Comments on: Should Bloggers Write for Humans or Computers?

By: Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing

Paul Burani, Clicksharp Marketing — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:39:20 +0000

Darren — this is a fantastic take on the humans vs. robots issue. Thanks for weighing in on the subject. We’ve highlighted your post in a recent video about this same topic: http://www.clicksharpmarketing.com/blog/2008/07/30/myths-seo-video-readers-humans-robots-crawlers/

By: Janelle

Janelle — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:22:51 +0000

This is a great article. I work for a web-based company and author several blogs for them. As I’ve been “stumbling” across various web sites as well as other people’s blogs, I find myself becoming increasingly annoyed with a lot of people’s blogs, which are peppered with Google ads and totally irrelevant information. It seems that they’re more obsessed with linking out to stuff than they are with providing quality content. It’s really difficult to find blogs out there that actually speak to other people-blogs that aren’t trying to sell you something or which aren’t so focused on making revenue that the quality of the content suffers.

By: daniy!

daniy! — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:47:09 +0000

Since I’m a novice internet-guy, I started my work with writing for humans. It feels easier to tell stories with human’s language rather than machines. And I remember that my readers are humans. They’re persons that will put judgments over my blogs and the content. If they like it, if they see it useful, they will tend to come again next time, or at least giving a useful one-way backlink to my blogs. And these backlinks are lovable things that we can earn.

Simply, I know some basic SEO techniques and somehow apply it to my blogs. Adding some keywords [but note fulfill them] in the content, will help the SE to find our blogs and help deliver our blogs to people who never know about my blogs. They’re also potential blog subscribers

By: Blogger SEO Without Google? » Web it and forget it! Exploring the niche web.

Blogger SEO Without Google? » Web it and forget it! Exploring the niche web. — Tue, 16 May 2006 02:39:15 +0000

[...] After The Click-through The challenge is on writing quality posts containing the popular search terms to get readers to subscribe to your blog. This essentially breaks the cardinal content rule of “writing for humans vs. writing for computers” but if done properly can achieve results expanding your readership. [...]

By: Gab

Gab — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 21:40:54 +0000

When I blog, I know my readers are human, so I limit and balance what I do in terms of SEO. But many tips I learnt through Problogger and such have been put to great use, and I’m getting 5-15% of my traffic from search engines, so I see the results. Notably, I hit #1 on google for “moderate analysis” and “centrist commentary”, using these ideas. I recommend paying attention to your post titles and site descriptions.
To use the metaphor of a suit, you choose the colours and materials according to what your customer wants, but because you have an eye on your business, you do the stitching and hangars the way you want.
Cheers
gab

By: Easton Ellsworth

Easton Ellsworth — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:50:55 +0000

The major search engines are continually evolving and (hopefully) getting “smarter” at sorting out the best of the Web from the rest of the Web. So this (hopefully) will reward those who write for humans first, and edit with computers in mind second.

By: AmBlogger » AmBloggers Prefer Humans Over Computers?

AmBlogger » AmBloggers Prefer Humans Over Computers? — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 02:21:57 +0000

[...] Steve Pavlina has a long post filled with tips about How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog). Point # 4 on the post was Write for human beings first, computers second. Darren Rowse also asks the question “Should Bloggers Write for Humans or Computers?” onProBlogger. [...]

By: » The Beauty of networking - Free Marketing Information

» The Beauty of networking - Free Marketing Information — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 23:42:41 +0000

[...] Should Bloggers Write for Humans or Computers? [...]

By: jim

jim — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:28:27 +0000

It has to be somewhere in the middle because if you write strictly for SEO’s, readers will pick up on that (if you’re too keyword rich, it doesn’t sound natural) but if you write strictly for readers (in an anti-SEO type of way) then you lose the ability to reach a wide range of readers.

By: The SEO Debate is Alive and Well | Copyblogger

The SEO Debate is Alive and Well | Copyblogger — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 22:02:36 +0000

[...] ProBlogger’s Darren Rouse chimes in with an excellent, balanced addition to the growing debate over traditional SEO as applied to blogs. This is the topic that I commented on with SEO Copywriting is Dead, which built upon a couple of posts by Nick Wilson of Performancing and was pushed further along by Steve Pavlina. [...]

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 20:42:13 +0000

You have to write for humans. Do not get caught up in the google algo crap. You will never win. People cannot program what people will like.

By: chris

chris — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 18:13:48 +0000

Here is an seo question, I had 150 listings in google at 3pm yesterday, at 6pm I was down to 52 listings. The listings that I lost were my individual blog posts. any ideas why this would happen? As to what you wrote about, I personally think that to many “pro” blogging experts are stuck in the content is king mindset and are to narow in there focus.

By: mark

mark — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:56:23 +0000

I strongly agree wth your comment that “balance is the key and a combination of SEO and concentrating on quality content has been successful for me to this point.”

I like to not focus on just one side, but tweak around the middle somewhere.

By: Darnell

Darnell — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 16:05:24 +0000

I also agree that both of them are somewhere in the middle, although it will probably very from blog to blog.

Hey Darren, I was wondering, would you consider traffic from online RSS feeds to be more machine or human (or a combination of both)?

By: Lyndoman

Lyndoman — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 15:16:10 +0000

Write for people first.

Edit for searchengines second.

SEO for blogs is not dead, it’s just one tool in the toolbox and depending on your blog and what you want out of it depends on how you approach the balance. Maybe the best metaphor is how to bake a cake, the recipe has to be just right.

I always make more money from virgin traffic from an SE rather than repeat traffic, but repeat traffic leads to links which leads to better ranking in the SE’s.

By: Ariejan de Vroom

Ariejan de Vroom — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 14:56:36 +0000

I completely agree on the “truth lies somewhere in the middle” thing. As with all things that have to arguments, this is also true for writing for people or SEO.

I personally think that SE’s are always optimizing their algorithms to get a fix on text written for people. So, wasting time on SEO may work for a while, but SE’s don’t sit still all day.

Writing for people is the way to go. It has many benefits (as described in this article). And personally, I like to read something that’s written for me, instead of for a machine.