There is a commonly held belief that if you are producing content within SEO guidelines that somehow it restricts you in terms of being creative, but the reality could not be more different.
It is true that those guidelines which are in place for high ranking content will provide you with a restriction regarding structure, but those rules can actually be used to boost the level of creativity in the content and can actually be a springboard for creativity. There are many ways in which you can maintain that level of creative spunk whilst still producing content that ranks well when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, and here are some tips on doing just that.
Relevance of Keywords
Very often the idea that SEO kills content is based upon the keywords which must feature in the title, tags and body of the content, keywords which perhaps don’t sound very natural. In reality, however, it is during the keyword research period that this all begins because it is crucial that keywords are not picked simply because they are searched for frequently and have low competition, although that will be a factor. The best practices are to pick keywords which hold relevance and which do sound natural, this way the content isn’t a slave to the keyword.
Mentality
The mentality of many writers when they are producing work for content marketing companies is that they can either be creative or stick to SEO principles, yet the two are not mutually exclusive by any means. In many cases the only shift that needs to happen here is in the mentality of the writer. There is a clear hierarchy of importance here which begins with the audience and making sure that content is right for that particular marketplace, the next is the article’s ability to meet with the ideas around Search Engine Optimization and finally it is that the content has sufficient bounce or joie de vivre as to not appear like a square and mundane piece of content. Understanding this is of great importance when you are looking to produce both high quality and high ranking content.
Set-Up
Something which many forget is that much of what is expected from search engines in order for a piece of organic marketing content to do well is that the content is accurate, of value and engaging for the reader.
There may well be rules around keywords and their placement, but beyond that a great piece of content features quality information, a well-written piece, media and internal links to support the content, now that doesn’t sound like rules which will kill off any creativity.
The idea that SEO stifles creativity is not true and whilst it could be said that a pure SEO piece would never be the most creative ever written, this is not to say that a creative piece will not rank well, that simply isn’t the case. Content producers must trade off the joy which the reader gets from the piece and how well the piece ranks from an SEO standpoint, this is the balance which can and needs to be struck.
