Forget about Search Engines When Creating Content

"Content is King" – you probably heard this saying with regards to search engine optimization. There is a common sense really. Your website content is a representation of your business and your personality. Your content determines whether you'll get more traffic and links and, what is most important, whether your visitors will become your customers. Why do you write new content?

Firstly, because you want to attract more readers to your site or blog, and secondly, because you want to get a few more links to your website.

Many webmasters consider new content primarily as a website ranking leverage and focus on creating content only to get potential links. Their websites often have a cheap, freelance content overfilled with keywords and optimized for search engines only because they are interested in adding content only to influence search engines.

Creating new content simply to obtain links cuts both ways. This tactic can work sometimes; sometimes it can totally fail. Some will appreciate your content, few people will link. Content created for search engine optimization purposes only can often seem artificial and may not bring you a link you were looking for. Yes, it can help the website ranking for a while but it won't be a long lasting success.

Adding new content just because you have to and not because you feel inspired and want to tell something valuable to your readers simply leads to a huge amount of mass junk pages that turn the readers off. And what is more interesting, many webmasters know that web pages with bad content are doomed from the start but they continue and continue churning out those pages hunting after more and more links like a drowning man will catch at a straw.

Well, I personally incline to a different approach to content creation. If you get down to creating new content with no SEO element in your mind and write just because you have something to tell to your readers, your content will gradually and naturally generate links. Why? Because it's good. A good content will favor the search engine rankings while bad content will hurt it.

The big secret (in fact, it's not a secret at all, it's just a common sense) is to write to attract more readers and not links. More readers, more chances to get links. Write quality content for your visitors and you'll be rewarded. Many will return and link.

Here is the proof. Look at the screenshot from Google Webmaster Tools. There is the statistics on the number of inbound links my articles generated. I didn't ask anyone to link to these pages. All of the links were obtained naturally and I think it's quite fair (or maybe I'm flattering myself?).  

Click on the image to enlarge

What I want to suggest is that you forget about search engines and SEO purposes when creating content. Focus on your readers interests. Spend more time to create a unique quality content and the results will not take long to appear. Be honest with yourself, take time and think – would you look after that cherished link if search engines don't exist at all?

You know I don't want to blame anyone. We're all in the Internet marketing and just like in any other business we want to be the number one in our niche. I just want to find a core of sense and pick out SEO tactics that really work among the tactics that only seem to be working.