Should you write for a search engine or for your audience?

Most bloggers think the most fundamentally challenging question is, 'What to write?' but the true question happens to be 'Who to write for?'. Shrinag H answers whether a blogger should prioritize Search Engines for discoverability, or his audience to maintain quality with his informed take on the subject.

What is blogging or what is this content writing is all about? A wordplay or a constructive way of story telling? Or, is it just an art of converting the facts and data to a readable information? I’ll come to the art of writing in the coming paragraphs but at this point, the one question that every blogger or a digital content writer faces, ‘Should I write for Search engines or to my target audience?’

In my 3 years of copywriting and blogging experience, I have found that writing is an art that elevates your inner sense to explore something you do not know. Through writing, you educate yourself and then you put your experiences and learnings on a blank paper in the form of an article. So, if you are a writer it is needless for me to explain the beauty of it but the hen question here is, ‘For Whom Should I write?’

The Concept of Target Audience

Before seeking an answer to this question, it becomes important to understand the concept of Target Audience and to draw a line in between the needs and wants of your customers. To keep it simple, the target audience is the ones who has an interest towards your blog article. For an instance, you have written an article on food points then your first target audience is foodies. Right? So, if you wish to drive more traffic to your site then write for the right audience and promote in the place where your audiences are there.

So, you have identified your audience and you have also drafted your first post keeping your audience in mind. Now, what if there is no enough Google search for the topic you have chosen to write? Should you still go for it?

Search Engine Vs Audience

Here comes the dilemma of search engine vs audience. If you are confident that the topic you have chosen will fetch you more traffic then why not? Let me share my experience of writing for the audience ignoring the fact that my topic had lesser google search.

In India and in the Arab countries, the followers of Islam religion celebrates a festival called Ramadan or Ramazan. It was a season of Ramadan and I knew that people would be interested to read and know the fascinating things about it. So, I wrote an article called ‘The Best Ramadan Food points in Bangalore.’ Though my topic failed the Google keyword search, I went on to publish and promote it. Interestingly, the article went viral on social media and drew me the maximum traffic in 3 days.

Don’t I recommend the keyword search? No, I have never said that. Few topics and few stories are beyond the search engine. Always have a quality content, relevant content and the interesting content. That’s it. Do your keyword search but let that not stop you from telling an interesting story.

5 Things you should keep in mind while drafting your blog post

#1 Create compelling content

Writing viral content is not there in the writer’s circumference. A writer can sense the viral attribute and put his best in creating compelling content but he does not have complete control over it. It is the readers who make things go viral. Be consistent, identify your audience and write for them.

#2 Get your On page SEO right

This is important if you want to rank your Article on Google.

Few things:

Do your keyword search,

Identify the focus keyword,

Put relevant tags, and

Write an SEO-friendly meta description.

Do this for the every article you publish without fail. Install Yoast SEO plugin to your WordPress and follow the guidelines accordingly.

#3 Have descriptive and readable content

Always write more and keep things simple. Do not use Jargons or Buzz words. Write as if you are talking to your readers.

Ideal word count is : 800

#4 Write the best Headline of your life

Your article’s Headline is the first thing that your reader notices. If you have spent an hour to draft your article then spend at least half an hour to write that best headline of your life.

#5 Write as a Reader

Always think from Reader’s perspective and write as a Reader. Always ask these questions. Am I writing something that my reader can relate to? Am I writing something that drives my reader’s emotions? Am I writing something that is shareable? Before you become a writer, become a voracious reader.

So in the nutshell, write something that is useful and relatable. As I said earlier, do your keyword search but let that not stop you from telling an interesting story. Always remember that you are a writer first and a blogger second.