If you ask me SEO content is actually targeted content, and if you are wondering what is targeted content it is content specifically generated for a particular audience using particular keywords (and that’s what makes it SEO content). Purely SEO content doesn’t do you much good because even if it generates lots of traffic it doesn’t generate much business because it doesn’t move your visitors. Targeted content on the other hand not only draws qualified traffic from various search engines it also improves your conversion rate.
A couple of weeks ago I removed a package that I had started offering from my website. I had collaborated with a writer (a content provider, actually, who hires writers to generate bulk content) to provide low-cost, average-quality content that could help clients improve their search engine rankings. I started offering this package because I was getting lots of queries from India and I also got contacted by a few writers who were ready to generate lots of content at very low rates. This worked for a while but then I felt it was counterproductive for my clients and also for my own business.
I am not a very well-known copywriter on the Internet but over the past five years I have managed to eke out a presence through providing quality content persistently. Since there are very few people who understand the difference between cost and value a majority of clients confused that package with the overall content writing services that I provide.
They somehow got themselves into believing that they could pay dirt cheap and still they should be able to use that content as primary business content.
Content purely written for SEO rarely performs well as primary business content and if you want primary business content then you must pay accordingly. Anyway, it is very difficult to explain to clients once they have seen the rates. Instead of wasting my time again and again trying to explain the difference between quality content and low-cost SEO your content I stopped offering that package altogether.
Instead, I insist — even if they have to pay a bit more — that they should aim at producing highly targeted content. They may end up with less content than what they could have gotten by paying a lower rate, performance wise this content is much better.
But how does targeted content improve your search engine rankings?
In order to produce targeted content you need to be clear about two things, in fact three things:
- What exactly you want to convey
- To whom you want to convey
- What words you want to use
Once you have sorted out these questions you are more than halfway through producing high-quality SEO content that can also be used as your primary business content. When you write content keeping your audience in mind you are careful about what you’re writing and how you are writing. When you know what you want to convey you stick to the topic and stay away from ambivalence. The words that you want to use while creating your content are your keywords and the search terms you want to target.
Although you should arrange your content so that it is more convenient for the search engine crawlers to go through it and assess it, your primary focus must always be your visitors, your readers. Search engines are not going to do business with you but people will.