Any content on a website, whether in the form of a landing page, blog post or text, can bring you opportunities and potential customers. can bring you opportunities and potential customers.

Keep the quality of content high

Focus on creating high-quality content that is informative, engaging and relevant to your target audience. Not only will this help with search engine optimization, but it will also ensure that your visitors stay on your website longer and engage more. An article, landing page or text that is interesting and meets the visitor's needs will be presented much better than content that is rushed and doesn't really help anyone, apart from the amount of content that can be found on a website.

User friendliness

Make your texts easy to read and understand. Use short paragraphs, subheadings and bullet points to keep the text clear. Also break up your texts, e.g. with images and other media, to better hold the reader's attention. A good user experience contributes to better search engine rankings.

Internal and external links

Include relevant internal and external links to clarify the context of your content. This helps search engines understand the relevance of your pages and provides additional value to your readers. For example, link to a previous article on the same topic or link to your main page to make a purchase right away.

Meta descriptions and titles

Write attractive meta descriptions and titles that contain keywords and pique the curiosity of potential visitors. This can help you stand out in search results and can also be supplemented with functionality. This is often already done automatically by Google, but can also be specifically controlled. For example, include a table of contents in your text that allows visitors to quickly jump to specific content. The featured image (cover image) is also important here and can ensure that your image is also displayed directly next to the search result of your website.

Within WordPress, it is often advisable to install an SEO plugin for this reason alone in order to have more control within your meta tags and titles. We have had good experiences with The SEO Framework plugin, which is free to use and does not add any unnecessary functions. Like many others do.

Mobile friendliness

You'll be knocking down the doors of many website operators, but optimize your website and your texts for mobile devices. Use responsive design and make sure that your texts are easy to read on different screen sizes. Test this yourself on several mobile devices and regularly check whether this is still the case.

Monitoring and customization

Use analytics tools such as Google Analytics to monitor the performance of your content. Adjust your strategy as necessary based on the insights gained. This is an ongoing process that is best viewed over a slightly longer period of time; one day's data is not enough to make content decisions in most cases.

By combining these approaches, you can create web copy that both meets the requirements of the search engines and is attractive to your audience. A balanced approach ensures sustainable growth and a positive user experience.