Words vs. Sentences: The Battle of SEO and Content Writing

Ideally, an SEO specialist and a content writer get along just fine. If both sides are fully aligned with each other, tasks get done snap after snap. No muss, no fuss, no drama. If not, however, things can get…a little rough!

“Mi Casa Es Su Casa (In the Context of SEO and Content Writing)”

At first glance, SEO specialists and content writers may appear as people doing completely unrelated things. In reality, there’s always a vis-à-vis approach to their responsibilities. One depends on the other to both start and finish tasks effectively. If the working relationship is not healthy, processes can go off course quickly and situations can turn chaotic, which is definitely not a scenario anyone is looking for.

Why on earth can this happen, you ask? Let’s find out:

For starters, SEO specialists often tend to think in terms of words. Their job is to find the right keywords required to rank a website on search engines. And they abide by a strict criteria when doing this. Search volume, keyword difficulty, trends, competition; these are things SEO specialists look for. Once the keyword research is done and they get their hands on a list of keywords, they hand them over to the content writer(s) for blogs, social media posts, and link-building articles. Doesn’t sound awfully complicated, does it? Well, it’s not. Not counting the arduous task of finding the words and keyword combinations (aka long-tail keywords), that is.

Words Turn Into Sentences

If SEO specialists think words, content writers think sentences. And that’s exactly where problems can occur. An SEO specialist can find the perfect long-tail keyword that works, but the content writer might sometimes struggle to put it in a sentence. Let me paint you a word picture…no pun intended!

I was working with an SEO guy on a project about all things baseball, and one day he handed me this long-tail keyword - with some next-level excitement: “Gameplay great baseball bats.” Now, to him, this probably looked like freshly dug up gold. It had perfect search volume and keyword difficulty. By SEO standards, he hit pay dirt.

Now look at it from a writer’s perspective: it’s just a bunch of words. The syntax is so out of place, it almost feels like a kindergartner wrote it. So, how could I, as a content writer, include it in a semantically correct sentence? Mind you, this was early on in my content writing days, so I was still new to the game. I tried reasoning with the specialist. “Can I use a comma?” “Nope.” “Hmm, can I change the order of the words?” “Nope; they need to be in this exact order, otherwise it won’t work.” It was hopeless! “Do I really, really have to use this?” “Yep, we can rank with this.” Trust me, this is a common scenario which you’ll run into as a content writer if you’re working with an SEO specialist.

So, there I was, stuck with a confusing long-tail keyword which I somehow had to use in my text. The specialist was giving me a ton of attitude, probably because he had spent hours finding it and wouldn’t let it go. If you’ve read this far, stick around. I’m about to shoot some truth bullets your way while exposing how I found my way out of this drama.

Know Your Audience

Let’s face it: when writing SEO texts aimed at boosting rankings, a content writer’s main audience is a search engine like Google. But, that still doesn’t mean you can include nonsensical long-tail keywords in your text. Google’s superpowers allow it to understand both syntax and semantics (cue the music from Terminator), which basically means it can clearly see that you’re beating around the bush with your content.

Fully realizing this, and with the SEO specialist breathing down my neck to use that horrendous long-tail keyword, I decided to do what I tell my students and other writers to do: think outside the box. Now, obviously I couldn’t write something like “Gameplay great baseball bats very best.” I couldn’t add punctuation in between the words or change their order either. But, it suddenly hit me: if this was a keyword that was found during the keyword research process, it was something that came up in Google search results. And…that was the key - pun intended! Here’s the final solution I came up with:

If you’re searching “gameplay great baseball bats” on Google to find the baseball bat of your dreams, search no more!

And there you have it! Simply by adding punctuation before and after the keyword - which I confirmed I could do - I gave the nonsensical keyword the context in which it could be meaningful in. The SEO guy was happy, I was happy, Google was happy. We ended up ranking the website using more similar keywords which I rather cleverly used in texts. Yes, I’m showing off just a little bit. Sue me!

As you can see, outside the box isn’t that scary when it comes to the eternal battle of words and sentences. What matters most is sitting down with your SEO specialist to discuss what can be done with the keywords received. Sometimes, they’ll throw keywords your way that have nothing to do with the industry you’re in. Why do they do that? Because they find those words when sniping competitor SEO. It’s then up to you to somehow include them in your texts, whether they are blogs, articles, or anything in between. Keep in mind, however, that this only applies to content writers. If you’re a copywriter, the scenario can be a little different. If you don’t know the difference between the two, I have a blog on it right here.

I wish you godspeed on your writing journey! If you need any tips as a writer, or if you need someone to write for your business, you know where to find me! Until we meet again, my caffeinated friend!