At work the other day, there was a presentation about SEO and how we can make all of our sites more SEO friendly. Instead of spending gobs of cash on online banners and such, SEO is a free way of getting your name out into the world. As any blogger can attest, a little bit of SEO research can go a long way.

What I found really interesting is how the presenter framed the stuff he was talking about. To make sure everyone understood the idea behind some of the complex stuff that Google does to crawl and find sites, he told a little story that went something like this:

So Google probably has the smartest engineers in the world working for them. And their number one directive that they’ve been asked to follow when it comes to their job is to do what’s best for the user. So if two pages look exactly the same but one of them is more popular than the other, Google’s engineers will make it so that popular page shows up before the other one. And if Google thinks a page is trying to do some sneaky things to try to game the system but aren’t useful to the user, then they will not only ignore your site—they’ll penalize it.

So as you’re working on a site and you’re trying to make sure it will do well on search engines, each time you’re wondering whether or not something you’re doing is sneaky or questionable, think of the team of Google engineers who are so good at their job. And try to put yourself in their shoes: ask yourself what the user would want and try to make it easy for them to find you. That’s what Google wants, and that’s what you should try to give them: keep the user in mind first.

The presentation was longer and deeper than that, but he kept coming back to this concept and I thought it was fascinating. He was telling everyone from engineers to writers the same exact thing: keep the user in mind and Google’s search engines will reward you.

OK, Now the Writing Part

What does this have to do with writing? I’m sure you’ve figured it out by now, but whenever you’re writing something it’s always good to ask yourself, “What would a reader think of this?”

Not to the extent that you should change things just for the sake of the reader—we’re talking writing here not mathematics and engineering algorithms. There is no “right answer.” But there is a consideration. Don’t forget about your reader—hes/she’s the whole reason you’re writing in the first place, remember?

This happens to me when I write a first draft of something as simple as an email. I’ll get to the end of it and think, “Boom, this is perfect. Off it goes!” Then I go back and re-read it and it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re in my head (you don’t want to be in there, trust me). The best thing to do is to go back and try to reframe what I’ve written so that a third person could actually understand what I was trying to say.

That’s why writers hate first drafts and that’s why we need to “step away” from them before coming back and working them over. As Steven King has said, he finishes a novel, stuff it in a drawer, and doesn’t come back to it for around six months.

Why? He wants to be able to edit it from the point of view of his readers: with a fresh perspective.

Google would be proud of him.

This post was included in the Just Write Carnival over at The Incurable Disease of Writing

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