We idolise SEO rules because it’s easier than thinking about other people.
SEO exists to help people find what they want. But some of us marketers abuse optimisation tricks; we stuff keywords and squeeze SEO into titles in the hope of pushing that blog to the top of search results, Meanwhile, others barely pay attention to SEO and instead focus on delivering what their audience is truly looking for,
Here’s the twist: both approaches can work. Each route can take your content to its audience, though they’re two different paths. One is said to rely on data and search metrics; the other seems to be based on intuition and understanding the needs and wants of real people. This is not the reality, however.
Moreover, while both are valid strategies, can you name any “gurus” or experts who share “ways to think about your audience" every day? They're few and far between, and their voices are drowned out by an even larger crowd of SEO “gurus” pushing the latest SEO hacks, tricks, and supposed shortcuts to drive traffic.
So, what do we actually do with all the optimisation advice? Do we toss it out? Do we double down on creating for search engines? As is always true of marketing, the answer lies somewhere in between.
And let’s be clear–I don’t blame the SEO gurus. Their incessant hack posts are responding to a need (or an obsession) that already exists in the industry. I don’t blame SEO either. SEO is a tool, but it's only useful if it’s used to potentiate real audience understanding.
Here’s who I do blame: the audience of those gurus–us. We seem to find it easier to get wrapped up in tech-y terms like “search intent,” “click-through rate,” and “meta descriptions” than to dig deep into the nuances of actually getting to know our audience. It’s like the old saying about missing the forest for the trees. In our case, we’re often too busy chasing the right keywords to think about who’s doing the searching.
So what if we shifted our focus for a moment? Imagine if we put all our energy into understanding what our audience wants, expects, and actually needs.
We might ask ourselves questions like:
What are the problems our audience is trying to solve?
What keeps them up at night, searching for answers?
What type of information genuinely benefits them, rather than just bumps us up in rankings?
Instead of getting hung up on search volume and keyword density, this shift in focus could lead us to create content that naturally resonates, feels authentic, and meets the real needs of our audience. And the funny thing is, good SEO might just happen, our content would be organically optimised without us even trying.
It sounds radical, but when we truly understand our audience, content tends to perform well. Suddenly, we’re not battling the search algorithm or second-guessing every Google update. Instead, we’re creating something that’s valuable in and of itself. It’s content that serves a purpose, and as a bonus, it might just happen to rank well too.
If we rely solely on SEO tricks to reach people, we may be missing out on the full picture.
Optimising content and understanding our audience aren’t mutually exclusive. They can both create human-centric content, but sometimes, the best SEO is no SEO at all–it’s content that answers the right questions, reaches people at the right moment, and doesn’t need a dozen hacks to get there.
So, what if we focused less on idolising SEO rules and more on humanising our content?
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