Writing Copy for Humans and Robots

Our great website company will make a great website for your company and ensure that you have a great website to meet your needs.

Uh, what?

I can already picture the blank stare and furrowed brow I’d give someone that said something like that to me.  And yet we come across content like this all the time online.  Well, maybe not quite this bad.  But close.

I’m not discounting the importance of search engine optimization (SEO).  Good SEO can be incredibly helpful in driving the right people to your website.  And of course you should follow SEO best practices like:

• Creating keyword-rich content
• Writing sufficient content on each page
• Putting keywords in headings
• Doing all the behind-the-scenes work like creating meta tags and submitting a sitemap to search engines

While there are many more best practices, giving SEO tips isn’t the point of this post.

The takeaway message is this:

There’s no point in driving traffic with SEO if your content doesn’t make any sense.

True, quality SEO can get more hits on your website.  But if you want your website to actually do whatever it is you’d like it to do, you need to write your content for humans as well as robots.  While robots can help get eyes on your page, it’s ultimately up to real people to give you a call, insightfully comment on your blog or donate to your cause.